Things to celebrate!

So, it's been a while since I've written.  Lots going on: writing, teaching writing, applying for work, going through endless visa process for/with my beloved Canadian husband.

But, in the meantime, my beloved step-father Tom's memoir was published and is now available on Amazon, so I want to give you the link here: Seeking Adventure, Finding Home.  If you are interested in how someone combined a deep spiritual and social justice sensibility with tackling real-world problems (in places as far flung as Columbia, South Africa and Bangladesh - and as strange as the Providence, RI & D.C.), then this is the memoir for you.  If you are also interested in how someone can hurl themselves around the world in the first part of life but then find an even deeper happiness as he got older by 'retiring' to renovating a farmhouse in Maine, and finally - after physical disabilities became too much for even that - becoming witness-in-chief of a pond outside his condominium in Brunswick, Maine (along with working at a soup-kitchen, taking classes at local colleges and being part of a very active James Joyce study group), then this is also the book for you.

Here's the promo postcard designed by my very own Canadian:

I wrote about Tom on this blog back in June 2012 when he was dying.  That was a horrendous time for all of us who loved him of course.  However, that time was also sacred because I was privileged to be present for him and my mother when he died.

One of the astonishing things about Tom's death was that it was clear he was transcending the wheel of suffering, because he had lived a good life in all the possible meanings of the phrase.  I wrote here about the waves of love I felt from him as he took his last breath, holding his feet, with his beloved Ganesh statue behind me in the ICU.

He was not perfect, nor did he aspire to be, but he was a loving and vital human being who used every one of his many talents to make the world a better place.  Now, that, is a life worth celebrating.

I am lucky in that he was my stepfather long enough for me to appreciate this about him and that before he died we had worked through residual issues (not unsurprising for a teenager and her fourth father...).  His generosity to me from the beginning of his relationship with my mother in 1980 was kind of breathtaking.  The need my mother had for that kind of love, a man who would be her champion in every way, was palpable, and I - as the daughter who had attempted to carry that weight for a long time - was mightily relieved when he came along to take it off my back.

My mother in turn offered him a kind of love and nurture he so desperately needed and so they accomplished what they both happily referred to as a "successful mutual rescue project."  This is the kind of happy ending one wishes to see in the real world.  I feel so grateful I had a front row seat.  It took me many years to take on board the life lesson staring at me for over 30 years, but eventually I, too, found the love of my life, and so the (happy) story continues.

My mother and I, with the help of men like Tom and John (and our own ceaseless work on ourselves in various ways too numerous and in some cases embarrassing - I'm talking about me here - to mention), have slowly but surely turned the direction of the enormous toxin-filled ship of - no exaggeration - hundred of years of generational alcoholism and dysfunction away from the inevitable grounding on the proverbial shoals of self-destruction (in which many innocents also drown for the sin of just being near the cyclonic force - to mix the 5th metaphor), to a more gentle shore.  A place where the toxins can be unloaded, perhaps stored somewhere safe even, in hopes they won't hurt anyone else, ourselves included.

My beloved cousin Darcy and her amazing husband James in the way they are with each other and how they are raising their two wonderful children Simon & Leo are also charting a different course out of the dangerous fog within which our inheritance wants us to get lost.

I am so lucky to be alive and so is my mother, but more than that - in this life - this very life - without anything given to us to start  - except arguably in a weird sideways cosmic pincer move, one loud, angry, raucous, politically astute, feminist, hell-bent-active alcoholic-but-loving-in-her-own-crazy-ass-way woman (my grandmother, her mother, Jani, who fought and clawed to gasp air even when she didn't even know what it was to breathe) - we have found a way out of the predetermined path of self-destruct on which we had been set.

Tom was a huge part of this healing project and I celebrate him here.  I miss him so much I can barely let myself feel it most of the time, but I am equally grateful he was in my life.

One person's love can make that much difference.  Know that.  Act on that.  With that power you can really change the world - not just the wallpaper.  For realz.

in praise of archeologists & Kate Vargas

Just a brief update to say I continue to work steadfastly on my grandmothers' book.  The research part is taking a huge amount of time.  I keep thinking I see the end, then...it's nowhere near the end.  I ams sometimes told that I should "just write the 50 pages" and send it to the agent, etc. but I keep feeling I must continue reading all that my grandmother, Jani, wrote before I do so.  While it is sometimes a slog, in the middle of that a gem will pop out, a connection will be made, another idea shines through, some structural understanding, some emotional penny will drop.

