I don’t write this blog regularly or even semi-regular-like as my father used to say.
I can’t.
I think all the time, but I want to escape from saving my thoughts.
I am in the midst of creating an opera from a book I penned.
Simple right?
It is terrifying.
We have very little money and a mountain to trek up involving artists and logistic leaps and slogs.
And so I move daily from abject terror to a giddy elation.
I never know how it will unfold.
Someone calls me back and I am high.
The calls go unreturned and I am reduced to a puddle.
My ex boyfriend sends us a $100 donation and I leap.
The fabulously wealthy mother of a Yale friend tells him to call me, to say she has NO MONEY and I am in a rage.
Can a heart and mind continue like this?
I suppose it is no different from what we see played out daily on Wall Street... big-huge, excruciating swings.
We hate the economy,
Then we are hopeful, and the market swings hundreds of points, like yesterday.
Today who knows?
Have we all been reduced to this pendulum of emotion because the real terror of the environment and war has inured us to the scary things that abound?
I have young adult children, 23, and about to be 20, well at my age, thank god they are not baby children. But I worry for these kids; I attempt to not obsess about their world or excessive expense and diminishing resources. I worry for their joy and freedom from fear.
As I write this I think that perhaps the wild ride of life has always been the impetus for writers, painters, and composers to create something else - to both divert themselves and others from tough times or to focus our energies on how to do things differently.
OK back to the OPERA salt mines. This week we finish scheduling auditions, which will happen next week. This means that the boat has sailed and now we head toward the dock and performances in September.
BON VOYAGE and Stay with us.
July 17, 2008
June 19, 2008
My Birth Year in an Obit
We all know by now that Tim Russert passed away. He has been rightly lauded and eulogized and will be missed by family and those of us who came to think of him as a part of our “news family.” Russert was someone on whom we could rely for the strait answers and tough questions. But this is about me.
It is about me, because when they first flashed the dates of his life under a smiling picture of Tim Russert, I saw in bold 1950. This is my birth year. And it stunned me. It is the first time I am aware, or acknowledged my birth year in an obituary. Oh yes I saw high school or college friends perish in Vietnam or car crashes, the dangers of youth and war. But this was the first time I had sucked in my breath at someone my exact age who had, as my grandmother would say, “up and died.” This means that a person’s body gives out and they just go, quick and unannounced. And in this case way too young.
I kept thinking about this rub with mortality as I gardened or worked on the benefit for the small opera I am producing, alas the reason I am so infrequently on this blog, operas take a huge amount of care and feeding. So my apologies. But I thought about the idea of life, of all of it, just stopping. Here and then not here.
Of course that is what is supposed to keep us humming and appreciating all that comes with the breathing and beating heart. The sweet, short unknown range of this thing called life is supposed to be cherished because it is so unpredictable. And yet isn’t that one of the things we complain about. All right I bitch about. But I vacillate between deep appreciation and abject depression at the state of my life and the world.
So with Tim Russert’s passing I decided to re-dedicate myself to appreciating my years, both backward and forward. And thus I am off to my 40th high school reunion attempting to leave behind the notion of chubby and underpaid and instead holding on to the concept of verve and love.
It is about me, because when they first flashed the dates of his life under a smiling picture of Tim Russert, I saw in bold 1950. This is my birth year. And it stunned me. It is the first time I am aware, or acknowledged my birth year in an obituary. Oh yes I saw high school or college friends perish in Vietnam or car crashes, the dangers of youth and war. But this was the first time I had sucked in my breath at someone my exact age who had, as my grandmother would say, “up and died.” This means that a person’s body gives out and they just go, quick and unannounced. And in this case way too young.
I kept thinking about this rub with mortality as I gardened or worked on the benefit for the small opera I am producing, alas the reason I am so infrequently on this blog, operas take a huge amount of care and feeding. So my apologies. But I thought about the idea of life, of all of it, just stopping. Here and then not here.
Of course that is what is supposed to keep us humming and appreciating all that comes with the breathing and beating heart. The sweet, short unknown range of this thing called life is supposed to be cherished because it is so unpredictable. And yet isn’t that one of the things we complain about. All right I bitch about. But I vacillate between deep appreciation and abject depression at the state of my life and the world.
