tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178656952024-03-14T01:44:44.373-04:00Night BlindRough Drafts from a Writer's LifeMacy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.comBlogger363125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-77789297310070899802023-12-24T23:52:00.000-05:002023-12-24T23:52:04.266-05:00All these years later, returning to announce a new book<p> The new book, a collection of my essays from <i>East Village Magazine</i>, 2007-2022, is called "That's My Moon Over Court Street: Dispatches from a Life in Flint." Please check it out! </p>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-66753005328890121422013-05-05T10:43:00.002-04:002013-05-05T19:37:17.855-04:00Eating Papaya at My Writing Table<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Autobiography isn't necessary. History wants in all the time, like the way I put my great-grandmother's silver spoon in this shot. I wasn't actually eating with it. I'd first just grabbed a regular one from the regular drawer but then I got into a spirit. Complications ensuing. Want to celebrate the moment. See how the papaya looks on that plate. I love that plate, its merry colors, totem of abundance. Remember when I bought that plate, its set -- and then --<br />
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Oh lord, there comes the first husband, and the dying parents, and that day in Ohio, one of a thousand days of grief, guilt and sorrow.<br />
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Back to The Moment, please. See how beautiful is that silver spoon. Yes, evidence of bygone elegance, something of loveliness and pleasure after all those other stories, to the contrary. The why of my persistent desire. <br />
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Back to The Moment. Gentle, ripe papaya with black seeds on a beautiful plate. Scooping a mouthful with a silver spoon -- <br />
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-- how I used to buy papaya at the market in Tonga decades ago -- we all loved it, it was cheap and sweet -- and once one of the other volunteers ate so much the palms of his hands turned orange.<br />
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The Moment will not stay put.<br />
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Getting up and backing away. Looking again: from here, you see a different moment: things less artful, the cords, a glass of juice, the mug of tea, the phone -- less order now. <br />
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And backing away. And looking again at this corner I've made, readied for what I hoped would happen. A room I love with a blessed bed. Love and color and light.<br />
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And coming back. The gentle, ripe papaya with black seeds on a beautiful plate. Does it need my great grandmother? Ex-husband? That guy with the orange palms in long ago Tonga? <br />
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Okay, ubiquitous memory, devil and angel and pride and melancholy and muse, I let you in. And then I come back. <br />
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The gentle, ripe papaya with black seeds on a beautiful plate. The Moment I'm in.<br />
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<br />Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-862457553913340972013-05-05T09:48:00.001-04:002013-05-05T11:04:23.130-04:00AffirmingA sunny Sunday morning. Backdrop of robins and wrens, chattering and eliding, crisscrossed arias from the tops of maples. Solitude in the house where sunbeams nudge away doldrums. <br />
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Almost forgot how to get started. It is curious how a woman who has always limned herself "writer," would resist this actual moment, the moment of sitting down. Opening up. Typing the first words. Turning inward. <br />
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Of course that's it: the layered mix of risk and self-esteem. Which will win -- the loneliness that feeds lackadaisical avoidance or the propellers of self-love, belief and hope?<br />
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Stay tuned. This feels good.<br />
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<br />Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-16876140921856559182011-11-06T18:41:00.009-05:002011-11-06T21:10:31.118-05:00You Can't Dance with Architecture. But Still...Today was proofing day at East Village Magazine, meaning that I showed up at 4:30-ish to read my column (copied below) on the table at Gary's cluttered office on Second Street. And to make my little edits. I found only one thing I wanted; I wanted the word "interesting" italicized. Gary says he CAN do anything I request. Whether he WILL is another matter. I love the scraggly-bearded Rip Van Winkle of East Village, who sleeps on a desk in the back of his store-front and for 35 years has been working 14-hour days, seven days a week to get his little paragon of community journalism out. <div><br /></div><div>As I've noted many times before, one feature of proofing day is that Gary sets out a bottle of Bushmills, along with my proof and a pen, and a chipped cup. He knows I like a finger or two when I'm editing. It is one of the high points of my month. We sit there and argue over writing and I drink a couple of fingers and ask him to pour just another finger or so, and we talk about stuff that we both remember. No matter how depressed I am in the morning, by the time I've had a couple of slugs of Irish and an hour or so of conversation with my friend Gary, I feel better about life. Tonight it had to do with John's Mini-Mart, a stop-and-rob that used to sell beer and lottery tickets and bad junk food next to the EVM office. It was torn down and leveled years ago, and now there's just some desultory grass there. But when I lived in my first Flint digs, a walkup on Avon Street right across the street from Gary's family homestead, John's "mini-rip" was a big neighborhood hangout. John, a broad-bellied white-haired con man, used to be a friend of mine, and I'd go over there a lot to buy beer, cheap wine, boxes of mac and cheese, and lottery tickets. </div><div><br /></div><div>Tonight I told Gary my old house on Seventh Street is vacant. It makes me sad: I lived there for 15 years with my first husband, a wonderful poet and the man with whom I once thought I would live forever. I once thought we would be literary lights and thrive and prosper. For a time, it came true. But something went wrong. We disappointed each other. Booze came between us like a rude mistress, not to mention that when it came down to it there were lots of ways in which we struggled to connect. There is no way to write about this without being overcome by melancholy, by the lingering grief that comes with a relationship that went awry. </div><div><br /></div><div>But that house...I loved that house. Everything I feel about that house has to do with my first husband, and my hopes for a life of poetry, and a deeply embedded love of romance.</div><div><br /></div><div>I told Gary I'd just discovered the house was vacant -- a victim of what's going on in this town and has been going on everywhere in the country lately. After my first husband and I divorced he sold the place, capitalizing luckily on a decent market just before the bubble burst. I was happy for him -- I had abandoned my claim to the house out of the guilt of my escape. But the new owners eventually foreclosed. For the first time in its 92-year history, the house is empty. </div><div><br /></div><div>Gary always says "you can't dance with architecture," meaning, I guess, that some kinds of art defy analysis. He's probably said that to me about two dozen times. I always nod and agree, though half the time I don't know what the hell this actually means. I just googled it again, and it looks like Martin Mull might have said something like that back in the '80s...but actually I think it goes back to about 1918. Gary probably knows and will tell me eventually.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, even though Gary says you can't dance with architecture, I am very susceptible to buildings. That place at 942 E. Seventh Street is in my heart, in my memory, in my soul -- whatever that is. It hurts me that it's vacant. As Neil Young said in "Helpless," it feels like "All my Changes were there." I'm going to take a break now to think this through more, and then I'll come back to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>...So, after I left EVM I turned onto Second Street, and then onto Crapo, and then to Court, where I had my turn signal on to turn left to go to the house I live in now, in the nicely manicured and upper-class neighborhood known as "The College/Cultural Neighborhood." We have a big sign and everything announcing this. But when I got down to the light at Crapo and Court, I looked in my rear view mirror to see if anybody was behind me. There wasn't. So I turned right instead, going up the hill to the light at Court and Avon, and turned left. I turned left off of Court at that light for 15 years -- it was so habitual that for about three years after I left I used to turn left there without even thinking about it, coming and going for other reasons. My body and brain thought I still lived in my old neighborhood years after I left. I would go down Avon to Seventh and turn left again. My old house was the last one on the right at the dead end of Seventh. There is a brick gate into a mansion at the dead end. My old house is a solid gray stucco place on the right, NOT a mansion but a lovely, solid square place. An immense maple still arches over the front yard -- a tree I'd written poems about for years, a tree that turns gold every fall and used to send brilliant light for a week or so every October into the second floor master bedroom where my first husband and I slept together for years. This is all I can say now. The memory of that tree, that brilliance, that bedroom where we cleaved and cleaved, is all I can handle at the moment. I have to take another break.</div><div><br /></div><div>So...I went down to the dead end of Seventh and pulled into the driveway, on the first night after the time changed and it was already dark. The maple tree was leafless, and a three-quarter moon overhead glinted silver into the yard I'd spent many years in. </div><div><br /></div><div>In a way, it's a gift that the place is deserted. Now I can stop and be there. I used to go by there from time to time, usually when I'd had a drink or two, and sneak a look, but it always felt a bit invasive. Were the new people happy there, where my own life as a poet had flowered? Where my life as a wife had foundered? The place always looked nice. But now there is a sign on the mailbox that says, "Vacant. No Mail" and a paper on the door that says it's managed now by a "Five Brothers" company in another county. I know that because I parked my car in the driveway and audaciously walked up the walk and climbed up the three steps to the front door. After staring at the depressing signs, I turned around and sat on the top step of the porch. I spent many hours on that front porch. Here is a poem I wrote on that front porch once:</div><div><br /></div><div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>86</o:Words> <o:characters>491</o:Characters> <o:company>UMFlint</o:Company> <o:lines>4</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>1</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>602</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;">Smoking on the Porch, Winter Night<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I want just this moment of flagrance.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Breath mingling with smoke, smoke with</p> <p class="MsoNormal">breath, no difference. I am on fire and</p> <p class="MsoNormal">the sweet air snuffs me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I am beeswax</p> <p class="MsoNormal">stolen from church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Leave me alone.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It takes eight minutes to smoke each one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">All eight stretch to my fingers’ tips.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I lift up, up to the relief</p> <p class="MsoNormal">of oaks and that recumbent moon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Who</p> <p class="MsoNormal">is that woman smoking on the porch?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">She is a timer for a small death.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">She chugs knifey air like whiskey</p> <p class="MsoNormal">to compose herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She solicits</p> <p class="MsoNormal">the blues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She gets itchy waiting, wrapped</p> <p class="MsoNormal">in smoke and her good black wool.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Okay, I've reached another moment where I have to stop writing. More later.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-38440550241131151622011-11-06T18:38:00.001-05:002011-11-06T18:41:04.045-05:00Give This Old Woman Some Air<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>782</o:Words> <o:characters>4461</o:Characters> <o:company>UMFlint</o:Company> <o:lines>37</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5478</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Make way, step aside, back up, get the smelling salts…and give this poor woman some air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This poor…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">old</i> woman.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yes, your friendly neighborhood writer is feeling a bit weak in the knees right now, a bit dizzy and faint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I might need to plunk down, right here on the floor, among you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here’s why: as of Nov. 14, I qualify for Social Security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So I’m officially elderly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve seen it coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve been spurning invites from the AARP for ten years and even though I’ve been ripping up the packets and stuffing them into the trash, the calendar is winning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As I wrote last month, my arches have collapsed and my bunions have set up their own rogue government. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My grey hair insistently pushes out the “Red-brown #6” judiciously administered by Esteeve, my Pico Rivera stylist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My neck rivals Nora Ephron’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve got age spots and a menagerie of bumps and flaps suggesting my skin has been on the planet too long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My tri-focals keep getting thicker, prosthetics for myopia, presbyopia and some other –opia I can never remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And while I’m at “remember,” what was it I was going to say next?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I forget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Has anybody seen my cell phone? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m not just old enough to be my students’ mother, but now their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">grandmother</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My allusions to Talking Heads and Twin Peaks, to name just two items from my moldy pop culture baggage, are so unknown to my students I feel like a lumbering brontosaurus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What has been occurring to me about old age, though, is not so much how my body is falling apart, but how my dreams are faring.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The other day I was recalling the first time I traveled overseas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was 1974 when I flew alone into Athens, Greece, where I arrived in the middle of a coup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I holed up taking bubble baths in an overpriced hotel until things calmed down and I could proceed to the Parthenon and Delphi and eventually Crete. It was exhilarating.