I am trusting, for better or for worse, in this weirdly methodical (for me) organic process.  That may seem like a contradiction in terms, but as I get older, the more respect I have for archeologists.  The people who just sit there patiently brushing dirt off things ever so delicately layer by layer in hopes of finding another piece of a gigantic puzzle - one that most of them know they will never definitively solve, but move forward nonetheless.  You can't just go ransacking around ancient sites and hope to find a treasure.  Because, even if you do find that treasure, it will be out of context and you might have damaged other perhaps less obviously valuable bits of information that - if discovered - would have been more valuable than the glittery object you're holding in your greedy, impatient hand.

As someone who spent so many years working with cut-ups and random chance operations (which I still love by the way) to be working this way seems so strange and yet in some other way weirdly healing.  Like there's a faith there is something to find after all.  Not that it'll be 'definitive' or The One Great Truth, but it's there...this understanding of another human being...or two...and a different time period in which I did not live.  It feels weirdly - dare I say it - mature.

If nothing else, I am getting a much greater sense of my grandmothers, and in so doing have found myself reaching back further to their grandmothers...the sense of feeling backwards towards history, finally embracing my heritage, which is not without some big dark holes (visible, invisible, palpable, almost like air).  Linking historical events and people, finding common threads, realizing how close we are, so much closer than I suspected.

When I do give myself the permission to write, it feels fabulous.  But I am keeping that in check, so I can continue the reading and the notes and the perambulating in my brain and heart.

Throughout all this my lovely husband, John, has been extraordinarily supportive, even when I've kind of lost it, which I do...on a fairly regular basis.  Sometimes crying, sometimes just acting in an um well not so great way and sometimes just exhausted...and sometimes, even, well, happy.  He is the true love of my life because he can handle this.  I've never been with anyone who could.  My gratitude for him in my life is beyond all else.  (And happily his visa process is moving forward...finally...so in a couple months, hopefully, we'll be in Montreal for his green card interview - which will be almost the end of a way longer than expected road...)

I have two Ganesh statues, one brass, small on my computer base (from my mother) and one larger, reddish color, a writing Ganesh looking at me with piercing eyes in the corner of my desk.  Ganesh the trickster, the creator and remover of obstacles...of course he's writing.  I just wish I had those extra arms....

***

On a different note, my friend Kate Vargas debuted her album Down To My Soul at Rockwood Music Hall in NYC on Thursday and damn but did she kick ass.  But don't take my word for it.  Here is a link to one of her songs 'Throw the Devil Back' here.  You can get the album at that site, too.

Also playing with her was the lovely and talented Andrea Wittgens, another extraordinary singer/songwriter.  Below are two photos John took on Thursday.  Give yourself a treat and listen to these ladies' music.

The divine Kate Vargas at Rockwood Music Hall (photo © John Barclay-Morton)

Andrea Wittgens playing with Kate (Andrea's got a Pandora station: check her out!)
© John Barclay-Morton

So, like, do I have the most gorgeous and talented friends or what?  Yet another blessing in this life.

David Foster Wallace, Philip Seymour Hoffman and the perils of long-term sobriety

Update (8/12/14)

Sadly, I need to update this post to include Robin Williams on the roster of people who had experienced long-term sobriety and killed themselves. There are others who you don't know and never will. It is a sad fact of life for those of us who live in this strange world of suspended animation known as recovery - attempting each day to live rather than die. Robin Williams also had other issues, but addiction was one of them, so sadly his death, another loss of someone too young, who gave us so much, is added to this post from last February, which was written when Philip Seymour Hoffman died.

***

(original post 2/9/14)

There were two things I had in common with David Foster Wallace and Philip Seymour Hoffman before they died - both tragically - in their 40s: like them I got clean and sober in my 20s and in my professional life use my middle name.  (Unlike them, I have not been burdened with fame, though that hasn't been for lack of trying - not so much for fame as much for recognition as an artist that can lead to a sustainable living as same...which I think is what DFW and PSH wanted, too, neither seeming very happy in the Fame Light - because like who Would?  It must be terrifying, especially in this country.)

What is scary to me - and to anyone else with long-term sobriety who also spends a lot of time thinking, creating and putting themselves out there in the world - is that these two men who spent so many years clean and sober in such a dedicated way both ended their lives prematurely.  One on purpose (DFW committed suicide by hanging himself and left a note) and one whose death is still being examined, though it appears to be a drug overdose, most likely accidental.  However, as anyone who has been sober a long time knows, any use of drink or drugs by an addict or alcoholic is, generally, a form of short or long-form suicide.

