Iceberg or not July 31, 2013

 

 

The sad part is that there is no way out of it for her.

She seems trapped. She can’t keep her ambitions quiet, can’t get the man she wants, and seems not to be as taken as seriously as other people in the group she has attached herself to.

She can’t trickle up the way she did elsewhere because there appear to be too many other power players already one or two or three steps ahead of her, too powerful for her to cast them aside, and in some cases, powerful enough to determine her fate, when she cannot do so for herself.

  She may not understand what she needs to do to find success and even if she escapes this situation, she may be caught up in the same loop until she finally gives up.

Somewhere in the maze of expired and unexpired sea shells that is her life, the small vulnerable hermit crab scurries, seeking cover to avoid exposure.

To know too much about her gives others too much power over her, and it immensely sad that she has so much evil around her that she needs to embrace in order to survive, only she needs to be considered a player and yet, perhaps is not, and finds herself protected by an equally vulnerable and perhaps out of touch Virgin Mayor, while the real power lies in the group that feeds off of him, the Joey Ds and others.

In some ways, she is riding a dead horse, even if the Virgin Mayor survives his legal troubles. He is a figure head behind whom other people operate with impunity.

Her trickling up seems to have had her trickle up into a sinking ship, from which the rats are looking to jump, perhaps abandoning the Virgin Mayor entirely if R can win in Hometown.

The problem is, they might not want to take her with them – except for perhaps Joey D, who seems to have plans to trickle up or out to the town I cover, and someone there told me he’s already asked the future mayor there to get her a job.

But it won’t be the same. She will come across as excess baggage, not a full-fledged player.

All this must be weighing heavy on her, especially with the struggle to survive cancer and the loss of her lover, and unless she finds a better place with better and more ethical people, she won’t get anywhere – which raises the question, how does she jump ship to a ship that has not already hit an iceberg?

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal July 29, 2013

 

I refuse to believe she fakes it, regardless of what the PR lady says, life and death ain't no scam, I say and believe down deep the deeper truth we accept when coming face to face with death. 

I want it to real while at the same time for her to be all right, to be on the mend, to have her feet finally firmly on the inner circle of what will become the yellow brick road to salvation, her trusted companions getting their brains, their heart and their courage as she finds her way back home.

I want to think the wine that gurgles in the sink and the car of cigarette ashes finally abandoned are more than just a con job for some new scam the way the PR person pretends, that in the end she will emerge from her shell or cocoon as something different, something spectacular.

email to Al Sullivan

Smoke screen July 31, 2013

  

The more I think about it, the more I think the hyperbola she uses in describing her cancer sure is more about proving herself as a PR person – perhaps connected with the hometown election which her boss is involved in, trying to show she can do as good a job as anybody.

This may be prompted by the fact that A – our former Hometown writer – has secured a spot in the R campaign apparently as a spy, serving as PR person for the third mayoral candidate with the aim of undermining his campaign from within in order to allow R to win as mayor.

She did similar work for the Virgin Mayor when she pretended, she was going to work as a PR person for the Virgin Mayor’s chief rival, and then carried back on the Chief Rivals secrets to the Virgin Mayor, who hired her as special assistant and PR person.

This is speculation, of course, though I suspect it may well be true, her need to demonstrate her abilities so that she might become a more valued member of that team.

Explaining why the whole thing about the cancer cure sounds like an infomercial.

She constantly feels the need to prove herself, even though it is perfectly obvious how competent she is otherwise.

Now, a year after her failed attempt to bring down the congressman, it seems more likely she was trying to earn credibility, using RR to attain what might have taken her years to earn any other way, not aware perhaps that RR was using her, and that RR really didn’t have to goods he said he had – but just the threat got her in deep shit with the Small Man who pushed for her to resign. This partly because she was apparently romantically involved with RR n—a mortal sin for a writer being involved with any source, let alone the arch enemy of a powerful congressman.

I’m not saying she isn’t capable of guile or some other nefarious deeds in her goal to trickle up, but as time goes on, she seems more dedicated to advancing her own schemes than being used by others to advance theirs.

The congressman’s PR person is wrong when she says this cancer cure is a con game, but rather something our poet actually believes worked, but her scheme is to show how she can promote a product that some see as questionable.

