Free Blood Pressure Checks at Puddleduckpuppet Plaza

It's All Temporary

Arias by Sean Thomas Dougherty

Pavoratti is dead and the streets are full of arias,

my brother.  Every window a tenor leans,

there are sopranos in the olive branches.

And all across the globe the world

turns to crescendos.  Along Parade Street the day passes.

The Russian women lean on their steps, discussing

the price of cabbages. The boys with tattoos

ride their skateboards, skipping curbs,

and there is a music to their wheels, a screech,

a scat and scatter, a turn table cutting La Boheme.

Pavoratti is dead and the streets of his hometown

are full of weeping, and as his casket is carried

the peoples voices speak, as when Verdi died,

and as they carried him through the streets

the people spontaneously began to sing

the slave song of the Hebrews from Nabbaco.

All the dead are rising through the olive branches.

The elms are weeping on Parade Street

where the sunlight is the color of opera.

Where my hands are holding my face,

watching the television, the streets full

of the crowd, gathering to give witness

to what burned their chests and told them

the true name of sorrow.  When we weep

we are most alive.  I turn off the television

and listen to Sasha upstairs. I hear her steps

dancing to a Russian pop song’s staccato.

There are arias everywhere, my brother.

Can you hear them ghosting through the laundromat steam,

with the clack of cue balls in the pool halls,

at the CITGO station when the gas glugs,

where one legged Jethro waits outside

on the curb, humming while smoking a cigarette,

he blows a halo of smoke casually into the air,

it swirls, composes notes and disappears,

like a song, a kind of blessed noise, the way music

enters us and vanishes.  What remains is why we live.

It's All Temporary

Mozart Concerto in A Major - The Adagio

It's All Temporary

The Antique Cradle - Conclusion

This is the conclusion to a short story called The Antique Cradle that I posted on March 14th:

________________________________________________

Some plants need to be uprooted in order to maximize their potential and so it was with me. After an initial withering, my roots began to take hold in our transitory environment, and much to my surprise, I began to thrive.

No, I am not suffering from The Stockholm Syndrome, at least I don’t think I am. You won’t see me holding a semi-automatic rifle in a bank lobby somewhere like Patty Hearst. The Dentist turned Astronaut may be accused of many things but he is not a violent man, and there was nothing to stop me from leaving. He would never hurt me.

The routine (if you can call it that) of our life was noteworthy in that there was no routine, or none to speak of. I, who lived my life following a certain schedule, found that I had none.   Sometimes I stayed up most of the night only to wake up, look out the window, and see farmland, cows with calm eyes, looking back at me. I envied them, I envied their serenity.  I would go back to sleep and wake up to find us entering the parking lot of a super market in a small town somewhere in the Midwest.

You must hate me.  How could any woman allow herself to be trapped, imprisoned by such a man?   Why don’t I extricate myself immediately, go back home and sue the bastard for every penny?  I really don’t know - except to say that as time went on I began to discover myself, and the more I discovered, the happier I became.  

You have seen the bumper sticker: God Is My Copilot? My bumper sticker would say The Dentist Is My Copilot. We actually got along quite well.  Much to my surprise, I found that he didn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to him. The surround sound in our cabin was silence.  We both loved it. I had no reason to leave, at least for the time being.

I began to think of myself as one of those Russian stacking dolls, the outer doll became abhorrent  to me, she was such a superficial twit. With no possessions to occupy my time, I realized that most of those possessions served only to help me to avoid removing the outer doll, the shell I had become.  It wasn’t easy. Those outer dolls had a very hard veneer, they didn’t want to go. I became obsessed with what I called “Operation Doll Removal.” 

At the same time that I was consumed with my doll removal project my interaction between The Dentist turned Astronaut took a highly unusual turn. One day while driving through a small town en route to a mobile home park we passed a large sign in front of a church:  

‎"If you want to be sad, no one in the world can make you happy. But if you make up your mind to be happy, no one and nothing on earth can take that happiness from you." Paramahansa Yogananda

Neither of us commented on it, I did not think he saw it, but after several miles he turned to me and asked me if I was happy.

“Happy?”  This simple question took me by surprise, I felt like a deer in the headlights.  

“No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure. Maybe.  Are you?”

“Yes, although I am beginning to miss the sound of the drill.”

“Really?  Did you know that most people hate that sound?”

“I didn’t know that.” 