The reason this is scary is because as much as I would like to think I have it down, or am somehow immune to the disease of alcoholism or addiction, the sorry fact is I'm not.  Not only that it confirms that nothing in terms of recognition, talent, intelligence, general goodness or wisdom, love from a partner or children - nothing external can keep me clean and sober if I decide to go out and drink, use or off myself in some other way.

To give you an example of how slippery this slope can be, here's a personal story.  When I hadn't had a drink or a drug for 23 years, my father died.  I 'dealt with it well' - did all the right things, showed up, felt forgiveness, acted well, felt my feelings, grieved real grief...etc.  Then after all that, there is this voice in my head (which I have named the disease as double-agent CIA guy - who sounds ohhhh, so reasonable at the time...so suave and calm...so intelligent) "Hey, you know you dealt with your father's death so well.  You've obviously healed so many wounds from your past.  You know, that emptiness, that void you were filling with alcohol when you were younger.  It's not there anymore.  You could probably drink now...oh, I'm not saying you should drink, but you could...and of course if it scares you, then don't...but you could."

For real.  That voice.  And that voice will kill you dead...or at least make you drink, especially if, like me - and of course this voice is designed for me - any talk of me being afraid is a red rag to the bull of my alcoholism.  My throat starts getting dry and I feel thirsty.

After Philip Seymour Hoffman died last week, my throat felt parched.  My tongue felt swollen.  That combined with the anniversary of my alcoholic grandmother's death (about whom I am reading and writing)...was horrendous.  Part of it was fear, part of it thirst.  As George Bataille once wrote "a wound desires nothing more than another wound."  The siren call of death.

So seductive, so scary....but here, my friends, is the irony of all ironies.  I am so embarrassed to ever be called out as afraid and yet it is my fear that is my friend.  Without my fear, I would probably go out and drink again, thinking, "yeah, I can handle it."  And that would be death for me.  I know it.  Which is why indeed I am afraid. Thank God/dess.

For those of us with long-term sobriety the final irony is: it doesn't get any easier.  In fact, there is some element of the whole enterprise that is not unlike Wiley E. Coyote having run off the cliff before looking down.  We are in some sense defying gravity.  So, after many years, one's arms can get tired and it's hard not to look down...to strain this metaphor to death...

I attribute my long-term sobriety to one thing only: grace.  I don't deserve it any more or less than anyone else. I certainly don't deserve it any more than Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Foster Wallace or some very close friends and relatives who have died of this disease.  I have taken some suggestions.  I pray and meditate every day, do attempt to be as honest with myself as possible, try to help another person suffering, etc.  But so do a lot of people.  And so did PSH & DFW in their time.

The fact is the desire to stay sober and stay alive is also a gift.

So, this post is a long way of saying how grateful I am: to the gods and goddesses and forces of the universe and Whatever else for giving me this gift.  I hope I help others sometimes - by example rather than advice (God help anyone who I begin to 'advise').  I hope my life on this earth means something to somebody.  That I do something in terms of service, art, something that even begins to give back this undeserved gift to the world.  I try pretty hard not to be a waste of space.  I am trying to do this writing project about my grandmothers that sometimes feels like it is driving me close to crazy.  I think I am doing this so that their voices, and the voices of women like them that have not been heard can be heard.  Am I?  Is it just ego?  WTF knows...but I'm moving forward with it.

I do know there are powers greater than me at work, greater than you, greater than any of us.  How they work, I don't know.  I just know they do. I have felt them.  I have seen them.  I forget them a lot.  When I remember them, I feel like I have a right relationship with life and - as a good friend never tires of telling me - "Your life is none of your business."

Indeed.

Gratitude to you all out there reading this, with a special shout out to my friends who spend time with me and others in uncomfortable chairs, under fluorescent lights in church basements and community halls.  Stay alive, don't pick up and don't give up on yourself or anyone else before the miracle.

Peace out.

For the record...

I believe Dylan Farrow.  Anyone who is a survivor will recognize her story as true.

Here's a link to Nicholas Kristof's article in the New York Times that links to his blog post with Dylan's letter: kristof-dylan-farrows-story

She has never before spoken out about the abuse claims against Woody Allen.  She has now.

She will probably be judged for this.  Those her judge her are like the people who sheltered Sandusky & such other 'heroes' of sports and entertainment.

Believe the survivors.  Only once this hidden scourge of abuse comes out in the open - including when girls are abused in their own home - will we have a bat's chance of sanity.

Until then, we are living in a dangerous delusion.

No "genius" is worth this.

For the record, too, I stopped watching Allen's films after he married his own stepdaughter, was a physical repulsion more than a decision.  Now I know the full extent of what I was feeling and why.

