first day of school

this time last year, my grandmother was my major preoccupation, and my grandson but an anticipated joy. this year, my grandmother is a memory and my grandson is 30 lbs.

last year libby started high school...this year she starts tenth grade. the end is in sight - some day soon, there'll be no need for me to drive her to the end of the drive, wait with her for the bus to trundle around the corner and down the hill. the rhythm of my days will take on a new shape, form a new song.

but until that day comes, for all the mothers (and fathers) and all the women (and men) who stand and wait and wave, to new-minted school children in shiny new clothes and dirty sneakers, i reprise this poem i wrote for my sister, on her birthday:

i am a woman
who stands
at the end of a driveway
with a child
waiting for the school bus
to rumble up the road
while the sunlight flames
through the trees.

i am a woman
who waits
at the end of a driveway
looking for the school bus
to tumble down the road
spilling children
while the shadows darken
across the fields.

i am a woman
who sees
at the end of a driveway
the seasons rise up,
then fade;
and school buses come and go
churning children
across the years.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

some things i did today

as summer days go, this one was pretty good.

i began the morning at my physical therapist, where my shoulder and upper arm muscles were first pulverized and then lasered.

i came home and checked on the baby holly trees. there's at least a dozen of them, roughly six males and six females. so far, so good. the rooting hormone seems to keep the water clear, but i think im going to need rooting mix and some sturdier pots by the weekend. they are prickly little suckers, literally, reminding me that holly leaves are prickliest near the bottom.

i harvested four good size bundles of white sage and gathered fresh plaintain, wild impatiens and mugwort. the wild impatiens and the plaintain, i mascerated in my mortar with olive oil and used it on my eyelids along with a hot salt soak a couple times today. im not sure what got them so irritated - i think allergies and generally "gunky" eyes - my opthamologist assured me this is the correct medical term - caused a tear duct to block.

i used the mugwort in an oatstraw and dandelion root infusion i drank at noon. i wasn't planning on adding dandelion, but the most adorable little plant with the cutest little roots jumped into my hands while i was weeding, and so i chopped it up and added it to my brew. the oatstraw tasted gently green and soothing.

i worked on the outside of my dollhouse. who'd have thought the outside would be such a bugbear to paint? im thinking of switching color schemes. i wanted the dollhouse done before the real house and now im thinking the latter will be done long before the former at this pace.

i gathered all the weeds and cuttings i couldn't use and left them in a bundle on the bridge as an offering to hecate, a little late, but an offering nonetheless, in thanksgiving for my grandmother's finally-swift passing. she told her care coordinator the day before she was taken to the hospital that she was ready to die, and less than a week later, she was dead.

i did three loads of laundry, cleaned in all the zones. i walked, napped and ate like an Angel all day. this evening im attending the psychic development circle at the purple rose while Beloved goes to fight. there's pork chops and sauteed veggies for supper tonight - im hoping to get in another full rainbow.

as summer days go, it was a very nice day.

last day of summer...

vacation, that is.

it dawned late and dark, it seemed. snuggled under the quilts with Beloved, i noticed it didn't get light until nearly six o'clock. this morning the light is gold, the mist is steaming off the ponds. i hear the geese calling overhead and the crows screaming in the trees. the heat of my coffee mug feels especially welcome today.

tomorrow my youngest daughter begins her first day of tenth grade. tomorrow baby jake comes to stay.

this morning the world seems still as a swimmer poised before the plunge.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

tickle me, dear reader

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The Cranky Crone

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

just when i thought it was safe...

... to pay attention to politics, the democrats give me reason to despair.

obama picked biden?

biden? biden as in joe biden the plagarist from delaware?

i guess i will have to console myself by remembering we've had satan incarnate as the veep for the last 8 years.... and plagarism isn't even one of the seven deadly sins.

i guess you might say washington is coming up.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

back from the beach

we arrived at the funeral as the priest was processing down the aisle, and thus i got to enter the church where my parents were married and where i was baptised, communed and confirmed right behind the official celebrant. how ironic, i thought, and that was only one of the many delicious ironies that has attended my grandmother's departure from this life.

i am happy to report that the statues neither danced nor the roof fell. at various points throughout the service, there WAS a very peculiar raucous noise - i attributed it to baby jake, my mother to a raven and my brother to the chicken he assumed i'd brought along to sacrifice. (funny guy my brother is.)

at the grave site my mother recited pslam 119 with such gusto i expected her to fall on the ground beating her breast, but she managed to control herself. she did, however, accept the condolences of all and sundry - especially the priest's (he'd never met my grandmother and so his were a bit cliched but obviously completely sincere) - with a sort of solemn dignified grace that made me want to stick a pin in her butt.

the only mourner who shed an obvious tear was a mentally-challenged woman who'd been kind enough to be one of the few people who'd visited my grandmother faithfully. rose didn't like the eagles, she declared when i thanked her for being so good to my grandmother who'd said so many terribly mean things both to her and about her.

no, i agreed. she didn't.

the food was as mediocre as i remembered, redeemed only by the bread pudding and the strong drinks but i am happy to report that my mother's half-brother had the decency to stay away. even i, who strongly feel that the disposition of the dead and all their attendant ceremonies should be done at the convenience and preferrment of the living, would've drawn the line there.

but it was not until the following morning, when Beloved and i went down the beach, as the sun was coming up, carrying the small bag of roey's ashes that i felt my grandmother's spirit finally depart.

the sky was perfectly blue, the sun blazed a beam of light across the water. in a gesture that was as fierce as it was final, i kissed the bag of ashes and let them go in a shower of silver that sparkled on the foam. they swirled, coalesced and then dispersed, falling away into the sand they so resembled.

and finally, i wept.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

laying roey to rest

we leave tomorrow at five am to arrive in time for the funeral.

my brother said he'd see me at lunch.

funny guy, my brother is.

i asked him if he thought it would bother my mother if i did a little ritual over the grave. he suggested i wait til she leave. i said it wouldn't have the same effect.

funny girl, he said.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

pardon my rant

i woke up this morning cranky and annoyed. the last weekend of the summer before labor day is the last weekend i want to spend at the shore. the last sunday of the summer before labor day is the last sunday i want to spend driving home.

the reason my grandmother's funeral had to be scheduled on this weekend of all weekends is because my mother has Plans for labor day weekend, and the weekend AFTER labor day is too late.

for what, i inquired.

it's just too late, she repeated. now the priest says the funeral has to be at ten.

that's too early, i said. i have a workshop to give on thursday night that's been advertised. i can't change the date. i will have to come down friday morning - through rush hour traffic around new york. ten am is too early.

well, that's when he says it has to be, declared my mother with all the definiteness of One Who Knows the Lord is on Her Side.

and so, at my mother's behest and the insistence of the catholic church, i find myself in the position of having to go tearing like a madwoman down to the jersey shore on what will possibly be the most crowded weekend of the summer, in order to crawl home in what will most likely be the worst traffic of the summer.

on monday, meg's classes begin, and baby jake will be here, bright and early. libby begins school next week, the house is torn apart, and the dust from the sheet-rocking is everywhere. my elbow is refusing to make itself better at any rate faster than a snail's. the beds at my mother's left my neck feeling like a crinkled piece of paper.

tuesday i spent half an hour dealing with my mother's madness over the fact the obituary wasn't going to be published until today. what difference does it make, i asked. everyone who matters knows she's dead.

it's too late, my mother insisted.

for what, i asked, genuinely bewildered.

it just is, she said before she started to cry.

this morning the bach flower essence that leapt into my hand was OAK - the essence that "allows the naturally strong to take a break rather than struggle on without rest." i added IMPATIENS - the remedy that "helps you deal with people or situations with good humor rather than impatience or irritability."

i meditated this morning for a few brief, grounding and splendid moments. i realized that i have everything at hand to do what i need to do today. how i choose to do these things is up to me. from essence of oak, may i draw my strength. from essence of flower, may i draw sweetness.

and furthermore the war must end. blessed be.

the shack

last night, the cosi girls' book club discussed the shack by someone or other. weeks on the new york times bestseller list, it was one of those books that leaves the Writer in me shaking my head. this? i wonder to myself. people like this?

i guess they do.