Or she may actually believe in the product itself and is so grateful for having come out the other end of what might have been a death sentence that she has become a true believer.

And yet, there is an undertone in all this, a sense that there is something else, something more fundamental bothering her, and that the overly positive appraisal of her health is a smoke screen to disguise this other thing, perhaps even from herself.

At some point, I believe this aspect will reveal itself, and that her misery over her lost love will become the predominate theme, and the smoke will clear away, and we will see a woman in deep, deep despair.

 

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal April 20, 2012

 

If I breathe too deeply, I'll bust, waiting in my seat in this corner for her to finish what she needed to do before she goes on to do what she came here to do in the first place, mingling near the door where students get ready to shoot her picture along with the parade of other professions that came to di it here, too -- cops and maybe robbers, marines and sailors, the ROTC guy falling over himself to help her while the men in uniform wait, a star among stars, for an event in which I play observer, a mere nobody except somebody who arrived, but won't leave later with her. Who do they think she is, starkly beautiful against this educational backdrop, all part of a drama Shakespeare might have admired, her carful grooming making her fit in and yet stand out at the same time, while I remain invisible, perhaps even to her.

email to Al Sullivan

Is the cancer cure a scam July 30, 2013

 

The PR person for the congressman our poet friend tried to bring down while working at our office, has very little sympathy for her, telling me she thinks the cancer cure is a scam that our poet has an investment in, perhaps explaining the infomercial tone of many of her posts.

I don’t agree. But I listen and nod just as I do when my best friend, Pauly, expounds his X-file-like theories of UFOs.

The PR person believes she is involved with the founder of the so-called cancer clinic and takes issue with her taking her own photo as she was wheeled out after surgery – the PR person thinking she might be putting together a book on how she got cured and all she did to achieve it.

Perhaps – the PR person claims – she might even be seducing our former temporary boss into the program to win more brownie points with the founder of the cancer cure program.

I find this more than a little harsh but understand how threatened the PR person felt when our poet tried to use her assistant – the son of a prominent political figure who is aligned with the Congressman – to help get at his father.

As I pointed out earlier, she did approach our former temporary boss to use this system to deal with his cancer, but his wife talked him out of it, apparently not liking the idea that he would have to stick a tube up his butt and pour coffee into it.

I do understand the PR’s skepticism. All the dramatic moments our poet has posted, the bandage over where they took the blood, the pouring of the wine down the sink and such does come off like self-promotion, but I can’t see her trying to broker all this into a new career, and certainly do not believe she is involved with the program’s creator – although in the past, almost all of her new careers involved being involved with someone romantically.

The cancer and the treatment seem legitimate to be, regardless of the hyperbole involved in her posts, and frankly, I think the exuberance comes as a result of relief, of discovering finally she isn’t dying.

Of course, I could be wrong.

All of this, of course, may be more about seeking a career in public relations, by demonstrating her ability to promote this product, much in the way she seemed to have targeted a career as a food writer by doing columns for free,

If she is tied to the company and the cancer cure program, then it came at a convenient time, coinciding with her diagnosis of cancer.

Maybe the PR person is right. I just don’t think so.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry journal July 28, 2013

 

The shell of the cup still warms my palms even with it is empty, a poor joke I mostly play for myself since when I post the picture and card, I have no way to know if anyone (even she) will see it. I am like the poor fool hunkered down in some bunker somewhere tapping out desperate messages to the starts in the hope come distant being on some distant world might hear it.

Only in this, I am the alien, the unwanted, the entity that terrifies others when that is not my intent, always misunderstood, seen where I am not, an unidentified object, she, then others think they see in the rearview mirror of their lives when I am not really there.

My cup is empty

email to Al Sullivan

A stupid provocation July 30, 2013

 

Okay, so, I provoked it.

For over a year, I have wondered if there was an actual exchange going on between us on social media and blogs.

Or had I finally fallen off of her radar, and she no longer paid any attention to what I posted on my blog or Facebook.

This made me deliberately take a picture of a park I knew she hangs out in – posting it on her birthday with the assumption her attention would be elsewhere.

