Golden Yellow Blues

From time to time when the sky is gloomy I gather various textiles that are not happy whites anymore and I turn them into golden days.
I'm told being useful to others, sharing your knowledge is the way to go. Keith Pavia fellow artist reminded me that talents are given to be shared not buried away.
It is still trying for me because I grew up under communism and much was taken from us in the name of altruism.
Yet for many years I went that route only to get burned out.
So: dissatisfying whites get soaked for an hour or so.

I put to boil 4.5 gallons of water  and 13 tablespoons of turmeric and 9 tablespoons of alum. If curious Google as to why.

I pushed the clothes thoroughly under the concoction and made sure it stayed oppressed.

After an hour get them out without burning yourself. 

Rinse. The turmeric powder might create a Milkyway of sorts on the bathtub floor. Get metaphysical.

Take pictures with your phone and not spify camera while rinsing until the water is not yellow anymore.

Put  a second load into the brewing cauldron.  If you get annoyed by the waiting like I do since I equate waiting with terrorising controlling tactics, as experienced under said communism, double task. Repot your plants. Here goes Pandele, my digging assistant:

After rinsing put them in the dryer and get all metaphysical again.

Then fold the fluffy clothes and uuu and aaa about how soft and sunflower fields and daffodils and autumn ginko tree leaves they are. And how you'll never get to be depressed by blahy whites again. It's not your fault the washing cycle is just half an hour here in America and you can't get them be the required white. 

And that how disgustingly patriarchal it is that brides must wear virginal white. And you can't remember the biblical title of a movie in which Betty Davis stubbornly showed up in a red dress she bought of a sexual worker and Jane Fonda's father dumped her. Jezebel the film. 

At my wedding my head looked like a buffalo partition in the middle  teased in two mounds stiff with hair spray. Made my own white dress. God, every year I find more stuff in my younger past to be embarrassed about.

Here are the invigorating results:

Even rust splotches look artsy now:

This flower is my phone screen now to remind me that when in doubt use yellow.

After trimming off the stray strings I made a tassel:

and left the rest to Pandele to play

while I took a hot bath using the brewing. Turmeric and alum is great for you. Google, Google. If you douse your nether parts you can be a virgin all over again. Yep.

New York City 

November 11, 2017

How Can I Walk On Weak Legs?!

Two years ago I started having severe pain in my middle back. As the months went by, it was getting worse. My personal doctor gave me pain medicine and muscle relaxers but that didn’t help. So I went to the emergency rooms to get X-rays. First I went to Muhlenberg. The doctor gave me a shot of something, which didn’t help, and sent me on my way.

A few weeks later the pain was so bad I was sleeping with pillows underneath me. I went to Somerset Hospital. They took X-rays. The doctor said I had pneumonia and that five weeks ago, my spine nerves got inflamed so he gave me Neurontin. That didn’t work either.

Three weeks later, I went back to Muhlenberg, only this time I didn’t have a car, so I was taking buses. It was twenty dollars one way in a taxi, so I’d take a bus one way and a taxi the other way, which living on social security it was a lot of money.

My legs had cellulites. I worked as a waitress five years at a diner. All these white water things came up on my legs, water spots. They got all swollen, I can’t walk on them. So, I got social security. $570.

I forgot to say that at Muhlenberg I had to give the doctor my history. At the time I was on a Methadone program. So you had to tell the doctors so they know what kind of medication you can’t take because you’ll have a bad reaction to it. So, I was honest. Right off the bat she looked at me like I was a drug addict and a bad seed, and I wasn’t. I had gotten on Methadone for prescription pills, Valium, I took for all my 30s. It had nothing to do with shooting drugs or heroine. But she thought I was still addicted to pills, and all she did was give me the same shot that didn’t work the last time, and also muscle relaxers. So I say, “Can’t you take some X-rays?” She took an X-ray and said it came out fine. I left. I walked home in agony, to say the least.

The last time I went to Somerset Hospital. The same doctor I saw earlier said the reason they couldn’t find out what the pain was, was that I still had a touch of pneumonia in the bottom of my right lung. He gave me an antibiotic, the Neurontin again, and a pain medication, and sent me home.

I then went to my personal doctor. She gave me pain medication and told me to go to the emergency room, get X-rays again. There was nothing she could do about it. So again, I went to Muhlenberg. It was the first time I didn’t get again that mean doctor, but her resident. He was really sympathetic. He was gonna give me X-rays, and he was gonna take a blood test finally. He was gonna do his job, actually. He went off to get me pain medication. As soon as he did that, the doctor I had seen formerly, stepped in.

I said to my nurse, who was a male, he was filthy dirty. I thought he was a patient! He had dirty white sneakers on, greasy hair. I didn’t know he was a nurse until he put gloves on and was taking my blood. I tell the nurse that I don’t want the medication she gave me last time, because it didn’t work.

He yelled at me, “You don’t come to us and tell us what to give you. You come to us, we tell you what we’re gonna do for you.” He was really snooty. So I called the doctor over and I told her to please see how much pain I was in. I couldn’t sit up straight in the bed. She goes, “See what?! I can’t see pain! How can I see pain?!” I didn’t mean it literally, I meant it in my face, you know. She was being a real jerk about it. I said, “Never mind, just let me go home.” As I was leaving, I saw the blood, the glass tubes, laying on the counter with no name on it, nothing. They weren’t even gonna send them to the lab. I went home.

About twelve days later, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I went back to my personal doctor. She gave me more medication, muscle relaxers, and I went home, spent the weekend in bed. I couldn’t get out of bed. I was in so much pain. My son had to walk me to the bathroom.

I had to go somewhere on Monday. I couldn’t stand up to get dressed. My son said, “Mom, you have to go. Try to get up.” So I stood up, my legs collapsed. I couldn’t feel anything, the pain was so severe. He called an ambulance and I went to Somerset Hospital. They stuck needles in my legs. I couldn’t feel anything. I was totally paralyzed from the waist down.

Thankfully a surgeon neurologist, Doctor Moore, did an MRI. The first time I’ve had it in all these months. He found an abscess, or a staph infection wrapped around my spine and my heart. He tells me, if this certain antibiotic wouldn’t take care of it in two weeks, they’d have to operate. So, I was admitted, with the pain, given a morphine drip. The pain didn’t let up and the abscess didn’t go away, so he had to operate. I had a good chance of dying. He called my family. In fact I didn’t know that I might die until all my family got there. I hadn’t seen them in a while. I was wondering why my mother was there, my son was there.

Before the surgery, this nurse, Terry, was taking care of me. I thought she was part of the hospital staff, actually she was a recruiter from a nursing home. After the operation, she said, “Where do you go from here? Are you going anywhere for therapy?” I said, “I know I can’t go home. I’d like to learn how to walk again, if I can.” She said she works for a nursing home and they had therapy.

A week after the operation she brought me there. It was a nursing home with old people. No therapy, at all. I was in such agony that they couldn’t even wash me or turn me. I, I, I could never forget that pain for weeks. Gradually over a month and a half, the pain subsided.

Six weeks later I was supposed to go back to Doctor Moore. Well, I didn’t know that. But they knew that and they never brought me. He thought I fell off the face of the earth. I found this out later on. He was wondering why I never came back to see him, after an operation like that.

