Technically Indian summer doesn't come until after the first freeze.
But we had a deep chill and then near 90 over the last few days. So, this may well have been Indian summer as a new string of showers brings us into the cold. -- not yet snow like that Halloween in 2011 when still leaf laden trees in our back yard cracked and fell leaving a brutal landscape I could not clear till the following spring -- eye surgery leaving me half blind and prohibited from any heavy labor.
it was a vulnerable time, too, partly because I had to travel to surgery alone in the back of a bumpy cab which got lost on the way to the hospital.
I held the resentment against my wife as deeply into spring as the broken tree limbs.
The death of Uncle Pete in early 2012 added to this sense of my mortality and perhaps made me vulnerable to what later happened.
I was 59 going into 60, an age I always thought of as old and suddenly someone admired me, and I went ahead over heels.
Now, after other surgeries associated with old age some of those feelings still linger in me --. the good and bad times, the intensely positive and equally negative things I did or said or thought.
Time has caught up with me, each new decade bringing me closer to that shore for a sailing from which there is no return. I feel my mortality even more actually now as I did then and the chill after Indian summer only makes my bones hurt more, envisioning the black sails of that ship destined to take me away.
She went to the park again yesterday, and most likely, by herself,
although it always difficult to nail something down when she posts a photo of
herself on Facebook.
She could be using a timer to take a picture of herself or
has someone else taking of her.
Nearly all the photos I have seen of her over the last year
have been self portraits -- such as the one she recently posted in her mother’s
kitchen (I surmise that it was her mother’s kitchen since her brother made some
comment under the posting in that regard.)
Outdoors, however, is a mixed bag, such as the one taken of
her eating lunch (most likely from a food truck) while sitting on some rocks (the
background showing a number of residential buildings, none of which I recognize
from around here, although she could be anywhere with anybody, and I’d have no
clue from my vantage point – merely looking at what she posts.)
Work photos are different in that she is often depicted in a
group.
Her most recent two photos, however, clearly show her in a
local park, needing no view of the New York Skyline to recognize which park.
This all seems odd to be that she would be all by herself on
a weekend, perhaps defying my jealousy when I envision her constantly being
with one of her admirers.
She’s changed her hair style, long, jet black with bangs
which make her look younger and incredibly innocent.
She turns 35 this week.
The outdoors highlights her makeup more and does not emphasize
her more attractive features such as her amazing eyes.
But none of these posts are accidental, and I suspect each
photo is a message to someone, perhaps to her late lover with the implication, “See,
what you’ve given up.”Although some
photos seem to be part of self-promotion, and increase the sense that she feels
isolated.
This sense of loneliness seems to support the theme of her recent
poems
I am, of course, puzzled by why she’s not gone farther than
she has, since she has so much talent.
But that is one of the great mysteries of the universe.
Tim, the former Hometown writer from a few years ago, is
recruiting current and former writers from our company, to help work on R’s
campaign, in an all too similar way our poet friend tried to use our company to
help RR’s attempt to bring down the congressman and his allies.
This continues to raise questions as to whether she is
connected to R’s campaign now or was acting as a provocateur during her
employment with us – a secret agent who was simply following marching orders.
GA, the hometown blogger, says she has proof that Tim is
working for the R campaign, of which I have no doubt since when he worked for
us, his stories tended to be pro old Hometown as opposed to the progressives,
and since leaving our employ, he has served as PR and other duties for some of
the most hard core democrats in the state, although he told me he’s not working
for R, but merely helping out.
All this stuff raises serious ethical questions about the
role we in media play, and how underhanded politics can operate in its attempt
to corrupt us.
The problem for our poet if she is working for R now, is
that she has already been compromised with too many players already aware of
how she’s operated behind the scenes to risk sending her out into the field to
work without a lot of alarms going off.
I suspect A – our poet’s bar-hopping buddy and our former
Hometown writer – will serve in that role, leaving the question of where our
poet fits in.
It’s hard to tell whether the Virgin Mayor and his crew of
cutthroats got any use of her when she called around the county looking to dig
up dirt on the Virgin Mayor’s enemies. She was never a political guru the way
Tim was and may have been – as Paul Simon might have put it – faking it.
But with Hometown up for grabs, it is a put up or shut up moment
for her. If she is operating as their agent, then she is going to have to prove
her worth, and to demonstrate whether or not she really is a political player.
Tim never mentioned her by name when he mentioned the list
of current and former employees who he’d approached, either a deliberate misdirection
or he simply didn’t see her as living up to the part.
Tim knows his stuff after having spent years hobnobbing with
political bigwigs, letting them give him drink and cocaine and most likely the
women that come along with such affiliations.
Unfortunately, Tim tends to self-destruct. As a writer, he
spent too much time socializing with these political heavyweights and showed up
at functions drunk or near drunk, yet someone is loved enough by the powers
that be as for them to keep giving him second chances – such as representing a
woman who is vying to become governor, right up to the point that he got busted
for pot possession during a DWI stop.
He eventually crawled back to this part of the world where
he apparently hopes to resurrect his career by helping R become mayor, compromising
our company’s integrity in the process.
This idea of manipulating our company by our poet and by
others to achieve political ends suggests a connection between her and them
which may not exist.
I think she would love to be considered an insider, and yet,
her intelligence and her personal sense of worth defies her simply being used.
Although, she did drink RR’s Kool Aid, and I’m wondering if
she even believed it back then or was simply jockeying for position, using RR –
as The Small Man suggested – as protection until she can trickle up to someone
better.