I also posted a birthday card on Facebook, one that I had been tempted to send by snail mail (having not yet learned the lesson from last year – I am an idiot), a private joke, as well as a photographic parody showing myself with an empty cup and a tag line saying, “now I know where the coffee went.”

I put the park photo in with a batch of other waterfront photos I had taken, these from her town, although I had gone up and down the coast from the state park to the foot of the George Washington Bridge.

But apparently, the photo I took was of a place she considered sacred, going there to do yoga and meditate, a small circle of pavers surrounded by a patch of grass, just below a public building that overlooked the river and New York City.

I mostly expected a snide remark or no remark at all on her blog. I did not expect a phone call from some guy in her town looking to speak with my wife, and refusing to let me take a message when I said she wasn’t’ home.

This small experiment answered a number of questions about whether or not she was still stalking my site the way she did leading up to our initial contact back in March of last year.

It also indicated that she is as enraged at me as she was a year ago, perhaps more so.

The phone calls did not stop. At least, we got two more – that had only heavy breathing on the far end and when I traced them, these also came from the town where she works.

After a while, I took the phone off the hook, although I knew this was not an answer, and got the feeling that she might be going for my jugular, and that I need to be very careful in not provoking her again, promising myself not to post anything for a while, and when I do, to listen more carefully to my cyber nanny and not post anything she can perceive as a threat or a communication.

It’s safe enough for me to read her poetry essays, even if she is tracking my IP – she will assume I’m reading these anyway, so, it’s pointless to disguise that aspect.

I just won’t do anything that will seem like I’m invading her space, which means no more joking photos or trips to places she might consider sacred.

Better safe than sorry.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal April 20, 2012

With more than 25 years of journalism under my belt, I never once got honored at a luncheon the way she did with only six months.

Can't image what magic she possess to get so many to lover her like this, what gifts does she possess that draws these people to her, what they want by given her such accolades, and yet, here in this library in this school where we have come so she can inform others how she does what she does, the feeling grows, people looking at her in the way I've not seen people look at anyone, except maybe for some home coming queen who has left her mark on the world beyond, like a movie star or a sports hero, which she is neither, born elsewhere among a whole different kind of people, even there, back when she was student, teachers treated her differently, sensing perhaps something in her that really is special.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Nobody really knows July 29, 2013

 

Who is she really?

She is a survivor. Someone who grew up with a violent mother and learned how to protect herself in whatever way necessary, shielding her brother from abuse. But not without a cost – finding that while that she has to rely on him at times, and most certainly loves him, she doesn’t always like him.

In some ways, he is a kind of mirror of her own life. He exploits women; and she – in her own way, exploits men.

Both seem condemned to living their lives with temporary relationships with sex serving as a main component.

And since they are both extremely sexual beings, there is also this sexual tension that exists between them, something that becomes evident when he does photo shoots with her, since sex is a big part of his arrangement with his models.

She began this hard road at about age ten when her parents split, learning to fend for herself and perhaps discovered the power of sex as far back as high school, a way of coping with the always tricky landscape of social groups to which she was not invited to join.

She is clearly a modern woman in many ways, although in some ways, she swims with sharks, and may explain why most people she interacts with do not know who she really is (as she points out, she is a hermit crab living in this shell and that, leaving others to know the shell and not what’s inside it.)

She seems to trust very few people, and even those with whom she shares some of her secrets don’t really know it all. Even those that cling to her heals, former lovers and such who continue to follow her with the hopes of some possible (but unlikely) reunion know very little about what makes her tick.

They love and adore her, but may not know exactly why, only that they need even the marginal connection she still permits them, such as our former temporary boss and our office gossip.

I doubt people like RR, Joey D or the Virgin Mayor know much even though they think they do, and she keeps connected to them because they are powerful people, who she can call on at need.

Her brother and her family, who to their credit, have become a positive force in her life, perhaps know the most.