lest i sound bitter, let me assure the reader i am simply puzzled. i just don't understand the appeal of such a story. the Event that frames the story - the murder (sacrifice?) of a pre-pubescent girl (even a fledgling feminist like myself can see all sorts of interesting cultural and societal Truth being revealed unbeknownst to the author) is simply so horrific that i - as the mother of four young women - found it hard to wrap my mind around. the way in which the characters dealt with it simply didn't ring true for me. and the way this Event is used - as a literary device - in such a horrific way - in the world of the shack, such an Event (such a sacrifice) is required for God to make manifest in the world - simply chills my soul to the bone.

it tries to explain why God (who requires Sacrifice) lets bad things happen to good people, said one of the women.

i guess that's the piece that speaks to most people.

it offers an awfully narrow answer, i said. if the author is going to present God in a story as a character, i would expect that author to be a bit more universal in his presentation. there's other answers than the one in this book.

like what, challenged another woman. why on earth would god let something like this murder happen to this poor girl in the story?

maybe her Soul choose that fate, i said. as a lesson, as a challenge, as some form of karma. maybe she was the person who murdered anne frank.

oh, said the lady. i never thought of it that way.

neither has the author, obviously, because he spends a very earnest 300 odd pages attempting to explain and justify in excrutiating detail why a Good God - though why a god who requires sacrifice in order to manifest in the world is construed as a Good God is beyond me - allows Bad Things. The whole book reminded me of the movie Contact with jodie foster, that i saw with my friend, lorraine.

people really believe heaven is UP? i whispered in the theatre.

i remember how she looked at me, as if surprised. yeah, anne, she answered. they do.

i wonder if these are the same people.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

home again, home again

i got home around noon time today... to a spotlessly clean house - well, nearly, considering the amount of upheaval in it - a fresh pot of coffee, and a pan of brownies.

i came home with a new dress for the funeral, three packages of taylor pork roll, a small bottle of lourdes water, and a potholder from provence. sam and buddy were beside themselves with joy at their reunion and poor buddy didn't know who to slurp first - me, or sam.

one of the sweetest surprises awaiting me is that i see that my friend rose of WHAT ROSE TODAY (among other places) has apparently become a newly adopted puppy-mom! congrats and best wishes to rose and The Boy on this new totally adorable addition! yet more incentive to start baking Granny Annie's Wicked Good Cookies for Wicked Good Dogs - and put them in my etsy shop. (you didn't know i had an etsy shop, did you, gentle reader? you may not even know what an etsy shop is.)

this afternoon libby and i did a spot of back-to-school shopping and this evening, Beloved is taking me out to dinner. tomorrow my book group is coming over and i need to do some thinking about what - and where - to serve them. if the weather warrants, it might be nice to be outside.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

troubled by the Right

last night, i sincerely hope and pray that i was not the only person in america appalled and sickened by the spectacle of the two presidential nominees baring their souls on national television in front of a crowd of evangelical christians.

pick me, pick me, was the undertone of both men, and it came across to me as a shameless pandering to the side that likes to believe it has a lock on Truth, Justice and the American Way.

they are, to my way of thinking, as potentially dangerous a group as any islamic terrorist organization.

the reason i think this is because they share the same fundamentalist outlook - evangelical christians, like the islamic fundamentalists, believe that the Bible is Right. about Everything. they, like the muslim extremists, believe that God wrote the Bible, and God couldn't have written anything Wrong. Therefore, every word in the Bible is TRUE, and the degree to which you are a good or bad person is the degree to which you also agree that the Bible is Right about Everything. it doesn't matter whether or not what is in the Bible leads to Wrong or Hurtful Actions - for example, the suppression of women or the burning of witches or even something so minor as the snubbing of a friend. people who do bad things based on what they claim is in the bible are labelled as misguided but the Truth of what is found in the bible is never, ever to be questioned.

there are parts of the bible that i would agree ARE indeed, the inspired Word of God - for example Paul's beautiful passage on the nature of Love. but there's also parts of the bible - like Paul's diatribes against women, jesus's exclusionary "iamthewaythetruthandthelight" passages (all very beautiful and poetic but words that have been used to justify more persecution in the last two thousand years than probably any others) - that should be excised, deleted, ignored, and yes, burned. and the reason i can say this with such absolute surety is because i believe there is very basic way to tell what passages are Divinely Inspired and which ones aren't.

but the evangelical christians, like the muslim fundamentalists, admit no such possiblity. and in the process, they don't much care who they hurt, or why, as long as they can justify it before their god.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sweet synchronicities

among the pile of reading material i brought along with me is a yoga journal magazine that i purchased last month on my way to california and never read.

one of the articles is about the ancient yogic practice of yantras - meditations based around colors and forms. given a choice of nine designs, the article suggests you choose the one that one that most appeals to you on an intuitive, or gut level, and then outlines a simple series of meditative practices around them. try it, the author, sarah tomlinson, advises, and see what happens.

on tuesday, i sat in the sunny quiet of my mother's white-walled patio, listened to the bees drone and the lawn mowers rumble, and followed the steps ms. tomlinson describes. the form that appealed to me had a six sided star of david in the middle (how fitting, i thought, considering my little brother's name is david) and was colored pale pink, soothing blue, calm lavendar and warm cream. interestingly enough, the qualities associated with the yantra i choose do reflect qualities i am currently cultivating - nurturance, sustenance, and compassion. i sat with the form, followed the author's suggestions, and waited to see what would happen.

on wednesday, the doorbell rang unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon. Beloved sent flowers - a delicious mix of pale pink, soothing blue, calm lavendar, and warm cream.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

absence of malice

the terms of my grandmother's will have not made my brother happy. i didn't expect that they would, but my intention was never to keep everything for myself. my brother does not believe this of course, nor does he know that in her later years, my grandmother was quite definite about who she wanted her money to go to (me) and who she didn't want it to go to (anyone else.) she knew, of course, she was setting me up for a potential war... she knew she wouldn't have to deal with it. she hoped, i suppose, that i would prefer to stand upon Dead Principle, than attempt to navigate upon the tides of the feelings of the living.

i wonder if my grandmother really intended that i should be that cruel. did she truly think that i would take it all and hoard it, gloat upon it, dangle it? i guess, on some level, she did... because, after all, that's what she thinks she did.

on the one hand, i think my grandmother must not have really known me, because when all is said and done, and all the slates wiped clean, when the money is mine, i intend to do what i think is right, not what she did.

but on the other hand, i like to think that perhaps there was a part of her that did know, and trusted me to do the better thing, the thing she could not bring herself to do, and so therefore knew she could rely on me to make it right.

at least, i like to think she did.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

a day of doing nothing

one of my favorite ways to tease my grandmother when she'd launch into a litany of complaint in recent months, was to point out to her that she was in a beautiful place, surrounded by people whose job it was to attend to her every whim, provided with food, clean laundry and as many of her beloved possessions as i could cram into her apartment. plus, i was there to visit her. roey, couldn't you just pretend you've died and gone to heaven, i'd ask.

the first time i said it, she gave me a horrified look and then started to laugh.

this morning, as i was throwing my clothes into my mother's super-duper, extra-heavy, industrial strength washing machine in her tastefully decorated lavendar laundry room with the happy little wash-maid wallpaper border, that now my grandmother really has died and gone to heaven (presumably), i could pretend the same thing.

except for the presence of Beloved, my mother's house is probably as close to any heavenly paradise as is reasonable for most people to expect. spotlessly, immaculately clean, surrounded by small patios spilling over with tumbled flowers and herbs, organized, and impeccably provisioned, the only expectation of me is that i will more or less preserve the order, and make sure nothing happens to my little brother.

and david is far from a difficult charge - in some ways, he's easier to please than my children. he doesn't whine, he does his chores with minimal prodding, and he more or less tends to himself. he has his schedule, he loves his music. he was happier at the idea of taking the chocolate chip cookies we made yesterday in to his coworkers than at the thought of eating them himself. driving in to work, we sang a rousing chorus of heigh-ho, heigh-ho and then one of oh, what a beautiful morning.

in the past forty-eight hours, in addition to cooking two meals, baking the cookies and doing two loads of laundry, i've finished reading three novels, played the piano a bit, walked the puppies and napped.

heaven is a beautiful place.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

happy birthday, mamma mia

my mother, or, as my sister and i sometimes call her, Mater Maxima (big momma in latin - literally "biggest mother") has safely landed in france. at least, i have to assume so because i have not heard from her, and there've been no reports of airplane crashes, terrorist attacks or other disasaters, natural or not.

as a matter of fact, it's a beautiful day.

the Great Shadow of my grandmother's presence that has always stood between us is gone now - no longer must i be tormented by the suggestion and suspicion of divided loyalty. i am no longer anyone's grandaughter - i am simply my mother's child.

and so, quite simply...happy birthday to my mommy. i hope in lourdes you find the peace and healing you deserve.

and futhermore, the war must end. blessed be.

off to see the wizard...

today i leave for a week-long stay at my mother's. she's going to lourdes, i'm staying with my baby brother, david. david is a sweet soul. the presence of his company is like a balm in gilead...