I am writing and teaching writing and that is all

I have not written on this blog for a while because I am fully engaged in my grandmothers book.  I work on it 3-7 hours per day depending on if I need to teach or do something else that day.  I've been ordering my grandmother Jani's files and reading her massive amount of writing (3 drafts of books, one complete, 2 incomplete, articles, correspondence, poems, stories, projects, etc.)  It was left in a mess so just getting dates right (while reading through some very personal material) while also figuring out her handwriting on her mountains of legal pads...is a journey.

John has been a great help keeping me grounded and making sure I have food and am somewhere near sane.  Our love continues to grow, though why on earth he puts up with me is beyond me.  Seriously, when doing this kind of work, I am no fun.  He claims I still can be.  That's probably why we're together and so in love.

I am also teaching writing again at Fordham, which is lovely and also grounding...in the present.

Last night, I saw a friend from high school, Sue, who I haven't seen since the 80s.  She lives in California but was visiting and we finally connected after all these years.  Here's a picture of the three of us: John, Sue and me at the W. 4th Street subway stop.  We lived one year in the same weird little George Washington slept here clapboard house at a tony boarding school (I was there on scholarship - see early blogposts for examples of my true dorkitude at that time).  Sue was someone with whom I connected in my senior year when I was quietly imploding.  We were both having a hard time.  I don't think we ever talked about that but somehow intuited another struggling soul.  And here we are now - lo these many years later at the subway station that was nearest my first apartment in NYC in the early 80s.  We're older, more mature and have been through a lot.  But here's the really true fact.  We're alive and that's good:

yes the dreaded 'selfie' x 3, but there we all are - Sue looks as gorgeous as I remember her in '81

yes we are still this silly happy with one another - and feeling so grateful to be together now

Other bits of news include having had a reading of an excerpt from my on-going, never-ending, someday to actually appear in the world William James project...the excerpt was illuminating, especially the conversations it generated.  Hoping now to find the right place for this to happen.  More on that as I know it.

The biggest news for me is once again Jill Lepore-related.  Her book about Jane Franklin is genius and is giving me the courage to keep going with my grandmothers book, knowing by her example how important it is to give these neither rich nor famous nor infamous women voice.  I think, given her definition of it in an article she wrote about the subject, that what I am doing is perhaps closer to 'micro history' than strictly biography or fiction.

The courage to keep on going with a project I have now worked on for over 3 years with no end in sight (research alone is taking me ages) and knowing I will continue thinking and rethinking it...that most of the hundreds of pages already written are destined for the trashcan...etc...is necessary.  What I can't believe now is how willing I am to do all this groundwork, the ordering, the endless tasks of figuring out dates and details, etc.  It's like a weird detective story (which is what Lepore says the best micro histories are) and I'm no Sherlock Holmes...just a kind of bumbling I'm not sure who or what...but it's happening and this sense of quiet accomplishment is growing inside me.  Shhhh.  Don't say it out loud a voice says in me...but well there it is...

So, back to work now...it may be a while before I post again.  My goal is to get most of the documents written by Jani read by the end of February.  I've read a ton, but there's a ton more.  However, NOW, it's all - basically - in chronological order....please wish me luck.  Send blessings, prayers, vibes, dances, whatever you believe in...that I may push through onto the other side...

Happy (slightly belated) New Year!

Happy New Year!

This was the first time the year passed and I didn't think: oh thank God that's over.  I will always have affection for 2013 (the year I married my beloved!).  I am happy to greet 2014 as well.

Having completed my portion of the editing project mentioned in earlier posts, I'm now back focused on my grandmothers book (hooray!).  I've worked many hours most days since Jan. 2 and am happy for that. The good thing about the crazy amount of hours worked and the levels of concentration needed for the editing project is that I now know what I'm capable of doing and can bring that same focus to my own work.  Also, the editing project gave me the discipline to motor through times of discomfort and tedium, which for a book project this big, with the level of research involved, is necessary.

I have done some writing about the 1940s and read (and chronologically ordered) my grandmother Jani's many opinion pieces, letters to the editor and articles by and about her that range in subject matter from an attempted rape (wherein she fought back and the man ran), which led to her successful fight to see rape laws changed in Wisconsin, issues of sexist grammar, racist and sexist basal readers (she taught remedial reading at an inner-city Milwaukee high school in the 70s), 3-mile Island, NOW, teenage pregnancy, her (unsuccessful) race for city council, violence in schools, teacher's wages, bank fraud and more...this was all from 1971-79 btw (she died in 1980). This does not include her many speeches, longer form articles, three (at least) books in progress, many short stories, hundreds of poems and piles of correspondence.  The correspondence, poems and stories range from the 1930s onward and include matriarchal genealogies from her and her mother, many hundreds of photos, newspaper clippings about marriages and divorces (hers), etc.  Boxes and boxes, people.  aka: a lot.  And this is just One grandmother.  I have discovered this past week that she was as liberal with the truth in print as in private correspondence.  This appears to be a family trait.  I find I feel ashamed of this even when I haven't indulged in this level of deception myself.  In fact the biggest challenge in this whole process is to maintain some level of detachment from my grandmothers' various, pretty obvious shortcomings and not take them all on board as if they are my fate.  Historical codependence perhaps?  