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was driven back then by a focused dream: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>to get out of Ohio, to get out of my ordinary life, to flex my choices, to be<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> interesting</i> as I thought of it back then. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That energy propelled me through many more adventures:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Peace Corps, marriage, more education, many jobs, a lot of writing good and bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it’s part of the inevitable course of things: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>my dreams have changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now, some mornings I’m just satisfied with waking up. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My dream is to sleep with my husband every night and go out for breakfast at Westside Diner. I could give up traveling tomorrow and never miss another TSA frisking, another roller bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have enough stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have enough material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, I realize, my dreams have to do with my “village,” my neighbors. My dreams have to do with being in a community that is humane, safe, and manageable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’ve given 30 years of my life to Flint and I have never been more anxious about its survival, as homicides pile up, break-ins plague even my own street, and the city seems unable to stop a spreading failure of the basic human services we need to live peaceable and sustainable lives together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I see my young neighbors, beloved additions to my recent existence, struggling with life – raising their children, making sense of their careers, making ends meet. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I see their exhaustion and worry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I see my students pulsing with the restless energy I once had, and I want them, like me, to have the chance to fly off to Greece if the impulse propels them and have the satisfactions I once enjoyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I fear that the world is tightening up for them, the country miserly, crimped and divided. I want a better dream for them.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’ll wrap this up with an actual dream. One night recently I woke up from a deep sleep, finding myself tightly tucked into a fetal position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My husband was in LA and I had a pronounced sense of solitude, not quite loneliness because I was enjoying the warmth of the bedspread and a nest of cushy pillows I’d assembled around myself in the scary darkest hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As I unfolded my legs and stretched onto my back, the blankets warm under my chin, I savored the reassuring slats of morning light tipping over the rooftops and venerable silver maples of Maxine and brightening the blinds. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I love my street, I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>About Maxine, I’m a conservative: I want it to stay the same forever -- lovely, neighborly and green.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Suddenly I remembered a dream I’d just been having: I was in my apartment – one of those dream creations that bore no relation to my actual house. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had bought a new bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was big and lavish, with an ornately curved brass headboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But where would I put it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Suddenly I realized my digs had a room I’d never noticed – a room I didn’t know was there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I discovered it, open and empty and with a glowing hardwood floor, light streaming through big windows, delight and relief washed over me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I went and got my husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Look, Ted, we’ve got another room!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, my subconscious seems to be saying, there’s some leeway here somewhere, and when the door opens, it’s going to be good, even for an old lady eligible for Social Security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I no longer think that room is only for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It has to have room for everybody. What we put inside should help us build a smarter, more compassionate life. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oh, there’s my cell phone on the counter where I left it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Can somebody help me find my glasses?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Once they show up, I’ll plunge right in to filling that new room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Here’s the thing:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>making that dream come true might turn out to be a job for the whole village.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-29793697200384364432011-09-25T17:34:00.003-04:002011-09-25T17:39:09.225-04:00An Ode to Feet<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:documentproperties> <o:template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:revision>0</o:Revision> <o:totaltime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:pages>1</o:Pages> <o:words>729</o:Words> <o:characters>4156</o:Characters> <o:company>UMFlint</o:Company> <o:lines>34</o:Lines> <o:paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:characterswithspaces>5103</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>While sitting in a hotel in Washington D.C. waiting for rain to let up, I found myself thinking about my feet -- prompted by yoga and an old photo. And it became my October column for EVM:</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not long ago I ran across an old photo – dried out on the edges, decades before digital – that I’d taken of my own feet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I remember the moment:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was lounging uncomfortably by an algae-infested pool in a nearly-derelict motel in a seen-better-times town in the redwoods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I was there with my then-boyfriend, a shaggy-haired Californian whose brothers had invested in the fleabag inn, the whole proposition spiked with other shadowy schemes like baggies of pot changing hands behind the tree trunks and afternoons in a mescaline haze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I was not hippie enough for the scene, feeling my worrywart Ohio roots, a kid up for adventure but fretting about the consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I didn’t feel at home with any of those beatniks and they knew it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So I stationed myself by the only square of honest daylight I could find, where the trees had been cleared to make way for the pool, and I painted my toenails bright red.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My camera a reassuring straight girlfriend, I took a picture that grounded me, literally, in an uneasy moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My feet I could call my own – my body my own territory. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I empathize with that momentarily alienated young woman, finding temporary solace in what she could see and stand on. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now, of course, the photo also carries an inconvenient reminder:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>those are young feet, not the bunion-bent, calloused dogs I’m walking around on now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As if I didn’t already see it every time I look in the mirror, the photo is evidence – time marches on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I appreciate the feet I have, even today.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s odd, isn’t it, to have these protuberances so far away from our eyes, these odd bony tootsies we have to encase in cotton and leather every day to keep us moving through the world?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none">They are remarkable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Each one, a quick Google search confirms,<span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">has 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments,19 muscles and 19 tendons.</span><span style="font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana"> </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana">They can saunter, jump, run, dance, twist, turn, grab, slide, and even moonwalk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They respond hilariously to tickling and sometimes, despite their silly appearance, participate in, um, the occasional ménage a paws. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(Stop groaning --I’m trying to protect the children). </span><span style="font-family: Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family: Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Some people are ashamed of their feet. In yoga class the other day, where bare feet are required, a newbie said, “I’d rather not” when the teacher sternly ordered off the socks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She gave her a one-class pass, but we know she’ll eventually have to give in – we all do, unmasking our pale and naked soles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My feet have long simian toes – both of my husbands claim – not at the same time, you understand, that I could play piano with my monkey feet. Until my inherited bunions made both big toes crowd into the others, I liked how my feet looked, the only place in my otherwise zaftig architecture you could find a touch of svelte legginess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Most of my life I’ve simply taken my feet for granted, unless I stoved a toe into a bedpost or stuffed them into ridiculous high heels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s only since yoga came into my life that I’ve come to bless my feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There’s a pose called<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> tadasana</i>, the first step toward the standing poses that I find very challenging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Basically you stand up straight, your legs together and your arms stretched out, palms facing outward at your sides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It seems like a simple pose, but like so much in yoga, it isn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There’s the whole question of balancing the feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Spread out your toes, Rachelle orders. Balance the balls of your feet! Place your weight evenly on your heels!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Be aware of the outsides of your feet! Roll your outer ankles in!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Her steady stream of pelted imperatives mystified me at first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My ankles have an “outer” and “inner” to think about?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have to spread my toes from the outside in?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have to care about those fleshy mounds behind my toes and find an even balance? </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Tadasana</i>, so seemingly elementary, still sometimes drives me crazy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I lean invariably to the right, my left foot refusing responsibility like a lazy teen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My weight wants to go to the balls of my feet, my heels gliding up as if ready to pounce – or keel forward.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But one day I started to feel the power in my feet – the remarkable, utilitarian beauty of the body’s design – the possibilities to anchor myself, feel myself grounded, deeply, to the earth. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The first time I felt it – energy arrowing from toe to brain, a flash of love and solidarity, I actually teared up. I could feel my body and mind finally, affectionately, strongly connecting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I went to the foot doctor, who treated my mangled arches like ladies-in-waiting and started me on the road to better metatarsal health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And when I stand up now I salute the way those many bones and muscles work together. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">tadasana </i>with joyful and attentive gratitude.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, my feet waited a long time to be acknowledged since that poolside moment in the redwoods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Apparently it’s not too late to cultivate – okay, I waited until the end to say it – a good understanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Getting old, a person needs to stand up to the world, to the world’s assaults.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That begins, it turns out, with those funny looking kids at the end of the legbones, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Thank you, feet!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-79877624377939379242011-09-06T22:10:00.004-04:002011-09-06T22:19:50.530-04:00I Couldn't Kill the Spider: Remembering 9/11Oh my, it's been months since I've been here -- I've neglected poor Macy Swain and her electronic life. Well, here I am, slipping back into the blog life, and the occasion is remembering 9/11. This is also available on eastvillagemagazine.org.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:13px;"><div>I couldn’t kill the spider.<span> </span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">It was pea-sized and black and crawling over the black and white tiles of my Sylvester Manor apartment.<span> </span>I’m not afraid of spiders but I’d never been above smashing them to pieces.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">This time was different.<span> </span>It was Sept. 13, 2001, and that week there had been just too much death.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Instead of crushing it, I got the creature to crawl onto the towel, and I gently carted it down the hall and jostled it into the bushes on Court Street.<span> </span>I freed it with aggressive determination:<span> </span>I wanted nothing to do with any killing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I don’t know why that spider is the image that comes most readily to mind when I think about ten years ago.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Maybe it’s because the other, less metaphorical memories are too hard to take,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">That spring and summer I had created my own debacles.<span> </span>In April I sat up in bed in the middle of the night and told my husband of 15 years “I think I’m moving out.”<span> </span>In May a<span> </span>truck from Red’s pulled noisily into our driveway and took half our stuff;<span> </span>my stuff. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">That night, shocked and prickly with hope, I sat at the window in Apartment 104 and poured myself a glass of white wine to go with the Cornish game hen I’d baked in my little oven, dinner just for one.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I’d deliberately decided against cable, and throughout those summer months, which I remember as so hot the strongest smell in my rooms was the acrid bubbling asphalt of Wallenberg Drive, I watched movie after rented movie.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I had a new man already who flew in from time to time from Los Angeles.