I don’t suppose I’ll ever really know if she served other
people while working for us, or simply did what she always does wherever she’s
worked in the past, a lone operative seeking new stepping stones to climb.
After more than a year, many of the events that took place
have blended together in one large smear of memory that even my daily journal
struggles to make sense of.
My poetry journal tends to reflect many of the incidents
better – at least in their emotional impact yet doesn’t really give details any
more than her poetry blog does her experiences.
I can probably break down the whole thing into periods, such
as that melting pot of memory just after her first text back in March 2012 –
not exactly a happy period, but less contentious, when I suspected I was being
manipulated – “I’m really into you,” she said – to that period when I had
fallen out of grace and she had moved on to our former temporary boss, and
eventually the owner, though to lay out what happened in any kind of chronological
order was beyond me even then, and now impossible to break out except for how I
might have felt, such as the realization at some point in early May 2012 that
everything was over, and I unwisely did not accept it, making matters worse.
I had no real way to understand what was transpiring, and
even now, it seems like a fog out of which particularly things appear more
clearly than others, though without any logical sense.
If there was a rime or reason, I spent the better part of
the last year trying to find it, and still do not believe I fully understand
what transpired, coming up with various theories, some of which may be true,
although most only scratching the surface of a complex personality I may never
fully comprehend, a soul that switches shells too often to pin down.
Part of all this was the fog I walked around in, both during
the good times and especially the bad, though the most vivid moments were those
with extreme emotions, most often negative, but not always – the boat ride,
even the time at the diner (although her angry poem had me banging my own head
against a brick wall or stabbing the back of my hand with a fork.)
Over the whole of it, I wrote a lot in my poetry journal, only
a portion of which actually made it into my blog (thanks to my cyber nanny) and
which I’ve recently gone back to in an attempt to reassemble events, though
poetry is not reality, and there are moments of confusion that made recovering memory
impossible.
As I said, some moments stand out even out of the fog, such
as those times at the bars, the first kiss, my seeking advice from our temporary
boss, then sabotaging him out of jealousy.
Abandoning her at the bar stands out vividly and so even my
poetry notebook has such painful recollections, I’ll never forget it, the smell
of the place, the look on couple at the bar next to us, my jealousy at the
attention she gave the bartender, my stupid mistake of bringing her a card and
candy, which she hated (not yet wise enough to know she dislikes such ostentatious
symbolic gestures the way many intelligent people hate Hallmark cards.)
All this comes ahead of the one year anniversary of perhaps
my biggest and most painful blunder, when I texted her on her birthday and got
bushwacked by her brother, father, mother in law and such, the text of which I
copied into my journal verbatim, still painful to read, and yet a lesson in
humility – and the aftermath, the quick sand and compassion poems in which she
seemed to show mercy on me, despite may clear violation of her space.
It is a lesson well if painfully learned, with the full
knowledge that I most likely will never speak to her again, not even – or perhaps
especially – to offer happy wishes she’ll never believe or accept.
My journals – regular journal, poetry journal and the other
odd journals I tend to keep – served as solace for me, where I could write my
way out of the pain and stupidity, a record of my own foolishness as well as an
exploration into her, one of the still great mysteries of the universe.
Her poetry and her music have served as an inspiration for
me, a challenge to understand the first, and the immense pleasure of listening
to the second. These are true treasures, ones that will eventually she will
eventually cease, though I know I will return again and again to them, if not
for comfort, then to better understand what it is that happened to both of us
over this period of our lives.
One of the persistent misperceptions I had back when all
this started more than a year ago had to do with my belief that she was much
more in control of all of us than she actually was – and the misbelief that somehow,
she wanted power over others, not just me, but all men, when in fact she did on
one level, but was also victim to circumstance.
She had no other options but to play the hand she got dealt
and to use those tools that seem to have worked for her in the past, even if
ultimately in each case, what she did never got her what she wanted.
The concept of power and powerlessness still appears to be
the primary elements of her life, seeking one while trying to avoid the other.
In our society, men use women while we paint it as if they
are manipulating us, and for someone like her with all her talents, she
struggled from the start to keep from being used, and in this regard, needed to
become powerful enough, and thus appears to need to use others before they
could use her.
This is something of a false dichotomy since there are other
options for most people, which may not be available to her in her use or be
used mode.
I keep thinking back to that time when she was still teaching
and her friend’s boyfriend kept hitting on her, and how eventually she gave in
to him, only to open the flood gates to his belief that he was entitled to her,
resulting in his eventually raping her.
This loss of personal control didn’t just resonate in her in
the way it might have other victims, but also made her realize just how other people
– in particular men – still possessed power over her, even to the point of
violence.
Until then, she apparently assumed she could keep things
together, keep control, and in a panic, she fled what might have been a
promising career.
Since then, I suspect, she’s been conflicted, not just over
her personal issues like her eating disorder, but also how to retain control of
her life, resorting perhaps to that lesson that old lady on the cruise taught her
-- which seemed to confirm that if you don’t use other people they use her.
In truth, she still scares me, because I’m just conscious
enough to sense when I’m being manipulated, yet at the same time, I let it
happen, giving into some childhood fantasy about letting things go and giving
control to other people.
Even at the height of our short interaction, I knew the
whole thing had to end badly, and kept telling myself the momentary joy was worth
the inevitable pain.
