Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Sunday, January 24, 2016
January 24 2016
There it was, a stark image of the urn, a clay container of ashes, "τεφροδοχος", you confidently declared it to be as you casually offered it to me, three decades and some ago. A jackpot of your pillaging a burial hill, somewhere in Chalkidiki, two, three millennia old, arrived in today's birdsong of FB posts.
Memories flooded in, of feeling out the calcified bottom, touching the carbonized dust, the negligible remains of a person, perhaps a hundred-fold removed relative of ours. The thumbprints of the clay thrower's, were forever preserved on its twin handles, yet the identity of that person unknown..
Before I could revisit the picture, giving in to sentimental forensics, it had been withdrawn.The image of the plain-earth beige color of the slip, the crude triangle shape of the vessel's finishing form, insufficient in honoring a being as he/she should ever deserve, flashed once more before my eyes. Dust to dust and all that of death, it was as plain an urn as it could be: unpretentious and amazing in having survived intact yet far from importance and grandness.
I remember I wanted to assign unworthiness to its owner. The indelicate form of the vessel was explained in my young mind that it must have been for some crusty, heavy-limbed peasant, puny in thought and accomplishments, deserving of oblivion, if not for that urn having survived..Yet, all I wanted in my life then was grandness, affirmation, entitlement and Z was affording me that mirage, as much as he was allowing it for himself. My early trauma was enough punishment, even at a cost of self-deceit and cowering to lesser virtue, I deserved no simple mortal, only the heights of intellect and refinement, which I was convinced he solely possessed.
But that gift also filled me with a painful foreboding of disaster, that I remember now I had wished to exorcise immediately, as if trying to suspend a final act before the curtain drops. The awkward "present", ever so short-lived as it turned out to be, signaled the betrayal and curse to come.
Hubris, is an exacting, leveling prize for unmerited heights, and it is coming on full-frontal today.
The father's tender love, softly sharing the pain, the pride, the ameliorating resilience: he is relating the aftermath of a gene deficit lot, Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. The luminosity of J, the boy who claimed my daughter's heart and I am forced to reckon, once again, with the loss of my own boy.
This is the velvet rope, corralling the memory of the urn and today's appraisal.
I did bury the "Υιος απολλυμενος", thirty eight years ago, under layers of ash, to preserve myself. I killed my son, to give birth to this parenthood, in a way.
It was the forfeiture of my motherhood to a cuckoo's nest claim, with the adoption of N. And in the end, the debit of my entitlement, was this unexpected gift, an alloy of kindness and love and shambles, the legacy of kintsukuroi.
May the love long live.
There it was, a stark image of the urn, a clay container of ashes, "τεφροδοχος", you confidently declared it to be as you casually offered it to me, three decades and some ago. A jackpot of your pillaging a burial hill, somewhere in Chalkidiki, two, three millennia old, arrived in today's birdsong of FB posts.
Memories flooded in, of feeling out the calcified bottom, touching the carbonized dust, the negligible remains of a person, perhaps a hundred-fold removed relative of ours. The thumbprints of the clay thrower's, were forever preserved on its twin handles, yet the identity of that person unknown..
Before I could revisit the picture, giving in to sentimental forensics, it had been withdrawn.The image of the plain-earth beige color of the slip, the crude triangle shape of the vessel's finishing form, insufficient in honoring a being as he/she should ever deserve, flashed once more before my eyes. Dust to dust and all that of death, it was as plain an urn as it could be: unpretentious and amazing in having survived intact yet far from importance and grandness.
I remember I wanted to assign unworthiness to its owner. The indelicate form of the vessel was explained in my young mind that it must have been for some crusty, heavy-limbed peasant, puny in thought and accomplishments, deserving of oblivion, if not for that urn having survived..Yet, all I wanted in my life then was grandness, affirmation, entitlement and Z was affording me that mirage, as much as he was allowing it for himself. My early trauma was enough punishment, even at a cost of self-deceit and cowering to lesser virtue, I deserved no simple mortal, only the heights of intellect and refinement, which I was convinced he solely possessed.