They kept me in bed for ten months on my back. They had made me a back brace in the hospital to wear. When I got to the nursing home, they said I’d lost too much weight, the back brace wouldn’t fit, it would do me harm. So I didn’t even wear the back brace. I was supposed to wear it, get up, learn how to slide from the bed to the wheel chair. They had no occupational therapy to do that for me.

Much later they had one guy come in, only because I was on his route and he felt sorry for me. He’d come in twice a week and give me some therapy, moving my legs a little and show me some exercises I could do in bed. That’s it. My son would come, and after like six months, he said, “Mommy, try to move your toe.” I couldn’t. But two months later he said, “Try again,” and I moved my toe. It was the happiest moment in my life. I was able to move my toe. And I was still laying there.

A new social worker started working there, he was young. He came in my room and told me who he was. He said, “Karen, why are you here?” I explained to him. He said, “Why are you laying here in a nursing home? How come you’re not in sub-acute therapy?” I said, “I don’t know. I thought they were supposed to send me from here.” He asked me who my surgeon was, and I told him. He said, "I’m going to get in touch with him.” I said, “Terry said she tried, but they never called her back. She left message after message on his phone and she never got a call back for the last nine months.” He said, “Let me try.” He called and left a message and in an hour Doctor Moore called him back. In an hour! He told Steve, the social worker, he was so happy to hear from him because he had lost touch with me completely, like I fell off the face of the earth. And to bring me in as soon as possible. He couldn’t believe that he found me. He was such a jolly fellow. He was so nice, so sweet. He loved his job, you know.

I went three days later to his office, and he took X-rays. When he looked at the X-rays, he came in. I said, “Will I be able to walk again?” He said, “Well, with some acute therapy, I think you will.” He held my hand, we were laughing and crying. He’s such a good guy. I couldn’t believe it. He said, “You have to get into Kessler West, or Magee in Philadelphia. I’ll give them a call and a social worker will call too.”

He threw his part in it.

When I got back to the nursing home, I told Terry. She called Kessler West and told them that I was on narcotics at the nursing home. She came into my room and said, "Kessler West doesn’t take people that are taking narcotics. Don’t get your hopes up that you’re gonna go.” She tried to discourage me. I sat there for a while, and I said to myself I’m gonna call this lady at Kessler West myself, see if I can make a difference because the hell these people are giving me… you know, let me do some things on my own. So I called her and I told her who I was, and what Terry said about the narcotics.

“Oh, that’s not a problem. People come here with brain injuries. Believe me they have to take narcotics. That can’t be a problem, or we wouldn’t be able to take anyone.” She went on to say, “After talking to you, now I like you. [Laughs] You really sound like a different person than what Terry described. I want to get you here as fast as I can.”

A week later I was at Kessler West. Two days later I started therapy. It did wonders on me. I was barely curling a toe, my legs were swollen like big logs, hard from laying flat, and two weeks later I was moving my legs up and down. I was bendin’ them, and the swelling in my knees, my ankles, my feet had dropped. They did wonders. [Sighs] I felt so limber.

I then found out they only take people six weeks, on any insurance. They told me to try to find a place that would accept me, that had the therapy that they were doing. I looked all over, but everywhere they had long waiting list. So they said there’s a place, this one, they said they had same Kessler therapy here. I figured, if they do Kessler it must be good. So I came here and I was brought into this mental unit.

People were screaming and biting themselves, dribbling and crying... It was crazy.

The aides here are so mean, very abusive, especially to the older people who can’t talk. They’re pushing them around, hurting them, throw them around.

People walk around with wet soaking pants, through the diapers, crapping their pants for hours. The whole ward stinks with poop and pee.

Yeah, the aides don’t clean them. You ask them for something and they act as they don’t hear you. They give you a nasty look, they keep on walking away. I got hit by one of them. They put her on a different unit for four days, now she’s back. I think they gave her a warning, because now she’s nice to me.

The health care in this country is atrocious. Why can’t we have free health insurance, like Canada? It’s just terrible. And the nursing homes take people’s homes, everything, before they even touch their insurance. They leave them with nothing, their families with nothing.

I lay in the bed twelve hours a night, or ten. They make me go to bed at ten until ten in the morning. By the time I get out, I can’t even move my legs.

The nurse puts on my socks, pants. It’s terrible that you can’t do anything by yourself. Not going to the bathroom, to bed.

I waited three months before I got evaluated. I kept on telling them, “I’m regressing. My legs are starting to get numb again. What am I supposed to do?” They just kept putting off. So finally three months later they evaluate me by just how high I could pick up my feet. Of course they wouldn’t go up as high as they did at Kessler because, dude, it was three months later. They said, “Well, you’re never gonna improve anymore from here.” I said, “Yes, I will, if I had therapy. I improved at Kessler! I stopped improving here because I didn’t have therapy.”

Well, the head of the department was supposed to okay my papers but she was sick, she was out for three months. Then they got a new person, Melissa. After five months I talked to her and she finally gave me three weeks. But she also said, “You have to learn to accept to live your life as full as you can in a wheel chair. Don’t waste your time trying to walk.” Discourage me as much as she can.

When she got me the therapy room I had a good therapist, Abe. He got me exercising my legs. He stood me on the parallel bars. I was standing up by myself. He says, “No wonder you were so angry. If you had therapy all this time, you could be walking by now.” I said, “Yeah, I know.”

Two days later, Melissa came to see how I was and I said, “I was so excited by what Abe said. I told my nurse and a friend of mine.” She said that I shouldn’t have said anything because Able could get fired. He had no right to say that because it wasn’t true. He wasn’t supposed to get me on my feet. “That wasn’t what we agreed on.” “You got me in therapy so I could work on my legs.” She goes, “Okay, but no more.”

She gave me three weeks of occupational, so I got another guy when I went in the next day. For three weeks we threw a balloon at each other for my balance, sitting down, nothing to strengthen my legs, nothing.

I said, “When are we gonna work on my legs?” He said, “Melissa doesn’t want me to.” I said, “That’s what I came in here for!” He said if I progressed in a month, then we’d see. Keep on going. Three weeks later Melissa had me get on the parallel bars and try to take a few steps. I took three or four sliding steps, I wasn’t able to pick up my knees and legs. I was able to stand up, of course. But she said, “Okay, you’ve done well. Your therapy is finished.” I said, “Finished?! We didn’t even start on my legs yet!” She said, “I never told you we were gonna work on your legs.” I said, “Yes, you did. Me and Linda,” my social worker, “and you discussed it in her office.”

And that’s the therapy I got here. From Kessler West my doctors sent me here to get therapy. And eight months later, I still haven’t gotten it.

If I had family to fight for me, go up there and say, “She was sent here for therapy. Why isn’t she getting it? Why is she sitting in her room for three months?” But my son is in jail. My mother’s in a nursing home. My brothers are dead.

She said my legs were spastic. She said there is a new medication out, Baclofen. They showed doctors and nurses videos of. At first they inject it in your spine. Sometimes the patient can start walking. If that doesn’t work, there’s a disc that they insert in your spine and it drips a dosage of the medication every day for three, six months, and you’ll be walking.

But, I feel, before they do that, they should do therapy on my legs to strengthen them. How can I walk on weak legs?! I haven’t walked in two years, my legs are weak now. How can I walk on weak legs? If they don’t give me physical therapy before I start walking, then they’re gonna think I failed. Anyway in four to six weeks I’m going to go in for an evaluation to see if I qualify for this disc.