So with Tim Russert’s passing I decided to re-dedicate myself to appreciating my years, both backward and forward. And thus I am off to my 40th high school reunion attempting to leave behind the notion of chubby and underpaid and instead holding on to the concept of verve and love.
May 21, 2008
What was your favorite age?
My husband, my lovely, sweet, generous husband’s mother is sinking into the miasma of Alzheimer’s and it is unraveling him.
I watched my father dance around the edges of dementia as he limped into his nineties, but he did continue to take in new information and even upbraid me with his Irish rancor when I repeated myself after he had processed and owned the new facts. But Nana is losing all sense of who she was, who her kids are, if she even has kids. She questions why she is living in this house, the home she lived in with her husband and seven kids for nearly 50 years.
Nana has settled herself in her late teens and early twenties. When she looks at old photographs of herself and her not yet husband, and all their friends at parties, visiting Atlantic City from Washington D.C. and she can tell you all their names, where she bought the fabulous hat and what they ate for dinner at the crab shack. But she often doesn’t know my husband, can’t recall that he is married and has two kids; and that makes him sad.
I watched my mother, near the end of her life, not really altered by Alzheimer’s, but shot up on morphine, and anti-depressants to get her through her life after a stroke. She was very interested in going to the place where her parents and her cousin lived. Both my mother and her cousin Robert were only children and they were raised more as siblings than just cousins. My mom adored Robert, a few years older than she, and there are photos of her trialing after him with a look of adoration spread across her grimy little face. Robert was a Navel pilot, shot down over Tokyo Bay and never found. My mother kept a picture of him, all gap toothed grin, smiling out. As she got near the end of her life she was in her late twenties and waiting to go to a party where Robert and her long-dead parents would be in attendance. Kind of a wonderful notion. For my mother.
But tough for those who don’t seem to make it into your conscientiousness. It sometimes made me feel as if I was diminished in her eyes. Why didn’t she want to return to the time when I was little or, graduating from school, or giving her grandkids?
It made me wonder, into what time would I retreat? Young mother with baby children, carefree romps in fields as a child myself, producing plays, gardening. I can’t predict what time will most captivate me. And as I think about that notion, I try to continue to make incredible memories, so when the time comes to revisit whatever moments my inner projector chooses; I will have a giant bank from which to choose.
I am content that Nana has a place to retreat when times are tough; but I am sorry my husband feels so sad when he sees her and has to confront the realization that he and his brothers and sisters are often not a part of the place where Nana has gone.
Life and old age are not for the faint of heart.
I watched my father dance around the edges of dementia as he limped into his nineties, but he did continue to take in new information and even upbraid me with his Irish rancor when I repeated myself after he had processed and owned the new facts. But Nana is losing all sense of who she was, who her kids are, if she even has kids. She questions why she is living in this house, the home she lived in with her husband and seven kids for nearly 50 years.
Nana has settled herself in her late teens and early twenties. When she looks at old photographs of herself and her not yet husband, and all their friends at parties, visiting Atlantic City from Washington D.C. and she can tell you all their names, where she bought the fabulous hat and what they ate for dinner at the crab shack. But she often doesn’t know my husband, can’t recall that he is married and has two kids; and that makes him sad.
I watched my mother, near the end of her life, not really altered by Alzheimer’s, but shot up on morphine, and anti-depressants to get her through her life after a stroke. She was very interested in going to the place where her parents and her cousin lived. Both my mother and her cousin Robert were only children and they were raised more as siblings than just cousins. My mom adored Robert, a few years older than she, and there are photos of her trialing after him with a look of adoration spread across her grimy little face. Robert was a Navel pilot, shot down over Tokyo Bay and never found. My mother kept a picture of him, all gap toothed grin, smiling out. As she got near the end of her life she was in her late twenties and waiting to go to a party where Robert and her long-dead parents would be in attendance. Kind of a wonderful notion. For my mother.
But tough for those who don’t seem to make it into your conscientiousness. It sometimes made me feel as if I was diminished in her eyes. Why didn’t she want to return to the time when I was little or, graduating from school, or giving her grandkids?
It made me wonder, into what time would I retreat? Young mother with baby children, carefree romps in fields as a child myself, producing plays, gardening. I can’t predict what time will most captivate me. And as I think about that notion, I try to continue to make incredible memories, so when the time comes to revisit whatever moments my inner projector chooses; I will have a giant bank from which to choose.