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

perfecting your shot

last night i dreamed of roey*. i was sitting on the old bleachers that used to rise above the grassy field at sixth street, across from the old high school. it was close enough to the beach that when the field was empty you could hear the ocean and the gulls.

she was playing basketball, dressed in a funny bloomer outfit, with dark sneakers, her hair dark as mine once was, held back across her forehead with a clip. there was a gangliness about her, that only moving morphed into grace. about half way up the court she paused, turned, and tossed the ball with effortless ease into the basket and it fell so perfectly it didn't even touch the net.

the ball bounded back to her, and she dribbled it over to me. did you see that, she said. i thought i was out of practice but it's all coming back to me quick.

it sure is, roey, i said, marveling at her hands, the size of baseball mitts. in her face glowing with youth, i saw my own wide mouth, my own square jaw.

i'm sorry i was so mean, she said. i know i gave you a lot of trouble, and i want you to know i'm sorry for hurting your feelings, because i know i did. but that was my job, you know. i was a guard. i was there to...

to do what, i asked, maybe a bit sarcastically. keep me from what i wanted?

i was there to help you perfect your shot, she answered. and then she faded, dribbling, away.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

* roey is my name for my grandmother...she was a most accomplished basketball player in her youth, so much so that she was made captain of her high school basketball team as a sophmore, and under her tenure, the team enjoyed three undefeated years. her position was guard. she died last thursday at the age of 95.

occasion of grace

when i was a little girl, growing up in catholic school, one of the ideas that seemed to stick was something the nuns called "an occasion of grace." an occasion of grace was an opportunity to act in some way that went - at least to my childish mind - above and beyond the call of duty or courtesy, ties of family or friendship.

people who present as occasions of grace are frequently very difficult people to be around, because, as the nuns explained it, they are empty. in their very emptiness, they invite all the people around them to become channels of divine love, to become, in a word, Grace.

if ever there was a person who constantly issued such an invitation to me, it was my grandmother. i don't think i successfully rose to the occasion all the time - i'm a Witch, after all, not a Saint - but i know i always tried to do the best i could with what i had to work with at the time.

there's a peaceful weight and an unexpected warmth to my grandmother's ashes. they sit now, on my altar, wrapped in plastic, encased in plastic, entombed in bronze, awaiting their final disposition. one set will go into the ocean, one will be buried on the grounds of her house, the largest will rest forever in the plot beside my great-grandparents. but one set will remain here, with me, in a garden i will make, a living reminder that even from ashes of emptiness, flowers can grow.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

today is the first day...

...of the rest of my life. it dawned with a fitful migraine brought on by the weirdly fluctuating changes in the atmosphere. i'm tired today, but there's work to be done before i go away next week. just about a year ago, i was collecting things to move my grandmother here. today i began the process of dismantling her little apartment.

when my friend lorraine died last year, i experienced the shock of her death as the deepest grief i'd ever felt. so i was not prepared for the profound shock of the loss of my grandmother's presence as i stepped over her threshold, made acute against the backdrop of her things.

the staff came in, one by one, shook my hand, hugged me, told me how she'd been happy, how much they loved her, how much they'd miss her.

i held her pillow to my face and breathed the last of her scent in - ivory soap and dove shampoo and johnson's baby powder. i packed up her pillows, her quilts, her afghans. i brought home one of her nightgowns, some of her sweaters, and all the pictures.

tomorrow she returns to dust.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

free at last

in memoriam...

lucy "rose" anne castaldi
february 4, 1913 - august 7, 2008
finally, at rest.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

almost there

my grandmother, for all intents and purposes, is giving in and giving up. she is no longer responsive, she has stopped taking food or water. it is only a matter of hours and days... they have started to give her morphine.

to paraphrase hamlet, this is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

outside the wind is picking up. a sudden rain sluices straight down, even while an errant wind whips the trees into a froth. the ghosts have gathered - i feel the presence of my great-grandparents, aunt babe and uncle tom, aunt katherine and uncle jack. betsey and johnny wave from the background. there are other faces, other presences whose names i do not know.

all year my grandmother has declared she doesn't want to be here - she wants to go home.

she is about to get her wish.

answers to prayers

i fell asleep last night saying the rosary. there is no deeper nor truer prayer, i think... than the final lines... mother of god, be with us now and at the hour of our deaths.

this morning, in quite an unexpected place, i was led to these words:

To take refuge in the Buddha is to take refuge in someone who let go of holding back just as you can do. To take refuge in the dharma is to take refuge in all the teachings that encourage you and nurture your inherent ability to let go of holding back. And to take refuge in the sangha is to take refuge in the community of people who share this longing to let go and open rather than shield themselves.

The support that we give each other as practitioners is not the usual kind of samsaric support in which we all join the same team...It's more that you're on your own, completely alone, but it's helpful to know that there are forty other people who are also going through this all by themselves. That's very supportive and encouraging. Fundamentally, even though other people can give you support, you do it yourself, and that's how you grow up in this process, rather than becoming more dependent.

--Pema Chödrön

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

letting go

...of expectations, of hopes, desires, needs... allowing what will be to be, and allowing all that is not to simply dissipate like dream-dust. we are such stuff as dreams are made of, after all... and our little lives are rounded by sleep.

or so i believe.

last night, i asked the Angels for guidance, for help, for anything that might bring a quick and easy release to this Wheel upon which i find myself bound, this Albatross i bear around my neck, this cross i struggle under.

you have to let her go, i heard lorraine say. remember how you had to let me go? you have to let her go, now, too. you have no ability to make things better in your grandmother's world... and you never did.

but i didn't really let you go, i said back. i feel you with me even more than i did when you were alive.

you have to let your grandmother discover that in her own time, said lorraine.

i think it's sad, i said, that a woman of such purported faith has no Faith in the end. she can't even pray.

but you can, said lorraine.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

what i did today

- laundry - five loads, including white towels, colored towels, dark colds, sheets, and throw rugs
- dinner - chicken pot pie
- garden - weeded along the driveway
- my bathroom and bedroom - scrubbed, mopped, dusted and linens changed
- entry hall and steps - dusted, vacuumed and mopped
- game room - contents of closet and room sorted, items trashed or set aside for donation, rugs vacuumed and deodorized
- meg's bed and bath - tidied
- living room - mopped and vacuumed
- car - bumper fixed
- dogs - fed, walked, brushed, loved
- grandmother - visited
- mother - called
- sisters - emails answered, phone call returned
- baby jake - cuddled and kissed
- meg and libby - treated to books, ice cream and lunch
- katie - extra pot-pie made for dinner tomorrow
- Beloved - given Best Husband Award for sundry and diverse virtues

i remember my father said to me, shortly after he took over the primary responsibilty for the household after my stepmother's diagnosis, "my goodness, honey, i had no idea women worked so hard!"

oh, daddy, if you only knew.

unexpected pause

the day begins with a short meditation and a silence broken only by birdsong and buddy's barks. Beloved met an early-morning client, libby is sound asleep. meg, who came home for chicken soup and a night in her own bed, has already left. the air is crisp, but the leaves are still. the faintest veil of mist drifts off the pond.

today is a day to get things done, a day for laundry and sweeping, weeding and working. i have dust bunnies to chase, a mountain of towels to confront, fox tail, mugwort and sweet annie running rampant in the gardens. the builders will be here soon - today, with its low humidity and fair skies so far - looks to be a good one for drywalling. meg and baby jake will come later; my car's going in to the shop to get the front bumper fixed - at last. i think i'll make pot-pie for dinner with all the chicken from the soup Beloved made last night.

my grandmother's battery of tests begins this morning.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

first of fall

the weather took a decidedly chilly turn last night. at some point, i remember reaching for the heavier blanket at the bottom of the bed, and by the time i woke up, the fan, for the first time in weeks, raised goose bumps on my skin.

it feels like the first day of fall.