In the videos they showed there was a woman who had a stroke, she was paralyzed from the neck down. Two months later, after this medication, she was moving every part of her body, walking down the hall. 

Peeking

I’m waking up from my 100-year hibernation. My first.

If everything is well then I shall stay around for five, maybe ten years, until 2140 perhaps. That will give me time to finish my life’s work, look around, and maybe sleep another 100 years, wake up again, sleep again, until I’m ready to sleep for good.

But if I don’t like how humanity has evolved, then in a week I shall be ready to snooze into the far future. I hope we’ve made spectacular strides. I might be right, based on my previously fulfilled predictions. In 2016 a Romanian journalist thought she was saving me from embarrassment when she left out chunks of my interview. I live in New York City, was born in Romania. I was sharing my euphoria that reputable Western scientists believed that in 2030 we’d have the ability to clone ourselves, to backup and duplicate our brains digitally, to heal the sick, and even revive the dead. And I decried that while this was happening in the world of science we busied ourselves with jealousy and back stabbing, addiction, discrimination, war, political thievery.

In 2016 in the USA they were cloning cats and dogs for big money. The journalist asked me, “What for?! Romania is full of stray dogs, no one needs them.” I stubbornly dreamed out loud, “How wonderful it would be if I could clone myself and grow up in New York. A new life, without trauma, without abusive alcoholics, without communists who trampled upon my youth.”

She was silent. In 2016 even pain killers were difficult to buy in Romania.

Well, in 2030 I did duplicate my brain digitally. But though many people cloned themselves, I didn’t. By then I made peace with my past. Plus Donald Trump ruined cloning for me. His first attempt at presidency failed, thank God. Imagine the President of the USA with his ridiculous comb-over hairdo and orange complexion.

But then he cloned himself, to run again for president later.

Anyway, I needed new hands, knees, actually new bones, since I suffered from osteoarthritis, but the side effects of bone replacements were still daunting. So I opted for hibernation, wait until science could fix my rickety body to last at least until I finished my work. My writing. What if they don’t read now? What if I’m obsolete? No. People still read in 2030. Print media died, we published only eBooks. Though I cherished my paper library. I hope I still have it. My dear home in the Catskills wasn’t sealed before I booked into the hibernation facility. I let my son use it, and his children and their children.

I wonder if there will be many family members welcoming me.

I won’t open my eyes yet. Wiggle toes, fingers. I’m okay.

I wanted a world without country borders, no walls raised to stop movement. If they finally gave up on cars and now they only fly about in saucers or hovers fueled by clean energy, I’d be so happy. I hope highways were dismantled and grass and wild flowers and trees grew back. I’ll swim again in the ocean. Last time I went to Brighton Beach was paradise. Water clear, sand pure. The antipollution steep fines worked marvels. I hope they kept at bay the sea level. I’m sure they did. The Manhattan multi-million condominium owner association took care of the dike system. What’s that sound? Open your eyes, will you? Wind. Waves? No, wind. We’re not under water. Are we? Open your eyes. Alright. Ceiling, bed, sheets. Cotton? Yes. Okay. Oh, fragrant flowers. Delightful. Seems we found our way back to nature. I never understood why flowers lost their perfume and tomatoes were rubbery. Lovely light. Warm. Let’s see if you can sit upright. Ouch! I’m afraid to call a nurse. What if we employ robots, or we invaded another planet, took war prisoners and now they work here? I can toughen it. Get up. Window. Slowly. Trees. Sleek cars. Few. Good. No roads. Those holes? Underground street entrances. I don’t see any flying saucers. Maybe they are not allowed in the city, hard to coordinate the traffic. Well, at least no surface cars.

I’m hungry. Remote control. Buttons. Press, click… Oh, my! This wall is a 3D electronic screen. Nurse. Family. Welcome back. History Update. Nurse. Click.

Hi! What a relief! I feared you’ll be a slithering reptile! Bravo humankind! Can I have something to eat, please?

3/15/2016

Dear Commander in Chief

Please forgive me if my language skills will fail me at times and cause merriment in you. It is not intended, but I come from a faraway land and I am a stranger to your customs and fancies. I write to you hoping you will find a way of solving my matter positively in a win-win situation and not cause further damage and puzzlement.
I am one of your humble subjects of inquestitation. Way back in early March my eyeglass was knocked from me, stomped upon, lenses broken, its brackets all twisted by my ex-paramour gone again berserk at the Armory Show Pavilion. I was myself demolished and defrayed nervously, emotionally and psychiatrically that I was put in a wheel chair to make my entrance at the ER hospital room. There two of your employees came and wrote my bad situation down and then life took me on the path to recovery out of my domestic violence residue and I waited to see about my eyeglass but nothing happened for quite a while, so I bought new.
Then a detective called! A Hamlet Aberdeen left a message saying to call the precinct! At last, help is on its way! At last, someone listens! I was very much impressed as I told him my gratitude he denied it completely. Before talking to this detective, I made many complaints at the precinct in my immigrant infested neighborhood but all I got was sniggerings and biggerings. They never did squat about my situation. I showered them with complaints but never ever one showed up ever never ever ever! Left me thinking I was still in the old country where justice is dead under a pile of musty dung.
