Sixties Chick

My horoscope for Wednesday, October 28th read, “You’re not one to worry incessantly, but money issues have popped up that are making you a little crazy. The good news is that you’ve got the mindset to deal with them head-on once and for all.”

I read this about a half an hour before I broke my tooth. My front tooth, bottom, leaving a gap that could have been cute if it hadn’t been so evident that half a tooth was missing. Now, if there’s one thing that stirs up the old money angst it’s a tooth emergency, because as anyone without dental insurance knows, those pearly whites can really devour a lot of green. Once you pass 50, you might as well sign over your savings to that masked man who so blithely orders you to “open wider.”

Unfortunately, teeth are rather important. And it goes way beyond chewing. My friend Dona tries to cheer me up. She works with a lady named Rose who, she swears, is absolutely beautiful and, by the way, has no front teeth. “You don’t even notice,” Dona insists. “She’s as beautiful on the outside as she is on the inside.” Oh sure, I think, reminding myself that my friend’s judgment  is always of a higher order than my own.

I want my teeth. I am very attached to them. Not much in the way of worldly goods interests me; you can keep your flat screens, your designer shoes, the luxury car, but I do want my teeth. I start the calculation for what I  learn will be a root canal and a crown. What’s in the bank? I wonder. How much room is left on the credit card? Who owes me money?

“Damn this recession,” I snarl. “Damn these teeth. Which ancestor passed these down? Who’s responsible here?” I ask myself, trying to recall the mouths of those long gone. Clearly, it’s a useless exercise, but it occurs to me that I could sure use their help now.

So with what might seem like a novel approach to my horoscope’s, “dealing with  money issues head-on,” I begin the “Ask the Ancestor” campaign, a full-throttle program of an appeal for help from those who once loved me on earth, but who are now on the other side. What could it hurt? I think. I’d do the same for them.

I start with the women. (The men, I figure, are distracted at the moment with the World Series.)  My grandmothers, my aunts,  my cousins, my mother – I tell them what’s going on, what exactly it is I need, how grateful I’d be. “Could you please pull some strings?” I ask these dear, dear disembodied souls. “Please see what you can do,” I  beseech them as I walk the dog, take a bath, navigate the aisles of the Super Fresh. “Anna, Mary, Nan, Sarah, Louise and Rosalyn. Midge, Ruth, Janet, Jean and Gail.  Are you listening?”  There isn’t an opportunity I miss for this somewhat  strange, on-going monologue.

“I am open to receive,” I assure them. “But I will do my part.” And I will. As these old souls must know from their days in “matter,” those of us still here could sure use a hand from time to time. There’s no question  that a little help (from wherever  it comes) can  go a long, long way towards a brand, new mindset  and a million dollar smile.

Is there anyone out there who likes to be hocked? I can’t imagine. I, for one, feel an instant visceral bristle whenever someone starts in on me. “Yeah, yeah, here it comes,” I think to myself. “I know I should, but I haven’t, and I might, but I probably won’t,” so please don’t hock me.

For those of you from another tribe, a hocker, quite naturally, is a person who hocks – someone who nags, harangues, badgers and otherwise annoys. According to Leo Rosten of Joy of Yiddish fame, it is a shortened version of the Yiddish “Hok mir nit kayn chainik,” literally translated as “Don’t knock me a teapot,” which makes a bit more sense as “Don’t bang on my tea kettle.” In other words, “Stop with your noise.”

The Brazilian version of that comes from my ex-husband who with his fractured yet inventive English coined the phrase, “Stop putting bother on me.” It seems to work so much better than simply saying, bug off, another curious phrase.

And isn’t that exactly what we want to tell the people who hock us? With the exception, of course, of the ones who do it with a lot of love and ever so gently, with a tad of humor and not too often. Like me, for example.

Now frankly, I don’t think I qualify as a real hocker although my daughter might disagree with that analysis. Let’s face it; type B personalities don’t make very good hockers. We laid-back people simply don’t have the temperament for it. Or the stamina. My hocking is always quite minimal. When pushed, though, I usually resort to notes, the civil kind, like the one I taped to the toilet tank the other day for the aforementioned visiting ex-husband who long since stopped listening to me. It read “If you have a penis, please lift the seat.” I thought it was a succinct yet gentle way to get my point across.