But I refused to surrender to her need for control
completely – and if I had, things might have turned out differently, allowing
me to fall into that unique club of those who love her from afar – such as our
temporary boss, her husband and others.
I mistook her lust for power as a threat, rather than what
it really is – a means of survival.
Looking back over the year, I see just how little real
control she has and how many things haunt her, causing her to wake up early
with a hamster wheel of panicked thinking.
I’m sure some day, she will come to realize how much real
power she has, and how she doesn’t have to live in a world of use or be used.
Of course, I still don’t know how much she got used when it
came to our office, whether RR tried to pull her strings to get his agenda.
Most likely, she simply followed a pattern of behavior she learned perhaps all
the way back in high school, when she found a way to escape being seen as a
dork, perhaps living up to that old Police song as girl student and teacher,
which set the foundation for later conquests – all of which ultimately got her
nowhere.
Most likely, I will never see her again – which is probably
a good thing – since as with back then, I still feel she is in control, and I’m
still conflicted, wanting on one hand to surrender everything to her, while on
the other hand desperate to retain my own identity.
In some ways, she does not yet know how powerful she really
is. While she wields sexuality like a sword, she has much more to offer, and
much power influence over others in more positive ways – seeing her teach
taught me that, reading her writing both in what she did for our company as
well as what she posts in her blog shows a vital force inside her that would be
completely awesome if she ever manages to harness it, a non-threatening force
that still draws people to her, even when – such as in my case – these people
are scared to give themselves up completely to her.
True love seems to have escaped her, not because she lacks
anything, but because to achieve it, a man (or woman) must be willing to
surrender to her. So far, nobody really has.
She corrected me in her latest video, intentionally or not, making it clear that she had not purchased a new camera, but rather and app for her phone which basically keeps track of her movements, something akin to the more old fashioned dolly used in movies and tv to pan along with a character in a scene.
She apparently planned to use this visual toy before this, but a forecast of rain dissuaded her.
Her video blog has replaced the print blog I followed for several years, and she clearly has a talent for it, and she is so photogenic, she can’t help but attract viewers.
She is also growing into the medium, having learned how to speak to the camera, not a hard lesson for her who has spent so much time on stage and as a performer – although the earliest efforts on this blog were basically a series of long shots, of her walking her dog or a study of nature in an urban environment, followed by a few videos narrated via text. So, by the time her of current video, she seems unintimidated, even giddy when talking to her audience.
Structure is something she seems to be still working out, crafting her own model as an organizational tool – especially in regard to her horse and travel pieces.
As I noted in an earlier journal piece, films tend to use two basic structures, one designed for storytelling, the other to use image as metaphor. The better film projects use aspects of both.
Her videos seem to have adopted a documentary format – which can use any structure – and it is clear that she is using her photographic skills to create some clever imagery.
Some of this might seem like a flash back to things she’s done in the past, especially in regard to her horseback riding, which she had engaged in when living upstate well over a decade ago, and she clearly retains the love of it.
There are no real lessons in these videos. She seems more focused on conveying her joy and her experience, using the video media to allow her audience to get some joy from that experience as well.
This differs sharply from the calculated motives of commercial films. She is not selling anything, or attempting to manipulate, which helps make each of these mini films a delightful nugget I can watch nearly as often as I listen to her music, feel good pieces that allows me and others to share in her experiences of joy – delightful change from the sometimes cryptic poetry she used to post, although to tell the truth, I more than miss the effort of trying to figure out what she meant.
I was so scared my teeth chattered the whole ride north, and
my hands shook as I tried at each traffic light to text her back.
“Where are you?” she repeatedly texted, and I replied with a
street by street report, each time I stopped.
My whole body shook in expectation of what might happen when
I finally arrived.
As stirred up from those few drinks we had, and the kiss I
stole when she drove me up the hill before my walk home, a kiss that stirred
her up, too, I later learned, when she reported her need to find another man to
fulfill the promise I never kept, a promise I knew I would have to keep this
time.
I got scared, too out of practice for far too long, fasting
as I had fasted does not make the hear grown fonder, a matter I soon discovered
to be all too true when I got there, unable to do what I had come to do,
needing desperately for it to b real, when all I could offer was a touch,
inside/out, not what she said she needed when I asked her once if she was gay,
and she said how she loved that but also definitely needed a man.
Needed that one thing that defines manhood.
Or are we destined for something else, something inadequate,
unable to fulfil what we promised and ultimately let down even ourselves, even
when we feel intense need, the humiliation carried out on our shoulders when we
leave the field of battle, conquered by my own fear and sense of inadequacy,
knowing well this will influence the future, and turn all that seemed promising
into a massive disappointment, as it indeed did.
I’m convinced that our former temporary boss hates me, even
though he still pretends to be my friend – believing wrongly that I somehow caused
our poet to resign last October, when I had no part in that affair.
He seems to be seeking out ill information about me.
It is difficult to tell if our poet has anything to do with
this or it is simply something he came up with on his own.
I suspect not.
I also suspect I’m not a subject of conversation when they
meet or talk.
Her MO seems to keep each of us in the dark about the others
– one of the reason why I think she went ape shit last year when I revealed I’d
been talking to him about her, or maybe more upset that she thinks he talked to
me about her as well, something he really didn’t do, I merely made it look that
way, one of my more shameful acts in this Shakespearian tragedy.
