lost-and-found trick-or-treater

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With the help of friends, owners of a house in our current town carve 100 jack-o-lanterns every Halloween

I don't know how the olfactory organ manages it - the blessed nose - the way it skips decades like a stone on the surface of water and brings back October thirty-firsts from forty years ago in a nanosecond. I just know it works.

On the drive home from the university this week in the early evening dusk, if I smell burning leaves from someone's yard, instantly I am walking fast in that I-will-not-be-overly-excited-and-run walk that trick-or-treaters commence from their own porch into a dark but streetlit Halloween night (unless you're my husband as a boy and you just full out run door to door, pillow case slung over your shoulder to be stuffed with as much candy as you can carry, go home, dump it out on the living room floor, and go back out again, running).

For blocks and blocks my small town neighborhood angled off in rows of sidewalks covered in crispy brown leaves, lined with beacons: porch lights inviting me and hundreds of other kids to walk up to a friend's or a stranger's door, reach a hand into a big Melmac bowl and help ourselves to candy - politely take one, or impolitely grab a handful - to what I hoped would be Snickers, Reese's peanut butter cups or sour apple bubble gum, but please no Tootsie Rolls or apples.

We were little fishermen docking for a few seconds at ports of call, lit like lighthouses, where we filled our nets with what the neighborhood sea had stocked.

One Halloween, I was lost at sea.

Little Ruthie got invited to go trick-or-treating with a grown up friend of an older sister. Was it the year Nancy sewed me an 18th century Martha Washington costume complete with black lace mask, shawl and fingerless gloves, white wig dotted with blue satin rosebuds, and lovely draped blue satin garniture hanging from the waist? Impossibly, I managed to go off with Charlene and have a blast without either of us informing my parents. Have you ever seen a police car parked in front of your house, complete with spinning red and white lights? Whatever fun you were just having disappears like a wave seeping into sand.

But no doubt, the catch I emptied onto the carpet, sorted into piles of keepers and undesirables, then eaten a few a day, mollified my guilt into mid-November.
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"suddenly thrill you"

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Do you know who said it, what's written on the page in my journal? No. Stop, don't you dare Google it. I know you might have Googled, if so, then you already knew before I added his signature below.

If you don't know, what would you guess is her or his profession? Did you think it was a visual artist? Think about that while I tell you what I've been doing.

In the evening after supper I am reading my way through a collection of short stories I picked up on the free book table in the hall at work, starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown and ending with Louise Erdrich's The Red Convertible. Close together this week I read Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat and Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener - both tales about scribes early in the 19th century who live poor and plain, the first in Russia and the second in America. Can there be anything more mundane and boring than copying text scrupulously and painstakingly by hand, all day, every day, six days a week? Then having to read it through with another copyist to be certain there are no errors? The writing they copy would most likely be tedious "legalize" too. Next time you curse your computer, think about the alternative. Well, my friend Inge might prefer it.

But put these ordinary characters Akakievich and Bartleby, whose lives are as achingly banal as anyone can imagine, into the hand held pens of Gogol and Melville, and their circumstances become rich alleyways you can't resist following around the next corner.

Unless you're Paris Hilton, life is pretty mundane most of the time, with blips of interest, joy, surprise or disappointment now and then. Writing, photographing, drawing, painting, exploring, teaching, counseling, parenting, cooking, designing, cleaning, laundering, organizing -- or whatever way of knowing you bring to the world -- you can be blown away by the essence of something inside your ordinary routine once in a while. I dare you.

Ok, who said it: "You need to let little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you." If you know, please let others guess first. Is there anything more ordinary than a Campbell's soup can?
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Answer:

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burning mad

"If you make a hard bed, you have to lay in it." - Hazel Moran, "The Burning Bed"

Last Halloween I wrote about some creepy stories in our little town. One of them was the true story of The Burning Bed, told in a non-fiction book by Faith McNultie, then a 1984 TV movie with Farrah Fawcett playing housewife Francine Hughes right here in Dansville, population 429. (We were not living here at the time of the tragedy or the movie.)