High powered hockers are another thing. And my reaction to them, probably quite common. When accosted by a tried and true hocker, I subtly disengage; then I shut down. At times, you might say I even leave my body. This is followed by the vacillation phase in which I bounce between feeling bad and feeling really aggravated. It ends with a silent yet firm vow not to do whatever it is being hocked about–out of pure spite. I had hoped I’d outgrown this response, but I can not swear to it.

Hocking is just very tough to take. It was tough as a kid, it is tough as an adult. It reminds me of a sign on the wall of a Miami deli which read, “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of your time, and it annoys the pig.”

As a postscript, let me just say that I am sincerely grateful for those hockers in my life who lovingly prod me along, nudge me forward and at times, light a fire under my sometimes very slow-moving tush. You know who you are.

In response to my last entry (the rant about cell phone usage in enclosed public spaces), both my somewhat cynical brother-in-law and my cousin in sunny, foreclosed-upon Florida commented that they had been hoping to read something a bit more upbeat. “Uplifting,” I think was the word they used. Seeing that their comments came within minutes of each other, I figured I’d better take a look at it. Have I been too negative lately?

In my defense, it sure is easy to feel down. What passes for reality looks mighty grim. A jobless recovery (that should cheer up everyone who’s out of work!), more troops for Afghanistan, and Cheney’s snarly punim plastered once again all over cable news. It’s enough to wipe the smile off of any face.

My solution, inspired by those little monkeys of “see no evil and hear no evil” fame, is to boycott the news. I decide that in order to “uplift” myself, the news has got to go. On TV, on the internet, in print. Not even a quick peak at the rolled paper lying on my neighbor’s front walk is allowed. And just so I do not shirk my civic duty before I plunge my head into the sand, I send a round of e-mails to my U.S. elected officials informing them of their responsibility to stand up to the insurance companies and pass real health care reform for people like me and my daughter. Then I pull the plug. It takes a stalwart soul to stay upbeat. That which uplifts is what I’m after.

Lucky for me that one evening, shortly after instituting my news blackout, I happen upon a spider web hanging from the utility line in front of the house. It’s huge, at least five feet in diameter, magnificent. “Wow,” I exclaim to Rio (the dog) who pays no attention, “Would you look at the beauty of this thing!”  The web is incredibly intricate,  simple at the same time. It is light and delicate, yet said to be as strong as tensile steel.  It is a work of art, yet totally functional. I am captivated by the perfection of it.

The next morning, I rush outside –eager to get a better look, but it’s gone.  “Talk about being OK with impermanence,” I remark to Rio as he lifts his leg on the nearby bush. That evening, the web is back, just as big, just as beautiful as before, the brown spider in the center doing his thing. “Now that’s what I call perseverance,” I pronounce with conviction, noting that Rio is busy with his nose down a  hole in the yard awaiting his chance to finally snag something that can’t outrun him.

Everyday and every night for over a week, the pattern is repeated. The web is there, magnificent and whole at night, gone in the morning. “Imagine having that kind of willingness, that sense of purpose,” I assert, awed by what I am witnessing. Rio sniffs and heads for his favorite spot on the neighbor’s front lawn.

One morning around five o’clock, unable to sleep, I go out to see what’s going on with the web. There she is, my marvelous Charlotte, eating her creation, strand by strand, demolishing her masterpiece – a design more brilliant than any in Architectural Digest or Art News. There she is, deftly taking down the structure she so steadfastly builds day after day, even as she clings to it.  “What an exquisite dance,” I think as I watch her start to consume  the strand she is balancing on.

“This is a wondrous world,” I say quietly only to myself, knowing that Rio is not all that interested in my observations. He looks up, though, with those loving, deep brown eyes, head cocked, and I am moved to add, “Yes, you and I, we’re wondrous too.  Not to mention uplifting.” But this, you can be sure, is not news to Rio.

Here we are right smack in the middle of those dog days of summer, named by the Greeks for the conjunction of Sirius, the dog star, with the sun. Known for its hot, sultry, often unbearable weather from July to early September, “Dog Days” was thought to be an evil time – when the “seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies.”*

It was not, as I had thought, named for Labs lazing about in the shade in midsummer. You learn something new every day, no?