Beloved and i spent the morning foraging up and down the aisles of home depot. the trip was successful - we got a new door, new screen door, dishwasher, inside and outside lights and all kinds of plugs and plates and sockets. but the change in pressure, coupled with the peculiar intensity of the light, gave me a migraine. i took a nap but the feeling is still with me... it's so pretty outside i couldn't resist pulling a few weeds in my sorely neglected gardens.

im going to rest on the couch with something restorative...and then, if i feel up to it, drive over to see my grandmother. they did some of her tests today... i can't help but feel if its something serious... they'd have called by now.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

the long journey home

just about a year ago, i started this blog, mostly out of a need to express my thoughts and feelings regarding the dissolution of my family's home at the jersey shore, and my grandmother's subsequent removal to an assisted living facility here in connecticut.

it seems ironic to me, that as the sun sets on lughnasa, and my bond to my irish grandmother feels reinforced, my italian grandmother is admitted to the hospital. one can only hope they find something wrong with her, something against which she can be medicated into a palliative haze. she's been telling us how sick she is for as long as i can remember. now, finally, we can only hope she's right.

what my grandmother has taught me is that a miserable life of any length is not worth living, and a miserable long life is a particular kind of hell. she's terrified of dying, terrified of what comes after, and yet, she was equally terrified to live. she spent her life truly trapped. her greatest gift to me has been to show me the effects of binding one's Self too tightly to any instituition created by minds of men.

some years ago i came to the conclusion that there are some souls, like mother theresa, who come into the world to show us their Light. and then there's others, who come to show us their Shadow, so that the people around them have a chance to polish up their own Lights. it is relatively easy, i would think, to be one of the Light-souls. people around you love you. but to be a Shadow-soul must be a very difficult thing. i think of my grandmother and my exhusband as my own particular Shadow-souls, because they are the ones who taught me the most painful lessons of my life. if mister ex taught me how not to love, my grandmother taught me how not to live.

whatever the test results show - and they may show nothing - i feel at last a kind of detached yet deep compassion for my grandmother in her last days. like my little dog sam, whose past is beyond her ken to communicate, my grandmother, too, remains beyond my ability to alleviate her suffering in any meaningful way. what remains for me to do is to simply be kind to her in the way i would want people to be kind to me in a similar position.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

asking for a Sign

a few weeks ago, a very Wise Woman advisor of mine suggested that much of my suffering around my grandmother might be alleviated if i accepted the fact that the person who is my biological grandmother is not much of a Grandmother at all. you need to find yourself another Grandmother, she said. a Real Grandmother, she amended. not the one who's been impersonating a Real Grandmother your whole life.

i have another grandmother. she died when i was ten, and so i don't think about her much. i didn't see her very much when she was around due to the strange, controlling nature of my mother's family. what i have from her is as spotty as my memories - a hand-knitted blanket, an old-fashioned baby doll named peggy, and my daughter meg's name.

when i first allowed my self to open to my psychic abilities, she was among the first three who came to me. i didn't even recognize her at first, when she said she was my grandmother. my grandmother's not dead, i remember thinking. oh yes, she is, i remember the small voice whispered. your other one is.

i have felt my grammy much around me in the last few weeks, her presence as palpable as the scent of jean nate and cashmere bouquet that sometimes overwhelms me. before i went to california, i asked her for a Sign. just a little something, i asked. nothing much... just something so i know you're with me. for real.

when my father spontaneously and for no reason i could discern suddenly decided to cook dinner one night, using one of grammy's old recipes, i figured i had my sign. i paid attention, noted what he did for future use, and let it go.

this afternoon he called me, quite out of the blue. he had a call from my uncle joe, his older brother. apparently uncle joe had a suitcase, taken from my uncle john's house, my father's second brother, when he died. it's been sitting around uncle joe's house for the last 20 years or so. a couple weeks ago, he decided to open the suitcase. inside he found an envelope, with a ring inside, marked "mom's ring."

my father choked up when he told me that uncle joe wanted me to have it. you were her only grandaughter, my father said. i wish grammy had the time to know you better.

i wish she had, too. but i think i have my Sign.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

except for some touchups...

the interior is done!














now to tackle the exterior....

dancing on lughnasa

the feast of first fruits is sometimes called the forgotten festival, because of all the high holy days of the pagan year, few outside the neo-pagan community are aware it ever existed. and unlike samhain, with halloween, imbolc with ground's hog day, and beltane with may day, lughnasa has no fanciful counterpart in modern times.

last night laura and i did one of our group mediumship nights, the first we've done in a couple months. it felt good to work together, even though the energy felt rough, less channeled, less synchronized. the last few days have seemed especially chaotic - the electricians interrupted my morning meditation yesterday and today, and especially, i feel out of sync, strangely unbalanced.

but perhaps it is keeping with the season.

lughnasa is not a comfortable holy-day.

as much rejoicing as there is in the celebration of the first fruits of the harvest, it is also associated with death, and the coming winter. if imbolc is the bright light that shines in the winter, then lughnasa is the dark spot that blots the summer.

the motto of my mother's catholic boarding school was spes messis in semine... the hope of the harvest is in the seed. lughnasa is when we see if the hopes and dreams and desires sown previously are coming to any kind of fruition, the time to adjust expectations, face realities, prepare for what's to come.

as i bounced baby jake on my knee this afternoon, i reflected in this august of my fiftieth year, i have reached a kind of personal lughnasa. i have been aware of a particular richness this summer, a particular fullness. i feel settled and ripe in my bones, in my flesh, in the life i have created, in the work i think i do. and so, on this particularly golden afternoon, as the sun sinks and the heat rises from the wetly green land, i light a lughnasa candle, prepare my offering and dance.

i wish all my gentle readers a similiarly satisfying lughnasa. blessed be.

guilt and other mind-sets

i read a post by another blogger about motherhood and guilt that got me thinking. i believe her when she says she's noticed that most mothers she knows are riddled by guilt when they take time to do things for themselves. her post reminded me of a time when i was married to mister ex.

it was early on a saturday morning, and jamie and his baby sister were watching television in the playroom next to my bedroom. i was still half-asleep when i heard jamie say to meg, let's go get breakfast.

they thumped down the steps and into the kitchen, where the sounds of chairs being dragged across the floor from cabinet to sink to fridge punctuated the early morning stillness.

don't you feel guilty, asked mister ex. lying here in bed when that poor little boy is getting his breakfast for his sister?

well, i remember i said, with perfect equanimity. i suppose i could feel guilty. on the other hand, i could also lie here, enjoy my rest, and when i get up, congratulate jamie on being capable of not only feeding himself but also feeding his sister. that is an enormous lifeskill he has already acquired at five years old, and who am i to take the opportunity to learn it away from him? shall i squash his burgeoning sense of responsibility and independence by rushing to help him when he doesn't need help? or shall i encourage it by hanging back and allowing him to handle things all by himself?

which not only shut mister ex up, but also put to rest any guilt-demon that might've been lurking on the edges of my psyche. you can't take care of anyone, honey, until you take care of yourself, my wise daddy advised me in the dark days of my divorce, and that advice shaped the tenor of my decisions of over the following years. if i had put my children's needs ahead of mine, i would not have been capable of pushing that rock of sisyphus who was my ex up the mountain of our divorce.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

what i made today

... though what i nearly finished today would be more accurate!

teaching tarot

the women in the class last night were a fun circle of four friends, all of whom i had met at least briefly before. all of them had more than a passing acquaintance with the tarot - all of them had, to some degree, worked with the cards for many years, some even longer than i have. as they went around the table and described their experiences, i very quickly realized i had a problem.