Thirteen can be an unlucky number, and it certainly was for Francine's ex-husband Mickey Hughes that night in March 1977. Francine told her kids to get their coats on and get in the car, and then with a good douse of gasoline burned down the house around her sleeping husband who had abused her for thirteen years. The movie showed that he beat her and beat her and beat her. When she left the burning house, she drove straight to the Sheriff's office and turned herself in, screaming, "I did it, I did it, I did it!" Ms. Hughes was tried here in Lansing and found not guilty by a jury of her peers by reason of insanity. Women's advocates called it self defense.

Our local newspaper has done an extensive feature called Unmasking the Violence on the story of Francine Hughes 25 years after "The Burning Bed" TV movie and how it affected legislation on domestic abuse because it got national attention. It is quite interesting to see how this case shaped definitions and policies on domestic abuse, if you go to that link. It is also interesting to read the section "Read about the Case" and then "Listen to their Stories" and see that some of the locals did not find the movie very accurate. Mickey's friends claim she let him have it too when fights broke out. There are very good video interviews with townspeople who knew the couple.

The world learned later that Farrah Fawcett, in a photo above from the movie in which she played the abused Francine Hughes, was herself beaten repeatedly by her actor husband Ryan O'Neal, who took out his anger on at least one of his sons too apparently. I was going to look for an image of her after the time he shoved her to the pavement and post it, but I decided not to. It's disturbing enough to see the image of her in make-up to look battered.

Oh it's such a painful topic. A person has a lot of anger, and it gets triggered by someone in the house, or some stress, and they take it out on someone close. I'm sorry if this stirs up painful memories or feelings for you.

So ok, anger exists. We all feel it sometimes. Why deny it? There are some things we really should be angry about. Others, not so much. When I feel the latter, I try to talk to myself. Slow down. Stop.

THIS HAS HELPED ME SINCE I READ IT RECENTLY.
See your anger as donkeys galloping along. You want so badly to hop on and take a ride. It would be delicious fun, such a good romp of anger! What if you just let the donkeys run on by? I have tried this, and it makes me smile. (I got this from Osho.)

SOMETIMES THIS HELPS.
If you're angry, just be angry, don't be angry with someone. Go be alone with it. G.I. Gurdjieff's father told him if he was insulted, don't react immediately in anger. Wait twenty-four hours, and then respond. Gurdjieff said that never did he have to respond, because by the next day the anger was gone. If you're alone with your anger, let it go to the cosmos. Osho said:

Remember, it is just like a dirty river falling into the ocean: the ocean will purify it. Whenever your anger, your hate, your sexuality, moves into the cosmos, into the ocean--it purifies it. If a dirty river falls into another river, then the other river also becomes dirty. When you are angry with someone, you are throwing your dirt at him. Then he will also throw his at you and this will become a mutual dirtying process.

I'VE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE THE KIDS WERE LITTLE. I WAS ILL EQUIPPED TO BE A MOTHER, THEN SOMEONE TAUGHT ME THIS. IT HELPED.
Change your belief about something. If you have a negative reaction, such as anger, it is in you, not someone else. First you have to ask yourself if you want to be angry. If not, maybe there is some way of thinking inside you that could change so that you won't get angry next time. If someone cuts in front of you in a line of traffic, and you become angry, ask yourself, What do I believe about this? "I have the right to this bit of space on the road, no one should take that from me." If you changed your belief to something else, such as: "Others may drive as they will, I will adjust accordingly," then would you be angry if it happened again?

It takes practice. Change doesn't happen overnight. Do you learn to play the piano in one day? Don't feel bad if you don't learn to conquer your anger in one day either.

I'm not promoting sainthood. And I'm not your nanny. I also recognize that some of us have ongoing conflict with people and circumstances we can't remove from our lives. I'm just saying. We are human, we have emotional responses to a tough world. But maybe putting our dirt onto someone else is not the best way to make things better. I'm talking to myself first and foremost.