<span> </span>His arrivals were intense – we had loved each other for 25 years, never knowing where the other was – and it was jarring to reclaim our ardor.<span> </span>Daily weeping for my failed past life was a matter of course.<span> </span>I was 51 years old and starting over.<span> </span>It seemed impossible, unadvisable, audacious and naïve.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">The last weekend of August my Ohio sister was in a serious auto accident.<span> </span>In the middle of a Labor Day party, I got a call that she was in the hospital and I needed to get there.<span> </span>I shot down to Barberton, where I found her dog, an expensive pure-bred beagle, untended and hungry in the house.<span> </span>She’d peed and pooped anywhere she liked for at least a week. I tried to make sense, yet again, of my sister’s complicated life.<span> </span><span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">The dog had an open abscess and I got her to the vet.<span> </span>I tried to clean up the house.<span> </span>Outraged at my sister and ashamed of it, I declared I was taking the dog back to Flint.<span> </span>On September 9, I put her in my car and drove back along Interstate 80, stopping every 50 miles to let her pee…she was wild and untrained and made the trip interminable.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">My friends Bob and Philip agreed to take her, but when I got her there, she ran away, Bob chasing her up Ridgelawn yelling and yelling.<span> </span>He caught her but it was clear she would never be a lovely pet.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">And then it was September 11.<span> </span>That morning I drove to Okemos to see my therapist, full of grief and guilt and anger – about my sister, again, about the debris of my life.<span> </span>On the way back I heard it – after tiring of the orderliness of Mozart’s 12 versions of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, I switched to NPR, where Bob Edwards was announcing that the second tower had just collapsed.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">It was a different world from that moment on, was it not?<span> </span>I drove straight to UM – Flint and called my new man.<span> </span>Then I went in to my husband’s office and we hugged, along with everybody else – the electricity of the tragedy overwhelming us and making me wonder if all could be forgiven, reset.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I went to VG’s and bought whiskey, cigarettes, Hershey bars and canned fruit cocktail.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">That night, I went to my old house, where my not-yet-ex-husband made comfort food, linguine with marinara sauce, and with four other souls we obsessively watched CNN.<span> </span>There was pot and I smoked it, but it didn’t work – leaving me only more heavily disconsolate.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I’ve often thought that if I’d ever gone to bed with my husband again it would have been that night.<span> </span>But when we hugged goodbye and the question hung in the air, the shock and neediness between us was intolerably raw.<span> </span>I rushed back to Apartment 104.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">The dog didn’t work out either.<span> </span>Bob and Philip said they couldn’t handle her.<span> </span>Philip and I took her to the Humane Society on Dort, where she failed her personality test by lunging at an assistant.<span> </span>My husband, who always loved beagles, took her as a stopgap, but she wouldn’t stop barking all night, and he sent me one angry, accusatory email after another.<span> </span>We finally gave her to a student we both knew who had a farm, and the dog roamed freely for three more years before dying a reasonably merciful natural death.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Without cable, I rented The Sopranos, which I’d never seen, and watched every episode, one after the other for three days straight. The opening shot <span> </span>of Tony Soprano chawing that cigar, the Twin Towers in the background,seemed cruelly right, lacerating me with bad news. They’re gone, they’re gone, they’re gone.<span> </span>My marriage was gone, my old life was gone, the world as we knew it was gone.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Life did go on, of course.<span> </span>I found hope in love, and now that LA guy is my second husband.<span> </span>We bought a house on Maxine.<span> </span>I bought a big stone Buddha for the back yard and stones and candles for the windowsills. I wrote a novel, and now I even have a new job.<span> </span>Just like everybody else, I’ve gone on with my life, because that’s what humans do.<span> </span>In fact, recently realizing I’ve been in Flint a full 30 years, I realized with a start that despite all the ups and downs, I am – shhh, don’t tell anybody! – happy here.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">I still think about that spider, though – how for that one moment, that one week, we were all aflood with compassion.<span> </span>I wish it could last.<span> </span>I wish – and hope – <span> </span>as human history rolls out beyond us -- that it is the impulse toward love that survives our primal bloody urges.<span> </span>Frankly, at best I think it’s a fifty-fifty chance.<span> </span>Absurdly, illogically, nonetheless, I’m banking on the love.<span> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></p></span></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-10961298531681221022011-05-02T20:45:00.003-04:002011-05-02T20:58:35.627-04:00Remembering Hazel Dickens at Flint<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:'Times New Roman', Times, serif;font-size:12px;"><p size="13px" color="transparent" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Here's my new column for East Village Magazine:</span></p><p size="13px" color="transparent" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background- background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">This week I remembered a thrilling Flint moment.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It was March 22, 1990, and in the UM-Flint Theater, bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens stood in a spotlight on the stage and sang her powerhouse elegy </span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Black Lung</span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> a capella. Her four-man backup band waited, reverently idle, behind her. Sitting alertly in about the tenth row, nervous because I had been in charge of getting her there, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck as her haunting plaint echoed out:</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"Black lung, black lung, you're just biding your time<br />Soon all this suffering I'll leave behind.<br />But I can't help but wonder what God had in mind<br />To send such a devil to claim this soul of mine..."</span></em></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It was a hell of a show.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">And when Dickens died recently at 75 of pneumonia in her adopted hometown of Baltimore, I felt as if something essential, </span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">someone</span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> passionately essential, had left us.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Her visit was part of how I came to a deeper, more vivid understanding about the significance of the country's labor struggles and history — particularly in my own adopted hometown, gritty old Flint.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I wanted to remember all the details of her Flint visit.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dickens' appearance was part of UM-Flint's Women's History Month. In only my third year at UM-Flint, I was the coordinator of what was then called the Adult Resource and Women's Center. We invited Dickens, along with the amazing Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey and the Rock, to perform.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As I recall it, there was one long set by each of these astonishing singers.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Our funding for that event came from the Ruth Mott Fund. We were very grateful for it, including the Ruth Mott Fund's last minute willingness to pay for Dicken's superb backup band. Two of them were Barry Mitterhoff on mandolin and Tony Trischka on banjo, and I think the other two were Dudley Connell and Ronnie Simpkins.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(Thanks to Paul Gifford, UM-Flint Library archivist, for helping me recoup some of these details.)</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I remember a buzz in the hall as Ruth Mott, 89, appeared and was ushered into a seat in the front row.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Dickens, a West Virginia native then 55 and a longtime advocate for the rights of the working man and woman, requested just one thing on her few off hours in Flint.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She wanted to see the site of the Sit Down Strike.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I drove her to what was left of Fisher Body Plant 1, and pulled the car over just in front of the historical plaque that never seems like enough of a tribute to what happened there.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">She asked for a moment.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We got out of the car. She read the plaque and then looked up at the building, gazing at its rows of windows where workers hung on, during weeks of drama in the national spotlight, from Dec. 30, 1936 to Feb. 11, 1937. The outcome was earth shattering — a one-page memo recognizing the UAW as the bargaining agent for the General Motors employees.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I suddenly realized Dickens was crying. She stayed there for a while and then got back into the car. She was quiet the rest of the way back to her hotel.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; ">Her heartfelt respect for Flint's history and struggles powerfully affected me — and I have never forgotten it.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As the readers of this column know well by now, my relationship with Flint has always been charged with ambivalence, and I well know I am not the only one.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Part of that, obviously, is Flint's complicated labor history. Through my years here I have gradually learned what this means.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">When I came here I knew nothing about labor history, even less about Flint's role in it. I had never heard of the Sit Down Strike.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But by 1998, eight years after Hazel Dickens' visit, during UAW strike against General Motors that started here in Flint, my sense of this town's difficulties had taken an elegiac turn.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In a commentary broadcast back then on Michigan Radio, I said: "There's an old French custom. When a loved one dies, friends stand at the grave, shouting curses at the corpse. That's sometimes how it feels to live in Flint."</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But in that commentary I described how I finally found myself on the workers' side.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Later, I helped advocate for and organize the Lecturer Employees Union for nontenure track faculty at UM-Flint.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Flint has indelibly marked me.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">There are some things that should not be forgotten. Here we are in another moment when the country seems to be turning its back on its labor history — the significance of the labor movement shaped with raucous and audacious energy partly by the working men and women of Flint. It seems like a long time since those workers' hopes and idealistic aspirations forced the Boss Man to recognize them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Many things improved for workers after the Sit Down Strike. But things are worse now for the working man and woman than in 1990, when Hazel Dickens came to Flint. She knew justice requires continual vigilance and tending, and had continued faithfully to sing and advocate for workers right up to her death.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Another stanza of Black Lung goes like this: </span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“He went to the bossman but he closed the door/Oh, it seems you’re not wanted when you’re sick and you’re poor/Your not even covered in the medical plan/ and your life depends on the favors of man.”</span></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"></span>Hazel Dickens told it like it was — in the minefields of West Virginia and right here on the stage of UM-Flint. The truths her mountain voice sang out so gorgeously are needed today more than ever.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We will miss her.</span></p></span>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-40956684826331184012011-04-24T11:40:00.005-04:002011-04-24T12:19:38.395-04:00FreedomI woke up this Easter Sunday irritated by academia. I'm thinking specifically about how part of the reaction to my quest to get a shot at a tenure track job last year turned toward ridicule: some of my esteemed colleagues ridiculed me for my column in East Village Magazine, a 35-year-old "neighborhood newsletter" for which I've been providing back-page prose for four years. How embarrassingly naive and parochial of me to assert that my writing for EVM was something to be proud of, something to offer up to my colleagues as evidence of my value for their precious position. How bush-league of me to point out that EVM has more readers than most literary magazines -- though my readers, who've been avid and attentive, have far less lofty pedigrees than academia demands. How incompletely professionalized and myopically amateur I was, to ask the publisher of EVM, Gary Custer, to write me letter of recommendation. My friends have endured my ruminations on this matter repeatedly over the last year, and contrary to what some of them think, I don't particularly care, nor did I take my stab at tenure naively. It was aggressive, at heart, and I'm not very surprised about the results. As I recently told the ultimately successful candidate for the position, I tried to push my colleagues into acting like another species, as if a giraffe could be an octopus. <div><br /></div><div>Also, I am long in the tooth. Ted and I heard the phrase on NPR this morning, and Ted said it refers to old lions, whose teeth lengthen with the years. I am then a toothy old lioness, crabby and demanding and still periodically driven by hopes new and old. I'm not a writer for the young; my concerns are neither glamorous nor hip. I'm dreading getting old and I'm preternaturally observant of my body's varied declines. I like knowing something about my community from 30 years of it. I enjoy thinking about things that happened at the halfway point of the last century. I'm doing more remembering past adventures than generating new ones.</div><div> </div><div>I've occasionally thought that my indirections and inward-looking observations make ripe fruit for parody. I could parody my writing myself, before some young wag beats me to it. Not that there are many young wags left in Flint who'd notice. </div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, this is a long introduction to savoring my freedom. For about the 45th time, I'm embarking on writing my next column, and it strikes me that I really am free to write whatever I want. What does it matter? There is nothing to stop me from being whoever I am on the page, and today this carbonating freedom pleases me immensely. We're making mimosas later, using our new juicer. The finches are gold again; maybe we can sit out on the porch. I wonder where the day will take me.