When Detective Aberdeen Shining Armor came! I was impressed from the minute I stepped in your precinct! I told him I never met a detective. He smiled and said well, now I saw four. I do not have enough words to describe you and commend you since we have an ancestral saying and it is true here too in America it is true, that De la cap se-mpute peştele which roughly is: “The fish gets funky from the head!” I can’t wait to meet you! I am sure if your fine employees were so courteous and polite, what about you, the mind behind this fine team? I have never seen such fine speciments. All mussellar in tight T-shirts with their long American legs, like in the movies, on the table! Sergeants, like in the movies, were typing diligently at their carbon copies. That was amazing how it was and it was not like in the movies! In the movies, the detectives always jump in cars and drive away in a rush. At your precinct, when Detective Aberdeen gave me the Precinct Grand Tour pointed out one lonesome car key up on the billboard. It is a miracle that anything gets done! Dousens of detectives and one car!
Commander in Chief, you need a fundraiser! Make a calling for bikes and scooters, roller blades and skateboards! If the city’s millionaires won’t throw in money for enough cars, ask the poor population to pitch in! My rescuer should get to the rescue full speed! I called him to go and get my perpetrator from the other borough he was arrested for other maltratreatments he bestowed on me, but by the time, four hours later, that Detective Aberdeen arrived on his roller blades, he already bounded and fleed!
This will not do, I said to myself. This has to be brought to the public attention! These brave courteous men need help! Me, a humble immigrant, I can do only so much! In addition, my head was abuzz with ideas.
Commander in Chief, your staff changed my life. Especially Detective Aberdeen. He gave me back hope. He gave me backspine; he gave me pride in humanity. I wrote very exquisite erotic literature thanks to this man, Commander in Chief! I had such erotic daydreams that I said, America at last!
It was a grand feeling mutual.
Alas, Commander in Chief, all fine things end in shingles!
Detective Aberdeen succumbed under the large load of suitcases and bickering of his detective partner and I wonder who else?—Maybe you gave him the evil eye since he spent too many long days on my suitcase instead of catching heavier perpetrators and violators? But Detective Aberdeen, I vouch with my heart, is a man of vision and, may I say, television. Television! He saw the core problem in my suitcase and extricated it and hold it up as a flasklight of Statue of Liberty shining thru the darkness! Detective Aberdeen is my hero. He saw in my suitcase the malaise of the entire Nation. He identified it! He pinpointed: Here is a small woman of grand will who escaped dying of AIDS thru condom slippage and condom brokage and condom peelage off the HIV positive dripping faucet prick and she could have been infested, she could have been dying! but life protected her to bear witness! And here she is now bearing witness that there’s no finer man than Detective Aberdeen in all the precincts in the world!
Buy him a scooter!
I do not know what is appropriate and fraternal because I am all mixed up in America you have to be professional; you cannot fraternize and buddyrize when you go to the precincts. Therefore, I do not know, can I offer my tax returns to you to buy Detective Aberdeen a super-scooter and a voice mail while my suitcase is still open?
It is a distressful situation.
Voice mail is not in the precinct. The phones are from the James Bond Series. But we are not. It is hard to watch how fellow detectives scribble down my erotic messages for Detective Aberdeen. How they report courteously over the phone that Detective Aberdeen is taking a leek! Detective Aberdeen is coming only on Friday! Detective Aberdeen actually is on vacation scootering in Bahamas; comes back next Saturday. Detective Aberdeen has been seen a minute ago! But where is Detective Aberdeen? At times, it looks like he is hostage in his own precinct, all gagged up and tied with ropes, and cannot talk on the phone. A fine situation! A man who fought the terrorists is afraid of my anxious self, wanting to know about her suitcase!
Commander in Chief, here is a hundred check from my tax returns! Buy the voice mail! Let him screen his calls. Don’t let this situation fester! I can see him running away down the stairs in the basement when the phone rings: Here is the dear old lady calling again about her eyeglass! Alternatively, picking up the phone, pretending he can’t hear my squeaking voice asking about my suitcase! Dropping the receiver!
Buy the voicemail and then he effortlessly can think about other suitcases and delete my annoying messages efficiently without losing any brainpower.
We, as a Nation, will be much better served!
Otherwise, I fell in love with your precinct, as I said. I feel like I could move in. Needs badly a woman’s hand. Some curtains here and there, dusting, mopping, some flower bushes to play cops and robbers with the victims more efficiently. If I may suggest you need larger badges and shinier ones. In my old country, though the militia was vehiculing on donkeys, their uniform was more splendors: lots and lots of tassels and pompons, golden, red and emerald green! And they’d salute their superiors!
Please consider implementing this healthy attitude! They should all salute! Snap the heels and up goes the arm to the hat! What is this nonsense with public service? Order and discipline! You are the Commander in Chief!
And the hats are unimpressive here! Ostrich plumes would look smashing! Or peacock feathers! The Elton John style! It can be done very cheaply, I assure you!
But let me not get carried away!
Therefore, in these few words I mean to say how keep up the good work, Commander in Chief, father of such brave terrorist hunters and domestic violence victim protectors.
Please let me know if the check bounces so that I can pay in food stamps, and don’t let Detective Aberdeen hide-and-seek each time the phone rings.
The Nation needs him for a new detective series and bless my heart if I come sane out of this bedlam of a suitcase I will be the one to write it with your help and guidance, Commander in Chief, with your help and abbreviations.
May you be in good health and close retirement!