these women weren't beginners at all.

what, i asked the Angels, could i possibly begin to teach these ladies? my heart had sunk to the level of my knees when i heard the answer - how to put it together

which, of course, is far easier said than done. in all the myriad books i've read on the tarot, its meanings and its uses, the trick of exactly how to derive meaning from the images is frequently only touched on. it's hard to get a grip on something as distinctive and elusive as individual intuition.

but Fools rush in, where wiser ones fear to tread, and so i opened my mouth and let whatever was going to come out, come out. which is exactly, when it comes right down to it, what i do when i "read" tarot cards.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

the balancer

last night, before i went to bed, i drew four cards, just to see what dreams may come. the first card i drew, from the celtic wisdom deck by caitlin matthews, was the eleventh card of the major arcana - the balancer, or as she is known more traditionally, as justice.

last night, i simply sat with the card. this morning, after writing out the introduction to tarot notes for this evening's class, i looked up the meaning in the book and saw that, appropriately for me, the ogham tree ms matthews associates with this card is holly. so i decided to read a little further.

according to ms matthews - "the balancer of harmony opens the ways (including the dream-ways) but also guards them. a life lived in full integrity is one that submits all its motivations and actions to truth first, rather than seeking to find out how truth may be bent to serve us."

she leaves me with a question - and which i will leave for you, gentle reader.

what keeps you in balance with the universe?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

...and where it led

i started off the day by meditating to the sound of crystal bowls for fifteen minutes. from scrubbing the shower on my hands and knees, i not only managed to make the bathroom fit for human habitation once again, but got all my unpacking done and put away. according to the laundry schedule meg created out of desperation one winter, today was towels and rugs day - so i washed not only all the towels (three loads, sorted by color) but managed to do all the bathrugs and the shower curtain as well.

from the bath and bedroom, i proceeded to the kitchen, where the bulk of the work had been done by Beloved while i was gone. he even cleaned out the fridge. all i had to really pay attention to was the floor, where the contractors and the dogs have left their dusty, hairy marks.

and then it was on to the big mess. before i turned to it, i meditated again for another fifteen minutes, answered email, played a bit on cafemom, ate some yogurt, some peanuts and cranberries and a banana. i decided to spend today mostly sorting, and packing. i also swept and vacuumed. the few articles of furniture i dusted, i draped in old tablecloths. i was happy i could move a few things into new places.

i have a tarot class to prepare for tomorrow evening, and i was disappointed by a new brand of glue in my dollhouse. the kitchen floor will have to be peeled up and redone, but except for the trim, most of the rooms are done. i'll post some pics tomorrow.

now it's ham and sweet potatoes and watercress salad for dinner.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

dog days

the general lack of focus in my writing is reflected, alas, in my world, where the mess and the chaos generated by the renovations has reached a critical mass. i am even contemplating calling in my mother.

it has occured to me that an element of deliberation is called for. the inertia caused by the mess itself, as well as my own proclivity to procrastinate, combined with summer's langourous lures, portends a disaster by fall. the task before me appears so big that even the idea of making a list stops me cold in my tracks.

today i will begin by scrubbing out the bath, and see where that leads me.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sunday morning coming down

the thunderstorm that woke me at four am with an immense display of apocalyptic light and sound effects has passed, leaving poor buddy lying like a limp dishrag at my feet. for a dog whose bark sounds like it should translate into "i want to rip your throat out," he's terrified of any kind of loud noise. Beloved thinks this shows how stupid he is. i think it shows how smart.

i spent yesterday in a kind of weird half-way place in my head. it was my turn to read cards at passiflora but no one came for a reading until after i'd had a cup of chilled cucumber soup, an almond-banana smoothie and two cups of lavendar tea. i brought home carrot-ginger soup for supper, and that, with the strawberries i had for breakfast with my yogourt, meant i had a full rainbow yesterday. i was very happy that except for this bit of fog, i was relatively unaffected by jet lag this trip. it's always comforting to have such real-world confirmation that this Eating the Angel Way diet is actually good for me.

today i'd like to attend a crystal class with my friend ruth in torrington, but while i have both libby AND meg around the house, it would be nice to try and get some work done on what looks like to be a very rainy sunday.

or, maybe not.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

there and back again

as usual, it was wonderful to see my daddy.







it was also wonderful to come home... to my Beloved, my puppies, hot coffee, fresh cream, roses on my desk, and an immense new kitchen-space!!!!

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

happy birthday, meggie moo

my middle daughter, meg, turns 21 today. born on the cusp of cancer and leo, if her inner nature is a struggle between the influences of fire and water, there was never any doubt in meg's mind who she belonged to. blessed with my father's eyes, and my irish grandmother's name, meg is the child i recognized almost at once as being the most like me.

from the very beginning, meg was, as i came to call it, a one-parent child. she never liked my ex - even as a tiny baby, she preferred my oldest daughter and her big brother over her father. and he, of course, responded badly, so badly that by the time she was ten, meg's attitude toward her father had grown from tolerance into active dislike. from the time she was 13, meg refused to have anything to do with him.

her middle name, for those gentle readers who might be wondering, isn't really moo. jamie was not quite two and a half years old when his baby sister was born. when meg was three days old, we ran out of milk and i, with no other recourse, bundled up all three kids and brought them to the grocery store. meg was so tiny she fit lengthwise in the seat of the cart.

a lady stopped to admire the baby, and noticed my son clinging to the cart. what's your sister's name, she asked.

meggie moo, jamie said, beaming from ear to ear. he was little and blond and positively beatific... a tarnished little cherub brought to life.

meggie sue? asked the lady with a puzzled look.

no, jamie bellowed. he might've been only two, but despite his age and angelic appearance, he had a bellow like a bull. meggie MOO - you know.. like the cow says MOO?

and meggie moo she has remained.

happy birthday, meggie moo, from the mommy who loves you more than enough for two.

the dark knight

yesterday, libby and i went to see the dark knight with heath ledger. i say with heath ledger because his performance as the joker is the only reason i could be coaxed back into a theatre and made to shiver through three long tortoruous hours of too much air-conditioning, and overly convoluted plot.

don't get me wrong - i appreciate a convoluted plot as much as anyone - more, even maybe, because after all, my books are full of them. but a convoluted plot on a page is easier to follow than one in a movie - in a book you can always turn back, read over, make notes. you can't do that with a movie, unless you're esconced on your sofa in control of the remote.

the dark knight of the film, i think, isn't so much batman, although thats what the film wants you to think. in my opinion, the joker is the dark knight, because he, in his purple suit and dark patterns, and garish, horrific rictus, is the agent of chaos and violent change, the person who shakes the tree just to see how much fruit will fall, who throws the lighted match into the keg of dynamite just to hear how loud the explosion will be. he is anywhere and everywhere, everything, and nothing at all. he is beyond personality - he is a force of nature.

that we cast him as the villian, carve his smile into his very flesh, and then recoil in horror says more about us than any other film i have seen in recent years.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

ps. i love you and miss you back, donnykellehergoodman.

in the land of always-summer

according to my father, when adam and eve got kicked out of paradise, california is the land they had to leave.

why are the hills so brown, i asked my brother, on our way from san francisco to my father's.

it hasn't rained, he said. it hasn't rained since april.

not since april? i blinked. i understand there are places where it seldom rains. i don't visualize those places as looking like this part of california, where the hills are brown and the houses are surrounded by vegetation lush as any eden.

then how come all these flowers and bushes look so green, i asked.

well, he said, looking a little like the guy who gives away the magician's secrets, there's a lot of irrigation.

see how golden the hills are, my father asked enthusiastically.

john says it hasn't rained since april, i said.

oh that's right, my father replied. it's always sunny - we never have to worry about a party getting rained out. we never worry about the weather.

that's pretty amazing, i agreed. coming from new england, where the only thing constant about the weather is its variablity, weather you don't have to worry about sounds absolutely paradisial. unless, of course, you consider mudslides, wildfires and earthquakes weather.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

california, here i come

...less than 12 hours from now, i will be on an airplane winging my way to west.

i really hate to fly.

flying - especially across time zones - is hard on my body - so hard that i, who generally eschews any kind of processed pharmasceutical supplement, travels with a veritable pharmacoepia of prescribed drugs and over-the-counter herbal remedies. i'm even confident i have more drugs in my suitcase than choice of tops.