Follow this link for help for abused and battered women, including state resources. If you are not in the U.S., please google domestic violence help in your area.
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blue cousins

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Here are second cousins, sons of two of my nephews. Second cousins are of the same generation, and they have different grandparents but the same great-grandparents, in this case my mom and dad. At the cottage clean-up day, Asher, on the left, was shy at first. But pretty quickly he and Aden realized they had probably met before (lots of times) and they must like the same things. The rest of the day they were inseparable.

Here they are at the spring 2007 cottage clean-up day, Aden on the left this time.



I myself had one cousin. And she died young. I have no memories like this.



Well I would have been playing with dolls, not cars.

































Do you see three-year-olds? Or future old men?














My one cousin was Marjorie. I think I met her twice, maybe three times. In fact I had so little contact with her I forgot her name and had to ask Bootsie. I was remembering "Melanie." She and my father's brother, Uncle Jimmie, lived in Richmond and it was a big deal if they, or we, made the long road trip to visit. I never met Aunt Virginia, who died before I was born. One Thanksgiving when I was about eleven, they came. Marjorie was already a mature fragile Southern flower, and maybe I would have pictured her like Blanche DuBois if I had known Tennessee Williams' character then. Her skin was pale, her hair the color of the lightest salmon maple leaf. She hardly spoke, and if she did, it was in a soft Virginian voice of grace. She was modest, unsure. We shared a room that week, and I don't remember a word passing between us. I knew she suffered a mental fragility, related in part to her mother's mental illness, which was triggered at the time of Marjorie's own birth. I didn't know how to talk to such a person. A couple decades later when she died, there was mystery and suspicion around the circumstances. Supposedly it was suicide, but my uncle, who believed in everyone, was certain that her husband, whom she had met in a hospital and who was not unlike Stanley Kowalski, was responsible.

Why share all that in a post about three-year-old cousins who rediscover the joy of boyhood every time they meet? To show that there are some things we learn later in life, like how cousins can be good friends. Don't we as parents try to make our children's lives better than our own, in whatever ways we can? It's the nature of our Instinct. All possibilities are reborn with every new child.

Right, DeeDee? Welcome to sweet little Lily.
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remnants of the day

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I'm not very good at putting things away. Going on three months after Lesley & Brian's wedding, there is still evidence of it out in plain view. Peter's wedding shoes in which he stood as Man of Honor for his sister are on the living room floor, and Lesley's cleaned and boxed gown sits in the treadmill room. Peter has no need or room for these shoes on the ship, and Lesley & Brian already have more books, pots & pans and clothes than they can accommodate in their small NY apartment. Where would they store this big box, on top of the TV?



We ourselves have too much stuff. Don and I grumble about it now and then.

But let me veer from that thought. Let's look at the stuff. I want to express gratitude for the ones who make it. I look at Peter's beautiful shoes, or Lesley's dreamy gown made by Mika in NY, and when I stop and think of the skill and dexterity it took to make them, I have to pause.

Once when I ventured to Chicago alone for a few hours at the Art Institute, I took lunch in the little garden restaurant. When you eat alone you have to occupy yourself somehow. I had a journal and pen, and before I requested my food, while I ate it, and afterward, I sat and jotted down all the professions involved within my small sphere at that table. There was my waiter, Dan, and the cook, Charlie. A farmer named Joe raised the vegetables and the chicken was probably grown in one of those big factories. Elsa at a pasta company poured ingredients into a big vat to mix the dough. There was the dishwasher Sammy who might have burned his hand with the steamy sprayer. Sarah ran the machine that manufactured the linens after a farmer named Michael grew the flax (read here if you think that's an easy job). Todd designed and laid out the menu and another few people printed and laminated it. Who made the plastic for the lamination? Ellen designed the plates and glasses, and Leiton mixed the ingredients and molded them in just the right process. Lisa in brown delivered the big boxes of heavy dishes to the restaurant at the end of a long day of deliveries, at about 6:30pm. And of course there were many other designers, planners and makers - just around my restaurant table.

I have not done any of these things. I've cooked, but not for a whole restaurant. I could probably design a menu. But I would have no clue how to pour the ink into a machine to print it. Have you noticed how we notice mistakes and flaws (Just look at that splotch of ink there!), but rarely do we notice, let alone appreciate, a job well done in the normal realm of daily life?