All our love with you and yours and Detective Aberdeen’s above all,

Ludmila Popovics,
Old Sexy Biddy Ex- Brighton Beach Sunbather [Now Bahamas Islands Cruiser—perhaps I bump into Detective Aberdeen and his scooter dressed as a palm or coconut tree!
Shush!]

P.S. We could have a rummage sale, Commander in Chief: with all the typerighters we can sell at a high price antiques. Please consider me to organizer it!
Let’s have a banner: Befriend Your Precinct! Community Gives Back to Precinct Rummage Sale!
Let me know!!!

10/25/2006

New York City

Tonight We’re Coming out of Our Tombs, We’re Crossing the Death River

Halloween. 

Carl and I are in SoHo to watch the crowd spectacle. Carl is an actor friend of mine. The best way to see the costumes close up is to go an hour before the parade in the area where dressed up revelers line up and wait for the parade to commence, so they can march and show off.
The wind blows and the crowd coils, a mincing machine crowd, we brush, roll, push against each other in this human collimator, startled by close ups of puss gashes, cadaveric complexions, some blood drained pale like flour, some putrid green black with gangrene, we grind against plump French maids, goose pimpled above their garters and white knee-high stockings, batting their enormous blue eyelashes, here go the Spider Men and Bat Men and Cat Women, oh, the Cat Women with their buttocks, rocks under black spandex, the tail, a pitiful knotted rope, the knees buckling up by the end of the parade, not a good idea, Cat Woman, those high heels not a good idea, Cat Woman.
Here go pirates, brides, one with a black veil, drops of blood on her embroidered shiny atlas gown, and a sad bride, dead, with dark circles, head inclined, her tresses and veil flutter in the wind as she poses, oh, so sad a bride.
Here come the salsa dancing marchers! You are in the wrong parade, man, your drums force me to dance along but your bright feathers and sequins are in the wrong parade! You are to scare us, scare us! Why can’t you be menacing cohorts of death? Look, like these three witches with orange wigs, pointed hats, black gowns and miniskirts! Look how they have a blast charging into the audience crammed behind the police fences! That’s how you do it! You are to scare us!
Here comes General Michael Jackson, in his red coat and golden glitter, and woos softly his signature, I love you, to a kid who wants a picture with Michael, oh, Michael, save the world, save the children, Michael! Here comes Jackie Kennedy Onassis waiving in slow motion her white gloved hand, a patent leather handbag dangling from her elbow, and then Marylyn in her blonde curls and her halter white gown. Oh, you need a fan, a hair drier, a leaf blower Marylyn, so your skirts go up your leggy legs.
Look, such long legs on this Deviless, she has long white legs, her red wig with red horns, she came all the way from Harlem the Red Deviless, she walks alone people gawking at her legs!
Look, the whip lashing dominatrixes, black leathered, scare the Tea Party Aunt Hattie, who holds a tray with miniature tea china and pretty cheesecake slices, all proper with her white hair bum and white apron. Then a Barbie doll ambushes us, confined in her Barbie box, pressing her face against the plastic wall, while her Ken doll rolls her enormous box up Sixth Avenue, and oh, the squadrons of gigantic skeletons and white serpents and bats, a cloud of bats, all huge puppets assaulting the dark skies, and then humungous fish skeletons, that’s how you’ll end up too, naughty little boy, piranhas shall eat you, if you go into the water when your mama told you not to!
Oh, and here is Marie Antoinette with her cauliflower, sky-scraper high wig, and her wide, wooden apparel hips! She stops ever so graceful for pictures. Here goes Schindler’s List Mom, or what’s her name in the painting, Whistler’s Mom, and then come the Asian monster-headed warriors, kamikaze samurai, in kimono gowns of gold and shine, and then monsters galore: one-eyed monsters, and fluffy fluffy plush monsters with white baseballs for eyes, the balls running amok, shifty, shifty, and then comes opulent King of France, or Britain, in his red mantle trimmed with a rich white fur leopard collar, his face is a skull and his hand is skeletal. Oh, majestic King, parading solemnly, you are dead, dead, dead. Why did you kill all your eight wives?!
And then come the bores from the movies, the Mad Hatters and the Star War Jedi and Princess Leas and the Elvises, many Elvises, wig and pompadour and diamonded belts, and the District Nine aliens and the Shout painting’s masks and the Sponge Bobs and Chilean miners, lots of Chilean miners, the 30 rescued miners multiplied to hundreds, and clock faces with angel wings, and the cohorts of dancers paying tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, man, two large groups, man, two, what bores.
And here are the drag queens, one has a golden phone receiver grafted on her wig blonde, the coil wire hangs dangling about, and a power plug couple comes, one has two penises, and one has two anuses and when they plug into each other, oh, how they twist in the agony of pleasure, oh, how they like it and oh, how we laugh! Then the ghoulish couples, white faced, a white strand in their black hair, the man in English tailcoats, the woman, long hair, black eye circles, all lace and finery, walk together solemnly.
Another couple parades in white dainty gauze shrouds, his eyeglasses lenses iridescent holographs. ‘Who are you, who are you?!’ I ask him, ‘so elegant and so absurd a man?’Hhe shrugs sweetly as his pair drags him away, ‘This is what one year of marriage turned me into,’ he shrugs sweetly.
Here go two bemused clowns, in such delightful costumes with various dangling silky bags, sheltered under an enormous umbrella with kitchenware things hanging from it, handing out business cards, let us come to your parties! Let us entertain you! let us earn a living! There come gothy Edward Scissorhands, there are many Edward Scissors, the Jonny Depp teenage misfits, scissors, scissors are my hands and my hair is a bush I hide shy under, and they all charge into us, the  screaming bystanders.
Some just walk in the parade, talking bored on their cell phones, doing nothing to scare us, and so many in cheap boring costumes from Wal-Mart. No, man, no, you’re insulting the audience! Make an effort! and they walk, walk not sure if they should have fun or not. No, man, no!
Next year I’m gonna go in the parade myself, this time I chickened out when Carl said I can’t have a large ruffled skirt in the parade, the crows would tear it apart, so crowdy a crowd. No, no, man, next year I’ll have a large pink dress! Larger than Marie Antoinette’s.
Look at the old ladies, four white ghostly spirits, they charge and wiggle their jazz hands and they say together wooo! wooo! and I am happy to play getting scared by them, and I am happy that they are old ladies, in their sixties, fifties, and they are spirits and they go in the parade and they scare us, wooo, wooo, woooo!
Life is here, yes, I am bountiful with you, my New York, tonight I am resplendent with you my America, tonight!
Carl has a plush rabbit, he tears its neck off, its red and violet entrails hang from the ripped neck. Carl is a tall hat gentleman, with a pipe and a tailcoat and military bravery medals, and has cardboard eyeglasses with scary painted eyes and he is a moody disgruntled gentleman. ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps at passers by, ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps and they love it, ‘Let me take a picture! take a picture! take a picture with you, grouchy Mister!’
We take the subway and emerge on Sixth Avenue and 14^th Street, prime location. We hang from fences, we can see over the heads of sidewalk crowds.
Every sidewalk is unnecessarily fenced up, policemen at every corner.
Carl says they practice anti-terrorism drills on us. ‘Crowd control they enjoy, fascists,’ Carl calls them fascists. ‘What has become America,’ he moans.
We are unable to get out of the sidewalks, at each corner all fenced up, unnecessarily. We are locked up.
Here comes a Russell Brand with his hair teased up. He screams in a high pitch voice, British accent, ‘Where are our fucking liberties, America? The fucking liberties, we should cross the street, mate!’ I first think he really wants to cross the street and I respond, ‘Yeah, man, we should cross the street, what is this? There is no traffic jam, few cars, let us cross the street!’ I quite shout worked up, ‘We should cross!’ and I expect Carl, the revolutionary who when he works as a bus tour guide tells the tourists on Wall Street that, ‘These robbers get away with theft, gentlemen!’ I expect him to shout along, and the Russell Brand to shout along, but I realize Russell Brand just does his comedy shtick, man, for cheap laughs, and Carl says some might get arrested if we shout. But then at least the rest of the crowd would be able to cross the street, he says.
I want to cross, it makes no sense to see all four street corners fenced up! ‘Let us go home, man.’ ‘Let us cross! Let us cross!’ the crowd coalesces in a booming choir, ‘Let us cross!’ the cameras flash flash, but the camera flashing is not the point, the point is we shouting at the top of our lungs, ‘Let us cross, let us cross, let us cross!’ and the police doesn’t seem to even hear or see us, impassibly motioning the cars thru the intersection.
We tire, the choir dies. That’s how we are, we get tired, we do get tired. Revolution gets tiresome. Drained, we are quiet. Only then one, two, three, as if they counted, the policemen pull carefully the iron fences aside and the crowd pushes thru the crossing, and we, Carl and I, with it, go forward.
I so love you, Downtown.
Back on the Uptown train scenery is drab. Uptowners didn’t bother to dress up. They took the kids with the pumpkin buckets to collect candy and that’s it. They are worried, they are tired, they won’t masquerade in Halloween parades, they have troubles. Bores.
The best was a white rubber glove man. He inflated rubber gloves, tied many whites in clusters, the glove fingers forming flower petals, or rooster feathers, tied bouquets on his neck, on his head, on his waist, and he was a creature of white hands floating in the moving air.
I haven’t seen pictures of him in the papers the next day. Why haven’t I seen him in the papers? Because the real thing is in the streets, man, not in the papers, not on TV, and you have to be part of it.
The real parade is Downtown, in the Village, Downtown in the Village, man. And I was part of it.

10/30/2010

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

Experiences of the Milky Way, Born-Again Christians, Indian Princesses, and Peacocks

I've written this text in 2003. I was reminded of it last night as I watched a documentary about African people.

[CLAUDIA, a petite Kenyan woman with funky, ‘tossed-salad’ hairdo sorts through several plastic bags containing children clothing donations. Her voice is mellifluous.]