But that gift also filled me with a painful foreboding of disaster, that I remember now I had wished to exorcise immediately, as if trying to suspend a final act before the curtain drops. The awkward "present", ever so short-lived as it turned out to be, signaled the betrayal and curse to come.
Hubris, is an exacting, leveling prize for unmerited heights, and it is coming on full-frontal today.
The father's tender love, softly sharing the pain, the pride, the ameliorating resilience: he is relating the aftermath of a gene deficit lot, Smith-Lemli-Opitz syndrome. The luminosity of J, the boy who claimed my daughter's heart and I am forced to reckon, once again, with the loss of my own boy.
This is the velvet rope, corralling the memory of the urn and today's appraisal.
I did bury the "Υιος απολλυμενος", thirty eight years ago, under layers of ash, to preserve myself. I killed my son, to give birth to this parenthood, in a way.
It was the forfeiture of my motherhood to a cuckoo's nest claim, with the adoption of N. And in the end, the debit of my entitlement, was this unexpected gift, an alloy of kindness and love and shambles, the legacy of kintsukuroi.
May the love long live.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Blinking cue
Tobacco, that keeps reappearing year after year in your memorial's gift - the contorted pine pot- is my treat today
Green sap, hangman's noose, the addiction's coloring transaction, attraction
Fall/ Autumn, the essence of fertility, the sum of effort and gist of youth, the ample coffers of survival and inheritance
Purple, my choice color, fireback for burning passion's ambers
Grey, the gun powder of age and spoils of the past, dissolving, stripped of meaning, taking off for a another brilliant spectrum
Tobacco, that keeps reappearing year after year in your memorial's gift - the contorted pine pot- is my treat today
Green sap, hangman's noose, the addiction's coloring transaction, attraction
Fall/ Autumn, the essence of fertility, the sum of effort and gist of youth, the ample coffers of survival and inheritance
Purple, my choice color, fireback for burning passion's ambers
Grey, the gun powder of age and spoils of the past, dissolving, stripped of meaning, taking off for a another brilliant spectrum
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Mid-Winter
One life's celebration
In the cerulean blue formal dining room, unearthed, excavated, having been buried for decades under Pompeian-like layers of hoarding deposits, a paneled mirrored wall and modest but dainty crystal chandelier shed light on the remains of a woman's arc, on the occasion of her memorial service.
The startling blue color of the wall is as deep as her unexpected complexity, the 93- plus years in the making of goodness, unvarnished beauty, effortless grace and spirited clarity that was Dottie.
The gardens, the cats and the let-it-be and love-it presence, that was Dottie. The geraniums would bleed red and die on top of the old station wagon all summer long, never allowed to stretch their feet in soil other than their nursery pots that they came in, for many summers in a row. The countless plastic pedestal bird fountains, presents to the feathered friend folks of hers, that would disintegrate in the brambles of the front garden. The cat hair bunnies that would multiply and accumulate on her decades' old clothes, comfortable, like another ratty sweater. The yellowing teeth that would still color a smile warmer than any disingenuous greeting and hug of the young; that was Dottie, year in and tragedies- parade out in our household, she would be a constant, a stalwart rock of our Crown Hill journey.
A red lacquered Chinese chest was the only companion to the mirrors and chandelier, supporting a bevy of photos, a pastiche of times gone and lives unraveled and worn out, on the occasion of viewing her life's reminders and remains. Why that strange artifact there? Why the love of music and the poetry musings? A vivid brushstroke, of no explanation, of a woman's life of 93 years.
Music and mustiness, warmth and unknown faces, love and tears - was the essence of that evening, a dark, dank and damp NW night, filled with a smattering of brilliant oranges and reds: the color of compassion, the shade of the marigolds of death, paying homage to Dorothy.
A woman that wore such crazy-colored hippy dresses unapologetic- ally, when they were no longer in vogue, styled with her flowing, pure white, elegant hair that she refused to let anyone mess with, a symbol of her free heart and happy soul..
Clarity, simplicity, daring-ness, her gifts of inspiration to us, the busy, mousy, determined and exhausted females of our era.
