on darkness visible

In 1994 my parents separated.  A year later, after a considerably bluesy period, my mom spent some time in the psychiatric wing of North Shore Hospital.  My Dad said she was tired and needed some rest.  But I knew it was more than that.  Her life had exhausted her and she wasn't sure she wanted to be here anymore.  

I'm not sure what triggered the idea, but a few months later she decided to call William Styron at his Martha's Vineyard home.  At the time, the Vineyard was the only place where famous people still had listed numbers and finding it was as easy as dialing the operator.  She left a message on his machine, knowing that it was off season and he would most likely never hear it and, if he did, never return it.  But she spoke into the recording just the same, told him that she had been feeling helpless but that his work in Darkness Visible left her with some hope.  That the past few months had been a struggle but she was trying to find her way out.  When she hung up I told her that if he ever heard it he was going to think she was a crazy person.  And then we laughed, because wasn't she just a little.

An hour later the phone rang and I answered.  The voice on the other end asked for Laura and when I asked who was calling, William Styron told me that he and his wife Rose would like to speak to my mom.  I ran upstairs, found her marking papers in bed, and whispered his name to her.  She asked me what she should say and I nervously shoved the phone into her hand. 

She called him Mr. Styron.  He told her to call him William.  He said that his daughter had called him at their home in Connecticut to relay the message from the Vineyard of a woman who sounded like she needed him.  And then he told my mom that she shouldn't give up.  She had heard this before but she listened because this was Stryon, an author, a writer, he had suffered too, and she respected him for all of it.  She thanked him for his work and asked him if it ever got easier.  They talked for an hour and I sat curled beside her on the bed in quiet thanks for the man on the other end of the line.  

The bluesy times came and went and come and go still, but seventeen years later there is hope that it gets easier.  And I can't help but think that it springs from that afternoon, from that call, from his words:

“For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as ‘the shining world.’ There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.”

John Curley, flickr

on a leap

The funny thing about having a public place to write (even if I still haven't made it really public) is that once I hit publish I feel as if the words become truth.  Like I owe them something.  So the other day after I wrote that I needed more music in my life, I decided I should do something about it.  Seeing the words there made the need, the want, feel huge, obvious, real.   

Last night I clicked around on some ads in the musicians section of craigslist until I found one that sounded like I might fit.  And then I sent an email with some song clips.  Ten minutes later a reply came in that I should come by the rehearsal studio today for an audition.  Now this might not seem like much, but I don't do this.  I do this in the shower, I do this when no one is home and I think the neighbors won't hear, I do this in comfortable and friendly settings once every three years.  

But then something changed.  And last week when my friend Mary wrote about fear, about stepping into it, about making the big things happen, I felt as if she were speaking directly to me.  So a few hours ago I walked into Studio B on 30th street and sang a few blues songs for a band.  There was a woman in there before me and I'm sure they'll see a few more before they make a decision, but at this point, as much as I want them to choose me, I feel like just going there in the first place was big enough.  Because at least I tried.  I said hello to the fear, called it out from it's lurking place in the corner, and leapt right into it.  

on the one before

That Samson song comes out through the speakers, "you are my sweetest downfall, I loved you first," and for a minute I feel the words are for him.  But then I remember.  No, that wasn't love.  That was some fabricated version of it.  A cheap knock off.  If it were sold down on Canal Street it would be called lofe; something close to love, but not quiet. 

He was the one before Mike.  Technically, in the ways that matter, he shouldn't even be counted in the same sentence as Mike, but he is, because I thought he mattered.  When I was with him, I thought I mattered.  Even though he only really knew me when we were at the bar.  Or late at night after the party cleared out from his house and I was left over.  For a long time I didn't know anything other than that feeling of watching and waiting for him to open the Town Tavern door and walk in, his tall frame filling the doorway.  That flip in my chest as he took up the space and noticed me.  Of watching and waiting for a clue, a hint, a signal that I was his that night.  And of those early mornings, of the cloudy hangover sounds of church bells and his breathing, of how much I wanted him then.  Of how little he really wanted me.

We build these things up over time.  In truth it was just a handful of nights over a handful of years but now they are solid, inked, permanent in my memories of then.  I seem to be able to make them more than what they were.  For a minute listening now I can almost convince myself that it was something, that I loved him first.  But not quite.  Maybe only in a Canal Street kind of way. 

on scenes from San Miguel

on Stuart, years ago

This morning I walked into the Key Food around the block and saw the front page of Newsday, read the words, and stopped moving.  I leaned down to pick it up and felt Mike stop to look behind him at what had held me up.  It was the headline, "16 Deadly Miles, the riskiest road on LI for pedestrians."  For a second the tears welled and I remembered him as if that last night were last week.  I didn't have to read anymore to know where they were talking about.  And then I came home and found the paragraphs below which I wrote a few years ago.  Today, for Stuart, for the boy he will always be, for the road that took him, for all the others along with him.