1. Show Me a Way Out!

I’ll tell you, this! I’ll tell you this! That God’s love has followed me all my life in the most awful situations, even in the darkness of my life God has always followed me. Right! He was always there, whether or not I felt it, it was something different, but I tell you the first time my eyes really opened and I knew that there must be a God who is pursuing me, and that’s what I really believe, I really believe that God pursues us, okay? Is like it says in the Bible, you draw near Him and He’ll draw near to you, okay? First, you have to have that disposition of the heart, that’s my point. I just told you earlier on how, you know, I came here from Africa and I was pregnant with my second child, I was alone, I was going through a very, very hard time, I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any job, it was just horrible, horrible time, and it was such a horrible time, that I actually considered giving up my child for adoption, because I didn’t know how else to take care of him and I could not go back to the relationship that I had before, it was not an option, so I was in a situation where I could not have that child, I didn’t have the emotional energy, the spiritual willingness, I didn’t have the financial, I didn’t even have a place to live, I told you I was living with people, moving from one place to another, so one day, [Beat.] still he wasn’t born, I had decided with the hospital staff that after he’s born, they gonna take him away, and just take him away because I didn’t need to see him, because I was gonna give him up. Everything had been prepared, all the documents were signed, and the people from the agency were gonna come and take him, so the Sunday that I was gonna be discharged from the hospital, I had never seen him. He was born two days before, I had not seen him, there was no need to see him, because he was going to be given up for adoption, and the people from the agency came to take him and I packed up my bags to leave and to go home. Then, inside my heart, I had a desperate need to see him for the last time, actually the first time, because I never seen him, I said to myself, Look, I will never see him again, let me at least see his face for the first time, for the last time, and then say goodbye; so I went up to the nursery where all the other babies were and there he was, and then, you know, say goodbye, so I went there, and as I was walking towards him, the first thing that came to my mind,--because it was time for feeding so all the mothers were there, nursing their babies,--the first thing that hit my heart and I felt my heart break was the fact that mine was the only child that was not being nursed by his mother. Every other baby that was born in the last two days had his mother nursing them and they were in the mother’s room and only my child was in the nursery by himself, because there was no mother to nurse him, so I walked into the nursery alone to say goodbye to my child who was alone because all the other children were with their mothers, and as I sat there to look at him and to hold him and somebody who… He will never know me! He will never know me, because I’m about to walk out the door and leave him, and I said, Oh, my God! How can I do this? But what else can I do? What choice do I have? And my heart broke and I fell on the floor and I was crying and I wasn’t even praying because there was no prayer, there was no strength in my heart, my heart broke, but the Holy Spirit knows what we feel and He intercedes on our behalf, even when we do not know how to pray, He prays because I know I was on my knees crying because I didn’t know what to do, it was very distracting, but what happened was that I sat there on my knees and I cried like I never cried before. The lady from the agency came and she said to me, It’s time to take him [Beat.] away. It’s time for you to go! [Beat.] So I held that child in my arms and I said to God, God, if You can show me what to do, I will keep my child, if You will help me raise him and show me how to do and give me a way to keep him, I will keep him and I will dedicate my life to You. ‘Cause I thought it was so impossible, how was I gonna do it? How was I gonna do it? I didn’t have anything! I didn’t even have a diaper! I didn’t even have a dollar in the bank account to buy a diaper! So I said to Him, Lord, I don’t wanna do this, this is my child, and if You show me how to just keep him, how to raise him, I will turn my life to You. And the lady who came to take him, who was from the adoption agency who saw me when I was on my knees, I was holding him and crying, and she shut the door and said to me, Listen, I’m not supposed to do this, if they found out that I’m doing this, I will get into a lot of trouble, they would fire me, but I have seen you and I can see how your heart is breaking and I know that if you leave this child here your life will never be again the same, so I’m going to say this to you: if you want, you can come and stay with me. I will give you two months of my life, you come and stay with me and figure out what to do and you will not have to pay for anything, I will buy everything that you need, you just come and rest for awhile, and—she’s not a Christian, actually, she was actually recovering from a thirteen year drug addiction, she didn’t even know Christ, but God uses whoever he wants to, He doesn’t need you to be a Christian.--And she said, Don’t tell anybody and if you want you can move in tonight, you can take your baby and you can move in tonight!
You tell me if ever I doubted God’s provision, God’s love, you tell me what that was! You tell me what that was?! If that was not God directly answering a prayer. That night I moved into her house with my child, she bought a crib, she had gone to K-Mart, she bought clothes, she bought diapers, she bought Baby Formula, she bought baby food, she bought everything that I needed, even a crib, to sleep on and I stayed with her for the next 2 months while I rested, 'cause I needed to rest. I was physically tired and I rested and I made arrangements to come to New Jersey and live with some people that I knew here. So… That has definitely been the most dramatic ways in which God has shown Himself. And every time I’m in a situation that causes me to doubt a little bit, God reminds me, Are you forgetting three years ago? In the hospital nursery what happen? Are you forgetting that? And then I have to remind myself, Don’t be silly, woman, look how far God has brought you. How can you doubt that He will put food on your table, or that He will find you a place to stay and how can you doubt that He will take care of this little need? Look at where you were! Even if you came to America pregnant and alone.--I came to this country with 600 dollars in my pocket, that is all I had.--So, God’ faithfulness I had never questioned. God’s provision, never for one minute!

2. Dear-God Letters

I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t have the knowledge to write, but what I did by myself, in my own personal time, I wrote Dear-God letters. Every night I wrote Dear-God letters. Put them in an envelope, I sealed them and I put them away. Two weeks ago I was opening up all my old letters, all my Dear-God letters, three years ago, two years ago, reading them, I came across this one letter that I had written October 21^st, 2000, that was a few months after my child was born, and a few months after I moved to New Jersey, and I was praying in that letter, Oh, God, I’m so desperate, I don’t know what to do. I miss my son,--my oldest son whom I haven’t seen for two years or something, 'cause I had left him back home hoping that things will get better and then send for him,--don’t know what to do, Lord, my child, he stopped asking me when he’s gonna come, Mommy when am I gonna come? He must think that I’m lying to him or that I don’t want him anymore because I always tell him, Soon! Soon! but soon never comes so I don’t even know if he’s loving me. My heart is breaking because I want him to come here with me, Lord, I don’t have enough money, how am I gonna take care of two children?! But despite all these things, I know, Lord, and I’m believing that one of these days my oldest son Paul will come here and that You will open the door and he will join me and everything will be okay and I will have a job, a good job to take care of them and not only that, Lord, I’m trusting that You’ll find me a good place to live and I said, I like Montclair, I’d like to live in Montclair [Laughter.] I would like to live in Montclair, I’ve been driving around the neighborhoods in New Jersey and I like Montclair, Lord, I’d like to live there. Won’t you, please, find me a place to stay in Montclair? [Laughter.] And Lord, if I am at it, just stretch it a little more, something else too: I don’t just want that, because after all You’re not just My Father, You’re the Almighty King of the Universe, You created everything that we see with our naked eye belongs to You, so I’m not gonna ask You for the least, I’m gonna ask You for the most, so I don’t want just that, I want more, I want my son to come here, I want a good job with benefits, and I wanna be able to live in a nice place, and I like Montclair, so could you find me a place to live in Montclair? Also, while you’re working at that, [Laughter.] I need a good car so that I can drive my children up and down, because we can not always be taking the bus in the snow and the winters are harsh, and the baby is little and I have to bundle him like seven layers of clothes before we can go to the park! So you need to find me a good car, God, that works and I can travel around, different places? And I prayed for the car and guess what? I didn’t stop there, and I said, And I want a good man! I want a Christian man and you know how I know he’ll be a good man, Lord? Because he would love my children as if they were his own and he would not judge me for whatever mistakes that I made before, he will take me as I am and he will love me and my children and we shall be a family. That’s what I want.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand! It is now June 8^th 2003 and I’m happy to report that every one of those things that I cried out to God for, each single one of them even the, not just the apartment in Montclair, the house in Montclair, He wrapped it up in a wonderful gift box and a ribbon and gave it to me. And the man is wonderful. Sometimes I say to him, Are you sure you don’t want to leave? [Laughter.] I had said to him, you know, you could,-- ‘cause sometimes God’s goodness is so overwhelming, sometimes even I’m afraid, I’m like, Whyyyyy? I forget that I’m the one that I’ve asked God to give me this and then when God gives me, I’m so overwhelmed that I’m like Oh, my goodness! And I say to my man, You can have any wonderful girl, single girl with no children, no burdens, you don’t feel… He says, I don’t have to be where I don’t want to be, I’m here because I want to be here. I’m free to do what I want, and I want to be here. So again I go back to God, never shift the focus from God to the person or the situation and say, Oh, this is so wonderful! No, God is so wonderful, 'cause He is the one who so richly provided everything that He has given you, everything that we have, everything that we are, are God’s gift to us.
He is so wonderful.

