Chapter Two (cont.) – (Chapter One begins 9/8)


To reach the farm we had taken a journey from the eastern end of the country to the west. Travelling by car, we arrived first in New Mexico to stay for a year or so with my mother’s Aunt Lou and her husband, Uncle Joe. I have no memories of this time, but my favorite black and white photograph of my mother, father, and me was taken then and hangs on the wall in this room where I write. There is a sidewalk along the edge of a wooden house. My parents are sitting next to it on an overturned box looking at some object, a piece of paper perhaps. They are wearing jeans and scuffed shoes and my father, already going bald in his 30′s, is in a white sweatshirt.

My mother is squinting in the sunlight, looking on with interest. Her lovely hands are resting on her knees, the left one dangling in a graceful line toward her shoe. I am kneeling on the sidewalk in front of them looking toward the camera. White-blond curls leap out from the hood of a thick cardigan sweater with embroidery in heavy yarn down its front. I look safe. We are together in the fall brightness. (to be continued)
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Deep Thought: Sometimes you have to be careful when selecting a new name for yourself. For instance, let’s say you have chosen the nickname “Fly Head.” Normally you would think that “fly Head” would mean a person who has beautiful swept-back features, as if flying through the air. But think again. Couldn’t it also mean “having a head like a fly”? I’m afraid some people might actually think that.

Chapter Two   (chapter one begins 9/8)

The Farm

 

 

The farm spread away in all directions from my heart. It encompassed some 100 acres of rich land on the banks of the Willamette River, where over the years we grew many crops, but mainly seed corn, the tall plants crowding the fields with their tassels and brilliant yellow cobs. I lived in its Emerald City and spent my days wandering the woods and meadows of Gillikan, Winkie, Quadling, and Munchkin country.(During these years my father’s older sister, Mary, sent me an Oz book on every traditional occasion and, as there were several dozen in the series, they provided a fantasy world to weave into my real one.)  (to be continued)

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Deep Thought:  Here’s a good thing to do if you go to a party and you don’t know anybody: First take out the garbage. Then go around and collect any extra garbage that people might have, like a crumpled napkin, and take that out too. Pretty soon people will want to meet the busy garbage guy.

It was a perfect fall day in Portland. Yesterday one of my cats caught a young squirrel. I heard a commotion in the back yard, came out and found Smoky gripping this creature tight in his jaws. So I got a broom and shook it at him to make him drop it. Eventually, he did. It lay there breathing and its little eyes half open on its side. I wrapped it in a towel and put it in a box and carried it to the back of the yard and put it in the bushes to see if it would recover. Later that evening I pulled the towel aside a bit and decided it was dead. I dug a hole in the soft garden dirt and began to pour it in when there was movement. So I carefully replaced the towel and box with room for it to breathe and left again. This morning when I went out, it was gone. There was just the towel left rumpled in the damp earth. I hope the little critter is now safe with his family. Thought you’d like to know how it all turned out.

Cocainize This is the empty hive where bees lived, little threadbare cells side by side, tiny hexagons close to dust. Touch them, blow on them. This is time running out.

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Deep Thought: When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns.

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!
Hey, that’s even the shape I am minus the tail. I better get to the gym.
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Deep Thought: Instead of a trap door, what about a trap window? The guy looks out it, and if he leans too far, he falls out. Wait. I guess that’s like a regular window.

Here I was in the 60′s, living in Marin County, California in the lower floor of a big house with my 2 preschool children. One of my neighbors upstairs was a photographer and used my pantry for a darkroom. He took this photo by my bedroom window in the front of the house. Wearing one of those thin Indian sari type material shirts we wore in those days. One of the reasons I’m so interested in photography now (specifically black and white photos of my family) is from knowing him and a few other good photographers back all those years ago. I treasure this memory of my youth. I still had joy, though the darkness was closing in. While we were in this house, my son set fire to our car, the man I loved left me because I was falling into addiction/alcoholism, I had an abortion of my third and last child, I started on antidepressants which I would continue to take for 10 years, and in spite of all this I managed to write an application to Berkeley that got me a full scholarship for a year. There were still about 15 years to go before I would find recovery.
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Deep Thought: I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

Taking a break from the life story till Monday.  Have 3 days off as of tomorrow and my home computer is much slower for posting.  I’ve much enjoyed your support for the first chapter.  I started writing it almost 10 years ago and have 4 chapters in the can.  But I’ve needed a kick start to get on with it, and this is helping.  So here’s a poem instead today.  (See Fig Marigold)

Deep Thought:  As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.

Fig Marigold

It is not necessary to hurry

again

she said

 

ever.

 

 

 Chapter One (cont.) – begins 9/8

My father wrote a letter to the relatives out west on the day after I was born. He wrote about visiting my mother’s hospital room several hours after the birth: “She was conscious but very weak and she wanted me just to sit and hold her hand and talk to her. She didn’t want to talk herself and would only whisper a few things. I asked her if she had seen the baby and she said no and that she didn’t want to…I wish you could have seen the way Inez battled. When she was having her pains between times she would cuss out Andy and the doctors and she never backed down an inch.”

So I was born, and our roles would never change — my father, the invalid; my mother, the warrior; and myself, the uninvited guest.

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The first season is a brush with innocence. One finishes the year behind the sickle and beyond the step of god.

 

 

 

End of Chapter One

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Deep Thought:  It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money. And I guess that’s what I like about it. It’s easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.

  Chapter One (cont.) – starts 9/8

After their marriage, my father pursued his Ph.D. at Stanford University, working with the Psychology Department which developed the Stanford-Binet I.Q. test. And from here, they moved to New York City where he began a teaching career as an instructor in the Psychology Department at New York University. My mother worked at various secretarial jobs along the way, enjoying university life and the prestige of her association with my father’s advancing career

In New York, something began to go wrong. In the photographs they still look smashing – my father always wearing a suit and tie, sometimes in a handsome overcoat; my mother in pretty dresses and hats with the brim at a jaunty angle. What happened to them then has always been immersed for me in a great mist of rumor and the unknown. For a time, they were socially active. There are many letters from, to, and about friends in their souvenirs. There are many references to political committee work and other gatherings. There are also, however, references in their letters to monetary struggle on a beginning professor’s salary in the Depression years. At any rate, near the time of my birth, my father gave it all up one day in front of his class at N.Y.U. He “broke down.” I will never know the specific details but I have imagined them. By the time it was discovered that I would have to be born by Caesarian birth due to my mother’s ovarian cysts, my father was almost too nonfunctional to go to the doctor and bargain for a payment plan for the increased expenses. And although he visited a psychiatrist briefly, it did not return him to teaching. Ever again.  (to be continued)

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Deep Thought:  If you go flying back through time and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it’s probably best to avoid eye contact.

Once Upon a Time in Mexico

This photo of Johnny Depp will give you an idea of the ambience of the film.  I saw the previous Banderas film, Desperado, and I sure don’t remember humor in it.  But this one made me laugh out loud many times.  It’s a clear parody, farce, and spoof of the first film.  You’ll get your fill of the famous Banderas smouldering look and whirling high kicks while shooting thousands of bullets.  But Depp is the real steal.  His lines are completely incongruous at times (from some other time frame) but his deadpan humor and gorgeous cheekbones are quite a combination.  Other than that though, the color of the film was not the best in my opinion and the plot was impossible to follow.  So I’ll give it a 3 out of 5 stars.