I am performing a search for a dead man on the internet.  An ad on the side of the Google page tells me that Dave Stuart is for sale, an advertising gimmick that takes the item you are searching for and plugs it into a “find here” field for eBay’s auction site.  For an instant I want to click on that ad.  Maybe I will be directed to a page where his face will smile out from the screen.  Maybe I could bid on his life, take back that day, slow the speeding car, turn him around and tell him to just wait a minute.  Maybe that's all it would have taken, just a minute.  I decide against it.  Instead I refine my search to the local long island newspapers where the accident occurred and find a brief and non-personal obituary in their archives.  “Upstate Man Killed While Crossing Street, December 1999.”  Two dollars and ninety-five cents later I have a print out.  A small morsel, but I have a piece of him again, to remind me that he happened, he was here. 

The night we came back to school from winter break, just two weeks after the accident, we gathered in Dave's dorm room.  His parents had been up the day before so his bedroom was void of his likeness.  His bed had been stripped and as we swallowed beer after beer, we threw the empty cans onto his now soiled mattress.  We thought if we trashed it enough the school wouldn’t be able to move someone new into the room.  And then the end of my life with them began.  Alex cried out that we were destroying Dave’s bed.  He spoke as if at any moment Dave was going to walk in and be angry with us for ruining it.  Jess yelled for him to stop whining, that a beer soaked shrine was fitting.  John slumped into the corner as Eric quietly wiped the puddles off the mattress and onto the floor.  The January wind whipped against the building and Jess and I left without saying goodbye.  When we were back to our room she jumped onto her bed and wrote Dave’s name across the width of the wall.  Days later we tried to remove the letters, their image a haunting and constant reminder of what was lost, but they wouldn’t budge.  I assume some janitor had to paint over them in June, cursing the girl who loved a man so much she had to stain her wall with his name.

The last night before winter break we had all been in that small room together.  Stuart was in my bed and I told him to get out, there wasn’t enough room, I wouldn’t be able to fall sleep with him there.  Instead he wrapped his arms around my head in an awkward embrace and drunkenly kissed my face, hoping his affection would keep me there.  James was on the other side of me, the three of us squeezed so tightly into my single bed that I had to get up, climb over them and sleep on the couch in the common room.  For a few minutes the two men lay in my bed together until they realized that I had left and there was no female body separating them.  I heard a shout, and I laughed out loud as Stuart tripped his way out of my bedroom in surprise.  He found me lying on the couch, smiled, leaned down to kiss my forehead, and then left to make his way back to his dorm.  I never saw him again.

I didn’t go to the funeral.  I was the only one of the group who didn’t come from their hometown and I missed it.  Jess and I fell out of friendship and in my last two years at school I would only see the rest of them occasionally.  When we met there would be a knowing look, a small smile and recognition that I shared something tragic with them.  But I was never one of them.  I never felt that I was allowed to mourn like they could.  He was only a part of me for such a small time; he was theirs for years before.  But I mourned just the same.  He was still mine to share.  And that is something.  As I close out of the search screen and return to work, it is something.

on home and what's next

Home from Mexico.  We left there yesterday morning after walking across a warm tarmac to a plane in Leon and arrived home 10 hours later to a New York February.  But it's still with me.  It's in the sun that's tattooed on my arms and forehead and in the dust on the bottom of my boots from the canyon hike on Sunday.  And now there are hundreds of photos to sift through but not too quickly, because that's still with me too.  It doesn't all have to be so fast.  Even here with the cell phones back on and the computer and the tv and the cabs and the noise.  For a little while I can keep that part of me here that was different there.

There were highlights.  Food and sun and a visit to a 500 year-old tree among them, but this is the best for me.  On stage with my Dad, something we've only done once before (twice if you count that open mic in 9th grade when he played "Round Here" with me).  This time there were four songs at a San Miguel open mic and then another when I joined him for a song during his set at a sold out show a few days later.  It's a funny thing to be reminded of something you love so much, something that feels so much like home, it's forced me to think about what's next.  I know I'm no rock star, but I think I need this in my life.  Maybe a little more often than an every few years attempt. 