To make a pair of shoes?! That is an art that has always fascinated me. What a collection of tools a shoemaker must have to craft those gorgeous seams and shape the heel! Look at this shoemaking book illustrating how to "last the back" with pincers, nails, and patience. Or better yet, watch this 3 minute video of a guy making a shoe by hand. See how important his own bare feet are:





I could probably have sewn Lesley's wedding gown, but would she have wanted to wear it? Poor thing. She would have, to please her mother. In the last photo, taken by the wedding photographer Mihaela Avasiloaie, Lesley's gown which was made by Mika, thank goodness, waits for her to put it on behind the spinning wheel that was passed down on my mother's side. Someone made that old piece of technology with their hands - carving, sanding, waxing and assembling so it works (still works). What women spun wool on this wheel? Lesley dreams of raising her own sheep, shearing them and spinning wool for knitted garments she designs. Imagine the satisfaction in the completion of that circle. She won't be doing that in NYC. Some stuff has to be spread out.

Last photo by Mihaela Avasiloaie

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blasphemy

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The trees of green, orange and red that line my drive to work thirty minutes each way five days a week, as well as the sumptuous light that rises behind the green barn each morning, have filled my sight with eye candy. Filled up past capacity, over-saturated. All that bending of apple boughs, swelling of gourds, plumping of hazel shells, angled light brimming over, clouds blooming, and twittering swallows that Keats wrote of in his Ode, frankly have me gasping for the bare bones of winter. Don't show me one more beautiful leaf on your blog, I beg you -- I'll explode!

I try to live in the moment, but I'm longing for less opulent ones. I covet the next season, looking over the fence toward not greener grass, but whiter. I can't take any more of this beauty I tell you. Even this shiny Beetle I saw two weeks ago the same day I stopped to take pictures of a patch heavy with pumpkins as far as the eye could see maxed me out with its allurements. Do I want to hop in and ramble down Route 66 on a two week road trip? Not really. I'm riched out!

I want smooth flat crispy snow fields with a spike or two of corn. I want bare black trees lining them. I want to come home and after supper I want the glowing family room window pulling me back to the house from the corncrib with an armful of firewood.

Come here wind, blow away all this color. I want to go inside and hibernate.
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corny garden fun

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If April showers bring May flowers . . .

what do May flowers bring?

Pilgrims.

Planting tulip bulbs Saturday I thought about my dad in his quilted plaid wool shirt raking leaves. His wavy rusty hair had gone gray in those later years, but I still see him standing in the russet maple leaves with matching hair blowing up like a flame to the sky.

Dad was a Baptist minister. He crafted words into two sermons every week, fifty weeks a year, one for the formal Sunday morning service and another for the more casual evening service. His words were not flowery, they were just right. He wanted the gospel to speak for itself through him, a simple vessel. His Virginian accent had softened so you could just barely tell he was Southern. My ever-supportive mother said every week, "Carl, that was the best sermon you have ever preached."

But when he was home, he hardly spoke. We - my mother and eight kids - had to guess what he was thinking. Sometimes he would sit at his end of the big dining table, put his fork down and wait while we figured out what he required. Was it the salt? The bread, butter? The peas? At last after we passed him two or three things he would help himself and we would go on with our own plates. I am guessing he thought the other nine of us talked enough and he just didn't want to add anything else to the room.

But both my parents loved words, the English language, witticisms and word plays of any kind. Nothing got my dad to chuckle through his teeth like a word play. He didn't write this verse I found, but it is just the kind of thing he would have memorized and recited with a big goofy smile.

Cabbage always has a heart;
Green beans string along.
You're such a Tomato,
Will you Peas to me belong?
You've been the Apple of my eye,
You know how much I care;
So Lettuce get together,
We'd make a perfect Pear.
Now, something's sure to Turnip,
To prove you can't be Beet;
So, if you Carrot all for me
Let's let our Tulips meet.
Don't Squash my hopes and dreams now,
Bee my Honey, dear;
Or tears will fill Potato's eyes,
While Sweet Corn lends an ear.
I'll Cauliflower shop and say
Your dreams are Parsley mine.
I'll work and share my Celery,
So be my Valentine.