but california is where my daddy is, and my father is too sick to travel any more. and so, off i go.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

crisis of creation

a few nights ago, i attended another meeting of the fledgling writers' circle. the topic was fear. our voices rose in turn, one after the other, as the deepening dusk darkened the perimeter of the room like a greek chorus shrouded black.

i'm afraid you won't like my writing, and therefore, won't like me. i'm afraid that what i have to say won't be good enough, interesting enough, funny or brilliant enough. i'm afraid i will never measure up to the expectations of my family, my peers and most of all myself. i'm afraid that i will discover i am not shakespeare. i'm afraid i will never have enough time/treasure/freedom to create. i'm afraid i'm just not that good. i'm afraid i'm wasting my time. i'm afraid that what i write will never see the light of day/find an audience/touch a reader. i'm afraid, i'm afraid, i'm afraid.

me, too, i kept thinking, though i am not sure anyone there believed me. and yet, now, with a manuscript under review since january, and so many projects competing for my attention, i feel almost unmoored, unanchored, and alone. without a set of characters in my head to keep me company, as well as all the demands on my attention in Real Space, i feel adrift, somehow, as if the chaos i so joyfully embraced has betrayed me, leaving me rudderless amidst a suddenly silent sea.

what next, i think. what now?

when i go to that place where my writing begins, i see a dark pool of water ringed with rocks that bears a superficial resemblance to the Hag's Sea in my silver series. but unlike that green and ever-roiling water, the surface of this pool is completely still, the water very black. if i want the story - any story - i will have to dive in. i hesitate, afraid that everything, and nothing, might be there.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

a world without internet

...is a world where stuff gets done.

hanging by a cable

last monday morning as i was blissfully answering email, my connection to the internet suddenly blinked out at the same time the television libby was watching in the next room went black. above libby's screams, meg wandered into the mix carrying baby jake.

you better go outside, mom, she said. some guy with a big truck just ran into a wire.

with dark foreboding in my heart, i went out to investigate. it turned out that the garbage truck which had come to remove the full dumpster and leave an empty one, backed into the main cable wire - the one that connects us to the world - as it was coming down the driveway.

with no internet and no television, i felt as if i'd been sucked back into the nineteen-forties. (there's even a war i can listen about, too, on the radio.) with a shaking hand, i dialed comcast the cable company. (i see i date myself unwittingly. a close reader would surmise i am old enough to remember a time when phones had dials, not buttons. so technically i punched in the buttons.) i explained the situation, the person on the other end listened sympathetically and pronounced the first date available for a cable repairman to come.

august fourth.

AUGUST FOURTH? i repeated.

august fourth.

that's three weeks, i said. i can't be without internet for three weeks. that's insane, that's absurd. don't you have anything at all sooner?

august fourth, she said.

and so i did what any good forties housewife would have done, although maybe not in the throes of whatever it is junkies call it when confronted by the possibility of abrupt, long-term withdrawal. i called Beloved.

what's wrong, annie, he asked the moment he heard my voice. (i think he was afraid someone had died.) don't worry, darling, he said, when i finished my sorry tale, sounding as manful as ever errol flynn did when speaking to olivia de haviland (or maybe desi talking to lucy.) i'll get right on it.

i'm not quite sure what Magic Beloved worked, but within forty-eight hours, a very nice man showed up in a comcast truck, climbed up the side of the house and fixed the problem.

and furthermore, (if only) the war must (could) end (so easily.) blessed be.

sunday morning, 7 AM

seven am and the world is still asleep - at least here in my world it is. sam and buddy are snoring off their breakfast, meg and libby and Beloved are dancing in dreamland. i fed and walked the puppies, made coffee and put a first coat of paint on the kitchen (hamilton green, for anyone who's curious)and touched up the walls of the master bedroom with yarmouth blue.









it's cool and gray this morning - after i finish this, the garden is calling me. or maybe its the weeds taunting me. there are no sweeter hours in the day than ones like these, i think.

Big Sister is watching

my little sister called me in tears this week, asking for advice on how to deal with our mother - otherwise known to me and my siblings as Mater Maxima, especially in my sister's universe.

without going into all the gory details, it involves my youngest brother - the one with Down's - long-ago promises, money, wills, and a new house - all of which are potentially inflammatory subjects taken one by one. combine them all, add Mater Maxima to the mix, and you have the potential to create enough poisonous fall out to engender a nuclear winter for at least a generation or two.

but those are only the surface issues, the peripheral issues, believe it or not. in talking to her about the situation, i very quickly determined that the trouble was not really about how to deal with The Supreme Mother, but rather, how to deal with my sister's husband.

the real issue is that my sister is married to a man who bullies her. always the peacemaker and the diplomat, my sister doesn't seem to be aware that while we can recognize her husband's many fine qualities, we can also sense a power inequity in the relationship, and we don't particularly like it. and while i personally feel that the marriage need not end completely, i believe that the issue which is creating the inequity must be addressed.

you know im hard to get along with, too, my sister told Mater Maxima.

i never found sheila hard to get along with, i said to my mother. (of course i always had the drawer to threaten her with.) no, said my mother, neither did i. (of course my favorite nickname for her is She Who Must Be Obeyed)

nan overreacted, my sister told The Supreme Mother.

no, i didn't, i said to my mother. when she says she's hard to get along with, she sounds like someone with a black eye claiming they walked into a door.

no, you didn't, my mother said to me. we agree with you. but we don't know what to do about it.

there isn't much, i said. but we can present another view of reality than the one she thinks she has to believe. we can Name what we See. especially if she asks.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

herbal and other remedies

this morning, in addition to the post i made on when weeds whisper, i received a letter from a friend of mine on the virtues of tumeric. since it's not the first time i've heard similiar, i've learned enough to realize that this may be a gentle nudge in the direction of a Suggestion from the Powers-That-Be, since this week i've been troubled by an elbow that seems slow to mend.

this morning, the bach flower essence i chose for myself was centaury, the remedy that addresses the needs of those who find it hard to take care of themselves. the book that sits on my desk is titled "healing the space within by beautifying the space around you."

the other health issue i've been dealing with this past week is a vaginal yeast infection, and for those of you gentle readers for whom this is simply TMI, my abject apologies and an advisory to stop reading now.

rather than rushing to swallow a magic bullet, ive been sitting with this imbalance in my inner flora, treating myself rather gently with yogurt and vinegar, and in general following the advice of susun weed in these matters. it seems more better than not, but it isn't a slow, steady improvement. it ebbs and flows, peaks and dissipates, allowing me time to sit and ponder this irritation in my mother-space... a manifestation of some imbalance in my most inner-space.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

making progress

the workmen were here on the dot of seven-thirty, and construction commences once more. it seems that the project, like so much of everything else in life, is composed not of steady progress, but of sudden fits and starts. i have settled on the color of paint for the living room and am now picking one for the kitchen/eating area. strangely, the shade i like best so far is the same shade of robin's egg blue i have in my writing room.

the dollhouse is stripped and sanded and just about halfway primed. libby and i need to make a trip to the paint store for more brushes and color samples. today my plan is to focus on the things around the house - both big and small - that need tending.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

hancock and obama

i dont think it's any coincidence that the best superhero movie i've seen so far with will smith in the starring role comes at the same time that a black man has been nominated for president. the crowds calling for hancock to save them ring with the same fervor as obama's supporters at a rally.

fiction - any kind of fiction, whether it is presented in a short story, a play, a novel or a movie - always tells us something of the truth about ourselves and the world we create for ourselves. like the tarot, it holds up a mirror and dares us to really See. i think this happens because in printed fiction, the words are used to create images in the mind, and in movies and plays of course, the story unfolds in images directly.

what is amazing about this movie is that its hero's angst is genuine. this is no namby pamby peter parker plagued by self-doubt. hancock knows exactly what he can do and does it with a devil-may-care panache that leaves billions of dollars of damage in his wake. wow, i thought, the real people getting creamed in this movie are the property/casualty companies... which may be yet another reason i found the movie so supremely enjoyable. go hancock.