It amused me that he could be oblivious to something so obvious, yet at the same time I found his reaction  rather endearing.  It struck me that The Dentist was without guile. Boring, yes, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He would not find the need to peel his Russian  dolls down to the core, his outer doll was his core, and I envied him for that.

And then I began to think about his question.  Am I happy? Well, I certainly wouldn’t call myself euphoric, ecstasy is hard to come by, but much to my amazement I found that  I was content.  Even without all my possessions, even without that antique cradle I clung to so desperately, I was content. And I knew, deep inside, that if I continued with my “Operation Doll Removal” one day I might even be happy.  All I needed to do was to keep digging, and in some strange way I needed The Dentist turned Astronaut to be at my side.

It's All Temporary

The Indian Parrot by Rumi

The Indian Parrot, by Rumi

There was a merchant setting out for India.

He asked each male and female servant
what they wanted to be brought as a gift.

Each told him a different exotic object:
A piece of silk, a brass figurine,
a pearl necklace.

Then he asked his beautiful caged parrot,
the one with such a lovely voice,
and she said,
"When you see the Indian parrots,
describe my cage. Say that I need guidance
here in my separation from them. Ask how
our friendship can continue with me so confined
and them flying about freely in the meadow mist.

Tell them that I remember well our mornings
moving together from tree to tree.

Tell them to drink one cup of ecstatic wine
in honor of me here in the dregs of my life.

Tell them that the sound of their quarrelling
high in the trees would be sweeter
to hear than any music."

This parrot is the spirit-bird in all of us,
that part that wants to return to freedom,
and is the freedom. What she wants
from India is herself!

So this parrot gave her message to the merchant,
and when he reached India, he saw a field
full of parrots. He stopped
and called out what she had told him.

One of the nearest parrots shivered
and stiffened and fell down dead.

The merchant said, "This one is surely kin
to my parrot. I shouldn't have spoken."

He finished his trading and returned home
with the presents for his workers.

When he got to the parrot, she demanded her gift.
"What happened when you told my story
to the Indian parrots?"

"I'm afraid to say."
"Master, you must!"

"When I spoke your complaint to the field
of chattering parrots, it broke
one of their hearts.

She must have been a close companion,
or a relative, for when she heard about you
she grew quiet and trembled, and died."

As the caged parrot heard this, she herself
quivered and sank to the cage floor.

This merchant was a good man.
He grieved deeply for his parrot, murmuring
distracted phrases, self-contradictory -
cold, then loving - clear, then
murky with symbolism.

A drowning man reaches for anything!
The Friend loves this flailing about
better than any lying still.

The One who lives inside existence
stays constantly in motion,
and whatever you do, that king
watches through the window.

When the merchant threw the "dead" parrot
out of the cage, it spread its wings
and glided to a nearby tree!

The merchant suddenly understood the mystery.
"Sweet singer, what was in the message
that taught you this trick?"

"She told me that it was the charm
of my voice that kept me caged.
Give it up, and be released!"

The parrot told the merchant one or two more
spiritual truths. Then a tender goodbye.

"God protect you," said the merchant
"as you go on your new way.
I hope to follow you!"

It's All Temporary

Pavarotti and Jon Bon Jovi: Let It Rain

Am reposting this in hopes that it will help to alleviate the draught. It can't hurt.

It's All Temporary

Debate Prep

Hillary - representing the Progressive Wing

Ron - representing the Conservative Wing

It's All Temporary

A Short Piece of Fiction by Yours Truly

The Antique Cradle

My husband has been a successful dentist for 30 years.  His office and adjacent lab are across town.  For the past several years he has been distracted, often wolfing down his dinner and abruptly leaving.  Lab work, suddenly there were so many crowns, dentures. All this extra lab work began the same time he hired a very attractive hygienist.

The Dentist is so transparent that as he lies, the child in him steps forth, a little boy telling big boy lies.  The funny thing is he thinks he is as smooth as glass, that he is pulling the wool over my eyes, but I have known him for so long that I see right through the glass.  I don’t care. I wish I did but one cannot draw blood from a stone and the truth is I stopped caring years ago.

We have been married for 25 years and lived in the same house for much of that time. Our two grown children live near (but not too near) and we have two small grandchildren, a boy and a girl.  I work part time in the local thrift shop, perfect for me because I am good at sorting through “stuff,” categorizing,  pricing, occasionally bringing home an antique that should have never been donated.  Every time I pass the sweet antique cradle, purchased for a song, in our living room I smile. The job makes me realize how lucky I am that I don’t have to live my life dependent upon the generosity of others.  We have plenty of money.