It is possible that the man over whom she still aches may have more insight into her than previous lovers, although most likely, even he doesn’t know everything about her, and as a survivor, she needs to keep it that way.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal April 20, 2012

 

I can't believe she went from cub reporter to old saw so fast, wide enough to teach the public about what she does, computer screen with the company website and ragged-edged print copies with her byline under each tale, she telling me she needed me to be there to give her confidence when in truth, she does all right on her own, so used to being up there on stage that is not a state that I feel as if I am the cub reporter she once claimed herself to be, more a witness or the shill old time vaudeville performers salted the audience with, expected to laugh or clap at the appropriate moment so that the rest of her audience might up up on the cue, though in fact, I need a wink or a nod to tell me when to laugh or clap and a score card to figure out if I've done it all right.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Nov. 25, 2023

 

All these long years later, I still can't pass this place and not think of her, during that terrible summer when I could do nothing right, when she came here, a year before I even saw it in the flesh, wondering about it, and her and who she had shared that weekend with when I knew it could never be me, the girl I saw in our office lobby in a day or two earlier in a sun dress and large sun glasses, and pictured her dancing with whomever it was in the sane near the pier, that magnificent Victorian hotel she posted pictures of later, and I still feel a bit of a twinge each time I was, wondering if she was happy.

email to Al Sullivan

All by herself July 29, 2013

 

 

I guess she goes to local parks because she feels safe.

After three years living in the same apartment, the waterfront must seem like her back yard.

She is often alone there, posing for self portraits in small spaces she sees as her private refuge, posting these to inform friends or family about her current condition.

At times, these are even raw footage, revealing all of the blemishes, while she reserves the right to fix up others when she seems to need to show herself off more perfectly.

I don’t know if she wrote the message I saw on one of the pavers, but it sounded like something she might write: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and stand up taller. I am not alone.”

And yet, she is alone, and as her recent poems indicate, desperate to reinvent herself, searching the world for some new venue for fame she has yet to achieve, not quite religious enough to become born again.

Her birthday must loom over here like a dark cloud. She is getting older, year by year, and though she is still beautiful and immensely talented, she must fear the years that might take her beauty from her (although I suspect, she will always be beautiful in the way people like Lauren Becall is, age only adding something to her the way age does fine wine.)

It is difficult to determine what her current ambitions are, although she clearly is reeling from her spoiled romance, even as she asks for her inner voice to take a nap so she can heal from healing, broadcasting her woes in a way I would never have expected, which suggests possibly she is sending a distress call to him, or perhaps sending a message in a bottle out to anyone who might listen.

I don’t think it is anything material she needs. She has a new car (reportedly) and can afford to spend a fortune on the vegetables she needs to maintain her program of health

Still, she is struggling apparently for a direction, a new career, one she hasn’t yet figured out, even as her current life seems to crumble around her, not just the criminal issues concerning the Virgin Mayor, but something deeper inside herself she just can’t resolve.

 

email to Al Sullivan

 

Angels in the waves Nov. 25, 2023

We didn’t get to see music during our annual post-Thanksgiving trip to Asbury Park, even though we booked a room in a motel in case we could.

But just before our leaving for the north again today, we got to see whales and dolphins, a startling bit of magic that is usually preserved for our Victorian Week trip to Cape May.

This was particularly apt since it came at a moment when I was looking for a particular part of the beach where my poet friend (as described in my journals from a decade ago, using the word “friend” liberally) and finding it just as the massive head of the whale broke the surface just beyond one of the rock. Scores of people crowded the rail to see the rare phenomena – rare for this time of year when the water gets so cold.

For me, dolphins and whales are magical creatures and seeing them always comes at a time when I am searching for something or trying to come to terms with some issue in my life, a lot like angels whose appearance bodes a positive change in my life.

Back in October 2012 during a trip to Cape May, I ached to see them as an omen of better fortunes after an incredibly rough year, and a massive school of them appeared at the last possible moment before I was scheduled to return north, hundreds of them at a time when I was pondering all the stupid mistakes I had made over the summer, and when I was thinking in particular about that poet – the same poet I was thinking of today when the whale appeared for the first time along with yet another school of dolphins, the whale’s head rising completely out of the water just when I was looking at the pole around which the poet had been dancing a month ago, as if that dance and the whale’s appearance were connected, just the way I believe the dolphins appearing a decade ago were connected to her, if not a sign of forgiveness, then some gesture of forgiveness issued by the universal being that oversees our lives, these beasts of the sea engaged in a dance that is both delegate and beautiful.