3. The God Of Bouncing Checks

I don’t know how other people pray, but I’m a very demanding person.
When God allows you to go through a hard time, you think it’s getting even worse, because sometimes you can’t bear it anymore and you think, Oh, Lord, what are You doing? Can’t You see? Can’t You see I have no money? Even to feed the children, can’t You see? But He can see! He needs for you to see, how can I say… I guess He just needs you to trust Him to a point where He can trust you with the things that He’s gonna give you, or the experience He’s gonna share with you, whatever it is. I think sometimes we are too self-centered. We focus very much on the problem or whatever it is we’re going through, it could never, ever, ever! compared with what Christ went through for us on the cross! [Beat.]
I fight with God! I do! I sit and talk to Him as if He was right here with me and I tell Him, Look! God, I will not allow You not to do this or whatever, I fight with Him a lot and I tell Him, God, my bank account is, is over drafted, what You gonna do about it? What You expect me to? And I tell Him, These children are Your children! Why have You given them to me? What are You thinking about that? There is no food in the fridge!--I make it very personal.--I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna accept this God! I don’t know what are You trying to show me, but I need some food in the fridge, can You make available some food in the fridge right now? I don’t want; I don’t want to deal with this! I don’t!
I give you an example: three weeks ago, or four weeks ago, I was so financially struck, I had no money and I had written checks I knew they gonna bounce, I knew they gonna bounce! But I knew! I knew! Because if I didn’t write them at that time, because I was gonna see the doctor and if I didn’t write the check, the doctor wouldn’t see me. But I didn’t have any money, but I said to myself, okay, I’ll write the check and then I’ll figure out how the money is gonna get into the bank account, but for now I’ll just write the check so that I can see the doctor. So I wrote checks and there was no money, and I knew they gonna bounce, I knew, so now, when Monday came, 'cause this was the week before, so Monday came and I said, Oh, my goodness what am I gonna do? Let me call the bank manager, let me talk to her, maybe she will let these checks pass if I tell her that I’m paid on Thursday so she can take the money right back. I call the bank manager, she said, No, we can’t do that. So when she said no, I went to the ladies’ room, in the bathroom and I said, God, Lord, You are not gonna leave me on my own! Every one of those checks that I wrote, I wrote them because there was need. I didn’t write them to go shopping, to buy shoes or clothes or make-up or anything silly. I bought beds,--that was when I was moving to Montclair,--I bought beds for my children to sleep on; I bought food for them to eat; I went to see the doctor and I paid the doctor’s fees; there was real need! And I don’t know what You gonna do Lord, but You gonna fix this problem, You have to! Because I need the money and these are Your children and You gave them to me, so You figure out how You gonna, You can’t leave me on my own! And if You gonna tell me in the Bible to be anxious over nothing but thanksgiving and whatever, make your requests known to God, I’m making these requests known to You! So You better fix it! Because if You don’t fix it, how You gonna tell me not to be anxious, or not to worry, if I come to You, and You don’t fix it? So You better fix it! And I don’t know, I don’t care! But I’m not gonna think about it because I can’t fix it, so You fix it!
And I dried my tears and I went back to work.
And I said to myself, I’m gonna go to the bank and I’m gonna see the bank manager, she wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, I’m gonna see her! Maybe she sees my face and I sit down and I try to reason with her, and maybe she’ll have a heart, so at lunch time I go to the bank, and I sit down and I talk to the lady and she said, You know what? That’s not my department, let me refer you to my boss. So she refers me to her boss and I go and see the operational manager and she sits and she tells me, You know, Claudia, we can’t do that, we can’t let your checks go through, that’s not the bank policy, but you know what? Hold on, one second, there might me something I might be able to do, hold on one second, just let me figure out, just hold on one second. Sit right here and I’ll be back. She goes, she does and she’s busy, she’s busy, she comes back, she says Okay, I have a solution: the bank is gonna give you a permanent overdraft line of credit,--so much money, she tells me,--so from now on, even if you overdraw your account, we gonna give you an overdraft facility protection of so much money, so you never have to worry about overwriting your account ‘cause the bank will pay for you and then when you get paid, you just put it right back, but we’ll charge you interest for it.
So not only did He sort out those checks but it has been helping me even till now, because even now the overdraft facility is permanent, so even if in future I ever overwrite my account, so God not only took care of that need for those checks, but He saw that this might happen again, or whatever, I don’t know, but it is a solution that He has provided in a most unexpected way that I was not expecting for Him to. I was only asking for the bank to allow $80 and they gave me hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars in overdraft protection. So, who says God is not interested in every detail?
The way I pray, the way I talk to God, I’m very specific with Him. I tell Him, Lord, this is what I want, not blue, not green, orange, you know? Other people say, Oh, Lord, whatever you want. I say that too, but I also say, I want him to be six foot two inches, I want him to be like this, but it’s oooookaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! if Your will, but I would prefer, you know, but whatever You want, but I would prefer, and I tell Him my preferences.
I tell you what: there are times that I thought, my goodness, I prayed for so long, God doesn’t listen to me anymore, but God is never late. He is never early, but He is never late, He’s always on time, so when His timing is right, He will give you your heart’s desire, but you first must look to Him, you must first… I guess He wants us first to need Him for Himself, not for the things that He can give us, this has been my experience. So.

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
October 22, 2013

Why Do I Go To The Thrift Store?

As I am decluttering my home, donating loads of clothing, I am reminded of how amassing stuff started, and why, upon arriving in the land of plenty.

 

Why do I go to the thrift store
whenever I got the blues/am not here/hate being here?

I don't know, but by the end of this poem
I hope you'll know.
Listen, the Saturday mornings, the spring Saturday mornings
with blue skies and fluffy clouds
with gentle breeze and warm air
scare me.

On Saturday mornings
when people peek into their car engines
when they do the laundry and clean the house
that's what I do too:
clean the house and do the laundry.
Wash the dishes and cook.
Make sure my son
finishes his social studies project
on rescue vehicles.

I have papers to grade on literacy narratives
my students are waiting for their grades.
I have to read three chapters on I-for-the-other
and I-for-myself, two short stories, one on a control freak cop
and his drowned teen daughter,
another one on an uterusless woman
with a husband ready to adopt a Chinese orphan.
I have to write and read and talk and smile.
It's Valentine's Day.

Then why don't I read and talk and write?
This is what I wanted to do all my life.
Read and talk and write and get paid for it.
I am successful. I am in full bloom.
Why don't I do it on this perfect morning then?
Why do I call Emmanuel, an illiterate friend with HIV?
Why when he tells me he didn't call being afraid
to wake me up too early
I ask, “What are you doing there?”
and when he tells me,
“Cleaning the house with my brother,”
I say, "Aha! Here you are. So do I.
Clean, wash, scrub.
I hate this! I hate this!
Take me to the thrift store."

"I don't want to go to the thrift store,
but I will come over, park my car in front of your house,
teach you how to drive after the basketball game."

"Alright. I'll drive in the parking lot."

And he comes and he parks and he goes to the basket ball game
with my son
to let me write and read and talk in peace.

And what do I do?
I sneak out, like when I was a teenager, going to the disco,
unconcerned about the curfew.
Father would beat me anyway….

And I trot towards the nearest thrift store,
three blocks away from my house.
I step on green grass,
avoiding the gray-predictable-confining sidewalk
looking at the tiny flowers, a marvel in the grass, yellow, tiny flowers.
Should I pick some?
Flowers. Little fresh yellow and purple flowers.
No, no, no. To the thrift store.