A quick glimpse, and then it is gone. Just like the wonder of Dorothy.
Rest in peace and have a great laugh with Stevie boy sweetie..
In the cerulean blue formal dining room, unearthed, excavated, having been buried for decades under Pompeian-like layers of hoarding deposits, a paneled mirrored wall and modest but dainty crystal chandelier shed light on the remains of a woman's arc, on the occasion of her memorial service.
The startling blue color of the wall is as deep as her unexpected complexity, the 93- plus years in the making of goodness, unvarnished beauty, effortless grace and spirited clarity that was Dottie.
The gardens, the cats and the let-it-be and love-it presence, that was Dottie. The geraniums would bleed red and die on top of the old station wagon all summer long, never allowed to stretch their feet in soil other than their nursery pots that they came in, for many summers in a row. The countless plastic pedestal bird fountains, presents to the feathered friend folks of hers, that would disintegrate in the brambles of the front garden. The cat hair bunnies that would multiply and accumulate on her decades' old clothes, comfortable, like another ratty sweater. The yellowing teeth that would still color a smile warmer than any disingenuous greeting and hug of the young; that was Dottie, year in and tragedies- parade out in our household, she would be a constant, a stalwart rock of our Crown Hill journey.
A red lacquered Chinese chest was the only companion to the mirrors and chandelier, supporting a bevy of photos, a pastiche of times gone and lives unraveled and worn out, on the occasion of viewing her life's reminders and remains. Why that strange artifact there? Why the love of music and the poetry musings? A vivid brushstroke, of no explanation, of a woman's life of 93 years.
Music and mustiness, warmth and unknown faces, love and tears - was the essence of that evening, a dark, dank and damp NW night, filled with a smattering of brilliant oranges and reds: the color of compassion, the shade of the marigolds of death, paying homage to Dorothy.
A woman that wore such crazy-colored hippy dresses unapologetic- ally, when they were no longer in vogue, styled with her flowing, pure white, elegant hair that she refused to let anyone mess with, a symbol of her free heart and happy soul..
Clarity, simplicity, daring-ness, her gifts of inspiration to us, the busy, mousy, determined and exhausted females of our era.
A quick glimpse, and then it is gone. Just like the wonder of Dorothy.
Rest in peace and have a great laugh with Stevie boy sweetie..
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
December 17, 2014
Shedding, discarding and permalinks
Once you trot down couple of decades with the acceleration of a downhill ride, defenses and fences come down easy, long-held beliefs melt like spent wax on a candle, but fires burn hotter, with a glow strong and memorable, like the last spark just before the flame's extinguishing.
Fire for connection, fire for the few and chosen, fire for examining your journey of being.
The progression is as such: a stiffness coats everything, from joints to emotional responses to the old car door that refuses to badge in the morning. Melancholy varnishes that stiffness with the appropriate citron- to support the grey. Then a cold northern gale sweeps up the dust and scatters the pieces adrift, maybe starting up a new thought on someone or niggling out a sensation on an unsuspecting and un-acculturated, tender still, pupil of the human condition. Or, it just falls down as a minuscule layer of detritus in the gutter of life. The end of the fire is ashes, carbon and then ...
Then comes the long wait for permalinks to flesh out roots, to travel another road, to cloak another Odysseus's body with the scars of the journey.
And so is the start of Winter.
Shedding, discarding and permalinks
Once you trot down couple of decades with the acceleration of a downhill ride, defenses and fences come down easy, long-held beliefs melt like spent wax on a candle, but fires burn hotter, with a glow strong and memorable, like the last spark just before the flame's extinguishing.
Fire for connection, fire for the few and chosen, fire for examining your journey of being.
The progression is as such: a stiffness coats everything, from joints to emotional responses to the old car door that refuses to badge in the morning. Melancholy varnishes that stiffness with the appropriate citron- to support the grey. Then a cold northern gale sweeps up the dust and scatters the pieces adrift, maybe starting up a new thought on someone or niggling out a sensation on an unsuspecting and un-acculturated, tender still, pupil of the human condition. Or, it just falls down as a minuscule layer of detritus in the gutter of life. The end of the fire is ashes, carbon and then ...