Why just yesterday on my way to Washington via Amtrak I learned that the mother of the middle-aged woman who was seated a couple of rows in front of me was in the hospital. I learned this from listening, no rather hearing her rather lengthy conversation, first with her mother, then with her father and then with the nurse who was called in from the hall. “Did they know she had called last night?” she asked over and over and over again.

“I don’t want to hear this,” I thought, unable to concentrate on the book I had saved expressly for the ride down. Does she know we are all listening, that we can’t help but listen?  Where does she think she is?  Alone in her damn bedroom?

“Take a deep breath,” I tell myself after I envision leveling her with the hardback in my hand. My good angel, ever on call, pulls me back just in time from the human-hating abyss I sometimes fall into. Her mother IS ill, I remind myself. I’d probably do the same. And there, she’s off the phone. Cool it with your intolerance.

But just as I settle back down anxious to be with the inimitable Tennessee Williams, my fellow traveler makes another call – this time to her friend. Forty-five minutes later, I and the other 80 or so passengers have learned that she is on the way to DC to help her daughter with the children, an inconvenient time, of course, because her mother is in the hospital which we already know, don’t we?

We are apprised of what each of the three children is doing this summer, and the fact that her son-in-law has been traveling a lot lately. We hear all about the daughter’s new responsibilities at work due to layoffs at the company, and what with the children’s schedule and the husband gone most of the time, it seems that the daughter is quite stressed, out of sorts. “Not as out of sorts as we are,” I mutter to myself. The gall.

You see, I don’t want to know about this woman’s daughter, her son-in-law, her grandchildren, even her sick mother. I don’t want to know anything about her. It may seem surprising coming from an inveterate eavesdropper, but there is something about a phone conversation imposed upon me in a public space that sends me up the wall.  It is uncomfortable at best – a rude, selfish, egocentric, unconscious imposition on others’ quiet enjoyment at worse. As my mother used to say upon occasion in regard to what she deemed proper behavior, “Some things are not done in public!”

So right she was. There are simply things one does not do in public. We don’t pick our nose, scratch our behind, or scream fire. And I’d like to add to that – converse at length on a cell phone in a confined space from which there is no escape.  Call me old fashioned or just plain cranky, but having to listen to someone else’s inane chit chat can make me barking mad. Meaner than a junkyard … well, you get it. A bad-tempered bitch or not – those devilish “Dog Days” aside, I am begging with my most humane heart, “Please,  put a muzzle on it.”

*John Brady, Clavis Calendaria, 1813.

I don’t care what they say. From where I sit, the economy doesn’t feel a bit better, except perhaps for our buddies at Goldman Sachs who seem to be just fine, bless their black little hearts. No, from my perch, even here in scenic South Jersey, there don’t seem to be any appreciable signs of recovery, at least not for the writing business. I am full of faith nonetheless. One day soon things are bound to turn around.  It’s just…what does one do in the meantime?

Enter my Brazilian ex-husband, an ever resourceful soul, who arrived yesterday for a week’s visit to buy all sorts of strange merchandise for his internet business – a business that supplies ranchers in the remote interior of Brazil with files for goats’ horns, oversize nipples for weaned calves and “castrators”  for cutting the you-know-whats off of bulls. His appearance reminds me of one of the things I learned from six years in that incredible country.

Coming from a place where old folks get tossed out like so many bags to Goodwill, I used to marvel at how Brazilians would save old string, make toys out of plastic soda bottles, oil lamps from old tin cans. Not only prodigious recyclers, Brazilians could come up with the most ingenious ways to make a living, melting down stolen manhole covers notwithstanding. And that’s with 80% inflation per month!  If the Third World teaches anything, it’s how creative humans can be when it comes to survival.

Case in point, Dona Antonieta – 63, 250 pounds, a diabetic blond bombshell. Left in the lurch by her second husband, a man twenty years her junior, Dona Antonieta had no skills, no education, no means of support and no hope for a job.

She did, however, have an apartment two blocks from the beach in one of Recife’s tonier districts. Although it couldn’t have been more than 750 sq. ft. with only two bedrooms and a bath, three including the maid’s off of the kitchen, this modest asset saved her from the street. She used it and her head and figured out how to make it pay.