and unlike all the other superheros, who predictably rise from ashes both literal and metaphorical to accept their superhero roles, hancock has no memory of a past other than waking up in a hospital with nothing but a couple of ticket stubs to a movie which was playing at the time - frankenstein.

hancock, with his deep sense of isolation, identifies on some level with frankenstein's monster, and therefore, behaves monstrously, until a chance encounter with someone named of all things (in my universe at least) ray (ick) - but as in sun ray, i think - leads him to the light. but the juxtaposition of the monster, which was more human than its human creator, and composed of many parts, and hancock underscores, at least for me, this connection to obama - a man who is frequently presented in the news, at least, as someone both familiar and foreign all at once, a man made up of many parts.

in the end, hancock embraces his destiny and the world becomes a better place. i suppose we can only hope for a similiar outcome in the fall.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sheila's doll house

when i was in college, i saved up all my spare change one year and bought my little sister sheila a dollhouse out of the sears catalogue for christmas. it arrived in thousands of pieces and a big flat box, and my stepfather spent hours in the basement putting it together.

sometime shortly after i moved to connecticut, the dollhouse arrived at my house, battered, somewhat disheveled looking, but more or less intact - sort of like me. i spent the first summer in connecticut without my children fixing it up as best i could for meg and libby. it came along when we all moved to pond house, and that first christmas, don bought libby a houseful of doll furniture on ebay.

for the last five years or so, the dollhouse has stood on the now non-existent deck, sporadically played with by visiting children. every once in a while, i used to rearrange the furniture but it really wasn't very comfortable out there, and not condusive to sitting for more than a few minutes at a time.

according to the clutter-busting books i've been reading, the dollhouse typifies the sort of baggage one should toss... an ancient relic that represents not much more than a part of my long-ago past, the sort of detritus that detracts from valuable space and only adds another place for the dust-bunnies to hide.

but i like to play with dollhouses. one of my favorite pastimes as a child was to build them out of boxes and books, because in the name of some perversity too twisted for me to understand even now, i had tons of furniture - but no dollhouse to put it all in. in retrospect, it forced me to be constantly creative, to think in big pictures, to consider aspects of three-dimensional reality i might otherwise have ignored all together.

but, oh, how i always wanted a dollhouse.

i thought this summer that libby and i might fix it up. last night, we went to the craft store, and bought among other things, paper and felt and a little saw.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

the pettibone ghost

on thursday, my friend laura and i took libby to see the pettibone ghost exhibit at the phelps tavern museum in simsbury. our tour guide was a charming new england lady who managed to evoke something of the manner of her forebears in a most authentic way. one had the sense that the stories she told of the people who had lived and worked and married and birthed and died on these lands were the same stories that got told around the dinner table when her family gathered on the holidays.

on the other hand, she was quite clear that while the inn itself may indeed be haunted - she demurred to pass judgement, she said with a prim quirk as much a relic as any ever found in an attic - there was no historically documented record of an abigail pettibone...which is supposed to be the name of one of the ghosts who haunts the pettibone inn, which is seven to ten miles down the road.

abigail just doesn't appear in any of our records, said the lady, and then showed us a sampling of the fanactically detailed documents which the town fathers have been keeping since the seventeenth century. one had the sense that if someone didn't appear in the records of the simsbury town fathers, one could safely assume someone didn't exist.

we had moved into the second room of the tavern when we heard a curious knocking from the first room. it sounded as if someone - or even several someones - had either opened the door and come in, or was jiggling the door. our guide left us to check it out.

they're here, i mouthed to laura, as libby rolled her eyes, even though she knew exactly what i was talking about.

when our guide returned, she said there was no one there and she had no idea what made the noise. on the upper level, i couldn't resist touching a stone of the original chimney as it rose up through the house. the stone was warm to my touch, even though a fire had not burned in that hearth in decades.

one of the most interesting parts of the exhibit, i thought, were the three shoes the workmen had found during the restoration that had turned the building from a private home to more of its original state. dark with age, and creased with dust, the shoes had belonged to a man, a woman and a child. the imprints of their feet were plain - it was clear there were two right shoes, and one left.

it's an old new england custom, explained the lady. its not mentioned much in the records, but we frequently find shoes buried around the chimney - a shoe from each of the original occupants. it's supposed to bring good luck. i wondered if the ones who'd left their shoes there thought it did, but that's the sort of question libby rolls her eyes at, so i didn't bother to ask it.

as we were leaving i happened to glance across the street to the cemetery, with its long rows of stones and monuments, stretching all the way back to the seventeenth century. look, laura, i cried - there they all are. and to libby's utter mortification, laura and i waved and yelled hello.

picking paint

Beloved spent the weekend flinging decades worth of detritus into the dumpster. i spent the weekend ruminating over paint. i narrowed my selection to four shades. the top one looks too yellow, the second one too gray, the third one too dark.

i liked the last one from the first time i saw it in the store. here's a few more photos. what do you think?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

sources of inspiration

these are the pillows i happened to see the other evening, as i was contemplating what to do about the color scheme. Beloved doesn't seem to understand that i need a sense of where it's all going before i feel i have a framework within which to make the thousand and one decisions we are going to have to make.

for me, it's not simply a question of choosing what we like - it's a question of choosing what we like relative to everything else that we also like. as i said to Beloved this morning, i'm trying to create a vision that hangs together as a cohesive whole. each part has to work together, and some parts have to play the backdrop so that the important stuff stands out.

you clearly care a lot more about this than i do, said Beloved, before he said the magic words: annie, do what you want.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

warm, welcoming and comfortable...

...spiritually-aware, harmonious and ordered.

these are the six adjectives i settled on to describe the feeling i wish my house to evoke. i also found a color scheme last night... quite by accident... as i was gazing moodily into the distance, thinking about nothing in particular.

three of the scattered pillows on the sofa in my writing room coalesced into a palette both soothing and warm, and appropriately pastel. (Beloved and i had a bit of a spat over what constitutes the definition of "dark" wood yesterday.)

the colors are cream, taupe and robin's egg blue. now it's off to the paint store for samples to put on the walls... and maybe even the floor :).

if i can find the camera in all the mess, i will post some photos of what i find.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

do you believe in magic?

well, sometimes.

i've been pondering the questions one gentle reader posed a few days ago, which is essentially this, at least as i understand her...as someone who not only believes in Magic, but has been known to use it on occasion, how do i respond to books that include the use of magic and people who use it?

for me as a reader, i am willing to believe anything the writer can make me believe. in other words, i don't read stories in which magic is used to learn how to use Magic. i read stories for the Story. magic, when it appears in a story, in its simplest terms, is really about the manipulation of either power or energy and sometimes both. however it works, it has to make logical sense within its own universe. as long as it does that, i dont care how far off the mark the writer is from the way i experience and manipulate Magic.

on the other hand, to read a story in which the characters experience magic in a similiar way as i do, is a delight. there is a new author, sarah addison allen, whose debut novel Garden Spells, is an absolutely charming story that reminded me of practical magic - only better.

as far as the more stereotypical presentations of charmed and such, i don't pay much attention. the good thing about them is that they introduce the ideas of magic and spells and witchcraft in a way that is a bit different from previous ideas about witches - at least the girls on charmed are young and cute rather than old and warty. anything that asks the public to think about anything in a new way can only be a good thing in the long run.

i think the way to create believable characters who use believable magic is to focus on them as characters first, who have needs and desires and flaws. magic in a story is not exactly the same as Magic in the Real World, just as characters in a story aren't really people, no matter how closely from Real Life they may have been drawn. your job is not to make the reader believe in your magic, but to make the reader believe in your Story.

i find that's when i need all the Magic i can muster. :)

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

dancing with the dark side

a month or two ago, I received an email from a writing friend about a new writing circle she was starting a few towns over. i liked the idea of a circle, and i like her, so i thought i would show up the first night and find out what she had in mind.

one thing i like about my friend karen is that she is amazingly thorough. despite being nearly nine months pregnant and the mother of a two year old, she had clearly put a great deal of work into the circle even before its inception. i am never sure about groups, but i appreciate hard work.

our first writing prompt is supposed to be about our fears. i appreciate a challenge, too. here's what i wrote instead of my blog the first morning my internet was down.