Speaking of which, my new writer hero is the historian Jill Lepore.  I wrote her after reading her piece in The New Yorker about writing her new book about Jane Franklin (Benjamin's sister).  I told her about the grandmothers' book (including above issues) and she suggested I read her journal article 'Historians who love too much' which is brilliant...and helpful...in it she discusses something called micro-history, which is distinguished from biography in that it focuses as much if not more on the social-cultural-political milieu around the person/s (usually not as famous as traditional biographies) being discussed.  I found this helpful, especially as I had begun to describe to myself the poles of the grandmothers book as oscillating between the price of rebellion (Jani) and the soul crushing cost of conformity (Dick).  This in the context of being female in the 20th Century (born before women could vote) and not wealthy (so economic imperatives to marry/go along to get along especially having grown up in the Depression are strong). Breaking the rules was dangerous.  Not breaking them was stultifying.  So, while there is a vast store of personal knowledge, details and whatnot, it all is unfolding within this larger political/economic/gender/philosophical context, which is the context in which all of my writing and theater work has unfolded since 1983.

So...in honor of those who have previously, continue to  and will carve out the poetical-political-philosophical sphere....I leave you with some gorgeous photos taken by John (my beloved Canadian husband & photographer) from my favorite New Year's Day ritual: the St. Mark's Poetry Marathon...

Jonas Mekas, filmmaker, poet, artist - 91 years old & still the coolest guy in the room

Philip Glass - after playing a lovely solo on piano - yes that close & what a treat

Clarinda MacLow - very talented dancer/artist all round great human being (& college friend)

Patti Smith - always the star attraction - always supremely human & always Herself

This year the force of nature also known as Anne Waldman (founder of marathon) stole the show with
a volcanic eruption of words/sounds/screams/cries/visions & nightmares of floods inspired by climate change

There simply is no better way to bring in the New Year than in the middle of St. Mark's Church surrounded by supremely awake, caring, angry, loving human beings.  Hundreds of poets and their admirers.  I felt so safe there, like everything was going to be OK.

John and I volunteered early in the day at the reader's desk, which was a great experience, too.  I can't recommend this enough.  Another reason, among the millions, to love NYC.

Blessings to all for the New Year - may you find your way to your deepest, truest Self-as-becoming... I've had some senses this past year of true connection to everyone around me - seeing, even in the subway filled with people, some type of divine energy manifesting in multiplicity.  I wish this for you, too, because there's nothing better than feeling blissed out in a crowd (without drugs, I hasten to add) and truly awake.

Sometimes everyone just pisses me off, too and I worry about money and shit (just so you know), but I do have those connected moments, which make me feel like this life is just part of a great Dance about which we know only a little...and what could be more wonderful?

Season's Greetings!

Below is the holiday card John and I sent out this year, which has been, bar none, the happiest year of my life because of the great good fortune of finding the love of my life in the middle of life.  This is a picture from our wedding day at City Hall in NYC.  Life has in fact 'begun' (i.e., become full and happy) at 50.  Who knew?

Never give up, is all I can tell anyone who is despairing, grieving or sad.  Life can change in an instant for the better and blessings abound.  As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I went through a lot of sadness and loss before this great blessing.  I wish that for you, too.

I celebrate with my other friends and family this year who have found (or re-found) love, had children, found recovery, celebrated successes and suchlike.  I grieve for those who have had heart-rending losses or setbacks.  Life, in my experience, is made up of both.  I used to try to hedge against joy consequently.  No more.  It's time to enjoy the love, joy and beauty that is here.  Just because everything passes (sadness and joy), does not mean I have to fear enjoying the gifts I have been graced with this year.

To John, my beloved Canadian, you are the best thing that's ever happened to me.  (But you know that.)

To my friends (who I consider family & those family members who I consider friends) that have sustained me for years, you are the reason I am here to tell this tale, with a special shout out to those with whom I share a mutual friendship with Bill W. & Lois W.

Love, abundance and blessings to you all for 2014.