<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-12026208784434392992011-04-12T21:15:00.004-04:002011-04-12T22:04:37.737-04:00This is where I used to...A peril of being in a place for a long time...one of my themes, day after day...is this odd sense of needing meaning from the architectures I've inhabited year after year. There's a displacement, a recurring mild angst I've been feeling lately when I walk by a place and I think, "my God, I've been walking by this for 30 years." <div><br /></div><div>Walking into the Rec Center last night in the grace of 6 p.m. April daylight, I looked up at the edifice of the Harding Mott building and thought, hmm, is this a beautiful enough building for me? Is it "in" me after all these years? In fact it feels unremarkable, if imposing -- it's a building I walk toward and into time and again and don't feel much of anything. It doesn't lift me up: the predicament being that I have often, often felt ambivalent about myself and my life in the perimeters of this architecture. Wouldn't anyone? Ah, thus it is, isn't it? Does the architecture shape us, or is it we who give the walls and sweeps of brick and mortar meaning? Could a sad and preoccupied woman be unmoved by the arches of Grace Cathedral, for example, a place I've gone with my brother in SF and never failed to be moved? <div><br /></div><div>I did once write a poem about my first husband picking me up at the Harding Mott building after work called "Walking Toward You, October Thursday," and I like that poem. I realize as I remember that poem, a romantic one in which I wanted him to see me smiling as I got to him, that I was in my 30s then and already feeling the lurking threats of domestic predictability, the threat of deadness, the yearning for something special never to end. It was a moment, there in the curving concrete blocks of the Harding Mott building. </div><div><br /></div><div>And last night, walking toward my yoga class, where I tread in with my yellow ID card and always say hi to the girls behind the counter, and they always say "Have a good workout!" I felt something akin to happiness -- a pleasure in a repeated routine of walking somewhere I always walk and seeing people who always say the same thing to me and of course, knowing that in the unglamorous basement room of the Rec Center I'll be discovering some new muscle, some new alignment, some new challenge, and that when I come out I'll feel...GOOD. </div><div><br /></div><div>That room always delivers something. Last night Rachelle had us doing a particularly painful stretch, where we pressed our shins backwards against the wall and then tried to straighten up so that our backs and shoulders also touched the wall. I couldn't come close. When she saw us struggling with it she almost yelled, "you've had a lot worse pain than this, people, you've lost family members, you've lost pets, you've had a lot worse pain than this..." I'm smiling as I remember that now. What's a little muscle stretch, what's a pain, even a stretch that made me want to scream? We've all lost shitloads. Take it, she seemed to say, just take it. We've all had pain, pain, pain. </div><div><br /></div><div>So tonight it happened again. Vickie and I walked by my old house on Seventh Street, the place I lived with my first husband for 15 years. So much happened there -- so many hopes and dreams resided with us there, climbed the stairs every night with us, slept with me, fed me. It was a dangerous place to go tonight. I felt my heart and my throat clench, looking at that house. I couldn't stop looking. It seems so long ago -- ten year now since I moved out on a mild May weekend. There is where I used to live. This is where I used to dream a certain dream, This is where I was thirty, forty, fifty. This is where I stopped being young. This is where I planted morning glories along the back wall and kept a triangular herb garden. This is where I wrote my novel. This is where I wrestled with many demons. This is where I stopped loving my life. This is where I stopped loving that dream. This is where I gave up that dream.</div><div><br /></div><div>We turned around and walked away from the house. I let Vickie talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. She liked another house, the big one at the dead end. I said I used to know the guy who lived there. It seemed like there were fewer trees, as if the life cycle was up all along the street. One old house was completely gone, the bare lot startling and freshly leveled. I felt sort of hungry, an ache I didn't want to touch, like my thigh screaming against the wall last night. I've had worse pain than that. Take it, just take it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually we got back onto Avon Street and crossed the little bridge over Gilkey Creek and strode through the park back onto the side I live on now. It was safer being up there, where I have another life, another dream. It used to be when I walked over here I felt unease -- the houses were grander and I felt small and unfulfilled. Now I think I deserve to live over here, where I have matured, where I am seasoned like these solid old domiciles. It's odd the vanities and cravings architecture can satisfy. It's taken me awhile to get here, barely a quarter mile from where I used to live, and I feel something mostly good. I climb the stairs up to bed every night and climb the stairs down in the morning to a kitchen full of light. In my familiar architectures, those that continually echo a nagging past and those that yield beauty and comfort, I'm continually adjusting myself, as in yoga class -- a woman both the same and continually new. </div></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-87109372710568660192011-03-28T21:09:00.002-04:002011-03-28T21:15:07.749-04:00Of spring, plowing, dandelions and the urge to "verse"<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> April's column for East Village Magazine:</o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">About this time of year, the days lengthening and the last crusts of blackened snow finally melting, my dad used to get overtaken by an uncompromising compulsion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He had to get out and plow some dirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My mother found it endearing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She understood he needed to set aside his preacher garb and dig out his overalls from the year before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My parents didn’t always get along but in early April they companionably united in answering the pull of their garden plot. Even if the humus was still a little frosty, they’d be cheerfully harmonious, at least through the planting, with the promise of their crops. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My mother’s bow to spring meant scavenging for early dandelion greens, which she considered a necessary tonic to perk us up after winter’s depletions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She’d toss the greens together with vinegar, a little sugar, chopped bacon and an egg and serve us several rounds of rejuvenating wilted dandelion. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When we moved from the country to the city, she complained she couldn’t find enough early dandelion the dogs hadn’t peed on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She never trusted city greens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But come the springtime planting season, I’m awkwardly reminded I’m no farmer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I didn’t get the gene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m a “political gardener” like I’m a “political lesbian.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That is, I’m happy to support lesbians and gardeners and I’ll do whatever I can to back their rights and clear their path across and over obstacles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I earthily admire and respect their life progressions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But it’s always second hand for me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m not a gardener and I’m not a lesbian, more’s the pity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">(Wait…how did lesbians get into this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I’m treading dangerously close to well-meaning faux pas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So allow me to drop the Sapphic analogies and get back to gardening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In conclusion, if you’re a lesbian gardener, especially of the metropolitan variety, let me just say you have met my criteria for urban goddess. )</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Me, I’ve always connected gardening with being grown up:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>if you grow your own, you understand the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You depend on no man or woman but yourself; you take responsibility for your primal needs, you cope with the vagaries of drought, flood and pestilence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You know that not all shoots survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You know you have to prune, sometimes ruthlessly, to fortify what remains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I remember several years when my parents’ most cherished crop, fresh strawberries, got flooded out in the bottomland they’d persistently tried to recover. They added truckload after truckload of purchased dirt, but still it often wasn’t enough. I remember their moaning distress at the loss of their first hopes. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">But if they were lucky, disaster struck early and they could start again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sometimes, though, they’d simply say, “well, this isn’t going to be a good year for strawberries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But just wait…it’ll be the year for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">something</i>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And they were almost always right: after the strawberries tanked, maybe it would be potatoes thriving in their dark nests, or the cantaloupe would be especially juicy, or the Peaches and Cream corn would be the sweetest yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I suppose you’re concluding, and rightly so, that the most I learned from growing up with gardeners was how to craft analogies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I suppose that’s something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The rest is sadly lost on me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I get the urge to garden I bring back pots from Home Depot that I then plop into other pots. And then I forget to water them, or I forget to deadhead, deliciously morbid spondee, or I forget to ask somebody to tend them when I’m out of town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think this means I’m unevolved.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">One thing I’m good at:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>somebody found slugs in my marigolds, and told me you could round them up with beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That I do extremely well:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I pour whatever brew I have on hand into little dipping dishes and plant them in the dirt in flower boxes. This Final Solution sort of horrifies me, especially my own guilty pleasure in counting soggy corpses of a morning. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s downright Shelley-esque the way they die, and sort of poetic in the interest of yellow blooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In short, when springtime comes my only plowing is these words, line after line after line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s a kind of gardening, a hopeful patience as close as I get to making something flower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In truth, in April I often feel the urge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My restlessness aims at making verse, a word derived directly from the plowman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In Latin it means to turn at the end of each row, and then to turn again, and then to turn again, making things straight and readying the earth for springtime growth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My father used to say if you wanted to plow a row straight you couldn’t look down or back. You had to keep your head up, looking straight ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My mother said in spring you needed dandelions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Between the two, there’s truth aplenty there to get me going on the page, at least till May.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-62702014617836649182011-02-20T10:18:00.004-05:002011-02-20T10:31:11.541-05:00Equity Isn't Everything: On Daffodils, Cardinals, Bankers and the Ongoing Pleasures of Owning a Home<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YisDGPpMs2U/TWEySu42uzI/AAAAAAAAAx0/-pe-ThkJvec/s1600/P2190002.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YisDGPpMs2U/TWEySu42uzI/AAAAAAAAAx0/-pe-ThkJvec/s320/P2190002.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575793111066917682" /></a><br />From my March column for East Village Magazine.<div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m sitting at my kitchen table irrationally exuberant about the morning’s sunlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think the word is basking. It’s been a long dark winter already, with more to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s mid-February as I write this and yesterday, in the lengthening daylight happily remaining when I got home from work, after three or four days of promiscuous melting, spears of daffodils appeared from under the disappearing foot of snow at the side of the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When did that happen?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When did they decide to start their lovely engines while the rest of us crabbed and scratched and fidgeted in February crankiness? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">And briefly, startlingly, I find myself saying as I take it in, “This is mine.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have always needed something to call “my own,” not for the heft of consumption but for the details.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This is the poet’s life -- the same redwood fence every morning, with its criss-cross top and gradual seasoning to gray, the same green bird feeder swaying slightly in the breeze, the same mulberry tree, with that particular bend of its burly five-part trunk, the same red cardinals supplying flashes of color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, nothing stays the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The sky changes, the trees slough off dead branches after midnight gusts and ice storms, the birds mate and pass on their territory to the fledglings, the roof tiles crack and curl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That’s the beauty of it – those changes, the way my back yard looks different every single day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In fact, that’s part of what I see as “mine.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I get to watch it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When my husband and I were looking for a house to buy in 2003, it was a day like this – late winter, bright 43<sup>rd</sup> parallel sunshine, not a bud yet on the trees but something about spring suggestive in the air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We stepped out onto the flagstone back porch and took in gulps of the place, surveying the yard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Just as we did so, a big male cardinal swooped overhead and landed in the little maple tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It belted out that chip-chip cardinal sound and the female fluttered onto another branch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He fed her a seed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I took it as an omen, and we bought the place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Cardinals mate for life and live up to 15 years – meaning, if you read my January column, that their broods all through these years have probably been more cooperative than the less monogamous species.