Oh My Sweet Carolina

 

Angel from Montgomery

on a writing break

I've been quiet here lately.  I'm not exactly sure why, but I was pretty sick for the first few weeks of the month and then fell out of the habit of writing.  Not just here, but emails, journal, all of it.  We are going to Mexico on Sunday to visit my Dad and Stepmom for a week and I'm hoping that some time away will have me coming home ready to write again.  At the very least it will give me something to write about.  These poor pages have been empty too long.

last week's "elevating the ordinary" exercise for photo class

on superhero photo

Sometimes I see something and want so badly to freeze frame it but when I try to the image on the back of the camera doesn't look the way I think it should.  And maybe that's a good thing, maybe that means that what I see in nature can't always be recreated, but really I know that it just means that I don't know what I am doing with this camera contraption.  So I signed up for a course through Superhero Photo.  Not a "how to" photography course but a "let's play and see what happens" photography course.  I don't expect to become a photographer over night, but I love what it's doing to me so far.  That it's reminding me to slow down and look a little more closely.  And now I just have to get out of the office during the day so I can take something other than the moon or sunsets. 

moon out the kitchen window

sunset out the work window (someone else's, I don't actually have a window)

from the parking lot of the Red Hook Fairway

on today

on photos from the train

I found this site a few years ago and went looking for it again last night.  The photos, taken on June 8, 1968 from inside Bobby Kennedy's funeral train, show mourners, about a million by some estimates, lining the tracks to say goodbye.  They are beautiful and powerful and heartbreaking all at once. 

The Times ran an interactive feature on these photos with the photographer's narration.  You can find it here.

on the four chord summer

I still remember the first time we met.  My family had just moved to Scudder Place from Vernon Valley and Kevin lived around the block.  It wasn't long before he became friends with my brother and before I decided that we should be in love.  I gave it time though, I was realistic, I was still in elementary school.  I'd let it develop slowly.

But by the time I was fourteen I was pretty sure that a foundation had been established.  There was a camping trip that summer before I started high school and he left for college.  There was a hike up to a pristine lake (ignore the fact that my Dad was with us).  There was a photo of just the two of us in front of that lake (ignore the fact that my Dad was behind the camera).  I wasn't naive, I knew he would still think of me as the kid sister, but I imagined him coming home at some point during that first year of college and realizing that I had grown up (because wouldn't high school mean I would instantly become sophisticated, gorgeous, braces-less and mature?).  There would be a big dramatic reveal as he approached our house.  Preferably with a great soundtrack and good lighting.

It didn't happen that way.  What I had yet to realize in 1994 was that my life was not going to mirror the 110 minute coming of age romance movie.  I'm pretty sure that's for the best (Mike, Kevin's wife and two kids would probably agree).  But there are times when I look at this photo and remember how sure I was.  I wrote this song in 2003 and the fact that I have not written a song since should let you know that I do not consider myself a song writer, but this is for Kevin.  For being so sure for so long and then for growing up and out of it.  I could not have asked for a better first* unrequited love. 

* "first" because there would be oh so many more unrequiteds to come along after...

on a little perspective

It feels funny to write this now that there is no health scare and things are alright (read: there is no health scare and things are alright), but even though everything is fine now, the perspective shift has stayed with us.  I can see it in the way Mike looks at me when I take a deep breath or in the way he kisses me goodnight, holding me closer to him and squeezing more than usual, an intensity to the "I love you so much" that was not there a week ago.

I started to feel dizzy at work last Thursday afternoon.  I walked into the bannister and then rocked over to the other side of the hallway as if the 11th floor was the deck of a not so stable ship.  Or a bouncy castle at a kid's birthday party.  I laughed it off at first.  But then it got worse.  And then my heart started pounding.  I've heard the expression before, but never felt it, but your heart actually pounds when it's beating too fast.  I waited for it to go away but it was still with me on Friday morning and so I called in to work and went to the Urgent Care walk in place around the corner. 

They gave me an EKG and after the results printed out the doctor who could use a lesson in bedside manner said, "you're not going to like this."  He told me that the EKG showed that my heart was not registering the correct signal to pump, that I'd need a "pretty invasive" procedure to find out why the signaling was off.  I felt some tears forming as he told me that he was going to fax the results to a cardiologist and then call Bellevue to see if they could take me that day.  Out in the waiting room Mike could hear the nurses saying my name, talking to the cardiologist on the phone, and then about transferring me to the hospital.  It was no more than ten minutes before the doctor realized that there was interference in the EKG and ordered a second one that would show that his initial assessment was wrong, just 24 hours until the rest of the doubts would be cleared by other test results, but that time was all we needed to feel the shift. 

The second EKG showed that my heart rate was high, but not abnormal.  So for the last week I've been rocking around the apartment on my imaginary ship but I am alright.  It's just an inner ear thing, not a heart thing, and at some point it will go away and things will go back to normal.  But I think the perspective will stay with us for a while.  The reminder to be thankful for being healthy, to be grateful we have each other, to mean the things we say.  I'm sure that soon enough we'll slip back into the ways of forgetting, of taking for granted, of snippy come backs and rolled eyes, but I hope it stays a while.  The perspective that is.  I'd happily give back the rest of it.