Last I knew there were eight people living there. One in each of the two bedrooms, one in the tiny maid’s room. She had divided the living room using shelves, taking one half for herself and her 36-year-old gay son who produced impeccable meals (extra if you so desired).  Three boarders occupied the other half.  She employed a full time maid who kept the place spic and span, and had a laundress show up on Thursdays to do the wash, offering yet another service at what she called a slight charge.

Dona Antonieta had firm rules as all good landladies do, and, surprisingly, everyone seemed to get along just fine. In fact, they seemed to have a great time together. In the evening, the ragtag group would gather in front of the TV to watch the latest episode of the hot soap opera of the season, often shouting comments at the actors and each other. There was a lot of laughter coming from that small room.

Afterward, Dona Antonieta would hold court. Dona Antonieta loved to talk. She often said she’d never been happier in her life.

Lately, I’ve been eyeing the guest room down the hall. Then too, my daughter’s off to college again in the fall.  The thing is, where survival’s concerned, you’ve got to be willing to crawl outside of your comfort zone. To leap right out of that box. You’ve got to be creative. And if there’s one thing I am…. it’s that!

The cryptic message on the machine said, “This week, ask yourself this question: Who Am I?”

Damn her, that Dona. Do I need this? And from a friend no less. Doesn’t she know I’m smack in the middle of a “freaking out over finances” frenzy? There’s been no trickle trickling down and the cash that needs to flow has dried up somewhere in that proverbial pipeline. Where’s my stimulus package?

So with time on my hands and against my will and better judgment, I begin to ponder. Let’s see. Who am I? Dear me. Maybe it’s better to start with who I am not.

Clearly, most people would agree I am not my bank account (thank God), my marital status, the car I drive, the house I live in, the success and failure of my kid, or the pedigree (or not) of my dog. And with all due respect to nutritionists, not even the food I eat.

OK. So, maybe I am She who writes. It is, after all, how I like to define myself. But then, what if I never wrote another word? Suppose I got permanent writer’s block or my digits were blown to bits? Who would I be then? And if I am She who writes, do I need to qualify it with I am She who writes less well than Faulkner, a major He who wrote? Can I define myself as such without even a book to my name? That can’t be.

Am I She of the accrued experiences that began in May of 1947? She whose mother died when she was 16? She, the second of four girls? She who lived abroad? She who speaks Portuguese, and loves the arts? She, a mother at 40 with a liberal bent and a rebellious streak? Is that really who I am? Might seem so, but I think not.

Half way through the week, feeling quite put out by the whole exercise, I conclude that I am not my body, my nationality, my education or my religion. I am not my personality, not even my talents or my flaws.

How could I be She who doubts her own capacity? Or She who worries about money? Or She who looks in the mirror and sees crow’s feet instead of light? In my understanding of the cosmology, limited as it is, what sense would it make to be She who is not enough? But, at times, that’s how I see myself. Sometimes, I think that’s who I am.

I’m still working hard on this, though I expect a breakthrough any day. For now, I’m stripping away the best I can – the roles, the stories, the beliefs, the ego’s small vision of who I am. My answer, I suspect, will be found in that deep and silent place where the mind can not go. I’m hoping for something like She who’s fulfilling her purpose. Whatever it is, I will get to the bottom of it.

And when I’m asked how it is I came to know myself, to be so very enlightened, I will smile and say, with gratitude, “T’was all that extra time on my hands, thanks to a lousy recession.”

Last night I heard fellow English major Garrison Keillor say that when he was a young man, he had a fear of living an ordinary life. It was not until he reached middle age, upon witnessing the quite common yet wondrous event, the birth of his child, that he discovered that “ordinary was good enough.” I loved the comment, but then I love Garrison Keillor, bushy eyebrows and all.

With the death of Michael Jackson, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to live what can be called a not so ordinary life. To be famous, always in the public eye, under constant scrutiny. What must that be like? Clearly, there can be consequences.