"Let's let our Tulips meet."

Do you know about "spoonerisms"? Take a minute and at least read the first story of Rindercella, her mugly other and two sad bisters and how she eventually slopped her dripper for the prandsom hince to find who tried it on her mugly other and it fidn't dit.
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What else?

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What Else?

First you're born and
you're alive-
What else?

Over the years
you hear confessions
that you tuck into
your swaddling clothes

Eventually you wear them
like a fleece
of deep forest green
collar up

A cozy suspicion
clothes you
the way night
clothes the moon

And what is that moon
if not a comfort
in the deep blanket
of your life

the stone that might help you
remember
What else?

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a different light

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Sky lover Violet Sky commented on the special warm glow of the morning and evening sun in October in my last post. I agree with her. Sometimes, though, as she no doubt could attest in Toronto, the glow of October's light is rather cool, if that makes sense, and sends you inside for a warmer radiance in a brick fireplace. As another friend says, it's starting to be "candle time."

Inge and I drove an hour and a half to my family's cottage (home of the Wild Things swing) for a writing retreat. It was dark and chilly - except for some brief moments such as this one when Inge was crowned with cool light on a stage of diamonds backed by milky drapes - and when it wasn't raining, light fingers of wind tipped the oak leaves spilling their rain reserves down onto the ferns, moss and tin roof. It was just the right atmosphere for nesting in the couch cushions behind a stack of books and a slow dancing fire.



Conversations with Inge are about stories. Of authors she reads and the very few I read too, such as Orhan Pamuk (click here for my encounter with him). Oh - his beloved İstanbul is also my beloved İstanbul. Or is it? He steps out one way, and I step in another. It is his story, it is my story. Or we talk about her mother's scattered leaves of stories collected and piled in attic letter boxes before Inge and her sister arrived, a world apart. Or Inge's own story, which she wants to write down for her fourteen year old son, with her places, favorite things, her poetry, sketches and photographs. We talk about truth versus fiction. What is the Truth? How does Memory serve? How can I fill in the vast gaps of knowledge about daughter of Swedish immigrants Grandma Olive? I don't remember her at all though she must have held me before her death when I was four. What can I piece together of her from what I have heard from stories told by Mom: taping wallpaper designs around the walls to match patterns as she drew them; sisters Susan, Bootsie and Nancy: falling into the goldfish pool and being terrified of breaking something valuable in the not-too-child-friendly house; and brother Nelson: Saltine cracker & peanut butter sandwiches she made for his snack - each unique and colored by their own separate memories? And what truth of her can I corral from her china, or the "bastard" cabinet she painted, or her sewing box, and the vases she collected?

Just as there is a different light in October, and there is a different light inside, there is also a different light within each of us. This light is more powerful than we are sometimes willing to acknowledge, and it slants this way and that and glows uniquely from each individual. As Eric Maise wrote in one of the weekend's fireplace books (one Inge gave me on some Christmas or birthday), A Writer's Paris, from the chapter "Hemingway Slept Here":

I don't care where Hemingway slept. . . What writers write interests me. . . . If Hemingway is important, it is because what he had to say still touches us. But is it important that on this exact spot, now smack in the middle of a fancy mall, he had onion soup after a night of debauchery? Hardly. The past is no substitute for the present. Love the 1440s, love the 1680s, love the 1920s--love any epoch that touches your soul. But start each day focused on your writing and not on your literary maps.

Bring along the stories of others that have touched you. You can't help it. But write your story, as only you can.

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simple sudden October

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Impulsively, I have to show you the morning, driving out of the farm and across the county on that old meridian road. It stops me sometimes.


Verlyn Klinkenborg wrote yesterday -

A day isn’t just a standard measure,
all the same size so each fits on a calendar page.
A day is a period of light, an astronomical event.

I will respond to your comments in the last post soon.
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