As a decade ago, once I saw the whale I continued to stare, and saw the scores of dolphins, as well, although I could not predict just where they would appear in order to snap a picture. The whale was more predictable, issuing a spout of water before rising to the surface again, although it was its back I saw most, curved and wet, glittering with the sunlight and it submerged again – even then, I barely had time to focus the camera because it vanished again, catching only a bit of the spout and the dark black back via video briefly.

I know all this sound like something out of the X-Files, but I believe it, need to believe it and in believing come to find comfort where otherwise I might find none.

These are the angels in our lives; we are our own demons, needing salvation, desperate for absolution, and like the ancient Odysseus who has always been a hero in my life, we search for those signs that tells us we have won favor or forgiveness from the Gods, and seeing this now, as I did back in Cape May all those years ago, I’m convinced the Gods look on me with favor, or at least with pity and compassion.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Nov. 25, 2023

 

the whale leaped up from the water in the place where she previously danced for her mother on the sand a month or so later, and yet magical just the same, whale and dolphins rising up out of the sea at the precise moment I thought of her, seeing the pole around which she pranced as if a ritual to deliberately evoke there spirits I have come to treasure, and unexpected witness here, this far north when I ached to see them again as I had long ago and far away, then as now, thinking of her, as if she, the sea and its creatures were always connected

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry journal April 13, 2012

 

(This is a rewrite from a poem I actually posted, but didn't like, but I never replaced the original post. I did this a lot, re-writing poems that I posted and regretted -- yet left the original in place)

She calls herself "Cub," I don't.

The girl who took a beat it took two languages to handle, learning her craft among the poets at Columbia and doing a food beat for free on some online thing in Manhattan, dragging behind her a string of music awards she feels a little embarrassed about hoping once and maybe still to broker them into a career of her own, a notorious flirt to whom men and women flock, not all getting their chance to share her bed, even when they desperately wish they could, a one-time coke head who says she's given all that up, ignored in our office, she says, letting her do what she wishes to do, with me coming onto her radar screen with my one eye covered like a pirate because I lent her a book on how to do what she was hired to do, asking me to be her mentor, something I don't know how to do, and know now this can't last.

email to Al Sullivan

Too much to hope for July 28, 2013

 

 

For good or bad, calculated or not, she is in the midst of change.

This may or may not have anything to do with her birthday. Yet it clearly involves her cancer recovery, and the loss of the man she loves.

For whatever reason, she is legitimately trying to improve herself, and has set her feet on a path of reform, both mentally and physically, giving up those things that helped bring about her close to death experience, such as wine and perhaps cocaine (which I’ve never confirmed).

So, this may explain the poem about giving up things, and how the one thing that got her through some of the worst things, she is also forced to give up – most likely meaning the man she loves, comparing him and what transpired between them as miracles, and at a point in time where she saw everything turning around, becoming rosy, the world turned gray again, and she is in constant pain over it, and doesn’t want to train her brain to stop thinking about him.

“I’m tired of going without especially when what I’m going without, I never had in the first place,” she wrote, suggesting that he has another life with another woman, and needs for part of her brain to stop so that she can “heal from healing.”

She clearly is deeply in love with this man, although it is hard to tell if he is the focus of the poem, although he clearly is in the mix of things, she is being forced to give up in order for her to continue living – only is it worth the sacrifice?

The opening line suggests that she has a number of things she needs to change, although later in the poem, she makes clear that one thing – her love of him – helped her get through the other issues in her life.

Although the poem seems directed at the man, this may not be completely the case, and she may well be talking to herself as the poem progresses, especially in regard to the word “you,” which seems to alter from one part of the poem to another, “Held you together,” clearly refers to herself, from which hope rises, from a place inside herself from which she has drawn strength. This may be love of him, but it is also about her own ability to survive.

This last thing she must give up has got her through the other things like a beautiful miracle string, reminding her that such things as miracles and beauty are part of this world alongside those dark things, she’s experienced.

This suggests that she still believes in beauty and miracles, but that when she got her life back and life began to look rosy, she lost this one thing as well, turning her world gray.

When I first read this poem, I wondered perhaps maybe she had become pregnant, explaining the pain from her belly to her heart – although this may also be read as the dual pain of her miracle cure at a time when she is also suffering heart break.