Why am I alive? What am I doing here?
This is it? This is it all?
Am I not doing the things I love to do?
Am I not loved?
Am I not alive and happy?
Why do I hate the sameness of my happiness?
The routine of my happiness? My achieved happiness?
The sameness of the rhythm of my happiness?

I pass by the seafood market
and I promise to buy shrimp. Lots of shrimp. A bucket.
But I don't. I cross the street, safely,
hoping one car would suddenly U-turn and
razor by me,
do something,
make me feel alive.
But I cross the street safely, while cars are still not in sight
and I enter the thrift store with its rows
of colorful dresses and blouses,
coats and shoes
ball dresses and suits, jeans and fluffy pullovers.

I start systematically. I swiftly finger the earrings.
Among the cheap plastic I find some lovely sand dollars,
and totems and bronze penny-like cooper leaves.
Tiny earrings. Someone's hands shaped them, painted them, put them together.
10 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar a piece.
I am a collage artist, seeking pearls in the muck.

I move to the Valentine cards section.
My son needs some for his class exchange.

And I read them.
It's the first time I read Valentine postcards.
We don't have them at home.
My beloved sent me a real heart photo
saying St. Valentine was lynched
because he helped the Christian martyrs during the Roman pogroms.
I wrote him back I'd cook it
on Saturday spring afternoon with onion rings.
I am loved.

I read:
"To me Valentine's Day is just like any other day,
because all I can think about is you."
And another one:
"I'll give you warm sleepers when your feet are icy cold.
I'll give you tasty chocolates in a box shaped like a heart
and I'll give you warm hugs as long as you don't fart."
And lovers share their best T-shirt and secrets
and spoon-sleep. And pink I love yous.

I buy a bunch of them.
I won't send them to anyone
but I'll read them to myself.
It's not cool to sob over Valentine’s Day postcards.

I move along the shoe racks. 50 cents a pair.
I put some in my basket.
Shoes can be cleaned from sweat and grease of others' soles
with chlorine.
Auschwitz piles of shoes. The Shoe Fashion Museum.

I go to the dresses racks
and I put some in my basket.
I go for different lengths,
up to my ankles,
up to my knees,
up to my calves.
I chose different colors, green the color of my eyes,
red the color of my lips,
grays and yellows, that go well with my skin.

I even go to the fancy dresses rack!
I pull out some shaped like cabbage leaves,
all of them shoulderless,
with glitter on them, with diaphanous foldings like exotic fish wings,
with huge breast cups, with small breast cups, with no breast cups.
All of them fishshshsh under my fingers.
A princess dress for a dollar.
I pile them on a sofa, since my basket is too small.
I pull out pieces of cloth from the bin,
this and this and this,
the yellow and the spring green and the Mardi Gras purple,
90 cents each.
I'll make shawls to cuddle in. Muffle up.
On the East Coast where you are beloved they are in fashion
and I always loved muffly shawls, loose ends.

Then I pick up glasses and vases,
imagining them shiny with cleanness
and bubbly with champagne we'll drink together.
Imagining huge rooms with flowers in vases
and you smiling at my splendid arrangements.

Now I'll try on all that pile of dresses.

Shoulder pads. Why do women need shoulder pads?
I always cut them off the delicate cloth.
I collect them. I want to make a decorative quilt or a pillow with a see-thru case, like a transparent skin, to see the stuffing inside, falsifying shoulder pads.
Authority. Manly-power driven-unsure-of-themselves-shoulder-padded women.

One dress doesn't fit around my neck,
this is too tight,
the other one is too stiff,
this one is stained,
the other one is too large.
I imagine the women that lived in them.
All the women whose skin touched this clothe.
I know I will never stop going to thrift stores. Ever.
I will never want new clothing. Ever.
I want clothing like me: with a history. With a past.
I want to be in a communion,
embodying their lives.

Who donated them? The family of the dead.
Of the young suicidals.
The girls who grew fat.
The girls who throw away the gifts their ex-lovers gave them,
trying to forget them.

I don't want to pretend like people do here,
that time doesn't pass.
People here in America want new-new-new lives,
new things, new bodies.
Aging doesn’t exist here.

I want history.
I want to love my things.
I want to caress and hug my things.
I want memory and affection.
I want to wash and mend
and wear them with pride and confidence.

I keep ten of them.
I look over them in daylight
to make sure I want them indeed.
Oh, one of them has a vomit stain on it!
I impulsively throw it aside, on a cardboard box.
But them I repress my own revulsion.
I'll soak it and wash it and it will be a happy dress again.
A rich drunk girl.
Her mother bought it for her from a fancy store
and she got drunk at a fraternity party
and they tried to rape her while she was vomiting.

Why people in this shop don't wash the things?
I'll do it. I am a dirty Gypsy.
My ancestors ate cadavers of horses and hens.
I am a Gypsy.
I'll wash the vomit.
Make my dress with faded green flowers
happy again. Romantic.

I'll vomit myself at times…. I'll wash it.
Some teenager messed it up.

I pay and I trot back home
with my bounty.

The sky is blue.
The tiny flowers stand uncrushed on the greeny grass.
The stadium roars.

The HIV friend laughs
at the 25 cent walking stick
with rear mirror and honk that I bought him.
He takes me to the highway where I can scream my pain,
hit the car seat with my knuckles, yell my pain, begging eyes,
laugh away my stubborn pain.
"I don't want to be alive, I don't want to be alive.
I don't know why I am alive for,"
I tell softly my friend.
"Why do you say such things?!" he scolds me gently.

"Well, you told me of your HIV
so I tell you of me.
I don't want to be alive…."

"Why do you say such things?"
"Why am I alive, then?"
"For a purpose. For a purpose."

I say nothing.
I look at the fuzzy coopery hair on his arms.
He seems eternally young and health.

Blue skies and fluffy clouds.
The red sun, as if it follows us,
runs with the car along the horizon,
until it plunges into a thick strip of clouds,
plunges like a comet.

My friend gets excited about a new building
they made on the right hand.
About the piles of dry vines they cut from the neglected plot.
"Gooollly! They did some good work."

I look at him.
He might be dead in a year or so….
Getting excited about what?!
About other people moving in new luxury apartments
while he'll be skinnier and skinnier in the hospital?!

I'll implode.
I can do much more.
I can perform in front of millions of people
I can write the PLAY OF THE CENTURY, and what am I doing instead?
Teach students show-don't-tell
Cookie-cut essay format.

I don't want to be cookie cut!
Your mom said, when I told her I would like to go to the thrift store,
She said, driving her casket black Cadillac,
"Do you mean discount store?"
"No, thrift store."
"But you don't want to go there.
You don't want to touch those stinky, dirty things.
They sell there what I throw away!
You don't want to go there."

I shut up astonished. She squelched my free will.
I am supposed to abide by your standards.
I am to be an ideal daughter-in-law,
with a life like in a fashion magazine.
I am not supposed to go to the thrift store.
She'd give me her silverware, she said.
She'd give me her gilded china.
I don't want her gilded china.
I don't want her silverware.
I don't want to be her duplication.
I don't want to be her marrying her son, my lover.
I am me. I am not a replica, do you hear me?

Now we know why I will always go to the thrift store.

2/15/2000
Baton Rouge

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
September 28, 2013