I am content that Nana has a place to retreat when times are tough; but I am sorry my husband feels so sad when he sees her and has to confront the realization that he and his brothers and sisters are often not a part of the place where Nana has gone.
Life and old age are not for the faint of heart.
May 14, 2008
The Eyes Have It or Weepy VS Old
No, it is not some new weird, reality show where people wrestle... it is just the reality of my life as a mid-life mom, woman, worker, wending my way through life.
I ride my bike everywhere, you know that right? Well, I do and today it is beautiful, gorgeous enough for me to feel as if perhaps the universe is paying me back for all the lousy, rainy, cold days I slogged to and from work and meetings on my trusty three-speed. Today puts money in the weather bank and redeems the North East for the crazed days past.
So yes, of course, I am riding my bike back and forth to meetings today in the sunshine and wind. And I stopped to get my sunglasses adjusted, because it looks as if the season is upon us. As I walk in the shop my eyes are streaming tears. I had been told that light eyes, mine are like an Alaskan Husky, clear blue off-set by my no-longer “real” dark brown hair. (OK, to dye or not to dye is most definitely another post) But this is about eyes. The eye doc comes over and I proffer my good old Persol glasses apologizing for my weepiness and add, “ have always been told that light eyes are more sensitive to light and wind, and I am on a bike.”
“Oh no, that’s not the reason; it’s just because they are old eyes.” I swear he said that. Who would make that up? OLD EYES.
Well, I mumbled and made some snappy rejoinder. . . maybe, but I was stunned. My eyes were a thing I though might hold out and still be glorious until I hopped off the twig--a phrase my 86-year-old friend Beati uses when referring to her last mortal moment. I thought my skin would get the way it does--spotty and wrinkly--and there would be more floppy skin surrounding the eyes, but the blue of a great Carolina sky would hold me strong. They wouldn’t be clouded in a flood of weepy.
Now when I enter a store or go to a meeting I will be embarrassed about my watery eyes. I know they have always been runnier than most and I am challenging myself today to think: Are they different from 20 years ago water-wise?
I can’t recall. I seem often to occupy the moment firmly, both a good and bad thing. Here is what I want to know. Was there a reason for this eye doc to call my orbs old? And couldn’t we all do with a little more finesse when it comes to talking about other people . . . I mean especially right in front of them. I’m off to buy a pack of tissues to stuff in my bag to hide the tears.
I ride my bike everywhere, you know that right? Well, I do and today it is beautiful, gorgeous enough for me to feel as if perhaps the universe is paying me back for all the lousy, rainy, cold days I slogged to and from work and meetings on my trusty three-speed. Today puts money in the weather bank and redeems the North East for the crazed days past.
So yes, of course, I am riding my bike back and forth to meetings today in the sunshine and wind. And I stopped to get my sunglasses adjusted, because it looks as if the season is upon us. As I walk in the shop my eyes are streaming tears. I had been told that light eyes, mine are like an Alaskan Husky, clear blue off-set by my no-longer “real” dark brown hair. (OK, to dye or not to dye is most definitely another post) But this is about eyes. The eye doc comes over and I proffer my good old Persol glasses apologizing for my weepiness and add, “ have always been told that light eyes are more sensitive to light and wind, and I am on a bike.”
“Oh no, that’s not the reason; it’s just because they are old eyes.” I swear he said that. Who would make that up? OLD EYES.
Well, I mumbled and made some snappy rejoinder. . . maybe, but I was stunned. My eyes were a thing I though might hold out and still be glorious until I hopped off the twig--a phrase my 86-year-old friend Beati uses when referring to her last mortal moment. I thought my skin would get the way it does--spotty and wrinkly--and there would be more floppy skin surrounding the eyes, but the blue of a great Carolina sky would hold me strong. They wouldn’t be clouded in a flood of weepy.
Now when I enter a store or go to a meeting I will be embarrassed about my watery eyes. I know they have always been runnier than most and I am challenging myself today to think: Are they different from 20 years ago water-wise?
I can’t recall. I seem often to occupy the moment firmly, both a good and bad thing. Here is what I want to know. Was there a reason for this eye doc to call my orbs old? And couldn’t we all do with a little more finesse when it comes to talking about other people . . . I mean especially right in front of them. I’m off to buy a pack of tissues to stuff in my bag to hide the tears.
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