I’m still not convinced about our owner’s explanation as to
why he has not yet filled the position our poet left in the upper county towns
after D left it for hometown, and the intern left (or was fired, not clear on
that either.)
A number of people in our office would welcome her back with
open arms including the owner, but especially our former temporary boss, and I
wonder if the position is being left open as an insurance policy in case things
go sour for the Virgin Mayor in his trial.
But why would she come back unless the owner can dig a lot
deeper into his pockets than he was willing to do in the past?
She just got a $20,000 a year raise, which is about $2,000
than she was making total when she worked for us.
Besides, she rarely backtracks. She always moves on.
Joe, former editor at one of our down county papers, had his
first dealings with her this week, and for some reason, he showed up at the
council meeting I covered last night.
Since he has a key to our auxiliary office and to our
computers, all this is an alarming development, making me wonder what exactly
is going on in our main office that I don’t know about.
Joe shrugged when I asked him why had had come to the
meeting, telling me he was on his way home and hadn’t been to one of these meetings
in a long time, a very thin excuse since nobody in their right minds goes to
government meetings unless they have to.
I once asked him if he was after my job. He said no. But I
don’t believe him.
Fortunately for me, he and our female boss bump heads a lot,
nor does one of the other long time writers like him.
All this maybe as he said it is, mere coincidence, but it
still makes me nervous.
Meanwhile I found out more about D’s complicity in two
slanted stories he did for our poet’s former beat prior to his moving on from
the Virgin Mayor’s town where our poet has been spinning him.
There is some hint that D is going after Carmelo’s political
enemies as well as those enemies of the Virgin Mayor.
Our poet in her current position fed D information as a
confidential source and he bit on it.
The second story he did before moving on to Hometown
apparently invented negative quotes which were never recanted when the person
quoted called D to complain.
D has also neglected to return calls to Hometown blogger,
GA, who wanted to correct information in a story he did in hometown, even
though story was not essentially controversial.
The Virgin Mayor’s chief adversary, meanwhile, had a
confrontation with RR, calling him a snitch, a situation that gets more
uncomfortable because the adversary’s aide apparently has switched sides. Since
this is the man our poet had the most dealings with last December, and who laid
out the Adversary’s plans for her to carry back to the Virgin Mayor, she may be
the one who convinced him to switch sides (though I suspect not). Still, I’m
struck by the fact that a man related to some of the principal characters in
that up-county drama lied about his relationship when he came to my town to do
a documentary about a story I had written.
Our former temporary boss was right about her writing; she really was the best in our office while she worked there.
The unfortunate part is that the new ownership in destroying the paper completely gutted the Archives and so to the general public her work is no longer available.
An inspiration to me since then I had kept all of her stories in my own archive and downloaded into my Kindle in order to reread hem the way I used to do another great writer for office years earlier, and the way I reread Orwell, Joseph Mitchell, Mark Twain and EB White.
More than once I've been tempted to post all of her stories on my blog but that's not my prerogative and the best I could do is simply read and reread the work she did while she was employed with us. (though I still cringe over the story she once wrote called Pizza man).
This is one of the great tragedies of modern media that the Legacy that you build online can sometimes vanish as if it never existed
As with her poetry, some of her work for our office remains highlighted in my mind my favorite pieces that I go back to again and again for inspiration
That is one advantage of having that archive in that it has become personal and a treasure much like her poetry, which I also collected.
Although I almost always wish for more poetry and more of her stories, I am very grateful for having them and to reread
It is just a shame that because of bad management of work has vanished for most other people.
This includes the archive of poetry that she posted on her blog for several years
It is a mystery as to whether she had a previous blog before she came to us full of other poetry although several times, she has alluded to it by posting or reposting things that I believe she had originally posted on another site long ago
The fact that she has moved on to video blogs is a positive since it continues a tradition of talented images and writing. As with almost everything she touches it turns to Gold but then disappears: her photography, her poetry, her news writing
This is a kind of reflection of the old artists from the Middle East who used to create masterpieces and sand and then watch the wind blow it away leaving only the memory images
I still recall some of her artwork that she briefly posted and see them in my mind's eye as images and designed to have the wind blow them away – leaving their image tattooed into me as a kind of permanent archive.
In the end I guess all of our art vanishes whether we like it or not and the best we can hope for is to leave a memory impression in somebody who treasures what we do enough to want to remember
I view her current videos with the same kind of temporary pleasure knowing that sooner or later she will evolve into something even more intricate.
(This is the first draft of my attempt to analyze this poem)
Her most recently posted poem was put up late last night –
at night being the usual time for such postings, and generally on a Sunday or
Monday.
It comes after I spent most of my night listening to all of
her music on line, knowing she would likely see the number of hits increasing,
suspecting, but not knowing for sure it is me.
Taking a step back from the personal and not trying to
assume to whom the poem is written, I need to look at what the poem actually
says before imposing an interpretation.
The poem is set a night, and the night air comes through her
mind though through “childhood senses” the way she remembers it from when she
was a kid, quiet, peaceful, suggesting nothing confrontational, like a peripheral
vision.
This comes at a time when her future is uncertain, “unclear,”
lost in a soft huge, a gray mist, yet nothing threatening at the moment, calm,
even soothing because it is empty of far or apprehension over what might come
next. It also sooths the past that she says is too full. She repeats “of my
past and my past and my past” to emphasis its troubles in her current life and
how it usually haunts her.
The next statement is a curious one, directed at someone,
perhaps herself, saying “You didn’t think I’d be here.”