Yet, as gray as the world is, she clearly does not want to suppress hope, to train her brain to stop thinking about that more positive side of life, although most likely she still means the man.

Although the idea of dreaming, asleep or awake plays a role in this, the idea of what her life is or should be and suggests that she is tired of her inability to get what she needs or thinks she deserves, especially because she’s never had them in the first place.

This is uncertain territory because she may also mean the fact that he is married to someone else, and regardless of how she dreams about a life with him, she knows she’ll never get it.

Yet the real menace isn’t external. It’s always that persistent voice of doubt, only now, it is the voice of hope she needs to silence because hope betrays her and causes her pain, and she needs that part of her to nap so she can heal.

The poem seems to run counter to other poems she’s posted recently, but sounds more realistic, and I get the sense that while she puts on her happy face, her inner turmoil remains, hating the fact that she hopes for something she’ll never have,

Perhaps she feels the insincerity of hope, not as a positive, but something that she clings to when all else fails.

I think while the poem may be directed at her lover, it is also about the folly of hope, and how she raised her own expectations for something that could never occur.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal April 20, 2012

 They love her, and I don't know why. It's in their eyes even here, as the student leads us to the library, even as we enter the room, gazes turn in her direction, as if she is a movie star, holding luncheons in her hour, letting her up on stage to perform, this small town reporter, here like no other I've seen before, what magic does she possess that makes people adore her, like this invite to \ teach here on career day,  no best selling author, no famous actress, and yet, they love her. I see it in their eyes, in the way they react, in the way they talk, none noticing me in the least, just her shadow for a day. What makes them feel this way, what power does she have over all of them, over me, too, as I take my place in the line of her admirers.

email to Al Sullivan

Another coincidence? July 27, 2013

 

 

Coincidence drives me nuts, especially when it pops up after another in a seemingly endless sequence.

With her, there have been a lot of them – the cancer thing in relationship to our former Temporary Boss, the poem about being down by the Hudson after I posted a similar poem.

Then last night by accident I stumbled onto a website featuring a well-established anti-toxin program (complete with malware), similar to the one she’s been engaged in over the last six weeks. Since I found no connection between her and it, I’m assuming it is mere coincidence that the site managers suddenly decided to follow me, when I have no other similar contacts, and she is not connected to it by any of her social media (as far as I can tell.)

The cancer remains the most puzzling of these coincidences, and so makes me think (as I have said before) that the two, his and hers, are connected. The paper work she posted shows the validity of both her claim to have it and her claim to be cured. But again, I wonder why she needs to broadcast either, unless it is a message to someone, and most likely the man she professes to love, both as ‘nothing’s wrong and I don’t need you after all,” scenario combined with “I was ill and you weren’t there for me, don’t you feel guilty,” scenario as well.

It is impossible to play down how serious her condition was to start with since she made it clear this has been ongoing for more than two years, although again, it may well be as contagious as GA, our hometown blogger claims, and suggests that she gave it to our former temporary boss during oral sex, something he plays down.

If she did give it to him, why broadcast the fact?

In most circumstances, you would want to hide it, not broadcast it.

Her sudden urge to become wholesome (purity) stuns me, as are the symbolic gestures, such as pouring wine down the sink, and the alternative uses for coffee, along with the multiple jars containing green or other colored substances she must ingest in order to save her own life, also symbolic of starting over, a return to Eden perhaps, and a sense of restored innocence. She’s even changed her hair style to look more innocent and pure, perhaps even touching up her photos a bit.

Not only does she want others to help celebrate her victory over that dastardly disease, but wants the public to be aware of her reformation, and as I said previously, it sounds a little too much like she protests too much, implying some inner turmoil with other demons she has yet to overcome.

Everything is just too dramatic, loaded with symbolic gestures and made public in a way that seems to counter her basic instincts for privacy.

Again, as pointed out previously, she is sending a message with all this, maybe to more than one person, to the lover with whom still holds out hope for a reunion, to our former Temporary boss to assure him that she is suffering as much as he is, all of this coming just prior to her 34th birthday, suggesting perhaps her fear of aging.

Who knows? She is a complicated being with complicated motives.

 

 

email to Al Sullivan