Why am I telling you all this? Because my husband, The Dentist, has lost his mind. I should have noticed, picked up on the ever-so-obvious symptoms, but my lack of caring caused me to live my home life with blinders.  I wasn’t blind to the fact that The Dentist was cheating, I was blind to the fact that he stopped.  Apparently the bloom was off the rose and the very attractive hygienist had had enough. Good bye.

One morning The Dentist made me an English muffin. This in itself was surprising, The Dentist never makes me anything.  But he handed me the English muffin, a bit over-buttered for my taste, sat down and told me that he sold his practice.  I found this piece of news so bizarre that I thought he must be telling me about a dream and I had tuned out on the “I had the craziest dream last night” part, and heard only the plot.

“Oh,” I said with a chuckle, “that’ll be the day.” 

“No, I’m quite serious, I signed the paperwork yesterday, it’s a done deal, patients, equipment, office, lab, the works.  I’m through with it.”

For the first time in years I looked at him, really looked at him. A kind of sick realization came over me that the only way I had been able to live the lie I have been living  was by subterfuge. This subterfuge required that I be both actress and audience in the ongoing, never-ending theatrics of my life.  Our marriage has been one long documentary for so long that I gradually came to believe that fact was fiction and fiction fact.  The glue holding the drama together was the stage set in which our lives had been lived.  My little antique cradle was now threatened, along with the entire charade, euphemistically known as my life.

His eyes were hollow, the frames of his glasses were slightly crooked, giving him one of his crazed scientists looks, and he was humming.  Humming!  The Dentist never hums, yet he hummed. Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. The Dentist was humming a Fleetwood Mac song, the end of the world as I knew it.

“I want to sell the house, buy a mobil home and tour the country. It’s a big, beautiful country and it’s about time we saw it.”

“You can’t be serious.” 

‘Oh yes I am, dead serious.”

If I was told to make a list of the ten things I would least like to do, touring the country in a mobil home with The Dentist would probably be at the top of the list.  Well, maybe  second to repeatedly jabbing rusty needles in my eyes, but it would be close.

Later that day, about 3:00, I looked out the window and saw The Dentist hammering a FOR SALE in our front yard. The Dentist never comes home at 3:00 but what’s to stop him now?  He can come and go as he pleases. I put my glasses on and looked again.  The Dentist had morphed into something like An Astronaut. Gone were his glasses.  The Dentist always wore glasses, The Astronaut has contacts.  Gone were his lab coats. The Astronaut is wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans and loafers. He’s a little long of tooth to be having a mid life crisis, but perhaps he is a late bloomer in the crisis department. Late bloomer or not, does he have to involve me in his crisis? Oh where is that bloody hygienist when I need her most?  She might like the contacts, the black leather, the loafers.

My bridge club wished me bon voyage, some members were jealous. They hungered for a little adventure in their lives and believed I was the luckiest of women. The mobile home was packed. The Astronaut had bought the Rolls Royce of mobile homes, no expense spared for our comfort. As methodical as The Dentist, The Astronaut had lists and check lists. (Some habits are hard to eradicate   even when one reinvents oneself.) My beloved cradle was in storage.  The Astronaut wanted us to sell everything and we did unload many unnecessary possessions, but I put my foot down when it came to the cradle. 

Belted, we cruised along Route 80.   I looked at this man sitting next to me, he had indeed turned into an astronaut, we might as well have been in a space capsule.  There was no escape and I had nothing to say to him. Days, weeks, months, years would go by and I still would have nothing to say to him.

I missed my home, my children, my grandchildren, my job, my bridge club, but most of all I missed my little antique cradle. 

To be continued. Maybe.

It's All Temporary

The Magnetic Fields: I Don't Want to Get Over You

The perfect song for someone nursing a broken heart . . .

It's All Temporary

Josh and Me

I love this picture of Josh and me, it has an "Ingmar Bergman" feel to it.  We both look so pleased about something, I wonder what it was?  And there is something about that look on my face. It's a sort of a "through a glass darkly" expression, I know something which pleases me greatly but I don't think I can tell anyone, it's my secret . . . 