This suggests that someone thought she might not survive, or
that she didn’t expect to be where she ended up.
Then still possibly talking to herself, she asked, “Did we
think at all when we began?”
This may hint at how she got caught up in the life she has
led, and sometimes, she closed her eyes and tries wrap herself around the smell
(of the sea breeze), wishing she wouldn’t think about the beginning why, because
those things flow through and out of her mind, carried away on the night breeze
that came again tonight – and went.
This also may be interpreted in connection with her desire
to see her lover again, and when she does, it helps her, but it doesn’t last,
because he comes (both in the sense of arrival and possibly as in sex) then
leaves again, back to his real life without her.
Her work is so cryptic, there might be other meanings I can’t
think of.
If she is speaking to someone other than herself, then it
may have an entirely different meaning.
The line about him not thinking she’d be there strongly
supports the idea of a relationship – and the continued theme of her other recent
poems.
Perhaps she really is in love, but a sticky situation. She
has spoken of this before, about not knowing how to get around the situation,
and if talking to him about it, acknowledges that they didn’t think their
affair would end up as it has.
There is a change from “I” to “We,” giving credence to the affair
interpretation.
Then, she shuts her eyes, and wraps herself around the
smell.
What smell?
The night air? Perhaps the musk of his love making.
She’s made reference in other poems to his smell, his body
wrapped around hers.
But if this is what she means, there is a sense of sadness
at it not lasting, his coming, his leaving, leaving her alone.
Whatever it is, it is a situation she doesn’t want to think
about, and apparently feels that it’s beyond her to do anything about it anyway.
There is resignation in the poem – if not the persistent pain
and rage she sometimes expressed in other poems.
If anything, she has adopted a much softer tone.
Again, it is unclear just to whom she is directing this and
other poems,
Perhaps the night breeze moving through her childhood senses
means love, but it would also mean the aspirations she had – all those
attempted careers, including her music, which she put such stock into as a
young girl.
The breeze comes in quietly from one side as she ponders and
has doubts about the future.
Again, we have the direct statement about someone (she or
he) not thinking she would be there – perhaps back to square one, the idea that
she might have to start over with someone else or some new situation.
My feeling is that there are multiple meanings because the
situation she’s stuck in, or surviving is too complicated for one simple thought.
Most likely, she’s looking back at the whole mess,
commenting on how neither of them thought things would end this way when they
started, and then forces herself not to think about it, the night breeze
carrying out of her mind all those things that depress her.
This is far less judgmental than some of her angrier poems.
She does not imply guilt. But she sees failures and seems to have a lot of
baggage on her shoulders.
The poem may well have been inspired by a recent trip home
that stirred up a lot of childhood memories, and a childhood perception she
once had. So, the poem then may be looking at her life now from the perspective
of her childhood, her long lost innocence, and pondering how she got to where
she got, and stirring up doubts about the future.
But in the night breeze, she seems relieved of those burdens
at least for that moment, the wind comes, the wind goes, taking all of concerns
with it.
Yesterday’s look at her surrealist story still has my head
spinning, because it is a far darker piece than anything I’ve read by her, and
makes me wonder if there are other pieces, I don’t have access to that are as
brilliant and dark as that.
I keep going back to look at it because it is so rich in
metaphor.
While I assumed it had to do with her life and condition at
the time she wrote it, the piece is clearly fiction, and it is always a mistake
to read too much into fictional accounts.
But the fiction comes at a time when she is transitioning,
out of one shell and in search of another.
The images are so intense that is it impossible not to relate them to
characters in her life, or to feel that she is expressing her frustration with
the past, disappointment (and betrayal) in the present, with a vague hope for
the future.
The power of the writing, the descriptions of the two men
that are part of this character’s life Past and Present are potent elements in
some psychological drama that has to have some basis in fact, her perception of
the past – as an individual person or a collective, filled with all the disgust
as well as pity as she can provide. It says a lot about her character, someone
who gets trapped in a relationship because she is fundamentally good, and after
some fashion, despite her disgust at the rotting conditions, still maintains a
level of empathy or pity.
This says a lot about her character later, and possibly
explains a lot about how troubled she is by life that keeps waking her up in
the early morning hours.
The fiction, of course, is a kind of American Horror Story,
that presents us with a dream for the past and then creates a character so
utterly normal as to be boring, only to suggest that maybe the dream is coming
true after all.
As with the story she wrote about cheating, she has a
remarkable insight into the male mind, even a decrepit one such as the past.
The once-blonde boy on the motorcycle presents a scenario utterly
sensual without needing to describe the lovemaking, although you can feel the
heat of it, the passion, especially when compared to the heat of decay she
presents with the past.
As pointed out yesterday, there is something very much
Salvador Dali in this work, especially regarding the impact of heat, and the
sudden dream-like shifts, the use of the hummingbird and the green rose, and
the gradual evolution of these images and symbols – the hummingbird that sucks all
the green out of the rose, who later appears as the boy in flight, this almost-salvation
that turns sour when the past stares out at her in the reflection of the boy’s
motorcycle helmet.
Even the helmet is a major symbol, her desperate need for
independence, even from the boy with whom she has shared a powerful passionate moment.
The feeling is that the boy will eventually evolve into a
trap exactly like the past, and she needs to be free of both of them, even if she
takes pleasure from the boy at the moment. He is not the future; he is turning into
the past.