“Having trouble?” Her voice is like the purr of a Cadillac’s engine. I hear it deep inside somewhere… but where, exactly, eludes me, just the way so many words, so many sentences and images and metaphors have eluded me this morning.

I hear the echo of a distant laugh.

She knows I’m after her.

She is Published Writer. She is hard and sleek and prefers to wear high leather boots – shiny black, of course – and a lace-up leather corset. Her favorite toys are whips and knives, and she is quite merciless.

She steps out of the shadows and I see the glint of her long white teeth, her blood-red lips, her long red nails. “Feeling brave, are we?” She chuckles. Over the corset she’s wearing a black and white hounds-tooth checked suit. No boots today; her stockinged legs end in pointy black pumps. Her hair is the color mine used to be.

“Maybe,” I say. I’m wearing jeans and my sweatshirt with the ratty sleeves, the one that’s soft and blue as my baby blanket. My feet are bare.

“So what do you want?” She lights a cigarette, blows the smoke in my face. I want to blow it back, but I don’t smoke.

“I want to ask you – no, I want to tell you – to leave my first drafts alone.”

She sneers, rolls her eyes, takes a long drag. “Are you kidding? The way you write, you might as well wander around all day with a paper bag over your head. Who are you trying to fool? You need me –“

“You’re right, I do need you. I need you to make phone calls and read reviews and talk to Jenn, and if we’re ever going to have an editor again, I need you to deal with her. Or him. I need you to – to make the revisions, to sense what sells. But I don’t need you ravaging my first drafts.”

She puts her face close to mine, and I can smell the blood on her breath. It’s my blood, every drop, and deep inside my chest, my arms, my throat, I feel the scars begin to ache, the places that she’s mined and fed. Not for the first time, I hate her. She licks her lips and says, “You think you got all the time in the world, sister? You’re not getting any younger, you know. At the rate you write…”

“You know, that’s the trouble, right there. You’re mean. I don’t like you. You don’t just ravage the drafts, you shred them. You’re hard and you take away all of my joy.” I look over to the wall, where a slim white wraith of a woman is chained. “You took my Muse. I want her back.”

“You gave her to me.”

“You didn’t used to be so mean.”

She laughs, snaps her fingers. “It’s a mean business, sweetheart. And you need me to survive in it.”

“Maybe I don’t think you’re worth it.”

“You blaspheme!” Her face contorts, her lips thin as they pull back from the razor edges of her fangs. Her body swells, lengthens. She is an enormous Cobra, dancing above my head.

“You’re very scary,” I say as calmly as I can, because – besides blood - she feeds on fear. “This is why I can’t have you around the first drafts. You just proved my point.”

Again she shrieks, and the huge head lunges forward, fangs dripping venom. But the snake body collapses as she shrinks, morphing back into a woman, a tiny woman, who runs shrieking into the void: “We’ll meet again, my pretty!”

so many blogs...

...so little time.

yesterday, as i was bringing sam and buddy home from their annual vet checkups, i happened to hear the local talk-radio guy bemoaning the fact that now, in addition to daily papers and internet news, he's also a blog-junkie and spends hours a day reading and commenting and emailing individuals who write enormously interesting blogs.

wow, i thought. i know just how he feels.

my two days, one hour, five minutes and twenty nine seconds without the internet showed me what it must be like for a heroin addict to go cold turkey. i didn't break out in physically cold sweats, but i was close. deprived of my daily infusions of pixels from cyberspace, i felt disconnected to the point of feeling marooned on an island of Real Life.

on top of that, Real Life has been demanding more and more of me. with libby home from school, my days are not so free, even if my house - at least where its not torn apart - is getting really clean. the construction - or should i say destruction - commenced at a blitzkrieg rate: where once stood a deck, there is now nothing but air.

i have a decorating lady coming over at ten oclock to take a look at the whole mess. i hope i dont throw myself at her feet and sob. i have some tidying up to do - haha - before she gets here, but this afternoon, libby and i are going off to see an exhibit called "the pettibone ghost" in simsbury. it's about the ghost who haunts an old tavern about half way between our house and my grandmother's place. i pass it every time i go there.

the place has an interesting vibe - everytime we've tried to go there, something's stopped us - and every time i think of eating there i feel faintly sick. and yet, they say they have good food.

one of the comments i came back to asked a really interesting question that i continue to ponder even while life continues to suggest other topics. and so, ms robertson (i hope i can call you linda, please call me annie) congratulations on your first publication (do leave details next time you visit). i am pondering the answer to your question:

when you read books with magic in them, even knowing you are reading fiction, especially if they are set modern, do you ever find yourself judging it as too fantastic or too real or do you suspend disbelief and dig in?

but in the meantime, gentle readers, what do you all think?

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.

happy birthday, miss elissa

my relationship with my stepdaughter elissa is one of the two more difficult relationships i have with my children. (the other's with my son, jamie, whose behavior reminds me of his father more frequently than i care to remember him.)

in elissa's case, the lion's share of the fault - if there is one - lies in my opinion on her mother, who encouraged elissa to despise her father for no reason other than he chose not to remain married to her mother. on the other hand, i arrived with not just one rival, but four for her father's affections. never made to share anything, elissa was understandably puzzled when the demands on her father's heart quintupled. how could there possibly be enough left for her? the child's fear of abandonment coupled with the mother's need for revenge ignited a fire that i fear will continue to smolder long into elissa's adulthood.

or maybe not.

last night, she came over with two friends to celebrate her twenty-second birthday. over cake - an especially pretty cake in just her favorite flavor that caught my eye the other day at shaw's - she casually mentioned to her friends that "anne can talk to dead people."

i was tired. i really didn't want to be a party game. this sort of thing makes Beloved particularly uncomfortable - he always looks for the exits if the conversation takes a serious veer into the psychic. but her friends looked like sweet girls, girls who wanted to look a little tougher than they actually were - just like elissa. and there were so many bright young spirits around the one who looked at me with eyes as wide and liquid as bambi's.

well, whoever would've thought that, said Beloved, when they left two hours later. elissa spent two hours here on her birthday and most of them with YOU.

i guess stranger things have happened somewhere.

and furthermore the war must end. blessed be.

arte y pico

among the three hundred plus emails i managed to wade through yesterday afternoon was one from my dear friend rose of Walk In The Woods of winsted, connecticut. she was kind enough to present me with an AWARD! - the Arte y Pico Award. i am both awed and humbled she would select me for this honor.

as she explains on her blog, WhatRoseMadeToday:

This award, originally started by Esey, was created to be given to bloggers who inspire others with their creative energy and their talents, be it writing or artwork in all medias. And, I must add, to receive an award such as this from a peer and associate makes it an especially special honor. :)

The Arte y Pico Award is meant to be paid forward to bloggers who are deserving of it. rose has presented me with the award and I would now like to recognize the following five blogs:

Stacie's Homeschooling Blog
Eat Man Drink Water
Cabin Fever in Alaska
Cynwrites: a blog for grownups
Diary of a Wicked Stepmom

So, gentle readers, I invite you to visit each of the five blogs I've listed.

If you have been selected for the award, please pay it forward, following the steps below:

1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.

2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.

4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the "Arte y pico" blog , so everyone will know the origin of this award.


5) Please post these rules!

The Arte y Pico blog is in Spanish. I can't seem to make the English link work. To read it in English, go back to rose's blog. i am currently attempting to fix this problem, but nothing i do seems to work. :(

a day without the internet....

...is like a day that didn't happen.

at least, not according to my blog.

a bad storm on sunday afternoon during jamie's graduation party knocked out our modem, and consequently, it was almost exactly 48 hours until our connection was restored. i signed on to find SEVEN comments - THANK YOU to all who took the time to consider the answers (they were most illuminating as was stacie's feedback, cause she's actually been HERE - i should ask questions more often, i see) and over 300 emails. most of them were from freecyclers, but still... 300 emails is a lot to cull through.

so here it is, a brand new month. joe the builder and his crew showed up early. my brother had the good sense to plan to leave today. now half the deck is mostly demolished. the other half is packed up in my living room.

to warm, welcoming, comfortable and spiritually attuned, i am determined to add ordered to the list.

and furthermore, the war must end. blessed be.