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Since Ted and I bought the house as an act of commitment to what we hoped would be a lifelong love, it all seemed right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s very possible the fat male cardinal I saw on the feeder this morning is the same one that convinced us to sign all those reams of nerve-wracking agreements seven years ago. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">That’s the way I decide to do things sometimes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Obviously, owning a house in Flint or anywhere!) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>is counterintuitive these days, as my California brother often warns me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But even with our house now “worth half of what we paid for it,” and the mortgage amount slightly “underwater,” when we recently refinanced, this house offers comfort, solace even, through every season, through storm, heat, ice, even in the face of last year’s arsons, the copper bandits, the homicides, the city’s deficits and struggling mayor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I don’t care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I love the place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It has good light, wood floors, crown molding, Faience tile in the upstairs shower, and the solid, square, no-nonsense rooms that go with its colonial bones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I enjoy my “investment” – ah, sweet anachronistic notion – every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I can’t say the same for any of my other “investments,” which appear in abstract quarterly statements as rows of san serif numerals under columns like “Value one year ago,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“value one month ago,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“current value.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Spare me that agitating obsession.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Value is a relative concept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>On credit reports, mortgage applications and tax forms it’s a banker’s word, determined by the hard and unimaginative contours of lucre, by a bunch of philistines who couldn’t care less about my cardinals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">While as a homeowner I’m clearly part of the mortgage world, shelling out my monthly payments gives me some rights to hang on to my own notion of worth – so to speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have the illusion of exclusivity, a sensory claim on a little patch of ground and the upright architecture of a satisfying shelter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I couldn’t have it without bankers, of course, but I didn’t want to say that here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I want to pretend I’m above all that, or outside it all, warmly cohabiting with the other lucky denizens of Maxine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In fact, we’ve just decided to buy again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We successfully bid on a short sale across the street, and this time, it’s to keep the neighborhood together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We love the little family renting there and didn’t like the thought of their potential uprooting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My brother shook his head when I told him, but after I explained everything, he came around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Sometimes the counterintuitive moves are the right ones after all,” he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m glad he sees it my way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Exploring that house, I haven’t yet spied an auspicious cardinal – just worrisome wiring, 1<span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol;"><span style="mso-char-type:symbol;mso-symbol-font-family:Symbol;">9</span></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-Times New Roman"font-family:";">30s asbestos, and a hole in the garage roof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But unlike the boring numbers on my TIAA-CREF report, these are provocations for the spirit, as satisfying in their concrete meaning for my life in the neighborhood as the sunlight on the windowsill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman';">For more from East Village Magazine, go <a href="http://www.eastvillagemagazine.org/">here.</a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-35089952808554213242011-01-14T19:47:00.008-05:002011-01-14T20:16:22.159-05:00Riding the Airport Escalator: An Aftermath<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TTD03C38kjI/AAAAAAAAAxc/EQ3ADYu68WE/s1600/escalator.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TTD03C38kjI/AAAAAAAAAxc/EQ3ADYu68WE/s320/escalator.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562214766304072242" /></a><br />...at the Atlanta airport, I experienced a moment. As with any epiphanic spark, there's a host of set-up antecedents: getting up early, padding downstairs for tea and light, feeding the cats, emailing my husband who awaits me at the other end, tucking together boarding passes and last-minute packing decisions, working through the morning's tasks at school, getting to the airport on time, parking the car, riding the shuttle, going through security with the efficiency I've learned, getting settled, getting onboard in the right order, getting my stuff in the overhead compartment, buckling up...then, at Atlanta, that bustle from one gate to another with just enough time.<div><br /></div><div>So, the crux of it: I felt good. I know how to do all this -- it's my life. And the comings and goings of this life make me feel fully engaged. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was going up the escalator, my backpack on my back -- my trusty, reliable back cheerfully taking its load. My small side bag swung along in my left hand, my very useful and faithful fingers holding on. My shoes felt good on my feet. My feet felt good meeting the ground, grounded evenly on each step. My body moved along the way it's supposed to, calmly energetic and fully functioning. </div><div><br /></div><div>I looked around at everybody else -- we were packed in the escalator -- and I felt happy to be among all these other humans, all of us so occupied and going places. It felt good to be in the human race, in this amazingly complex world we've made. I was "one of us," pleasantly anonymous and not alone. I don't know how I could say this, after the terrible week of Tucson and after a horrific double suicide of a couple I love, but today I loved us. Maybe it was the aftermath that did it -- the love for what remains, what hasn't died. Oh, yeah, yes, yes -- time for Dylan Thomas: </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="table21"><tbody><tr><td style=" width: 529px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" style=" width: 524px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><span style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:'Trebuchet MS';font-size:20px;"><b>Out Of The Sighs</b></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td><td valign="top" rowspan="2" width="100" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><div align="left"><table width="122px" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#f1f2f2""><tbody><tr><td valign="top" bgcolor="#f1f2f2" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "></td><td bg="" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:#f1f2f2;"><span style="font-size:78%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></span></td></tr><tr><td colspan="2" bg="" style=" ;font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:#f1f2f2;"><span style="font-size:78%;"> </span></td></tr></tbody></table></div></td></tr><tr><td valign="top" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" id="table23"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="30" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; "> </td><td valign="top" style=" width: 524px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt;"><span style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family:Arial;font-size:14px;">Out of the sighs a little comes,<br />But not of grief, for I have knocked down that<br />Before the agony; the spirit grows,<br />Forgets, and cries;<br />A little comes, is tasted and found good;<br />All could not disappoint;<br />There must, be praised, some certainty,<br />If not of loving well, then not,<br />And that is true after perpetual defeat.<br /><br />After such fighting as the weakest know,<br />There's more than dying;<br />Lose the great pains or stuff the wound,<br />He'll ache too long<br />Through no regret of leaving woman waiting<br />For her soldier stained with spilt words<br />That spill such acrid blood.<br /><br />Were that enough, enough to ease the pain,<br />Feeling regret when this is wasted<br />That made me happy in the sun,<br />How much was happy while it lasted,<br />Were vagueness enough and the sweet lies plenty,<br />The hollow words could bear all suffering<br />And cure me of ills.<br /><br />Were that enough, bone, blood, and sinew,<br />The twisted brain, the fair-formed loin,<br />Groping for matter under the dog's plate,<br />Man should be cured of distemper.<br />For all there is to give I offer:<br />Crumbs, barn, and halter. </span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div><br /></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-56463038808254630932011-01-05T20:59:00.005-05:002011-01-05T22:14:55.510-05:00Yearning Doesn't EndIn case you're young out there and reading this, here's some news. There's no end to desire. Tonight I was restless, after finding out there'd be no "happy darkness walking" with my friend. She got hung up with kids and an Epiphany party out there in a world with babies and harried parents and hanging crepe paper and sparkling lights and sweet cake. And that started it: the old bugaboo of childless isolation crept over me again, for the millionth time; no matter how many times I go around that track it always ends with loneliness and, not exactly regret, but wishing, wishing -- feeling left out of a huge part of human life, knowing that I will go to my grave not knowing many things. <div><br /></div><div>Please understand this is more melodrama than usual -- after all, it's a dark, cold January night at a time of year that I'm often mired in depression and self-doubt. And it just occurred to me that my mother, about whom I've been writing a lot lately, died on just about this day. I'm pretty sure it was Jan. 6. So when I landed on that thought I went upstairs and rooted around, trying to find the evidence of her death date. I didn't find the box containing her obits. But now, who cares? I turn away from psychic possibilities, turn away from that particular melancholy alley.</div><div><br /></div><div>Instead, I found a bunch of notes from when I was a kid reporter, and a few photos of how I looked then. I was cute: long straight brown hair, parted in the middle, around my face, the smile a bit teasy and a little too knowing. Apparently then I was regarded as a kid with potential -- one of my Kent State profs wrote, "tomorrow is homecoming, and I imagine some day you'll come back as the 'alumna of the year,' after you've had a chance to show your stuff." At the time I had just landed in Laguna Beach, and I was working as a cocktail waitress. "This might be useful for you eventually," he wrote, "especially if you want to write a novel, but I can see you'd want something more." The whole enterprise both struck me with the promise of my youth, my mischievous earnestness, my conviction that I would one day make it big, etc. etc. etc. and the sober understanding I have not quite lived up to the dizzying carbonations of what some grownups thought might materialize from my raw ingredients. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now I simply have trouble sleeping on dark winter nights. Sometimes I think insomnia is at heart a thick pulse of restless disappointment. The body always waiting for something more to transpire. And occasionally, it delivers these surges of yearning, for something. For something more. So I wander around the house tidying things up, and then I have a craving for the kitchen table, a clean, round kitchen table in the bright white kitchen, where I have barely sat lately. Sitting here with NPR's cheerful intelligence bubbling along from the radio in the corner is a kind of contentment, a grounding in the present. </div><div><br /></div><div>Tomorrow I meet my winter poetry writing class, and I have to go in there ready to communicate my love of writing poetry -- something about which, persistently, I feel fraudulent. The MFA, the years of writing, the failed manuscripts, the many readings, the wrenching divorce from a literary mating, the long-gone dinner parties with a certain eager panache -- the hopes of that other era, dust in the nose. In this frigid moment, simply self-pity, simply the navel-gazing of a woman who feels really old. </div><div><br /></div><div>I suppose if you've gotten this far in the blog, dear reader, I owe you some redemptive details. I put 14 cups in a picnic basket for my poetry students: I wanted real cups, and came home determined to provide them after VG's market only had "foam" which I detest, and plastic, which is ugly and simply wrong. I've ordered two carafes of hot chocolate from Brown Sugar Cafe for the first class. First we're going for a walk, and then we're going to come back in and write haikus. And then we're going to drink hot chocolate and eat frosted sugar cookies and molasses cookies and pay attention to the pleasures of our senses: warmth after cold, sweet after bitter, voices after silence. This is what I have to give. And getting ready to start the new, my own life seeks its deeper well.</div><div><br /></div><div>And so I sit at the clean, round kitchen table in the bright light, clean, solid-paned windows (six over six, as a more cosmopolitan friend described them) between me and the icy darkness, and as my fingers click on the black laptop, I go back to the paragraph I just wrote. Grace of discovery, warmth after cold, sweet after bitter, voices after silence. Having hit on that one set of words, just one sequence that rings true, I feel a small pang of peace. So maybe now I can go to bed, and sleep. </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-3064991087493958552010-12-29T21:55:00.003-05:002010-12-29T22:03:53.463-05:00What Did They Know?A lot of times my ancestors are in my head when I'm going through life. Like I think they know better than me.<div><br /></div><div>But they don't. They're dead. I'm alive and coping with real life the best I can. And I think, presented with the life I'm living, they would not know any better than I how to negotiate the rough waters of reality. I don't think their religion, their persuasive Old Testament God, would help them any more than my agnostic inclinations.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tonight, it was gin that served the day's anxieties. We had a gift certificate for Admiral Risty, a reasonably swanky restaurant perched over the cliffs in Palos Verdes at the spot where Hawthorne Blvd. dead ends at the sea. I had reserved a window table and we got there just in time for the last streaks of the post-solstice sunset. I held Ted's hand and we conducted several appropriate curse toasts for those who are attempting to torment us. Then we did it again. The sun disappeared but the forthright, deep blue ocean spreading out from Admiral Risty's windows comforted me. </div><div><br /></div><div>Tomorrow, we'll be back in the hard-edged frigidities of the Michigan winter with which I am viscerally, primally familiar. It will be okay. </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-44295688038436228582010-12-28T11:48:00.003-05:002010-12-28T11:55:23.872-05:00Rumination from Feathered InfidelitiesIn writing my January EVM column, I found myself considering a 2010 bird study that makes me wonder what the shifting partnerships of Baby Boom mating has done to the kids. In true Baby Boom style, however, I end up making the rumination about me -- a Boomer on my second marriage, with no biological kids, contemplating monogamy and my place in the flock. <a href="http://www.eastvillagemagazine.org/features/15374-village-life-fidelity-suits-flock.html">Click here</a> for the whole piece.Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-78823737235872339682010-12-27T22:05:00.003-05:002010-12-27T22:14:46.537-05:00My favorite Christmas gift<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TRlVA073GyI/AAAAAAAAAxA/QGIe8SlbAl8/s1600/PC260004.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TRlVA073GyI/AAAAAAAAAxA/QGIe8SlbAl8/s320/PC260004.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555565088036297506" /></a><br />...Other than the view out our San Pedro windows, which I love, but that's been a gift of my life for the last couple of years. My needs and pleasures are of a very moderate scale. Here's my favorite -- bought on sale on Christmas Eve at Crate and Barrel for less than $40: a hand crank juicer! I love it because it employs simple physics, requires no cords or electricity, makes no noise, and works perfectly. And it's shiny.<div><br /></div><div>Also, note that tumbler collecting orange drips -- it's a Waterford crystal glass that cost more than the juicer. Have you ever drank out of real Waterford? It's interesting that in my old age this is one of the things that pleases me -- touches of luxury I can afford, like a single Waterford tumbler. </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-85022833304565855662010-12-16T19:39:00.004-05:002010-12-16T19:57:14.472-05:00On the Pacific Rim Thinking About My Mother, AgainIt feels important that she would have been 100 today -- that a whole century has passed by since my mother's birth. She was proud of sharing this day with Beethoven. She was a fighter of sorts when I think of her now, a tough little bird in her later years, never quite happy enough with life, often clearly disappointed by how things were.<div><br /></div><div>And today I flew into the ether from ice and snow to the liquid blue of the Pacific Rim, again -- for probably about the 50th time in the last ten years. My cross-country life continuing, this time I come into it at a moment of confounding crisis and frustration, and I wonder what my mother would have made of this life of mine. I never thought much of her advice; I know she loved me, loved me with an ambivalent ache; was envious of me; found me "provoking" and loved me. When I was 40 and in a difficult relationship that was already beginning to end, I stood in my brother's large shower with my mother sitting haggard and naked in a plastic chair -- we were both naked and it was the only way we could think of to safely shower her. The blessed water streamed over our two bodies, our shared blood bodies, and in the extremity of the moment, a moment of her own extreme vulnerability, she gave me one of the most important gifts of our life together. As I washed her body gently, my own heart wrenched with her weakness, her poor bony body on its last months, she looked at me, her daughter, and called me by my name. She said, "You have a beautiful body. I hope your husband loves your body. I hope your husband appreciates your body." </div><div><br /></div><div>We were not a physical family. Our religion made us suspicious of our bodies' mysteries, and our bodies were often problematic to us. We didn't dance. "Premarital Sex" was one of the cardinal sins -- and I grew up to both crave and suspect my body's ardors. We were not a family who called each other "honey" or "darling" or "sweetheart." My mother never used those words for me, and I sometimes wish she would have -- I needed her tender love more than I knew. But that day in the shower what my mother said touched me, and I've cherished it ever since. She, who made my body and gave me life, loved what she saw, even as I struggled into middle age. As it turned out, I needed that love, and on her 100th birthday, I need it still. And love her for loving me -- incompletely, raggedly, but always passionately. She was not an "adequate" mother -- she left me unfinished and full of doubt and lamentation. But she gave me enough, and that day in the shower, her love was perfect.</div><div><br /></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-35946270188624233732010-12-04T18:44:00.002-05:002010-12-27T22:40:38.109-05:00Nonpartisan Chickadees<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><br />Just filled the bird feeders for a clutch of chickadees clustering around the backyard -- they're so cheerful and plucky, with their little high-pitched chirps. And they're so courteous -- they go to the feeder one at a time, get a single seed, and then fly up to a nearby branch to eat it; the next one goes down and does the same; then the next, the next, and then starting with the first one again. It's so orderly and, well, nonpartisan. </span>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-65586589133268332162010-11-27T15:52:00.007-05:002010-11-28T14:48:05.419-05:00On the 100th Anniversary of My Mother's Birth, I Take on the 100 Thing Challenge. In My Junk Drawer.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TPFwG9FP0rI/AAAAAAAAAvY/F79IJAovtZM/s1600/PB260005.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TPFwG9FP0rI/AAAAAAAAAvY/F79IJAovtZM/s320/PB260005.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544335881047888562" /></a>Before<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TPFv8D2UFAI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/WSdLIUTpln4/s1600/PB270003.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TPFv8D2UFAI/AAAAAAAAAvQ/WSdLIUTpln4/s320/PB270003.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544335693885740034" /></a>After</div><div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Here's my December column for East Village Magazine, examining the archeological dig that is my junk drawer: </p><p class="MsoNormal">A few years back a guy named Dave Bruno had had it with consumerism and decided to reduce his personal possessions to 100 things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He blogged about it and started a worldwide movement, The 100 Thing Challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This month, just in time for the ceaseless barrages of the holidays, he’s publishing a book, <strong><span style="font-family:Cambria;">The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul</span></strong>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I bet it will sell more than 100 copies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don’t trust people who make spirituality out of everything. I don’t trust “cleanliness is next to godliness,” for example; nature presumably made by God is frequently elegant but also messy—not to mention, bloody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I don’t like hints that because I might be a little challenged, stuff-wise, I might be in mortal peril.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, I was raised by a queen of clean, a housfrau of frugality, and this month would have been her 100<sup>th</sup> birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My mom would have loved the idea of the 100 Thing Challenge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So it seems that the stars are suggestively and neatly aligned for me to make a gesture of propitiation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I first heard something about Bruno’s new book on NPR, I muttered to my cats, “Hell, I’ve got more than 100 things in one damn drawer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The cats stared back sadly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I meant my junk drawer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doesn’t everybody have one?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A drawer, usually in the kitchen, where we stash our tawdry little bits of anxious life? A cache of personal anthropology – mirror to our worries, the vault for small stuff, unsellable on EBay, that we “might use” someday? The junk drawer blends the impulse to hoard and that persistent need for security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And, as another Dave, the “happiness researcher” Dave Buettner has been pointing out, “evolutionarily speaking, we are hardwired more for security than freedom.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Yikes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Maybe the junk drawer is a grown-up’s safety valve.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Unlike my mom, I am not obsessed with order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But the idea of exploring my junk drawer had a certain appeal, like going on an archeological dig. The day after Thanksgiving, still high on tryptophan and pumpkin pie, I pulled it off its squealing tracks, and heaved it, making sure to bend my knees, onto the living room floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sitting crosslegged on the carpet, I eventually pulled out and listed 140 things on a legal pad. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">At first, it all made sense, a logical collection of utility:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>stapler, scissors, cat brush, three Scotch tape dispensers, two lint rollers, three soft cloths for cleaning glasses, along with the glass cleaner to do it, 17 “forever” stamps, two Listerine pocket paks, two single-use tubes of Krazy Glue, a tube of lock de-icer – never used, a gift from my traumatized hubby after we once got stranded at midnight after a party on Calumet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And then, all the stuff obviously there because it MIGHT be useful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Who in their right mind, really, would not understand the reason for 200 rubber bands from Flint Journals and bunches of asparagus? Who would question the need for 37 paper clips, 11 black document clips – great for bags of cereal or potato chips – 9 thumbtacks, a single push pin, a half-dozen twist ties, 15 AAA batteries, 5 AA batteries, 4 C batteries, and an extra nine-volt? There’s even 47 cents in change, in case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Just in case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But the next layer, from the neglected, dusty back, creeped me out, yielding a succession of items of mysterious origin and way past their time. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What’s this? A fold-up hiking compass! Cool, but I haven’t been on an actual hike, in the woods, for about 20 years. Two plastic canisters with undeveloped rolls of film – anachronism – I’ve had a digital camera for years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Anyway, did I really want to see what might be revealed, what aggravating family gathering, what possibly compromising party? Ah, I remember this little battery-operated hand-held fan with a Las Vegas logo – cherished gift from a compassionate friend when I was still having hot flashes – now long unused, its batteries dead. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then, tectonic plates of heartbreak and abandoned hope: the brass nametag for my late cat Joey One, dead for five years, his ashes buried in the back yard; a “Women for Kerry/Edwards” campaign button: Rosie the Riveter, with her plucky “We can do it” logo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And a pillbox of folded-up notes I’d written to my parents – saved from their stuff after they died a dozen years ago – notes neither imaginative nor redeeming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“Dear Mom…thank you for all you’ve done for us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We love you.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“It was sure good to be here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>P.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I had a snack before I left.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why on earth are these still here?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Finally, just a pile of random and marginally disgusting stuff: two clothespins, one red plastic, one wood; a chipped ceramic pentacle tile; a plastic attachment for a long-gone vacuum cleaner; a six-ounce bottle of green automotive touch-up paint; a dry erase marker; two heavy duty locks; a pack of grape Pez; a Ya-Ya’s moist towelette, two packs each of pepper and salt; a half roll of chewable papaya enzymes; eight tiny plastic bags of replacement buttons; a broken birthday candle; two triangular pieces of dry cat food. Easy calls, all – to the trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The drawer empty, finally I stood up and took a deep breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The cats, unimpressed, sniffed around my desultory piles. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, since I am at least a part-time academic, I retreat now from my dig to profess what this all means. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In summary, I don’t know. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There’s actually a discipline devoted to “things” these days, called, remarkably, “Thing Theory.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>An English professor named Bill Brown wrote a book about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And we poets know how William Carlos Williams declared, “no ideas but in things.” But what ideas in which things? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What I mined from my junk drawer was only this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>there are things we accumulate, for whatever reason – out of torpor, hope, sentimentality, or practicality – that give us comfort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or maybe that’s just me – me and my curious and incorrigibly disheveled existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here’s what I can say for the condition of my soul, my act of contrition in honor of my mother:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>pared and purged down to about 70 things, the drawer slipped back onto its metal track a bit more lightly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Would that my restless mind, busy accumulating the next drawerful of comforting trinkets, went along.</p> <p style="margin-top:.1pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:.1pt;margin-left:0in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-85804374785972374422010-11-26T10:37:00.022-05:002010-11-26T11:28:39.129-05:00Ernest Boyer and Scholarship ReconsideredBelatedly, considering what happened to me last year in my department (See<a href="http://nightblindblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/so-much-for-my-dream-of-professoriate.html">"So Much for My Dream of the Professoriate)</a>, I am reading Ernest L. Boyer's 1990 monograph from the Carnegie Foundation, <i>Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate</i>. In his preface, he writes, "What's really being called into question is the reward system and the key issue is this: what activities of the professoriate are most highly prized? After all, it's futile to talk about improving the quality of teaching if, in the end, faculty are not given recognition for the time they spend with students." <div><br /></div><div>He continues, "...following the Second World War, the faculty reward system narrowed at the very time the mission of American higher education was expanding, and we consider how many of the nation's colleges and universities are caught in the crossfire of these competing goals." </div><div><br /></div><div>"In the current climate," he asserts, "students all too often are the losers...The reality is that, on far too many campuses, teaching is not well rewarded, and faculty who spend too much time counseling and advising students may diminish their prospects for tenure and promotion."