The symbolism implied by the present part of this story
suggests that regardless of how humdrum a life she adopts, the character is destined
to live out the dream – or nightmare, and perhaps adopting a so-called normal
life is not the solution.
Despite being fictional, the story comes at a time when she
is scrambling to find a new path out of a bad situation. She is writing food
reviews for free, possibly inspired by the fact that she got to meet briefly at
a book signing her all time hero. She (meaning the poet) is applying for even
the most medial jobs just to be able to maintain the minimal life style she
enjoys – it is not completely clear where the character in the past sections
lives or sleeps, although from the past’s remarks, it suggests they are
estranged even if living together, and so her need to make love to the boy is
all the more urgent, and for the past, an easy way (he thinks) to manipulate
her. She never anticipates the rage this inspires and how it eventually leads
to his downfall.
The story allows glimpses of the real poet as she slips out
of one shell briefly before adopting another, perhaps less intentionally
revealing that even the poet knows, how reluctant she is to give up what she
has for what she might need or want, and – at least in the past – her willingness
to suffer through a terrible situation, perhaps foolishly hoping it will
somehow get better when it is clearly already hopeless.
She once told me she never cheated on anyone; but many men
have cheated with their significant others with her.
I don’t completely believe this statement; I do believe that
she may have been driven into other men’s (and sometimes women’s arms) because
of the unbearable conditions of an existing relationship – such as depicted in
this fiction.
Also, although married at the time, she was a prominent
figure in a musical act that toured the world, and from my experience in the
music industry, such a position made short time affairs inevitable. This was
brought home hard to me during the end days of our brief encounter, when I saw
an off off Broadway play in New York depicting bored housewives who put
together their own garage band, and ultimately became popular – with one of the
songs they sang as part of this musical called “You can’t fuck them all,”
making it clear just how addictive the life style can become.
She no doubt had the same issues, even though her husband
was a member of the band, and perhaps he like the past in the story allowed her
to engage in these short term affairs in order to keep their marriage in tact –
pure speculation on my part, though as her later poems indicated, she is a very
physical and sensual being, and finds it very difficult to say no to someone
who constantly hits on her, as no doubt many men and women did during her time
with the band.
Again, we harken back to that old lady who gobbled up boys
and girls and helped guide her to a new way of life – perhaps helping her in
the same ways her friends did earlier when she gave up sex for a time after a
breakup from a boyfriend.
The idea of independence runs through this whole story, and
her need to know things – the past complaining about her constantly asking
questions.
While there were at least seven parts to the past portion of
the story, there was only one part to the present or normal portion, even
though she labeled it as part one – after which she may have felt no more need
to continue it since she had already found a new shell to inhabit.
What becomes clear from the story, however, is that she felt
trapped in a life, partly because of guilt over the thought of leaving the helpless
past. But more importantly, that life with the past was a living hell, and
destined to destroy her.
The blonde haired boy on the motorcycle symbolizes that vibrant
part of herself, the sensuality that gets lost in the dust and decay of the past
but must be allowed to thrive if to avoid the green turning to gray as the rose
did.
The past was sucking her dry and condemning her to a life of
misery, and the boy became both a reprieve from that life, as well as a
reminder of who she had been prior to becoming trapped in the past. She needed
to go with the boy, to make love with him, even though she came to realize he would
eventually turn into the past as well, and that the only answer for her was to
go her own way, do things for herself (as symbolized by her putting on the
helmet), although the story also suggests, she was never meant to live “a
normal life,” nor should she – and while she might wind up alone in the end, it
is better than being trapped in decay the way she was in the past.
Looking back at this story from several of her more provocative
poems such as the fair unfair and trickle up, it becomes understandable that
she needs to keep on keeping on, or rot on the vine.
By far and away her most provocative writing OK with a five
part series she posted during the month of July in 2011 an intense
psychological fiction that raises a lot of questions about her world view at
the time when she just began to recover from her romance in New York and at a
time she scrambled to find a new direction for her life
highly symbolic and very surrealistic portions rival even
images we get from artists like Salvador Dali
labeled as past or present the piece serves as a snapshot of
where her life was weird was at the moment and leaves Owens resolved where she
is going
the piece is gripping in both its realism and its surrealism
painting a picture of the deteriorating past and a seductive yet unstable
present each depicted by characters with whom she has relationships the past with
its uncomfortable decaying scent and images of a deteriorating figure that
continues to control her even to the point of allowing her to Make Love to
another man yet not as a gesture of good faith but one of control he allows it
in order to appease her concerns when he clearly does not care to understand
what her concerns are or how disgusted she is in her remaining uninvolved is
simply a pledge of loyalty that is rapidly evaporating even the man with whom
she makes love is an unsubstantial pleasure yet destined to vanish before her
eyes with the remaining caress oh with that deteriorating man in arranging the
whole thing for her
the piece opens with a very Dolly like image of time
slipping by in the heat only instead of a melting clock it is her melting bones
she depicts
Her world is one of discomfort.
while her past sits deteriorating in a velure armchair
chomping on a moist guitar his sweat stains the chair but he won't climb out of
it accusing her of not letting him even if he had the inclination to do so
constant contact with the chair has caused sores on his grey
skin
This makes her pity him, in what she claims is the first
time she’s felt anything in a long time – something resembling, I think, the pity
she expressed towards me after I got bushwhacked last year for texting her on
her birthday.
Pity and guilt appear to be powerful emotions in her life as
she struggles to find something more, something pleasant, even – as another
poem puts it – holding out for love because when it works it’s fantastic.