My friend Dona took Michael Jackson’s death hard. She remembers sitting on the stoop of her North Philly row home in the heart of the Black ghetto as a little girl. “Everyday was the same,” she shared with me, “a stultifying sameness, day after day. Nothing ever happened. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

“When Michael Jackson came along,” she tells me with tears in her eyes, “the kids began to put on shows right there in the street. Here was their star; a five year old who looked like them, afro and all, from an ordinary family and an ordinary place. He was all the proof they needed that it was possible to get out. And they didn’t even have to wait until they were grown-up.” Dona remembers how the kids came alive in the desolation of the North Philadelphia “hood,” thanks to little Michael Jackson.

But for all the gifts he had and shared, Michael Jackson’s story feels so tragic at its core. The mania with the ever-lightening skin, the plastic surgery, the paranoia, the drugs, his refusal to grow up – clearly, this was a tortured soul. For all the adoration he got, why was it he never learned to adore himself?

Michael’s not alone. The list’s a mile long – great ones hurling themselves head first down the path to self-destruction – stars, tycoons, socialites, politicians, rulers and religious leaders alike. It is curious; after all, what could be so bad about being loved on a grand scale? To be the world’s darling? Even without the bling, the mansions and the limousines.

Yes, it might be a glorious ride indeed, but fans are fickle. The winds do change. Truth is, if you look to the outside world for proof that you count, you’re up shit creek. And if you aren’t willing to wrestle the demons deep inside, you’ll be without a paddle as well.

There’s no way around it I’m afraid, you’ve got to know who you are. Who you really are. Not the profession. Not the persona. We’ve all got to muster up the courage to dig deep inside and pull out the weeds. To look at them, embrace them and then finally, let them go.

There’s really no other gig worth playing. It’s about learning to love oneself. And for my money, learning to love oneself is what merits a big round of applause and a whole lot of press. For those willing souls, take a bow.

Boy, it’s been tough getting this entry out.  I’ve started at least ten times on four different topics, all four stopping about two or three paragraphs down the page. Thoughts on the creative process, on listening to my gut, on being oblivious to the obvious, nothing seemed to jell, nothing felt quite right. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t feel like staying the course, slogging through to the finish line. Just didn’t feel up to it. Lethargy, I’d say.

Anybody else out there feeling a bit lethargic these days? I imagine I can’t be alone. Always anxious to find reasons for my behavior (anything besides laziness), I chalk it up to the never-ending rain we’ve been having lately. It is said that barometric pressure can be quite debilitating. No doubt.

It could, of course, be a reaction to the state of the world which is pretty intense, getting more so with each passing day.  I don’t linger on the news much, can’t watch it on TV, and find I can hardly read more than the headlines in any paper or on-line news. I catch snippets.  Bankers Pay Soars, Americans Struggle to Pay for Health Care with 40% Delaying Treatment, Unrepentant Rumsfeld Slams the Media, Nokia Provided Regime’s Censoring Technology, End of Line for Jon and Kate. Among the talking heads, the pundits, politicians, the power people – there are far too many egos having at one another. There’s no respite. It’s exhausting. It’s TMI.

Add to that the constant emailing, cell-phoning, texting, skyping, facebooking, youtubing, tweeting and linking in. It’s so pervasive that even if you’re only doing a quarter of it, it’s more than enough frenetic, electromagnetic energy swirling about  for any one planet.  Frankly, I’m too tired to even think about it. Stay in touch with whom exactly? How many? And why? It can take a lot out of you.

Perhaps there are other possible explanations for this lack of get-up-and-go, but I am feeling far too weary to even come up with any. All I know is that I want to sit quietly. I do not want to be disturbed. And as Dietrich so fetchingly once said, “I vant to be alone.”

With a list the length of my arm of things I needed to do this past Saturday, I plopped myself down on the sofa instead and read a wonderful book, 289 pages cover to cover, in one sitting except for an occasional snack and a quick bolt to the bathroom. It felt so luxurious. So good. To detach from all the noise and lose myself in the magic of a beautifully told story.

Today, after I minimally apply myself to a “pressing” work issue (after all, this family does have to eat), I am headed for the library for yet another one of those books. My hope is to be able, shortly thereafter, to head for that oh so soothing, horizontal position, head and feet elevated, and  lose myself in the lyrical yet compelling narrative of someone else’s world.

In the meantime,  if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll just go lie down for a quick…