It's All Temporary

Emerging by Pablo Neruda

A man says yes without knowing
how to decide even what the question is,
and is caught up, and then is carried along
and never again escapes from his own cocoon;
and that's how we are, forever falling
into the deep well of other beings;
and one thread wraps itself around our necks,
another entwines a foot, and then it is impossible,
impossible to move except in the well --
nobody can rescue us from other people.

It seems as if we don't know how to speak;
it seems as if there are words which escape,
which are missing which have gone away and left us
to ourselves, tangled up in snares and threads.

And all at once, that's it; we no longer know
what it's all about, but we are deep inside it,
and now we will never see with the same eyes
as once we did when we were children playing.
Now those eyes are closed to us,
now our hands emerge from different arms.

And therefore when you sleep, you are alone in your dreaming,
and running freely through the corridors
of one dream only, which belongs to you.
Oh never let them come to steal our dreams,
never let them entwine us in our bed.
Let us hold on to the shadows
to see if, from our own obscurity,
we emerge and grope along the walls,
lie in wait for the light, to capture it,
till, once and for all time,
it becomes our own, the sun of every day.

It's All Temporary

Joe Cocker and Pavarotti: You Are So Beautiful To Me

It's All Temporary

The Paintings of Alice Neel: 1900-1984

"You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is... unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far."  (Alice Neel)

It's All Temporary

Andrew Breitbart

"Change the culture and you will change politics."

A few short years ago I had never heard of Andrew Breitbart. The first time I heard him speak was on the radio and I had no idea who he was, he was someone talking about Hollywood and the entertainment industry. He grew up on LA's West Side as a liberal surrounded by liberals. While at Tulane his politics began to change.  It became increasingly clear to him that The Left in the entertainment industry had kidnapped  our nation's culture, they were calling the shots, and they were gradually eroding our nation's character. 

I lived in LA for awhile so I began to listen very carefully to what he said because of my own unsettling experience as a Conservative in Liberal LA. It wasn't easy.  It wasn't easy for me, and it most certainly wasn't easy for him but he never gave up the fight.  He knew that until Conservatives understood how our culture was being manipulated by the entertainment industry, the Left would remain victorious.

To that end, he was tireless, traveling, giving speeches, creating websites.  Biggovernment was my homepage, I couldn't wait to see what he had chosen to highlight every morning. Tragically, he died while still a young man. My hope is that his death will enable other Hollywood Conservatives  to stand up, speak out, write music and show us some movies that don't vilify our troops.  To quote Andrew Breitbart, "those who write a nation's songs are more influential than those who write a nation's laws."

I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that he is gone. How can someone so full of life be gone in the blink of an eye? There are questions. He had many powerful enemies. Be that as it may, the fact remains that those of us who were merely willing to sit back and read his websites  will now have to step up to the plate. We can't replace the irreplaceable, but there is much we can do. The beat goes on.

It's All Temporary

Ballerinas

There are two interesting documentaries on Netflix, interesting if you like ballet: Ballerina and The Dancer. Ballerina focuses on Russian ballerinas and follows several dancers as their careers advance. There is something about a Russian trained dancer, they are like feathers floating through life, their arms drift seamlessly, the epitome of pure grace in motion.  It appears as if they use their bodies effortlessly, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The Dancer focuses on one dancer as she trains relentlessly. The film vacillates between rehearsals and performances. We see our dancer endlessly repeating intricate moves wearing the ubiquitous tights, leg warmers and ballet slippers, then transitions to her stage performance in front of an adoring audience. One segment of the film focused on the making of toe slippers, a true art and one few could master. I was fascinated to watch the shoes  pounded, wrapped and baked. It is a whole new world, that of wrapping, then baking toe shoes.

What neither documentary depicted was the dark side of ballet. In a world that focuses on beauty, there is much that is not pretty.  (See Black Swan.)  Girls twist their bodies into inhuman postures, and there is a relentlessness to their rehearsing that is ruthless.Their muscles ache, they push themselves to the brink of destruction and constantly feel they should be doing more. Eating disorders are epidemic in ballet troupes, and jealousy constantly torments those in the chorus because there is so little room at the top.  Even while performing,  it is unclear if the ballerina is enjoying herself.  Although she lives a life of obsessive training, the ballarina remains a fragile china doll that could easily shatter.

The  reward for all this physical punishment is a very short-lived career. By the time she is 40, her career is over, she is pushed aside by a beautiful younger dancer. We enjoy the beauty of her performance, let's hope she is able to enjoy the rest of her life.

It's All Temporary