She treats his wounds, dabbing them with a cloth, trying to
make him feel comfortable, yet seeming more like a caregiver than a one-time
lover, covering every sore, the man turning from gray to a sickly green, pulsing
like the waves in the window – or as The Doors might have sung, cars go by my
window like waves.
This bit of mercy appears to grow in size and weight, then
tells her he’ll stay longer, as she comes to realize she made a mistake – Mercy
is not always the best solution.
She wakes the next morning to the smell of green roses, and
stumbles into the next room still damp with dreams (This is a sexual image.)
The man had put a slipcover over his smelly chair, smooth khaki
canvas in an apparent effort to become more appealing, greasing his hair,
shaving, splashing Aqua Velva on his face – a image of a specific kind of
classless man, putting on a seersucker suit with a green rose in his lapel.
There is something horrifying in this image, even though the
man would not recognize it as distasteful (much like the white sneakers she
once told me made me look like an old man).
Then, she takes a step back from realism when she describes
the gray hummingbird hovering near the green rose, slowly turning green as it
sucked nectar from the rose and causes the rose to wilt.
This very much suggests that she is the rose that is being
sucked dry by her relationship with the man – as suggested earlier when the man
turned green after she soothed his sores.
Her life with him is turning her as gray as the man was,
She sees the bird as a sign of change, a difficult change,
and once the bird was sure she got the message it flew out the window.
The change, of course, is building up courage to leave – and
it may not be from her New York City lover, perhaps she looks further back to
when she had to break it off with her husband.
The man had a red memory book on his lap and patted the arm
of the chair so she could set and reminisce.
She went to him, but not completely willingly, perching –
again the image of a bird as suggested earlier) lightly, bracing herself in
case she had to fly way.
The book contained a picture of a blonde haired boy who most
likely was the man in the chair as an earlier age when they first fell in love,
arms pinned as were hers in the picture, her face flushed with excitement as
was the boy’s – those days when love bloomed in them.
Although, this may also be a memory of another boy she loved
in the past, someone she regrets having left or having been left.
The man said the boy would return but just for one night,
something she may have seen as a taunt since she wept with anger and
frustration, partly because the man’s manipulation worked and love – despite her
best efforts to stop it – rushed through her.
She began to pace, tripping over the abandoned cologne bottle
on the floor, while raising the man’s complaint for her to keep still. She
glared at the bottle until it started to melt, finally disappearing completely.
Again, we get a suggestion of Dali, since the man asks at
this point about the time.
We get a strong sexual image when she notes the rumbling
coming from the man’s lap, from where he still held the memory book, which
began to erupt with tiny golden orbs. With a wave of his hand, the man sent
these out the window, and on the street appeared the blonde-haired boy from the
book.
Past mingles with present, as the boy dismounts from a motorcycle,
taller than she recalled, now with a shaven head instead of blonde hair, but he
had the same clear eyes
The man in the chair holds up a mirror and the poem give a
description of her with red-brown eyes, black clothing – and she slips into
surrealist image when she says she is staring at his face and her own at the
same time. She gets angry and grabs the mirror, cutting herself in the process
with three drops of red gold blood falling onto her face’s reflection, one of
her forehead, between the eyes, and just where her lips parted.
The man told her to go out and meet the boy, her fate, and
she does, still with the metallic taste of blood from her lip, which she swallows.
The boy outside doesn’t see her coming. She pauses in the
doorway, suddenly reluctant, thinking if she advanced everything would change –
implying not necessarily for the better.
She’s scared and can smell her fright, the kind of fear that
comes with the presence of death.
She edges back inside, then asks if she really wants to go
back to the gray life with the gray man in the chair, when she looks back at him,
she sees a sore reemerging under his lips. Still, she tried to convince herself
to go back, at which point the boy outside noticed her.
Calm came, and the face of the man in chair faded somewhat.
Her legs propelled her slowly towards the boy, and then she
leapt into his arms, his embrace crushing all of the noises out of her, he
telling her how he missed her, while inside of her dead things began to burn as
a blue fire erupted in her.
The intensity of her need is self-evident, having lived her
life slowly being sucked dry of life (green to gray), and now, she finds herself
lusting after renewed life in the shape of this boy, letting him put a helmet
on her for a drive on the bike.
“She could have done it herself, but she let him. She wanted
it.”
The intensity of the sexual attraction is obvious, but
unlike in some of her later poems, this is also flavored with an intense hope,
a desperation to escape a bad situation and perhaps the mistaken belief that
this knight on a motorcycle might save her from symbolically a fate worse than
death, grayness that drains her and condemns her to a life of servitude.
“She grabbed his chest with one hand that was instantly
electrified by sheer contact,” and as they drove off, she gave one last look at
the man in the chair’s face that was shattered into nothingness, as she puts
it.
Then, she wakes later “twisted and sweaty from her dreams”
after having made love with the boy, but she could no longer remember who or
what she was. She didn’t even think she had a body.
Again, we get the scent decaying flower, the gray, once
green rose, although was at a loss as to where she had seen it before, her
feeling of having lost herself, consumed by passion perhaps, with the boy
beside her in the bed, who stretched his beautiful limbs out, and all the discomfort
she felt vanished. She noticed the small green feather on his brow.
Again, we get a reference to time, and the boy’s eyes
growing hard with fear, and he ripped off the bedsheets to check his watch,
then fled, leaving her stranded.