</div><div><br /></div><div>Boyer's thoughts. supported by a large Carnegie Foundation-sponsored "National Survey of Faculty" led to what's often referred to as "The Boyer Model" for the work of the professoriate -- four "separate, yet overlapping functions." They were "the scholarshp of discovery," "the scholarship of integration," "the scholarship of application," and "the scholarship of teaching." </div><div>"What we urgently need today," he wrote, "is a more inclusive view of what it means to be a scholar -- a recognition that knowledge is acquired through research, through synthesis, through practice, and through teaching." And he called for all four of these to be equally acknowledged in promotion and tenure-granting decisions.</div><div><br /></div><div>That was 20 years ago. If anything, it seems to me, things have gotten worse since then. In a 2006 essay in the Chronicle Review, Stanley Katz wrote:</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 28px; font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 28px; font-size:13px;">The new environment for higher education has created a situation in which professorial worlds are multiple, complex, and conflicting. I think I am not simply being nostalgic (though I "grew up" professionally at the end of the earlier world) when I assert that we have lost something along the way. We have lost a sense of commonality as professors, the sense that we are all in this together — "this" being a dedication to undergraduate teaching and not just specialized research.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;">Considering all this, at least I feel less alone in the diminishment of my real value in the professoriate, which while I was denied access to the tenured ranks, has become clearer to me. Even though things have continued tightening up, especially in resistant and hide-bound departments that keep hanging on to old ways, it is heartening to sense some pressure toward a more reasonable and responsive change in higher ed. If we don't find a way to open up to a wider view of the professoriate, we may find ourselves consigned to irrelevancy, with serious consequences for our funding, for our ongoing public support, and most of all, for our students.</span></p></span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: 21.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:16.0pt;"> <!--StartFragment--> </span></p><span style="font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:16.0pt;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: 21.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><br /></p> <!--EndFragment--> </span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Georgia;mso-bidi-font-family:Georgia;font-size:16.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 28px; font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"> <!--EndFragment--> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 21px; font-family:Georgia;font-size:14px;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></blockquote><blockquote><br /><br /></blockquote></span></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-58942832699811856972010-11-01T17:31:00.003-04:002010-11-01T17:35:12.684-04:00Pursuing a Happy DarknessHere's my new column for East Village Magazine (eastvillagemagazine.org), the result of an evolving experience of confronting, accepting and sometimes even loving darkness.<div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Lately I’ve been renegotiating with the dark.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Darkness gets a bad rap, including in my own mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Each year I dread the coming on of longer nights, culminating in the anachronistic switch to Daylight Savings Time. By then, it’s dark when I leave for work in the morning and dark when I get home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This long winter darkness is so claustrophobic for me, so depressing, that anticipating it is almost as bad as actually putting up with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The literal darkness of winter merges, of course, with metaphorical darkness – that “dark night of the soul” that 16<sup>th</sup> Century mystic Saint John of the Cross first defined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Some of the hardest, most fearful moments of my life have coalesced at roughly 4 a.m., when the world seems most terrifying, most unpromising, most dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I know of course that darkness harbors danger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Evil hides in unlit corners, as our faithful neighborhood watch teams rightly point out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s not just nocturnal critters like possums, raccoons and bats showing up, rattling our nerves and trash cans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There are human critters all too ready to capitalize on the dark, stalkers and thieves and pyromaniacs, sneaking around with their badass intentions where we can’t quite see them. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But it’s not really the dark’s fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Back in the day we feminists used to parade around once a year or so on “Take Back the Night” marches, including several through downtown Flint, and though our efforts only seemed to apply when there were a dozen of us or more, it did feel good to shout out that the night belongs to everybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>At the heart of that movement was a call for safety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>For me, there also was a less strident song – that there’s something beautiful about the night, something primally necessary to reclaim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We spend half our lives in darkness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Life is short -- why should I squander half of it in a state of fear and resistance? Wouldn’t it seem that nature’s effect on humans, the yin and yang of day and night, might have an up side?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why should daylight get all the good press? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Could there, in short, be such a thing as happy darkness?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This question bubbled up over friendship – a friendship built on walks and a restless baby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>My neighbor Vickie figured out a stroller ride calmed newborn Frannie, and asked if I’d like to come along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’d meet after dinner and, with a baby buggy between us, explore many streets in the neighborhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As Frannie gaped and cooed at passing details, Vickie and I talked about everything, including the languorous sun drooping behind the silver maples of Maxine, Beard, Woodside, Lynwood, Calumet, Blanchard, Kensington.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We went wherever we felt like going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Eventually Frannie learned to go to sleep without her daily wheeling, but thanks to her daddy holding down the fort, her mom and I kept walking. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As the days shortened, we found ourselves starting out in dusk, each night noting decreasing minutes of light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When finally our whole walk was in the dark, I thought we couldn’t keep it up.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are all kinds of logical arguments, after all, for not going out after dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught as women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We’ve been marooned in fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But we enjoyed our nightly strolls so much we didn’t want to stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So we didn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We take sensible precautions, but we’ve found it quite possible to feel at home, in the neighborhood that is our home, even after dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Spending three or four hours a week meandering into the night like we own it has been exhilarating and liberating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is a luxury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s an antidote for claustrophobia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It’s a guarantee, almost always, of a better night’s sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">After dark, the neighborhood yields a remarkable glowing magic. This matters to my sense of our place, which so often saddens and worries me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>At night the houses look calm and inviting, their rectangles and orderly panes of indoor light distinct and intriguing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We appreciate particular front porches, where porch lights frame interesting doors, brick steps, trellises, roof angles, and climbing ivy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We wouldn’t so much notice these in daylight, when many details blend together in equalizing swathes of sunbeams.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">That is, we see things differently in different kinds of light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Part of the magic is it’s never really dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Yet night light is different from the light of day:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>the variegated oranges, ochres and ambers of artificial light, the silvery moonlight through canopies of hardwoods – it’s elegant, nuanced, etched in mystery. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">We pick blocks to stroll that have the best streetlights, and our progress from one cone of light to another is rhythmic and metered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Like a good poem, we move from dark to light to dark to light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">One night Vickie said when you walk the neighborhood after dark, it looks like every family is happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The quality of inside light, enjoyed from our outsiders’ view, is serene. It’s possible to imagine that lovely light means lovely life – it’s possible to imagine, a cozy, hopeful visual illusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When we walk by the lit-up houses, in other words, they make us happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That’s a kind of truth, a trick of the darkness and the light we all provide to counter it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Saint John of the Cross’s poem “Dark Night of the Soul” describes a journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. It’s instructive that that trip of the spirit takes place at night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Saint John’s pilgrimage involves the “purification of the senses,” a step the darkness accommodates very well. We rest our bodies, at night, from the daylight stimulations of eyes and ears, the way in yoga class we sometimes roll soft eyewraps around our heads to give the brain a break. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>People need a rest from daylight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What we find at night can be a journey rich with gifts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Even in Flint, there can be a happy darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-688469345829400162010-10-22T20:49:00.013-04:002010-10-22T21:51:08.880-04:00Wow! I'm back, with Roget and Daddy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7DmGJ__I/AAAAAAAAAuc/p8ADmyo1BwY/s1600/PA220004.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7DmGJ__I/AAAAAAAAAuc/p8ADmyo1BwY/s320/PA220004.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531048225316405234" border="0" /></a><br />Here I am again, believe it or not, after four months' silence. <div><br /></div><div>Of course I haven't been silent elsewhere, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel drawn to the ruminative presence of this space. There, just in that sentence, I paused after "ruminative," because I couldn't quite come up with the word I wanted. I love the moment of trying to find the right word. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sitting cross-legged on the brown couch -- the couch I bought when I lived in Sylvester Manor, one of the first actual pieces of furniture I acquired on my own, a semblance and reclamation of adult life after leaving my first marriage -- I breathed and sat back this Friday night and considered what would be just the right word for that sentence. I stretched one leg out onto the coffee table and looked up, letting my body and mind meander...I considered the word "posture," but that sounded too stiff. I considered the word "stance," but that sounded too rhetorical, too political. </div><div><br /></div><div>And so I lifted the laptop off my lap and went to the bookshelf looking for my thesaurus. I considered the word "attitude," but it sounded too common, too collegiate rah-rah. But "attitude" was a good place to begin. So I looked up "attitude" in the back half, where the words are listed alphabetically in four columns per page. "attitude" is on p. 689, the page which goes from "attainment" to "auditory canal." Under "attitude" I had five choices: posture, 183.4; viewpoint, 438.7; opinion 500.4; mental ~ 523.1; and in tiny capital letters, "TAKE THE ATTITUDE, 523.6 -- that last a strange little phrase that seems alien, foreign, quaint, strange. <div><br /></div><div>Now, interestingly, I find myself slipping into present tense. I select the first one, which was, after all, one of my original choices. And I'm delighted to find that 183 is labeled LOCATION....this really touches me, for reasons I'll explain later: the nouns under point one in "LOCATION" include situation, place, placement, emplacement, position, hole, stead, region, locaility, locale, locus, site, situs, spot, point, bearings latitude and longitude. </div><div><br /></div><div>Point 2 includes where, whereabouts, here, there.</div><div><br /></div><div>And Point 4 includes a fascinating mix, which offers many interesting angles of connection: posture, pose, position, lay, lie, set, attitude, aspect, bearing, port, carriage, air, mien, demeanor, presence, exposure, frontage...</div><div><br /></div><div>It is the word "presence", there in the middle between "demeanor" and "exposure", that captures what I want. </div><div><br /></div><div>To write, after all, requires presence. To write one must be present. Sometimes when I am not writing it is because I am unable to be present to the degree required; or, as in the case of my recent life, I am so fully present in some other part of life that I cannot be present enough for the rumination of language, of thought. </div><div><br /></div><div>But coming back to it tonight, I remember with a rush the pleasure of this presence, this being present with words. Tonight, this is my whereabouts -- to be present in these quiet moments with words.</div><div><br /></div><div>I suspect, too, that my readiness for this presence was kicked off by the startling convergence with another powerful location -- I find myself wanting to say echo-location, because when my hometown of Canton, Ohio appeared on the PBS NewsHour tonight I was jarred and touched by melancholy and nostalgia. My old hometown, where six years of my childhood in particular rolled out in a beautiful brick parsonage surrounded by leafy maples that I still write about and dream about, that old hometown is now decrepit and struggling, just like Flint. "In the Fifties, a manufacturing powerhouse," the reporter said -- those were MY Fifties, when the town was a great place for families to raise kids, the schools were great, we roller skated and sold lemonade on the sidewalks, the adults dressed up for church, tended roses on white trellises. There was a vigorous adult life there that I only observed through a child's naive lens, but something about it stuck with me -- something about the adult life I sense my parents and others were living -- that formed what I imagined my own grown up life would be. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now the PBS New Hour featured a haunted house in an abandoned warehouse, where 84 people make scant but cherished money 20 days a year dressing up like monsters and scaring other people, who pay for the fright. And then the reporter moved out to interview struggling families, and when I saw them standing in the streets with October light behind them, I thought I recognized that light, the light of my childhood, and it made me sad. Finally, there was a shot of a shorn corn field with a bank of stiff milkweed, cracked and empty of its fluffy seeds, in the foreground, and that was a field my body understands and remembers. </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, I love my thesaurus. As you can see below, it was given to me by my father on my 13th birthday. And as I see his inscription, I also see the seeds of my whole life to come, where he writes: "To help you find words with which to express the thoughts of a very fine mind." What a remarkable thing for a girl to be told by her father. I feel smitten, lucky, and loved in language from my powerful past.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7XoV14TI/AAAAAAAAAuk/RN1wFpQHtCg/s1600/PA220001.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7XoV14TI/AAAAAAAAAuk/RN1wFpQHtCg/s320/PA220001.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531048569516450098" border="0" />See my father's inscription -- My thesaurus was my 13th birthday present</a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7g5Yoa5I/AAAAAAAAAus/dNxJoItz4aY/s1600/PA220002.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 300px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TMI7g5Yoa5I/AAAAAAAAAus/dNxJoItz4aY/s320/PA220002.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5531048728710376338" border="0" /></a></div></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-68496660225549701932010-06-21T14:41:00.003-04:002010-06-21T14:47:07.736-04:00Chinese Bell for the Summer Solstice<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Never published, this poem continues to nettle, to agitate in my craw. What better day to dig it out and air it in the longest light? </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Chinese Bell for the Summer Solstice</p> <p class="MsoNormal">1. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Long ago, when he was maybe 50,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">my father took a solitary walkabout </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>by Greyhound bus,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>across the West, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">across the Golden Gate, chasing something</p> <p class="MsoNormal">he had missed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>From a fish shack</p> <p class="MsoNormal">on the wharf he called and said, “It’s still light here.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It shocked me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>time zones something startling, new.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">(On the only part of turning earth I knew</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Ohio was already dark as it would often be,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it was that Midwest night</p> <p class="MsoNormal">that drove my dad to Chinatown.)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Outside the screen door, a hundred fireflies sparked,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I barely noticed, not yet knowing how</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Exotic they were.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">. I wanted more</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of California, hugged the black receiver </p> <p class="MsoNormal">and heard from far away a gull.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I tried to see my father there, taking in the cobalt sea, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">swooping birds, California sun like heaven</p> <p class="MsoNormal">in his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>“There’s a prison out there,” he</p> <p class="MsoNormal">said., “and sharks would eat you if you tried to get away.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">2. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Back home</p> <p class="MsoNormal">he gave my mother</p> <p class="MsoNormal">turquoise rings and in a narrow box </p> <p class="MsoNormal">wrapped in newsprint with Shanghai script,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">a simple cone of solid brass from Chinatown.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For years she rang it, calling guests to dinner,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">They signed her leather guest book by the dozens,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">An inventory of the Mister and Missus </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Christians of Ohio, sipping homemade</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Tomato juice from heirloom crystal on paper </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Doilies and complimenting my mother’s rhubarb pie.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When we closed up their house,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">surprised by melancholy<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>memory</p> <p class="MsoNormal">of my father’s midlife pilgrimage,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">my mother’s hostess rites when he got back, I grabbed</p> <p class="MsoNormal">the bell from a black bag bulging and</p> <p class="MsoNormal">all ready for Goodwill.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I wonder if she found him changed,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">At peace with her and finally satisfied.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">3. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Now every summer solstice,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">my days in need of ritual</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I wait for darkness with </p> <p class="MsoNormal">the bell from Chinatown.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don’t know how the bell got</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mixed up with it,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Proof my father lit out</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Against his rampant heart?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Silvery clang against sorrow? </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I love the give and take of light </p> <p class="MsoNormal">at this, my native latitude,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">a daily shifting truth the earth still owns.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I claim this bell, its perfect “ting,” a token</p> <p class="MsoNormal">of my father’s restlessness but</p> <p class="MsoNormal">also love:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>he went somewhere</p> <p class="MsoNormal">for happiness, and he came home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">4. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I seem to see things best at fading light, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">when sharp black birds<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>at bright 9:30 </p> <p class="MsoNormal">soar out of elms to shifting blue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At 10 the cherry tree demolished </p> <p class="MsoNormal">by a winter storm bares what I hadn’t seen:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">dead branches bent like crones on what will be </p> <p class="MsoNormal">the tree’s last sun before the chainsaw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m glad I caught its last two blooms:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">the one before the gale,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>when flowers<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">rushed our weathered fence, then mournful pinks </p> <p class="MsoNormal">of this year’s brave but meager encore.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">5. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s not quite dark but tough times anyway,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Today, in fact, in floods of Iowa, a farmer </p> <p class="MsoNormal">had to kill his pigs. A few survivors </p> <p class="MsoNormal">screamed when roped and lifted</p> <p class="MsoNormal">from the bilge. They’re all that’s left , he said, </p> <p class="MsoNormal">but who would want to eat them now,</p> <p class="MsoNormal">soaked with diesel fuel and shit?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">What misery – saved, then euthanized </p> <p class="MsoNormal">by what was in the flood. This solstice poem , </p> <p class="MsoNormal">at first a song to days, now seems to want</p> <p class="MsoNormal">a hymn to night:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>why do those doomed and salvaged </p> <p class="MsoNormal">pigs want in this poem, a poem that’s struggling</p> <p class="MsoNormal">with the light?</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">6.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">At 10:15 three fireflies flash the purple yard</p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I recall that childhood night</p> <p class="MsoNormal">my father’s voice a promise</p> <p class="MsoNormal">from the glamour of the bay</p> <p class="MsoNormal">but I wonder if when summer dawns </p> <p class="MsoNormal">less light may come as a relief.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I ring my father’s bell -- And now</p> <p class="MsoNormal">begin invoking myths</p> <p class="MsoNormal">for those who followed light</p> <p class="MsoNormal">and disappeared. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17865695.post-49587814588913859712010-06-21T12:46:00.004-04:002010-06-21T13:57:28.181-04:00In the White Room, With Black Curtains...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TB-nzifIiXI/AAAAAAAAAuM/jt8u4OP1ahs/s1600/Cream.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 198px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_zGJinBMSdqQ/TB-nzifIiXI/AAAAAAAAAuM/jt8u4OP1ahs/s400/Cream.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485287375033108850" /></a><br />It's quite possible I lost my virginity to Cream's "White Room." Back then -- "then" being the late Sixties -- the melodramatic strains of "I'm so Glad," "Spoonful" and "I Freel Free" were regular accompaniments to the rebellious forays, experiments and exuberant separation adventures from our parents that kept us energized for years. I avidly pursued my independence in dorm rooms at first Miami U. of Ohio and then the much-sought after "off campus housing" (1009 Vine, true 'nuf, which you know if you read my novel) of Kent State where I drank Thunderbird, sampled skinny little rolled-up tastes of pot, and tried to get laid.<div><br /></div><div>"Getting laid" sounds like the way a guy would put it. Oddly, I can't remember if those are the words I used for it then. But I know I wanted to "lose my virginity," strange erasure that that implies, well, I wanted it so badly that Mike Davison and I, both untutored in the mechanics of sex, tried for about three weekends in a row to make it happen, and stopped each time because it frankly scared us back into our bell-bottom pants. He was afraid to hurt me...I was afraid it was going to hurt. But finally that novel feeling, to be entered, to be filled -- and then all that movement, all that exertion, me "laying" there under him, paying exquisitely close attention to my body, to his body, feeling him sweat, feeling his breathing and already asking, I swear without guile, innocently, "so that's it?" -- well, we managed to get there. I was determined -- dogged, even, in a typical Scorpio fashion -- to have that experience. When Jimi Hendrix said "Are you experienced?" I wanted to be able to shout back, "Yes. Yes. Yes." </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm remembering all this now because Saturday night Ted and Dennis and I went to Alva's Showroom on Eighth Street here in Pedro for a "Cream Tribute." It was performed with respectful exactitude in this sweet, small-scale venue by Kofi Baker, Ginger Baker's son, along with Fran Banish (fabulous name -- I looked it up to be sure I heard him right!) taking over the Clapton guitar parts and Rick Fierobracci emulating Jack Bruce's bass. They opened their two sets with "White Room," and the crowd lustily cheered. Including me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Young Baker is a remarkable drummer himself, though far cheerier and, well, robust than his dad, who glared from album covers in the Sixties like somebody who's really, REALLY mad at "old people." Baker Junior and his mates have been making the rounds playing Cream and Blind Faith favorites, and at Alva's, the crowd, populated by folks of at least my age or older, ate it up. </div><div><br /></div><div>And, sitting in the dark of Alva's, sipping Dennis's champagne from a plastic cup, I remembered Sixties sex. </div><div><br /></div><div>My first lover and I worked at sex, as I remember it, in a low-ceilinged attic room in the house, which somebody rented out to about five or six Kent State "girls." I remember none of their names. It was usually messy and there were fights about food and who was supposed to clean the kitchen. My roommate for a time, a classically gorgeous blonde, had sex with her boyfriend in a single bed about three feet from me for weeks before I angled for my own room upstairs. I remember candlelight and incense burning -- I'm allergic to incense and had to bury my sneezes so as not to distract. She and her boyfriend didn't care I was trying to sleep right next to them. They were condescendingly worldly and didn't find me cool. I had a black portable stereo I'd bought from my tips busing tables at a Brown Derby Steakhouse. It sat on a bookstand at the foot of my bed. It had those two little matching speakers that attached on either side of the turntable. I had a small stash of records under an Indian scarf that covered the bookshelf: Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, Janis Joplin, Cream -- my shards of worldly accomplishments. In the game. One of the "us" that crowded into the culture then, making so much noise.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was more like "so that's IT." Quiet, satisfied that I'd made it happen. Not the more cynical, jaded, pissed-off feminist reaction of later, "So THAT's It?" of later. It didn't feel particularly good physically. It was interesting. But not particularly pleasurable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of the poignance of this memory -- this set of memories -- when I think about it today, an old woman of 60 on this longest day of the year, 2010, about 42 years since I lost my virginity, is how long it took me to learn how to fully experience pleasure in this world. Back then sex was so often about misplaced revenge, getting vindication for what I felt to be the smothering sameness and boredom of my earnest parents' lives. The fresh air of my new life, my freedom at 18 and 19 and 20 was endlessly intoxicating. And also intensely consuming, not exactly relaxing. Not relaxing at all. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's possible to make a case that I didn't learn how to relax about sex until about a year ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>I spend time every day teaching myself, over and over again, to Be Here Now: it is easier these days, with life's limits clear and most of my big decisions behind me, to simply Be Here Now. It still takes practice.<br /><div><br /></div><div>But I am grateful nonetheless for the energy of those tense years of my late adolescence. And I feel affectionate and appreciative of the rich, marvelous backdrop that came with it: music permeated everything. Cream -- Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton -- were there, pounding out their complex symphonies, soulful accompaniment to the melodramas of my own young life. It was fun to hear these young kids play it all again, and to remember.<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div></div>Macy Swainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01123353580925472976noreply@blogger.com0