She managed to get to her feet, her body drenched with sweat
from a scalding sun. She once again tried to ride with the boy, but this time
when he tried to put her helmet on, she insisted on doing it herself.
This sudden need for independence echoed again and again in
later poems, though when she put the helmet on, it felt like a girdle and
clutched his back with a desperation she did not like
As they drove home, she wore the same wicked grin from the
day before – although again time eludes her.
She sees the man from the chair’s face reflected back at her
in the boy’s once black now red helmet. She could smell his sores that had reclaimed
his body, his clothing rotting, puss dripping down onto the boy’s neck.
She tried to block the puss from touching the boy’s skin,
only there was no skin, only more green feathers, and suddenly, she realized
they were high in the air, where she found herself clutching the neck of a hummingbird
(an image repeated from earlier that had caused the green rose to turn grey,
draining her). They traveled at high speed and jolted in a number of
directions. The humming bird told her he taking her home.
She screamed at the image of the man in the chair, who in
his gurling voice told her that he had allowed her to make love to the boy,
figuring she needed to have sex, but also that the boy was leaving. She ripped
the helmet off the boy/hummingbird’s head with such force, she and the image of
the man on the chair were propelled into the air.
She panicked, but this lasted only the moment when she
realized the man in the chair was dead.
There was no sound, only the sound of air as her speed increased,
and the sound of the hummingbird wings hovering above her, keeping her cool and
quiet with his blue gaze.
In the last part of the seven or eight part story, she
reverts to the present, opening with a comment on the mating of a particular
insect and the sound it makes (she once claiming she tended to scream when
making love), a sound that protects the insect from its bird predators, and
also helps attract a life mate.
In a sudden shift to realism, she talks about the pattern of
her life, waking each morning to a cigarette, and some of the things she does
to try to sleep, before surrendering herself to a cup of coffee.
At this point, we realize that what had transpired previously was part of
dream, although she’s still unclear how real they might have been.
The coffee winds up even tighter.
She claims the woman is average in almost every way, not too
thin, not to large, not too fit, and goes on to describe her other attributes.
Unlike the author, the character went to a local state college
and procured a degree in business, allowing her to live an un extravagant life
style.
She occasionally goes out with her friends for a drink,
sometimes joined by their boss – but he has twins and a wife at home.
When done with shop talk, she walks two blocks to the bus stop
for her trip home, a place with beige walls and a few paintings. She makes
supper and eats it while watching cable TV.
The story goes on to paint her uneventful life, habits that
are ordinary, and then the noise starts, small at first, like two of three of
those insects, and her hand grips the remote.
This, of course, leads us to question, which was the dream
(or nightmare) and whether she will fall back into that hopeless trap with the
man in the chair.
The first seven parts of this story would suggest that she
is constantly trapped in situations like those with the man in the chair, and lack
of control she has over her own life – a lot of Freudian imagery supporting her
desperate attempts to find independence, only to discover she has been
manipulated from the start, and the last part of the story, suggests a safe, mundane
life over which she has a measure of control, only as in her life until then
and perhaps since, it can’t last.
She apparently didn’t intend to post a video about chopping up a pineapple – even though she previously posted one about a watermelon.
She had intended to do a video about horses.
She seems to have three different general categories for her videos: food, travel and horses.
Sometimes these overlap or she has other animals such as her dog or cat that get a bit part in these videos.
Problems at her apartment (yes, she says, she rents) forced her to change her plan and do a food video in place of a horse video, but not before she indulged in a rant against her landlord, who allegedly made a repair, but flooding still occurred.
She lives in the poor side of town, an area that you might get a glimpse of by watching the old TV show, “The Wire,” although she clearly has no fear of that urban nightmare, walking her dog through some of questionable landscape.
She claims she’s losing her mind because of the leak. She apparently took the landlord’s word on the repair until a series of thunderstorms sent more water surging into her apartment, and she had to get the towels out and stuff them under the downstairs windows. At the time of the video, forecasters forecast more rain, because she says is frustrating and depressing, and forced her to put off her riding instructions.
The visual format for her food videos differs slightly from the other categories, even though they sometimes start off similarly with a series of short shots of her talking.
This and the watermelon video were clearly strongly influenced in their visuals by some of the more cutting edge cooking shows, featuring a camera angle looking down at the cutting board (she pokes her head under it to grin at the camera before yanking out some expensive food cutting implement and getting to work, talking over the visuals as she slices the pineapple.)
She plays a bit of classical music as she works.
She uses a series of short takes to reduce the film time it actually takes to strip the skin of the fruit, complaining that she will have to take out the nobs, and saying for all that work, in the end, she’ll likely have only two pieces of fruit.
At some point, someone calls on the phone and she had to put her dog into the bedroom.
“It breaks my heart,” she said.
The process went well, and she noted that the fruit contains ingredients that help against depression.
In this video, she actually ate a bit of the end product, saying people like to see her consume what she is working with.
“The next time, we’ll do a horse video,” she promises as she signs off.
Even with the limited camera angles, this and other videos shows her little world, and those things she carried from the place where she used to live in the north – with a number of small additions made over the ten year period in between.
She clearly is comfortable in front of the camera, able to talk to her audience without the necessity of a script, having adopted an on-screen persona.
This is a warm and sometimes funny character, devoid of Chaplin’s sad character, clearly trying to present something hopeful and cheerful for her audience.