Then comes the long wait for permalinks to flesh out roots, to travel another road, to cloak another Odysseus's body with the scars of the journey.
And so is the start of Winter.
Monday, September 1, 2014
September blahs
Has been a long while..
What is it with these super-constructed coats and jackets and the pseudo-psychedelic prints this season?
Anxiety of our era, relayed thru commercial goods, people trying to insulate the bareness of inner life, lest it is so obvious to all, and the bleakness of future existence with a trippy, nostalgic like packaging of MODA.
The deja vu of '80's and its dubious splendor is so disappointing, so stuck- in.
I watched "Breathless" on PBS and I was simultaneously overcome by the longing to identify along with confirmation of "you are now middle-aged or just past it- and the downhill has started". What a wicked candy that soap opera was! Same like Mad Men, different wrapper.
The fab '60's, I wanted that intoxicating feeling of cutting(-edge) rebellion, brewing along with things past their expiration date, like misogyny and male primacy, the dynamite smacking of unhindered desire and that hope, the one that had sprung wings of endless possibilities, the one that only youth claims as primary power. Ha, you'd think that public television station programmers plotted to give pleasure and scraps of hope to lonely middle-aged folks, who could stand back to back shows like "Breathless" and the long-lost and unearthed- just- for- Labor- Day- weekend Beatles "Mystery Tour" movie'.
OK, back to MODA, I now get past the invisibility cloak of pushing-60-something -person only if I wear extravagantly expensive clothes for my Goodwill persona, hard to find ones, paired with prime-sanctioned family heirloom jewelry of baroque dimension, like a garish men's gold Omega watch and an even bigger diamond ring of Macedonian aspirations. Throw in a silk turquoise
scarf from the '68 Winter Olympics. I then get looks. Maybe, mostly: the short, once-over ones of men; and the grief and piss of the young waitress that compliments my teenager profusely yet spits at me with her dismissal; the twice- look-over of young women, making mental notes of outfits and visual statements- honey, practice is the language of age and the currency of perfection.
"What is the listing prize, this Pembroke table is exquisite! "$6,600, of course you probably know better than I the worth of such a fabulous period piece, I think it is 18th century".
Back to the obnoxious WholePaychecks for a French rose and why on earth they pull them out of the shelves before Labor day is over?????
The bitter old bird on the occasion of her 56th birthday
Has been a long while..
What is it with these super-constructed coats and jackets and the pseudo-psychedelic prints this season?
Anxiety of our era, relayed thru commercial goods, people trying to insulate the bareness of inner life, lest it is so obvious to all, and the bleakness of future existence with a trippy, nostalgic like packaging of MODA.
The deja vu of '80's and its dubious splendor is so disappointing, so stuck- in.
I watched "Breathless" on PBS and I was simultaneously overcome by the longing to identify along with confirmation of "you are now middle-aged or just past it- and the downhill has started". What a wicked candy that soap opera was! Same like Mad Men, different wrapper.
The fab '60's, I wanted that intoxicating feeling of cutting(-edge) rebellion, brewing along with things past their expiration date, like misogyny and male primacy, the dynamite smacking of unhindered desire and that hope, the one that had sprung wings of endless possibilities, the one that only youth claims as primary power. Ha, you'd think that public television station programmers plotted to give pleasure and scraps of hope to lonely middle-aged folks, who could stand back to back shows like "Breathless" and the long-lost and unearthed- just- for- Labor- Day- weekend Beatles "Mystery Tour" movie'.
OK, back to MODA, I now get past the invisibility cloak of pushing-60-something -person only if I wear extravagantly expensive clothes for my Goodwill persona, hard to find ones, paired with prime-sanctioned family heirloom jewelry of baroque dimension, like a garish men's gold Omega watch and an even bigger diamond ring of Macedonian aspirations. Throw in a silk turquoise
scarf from the '68 Winter Olympics. I then get looks. Maybe, mostly: the short, once-over ones of men; and the grief and piss of the young waitress that compliments my teenager profusely yet spits at me with her dismissal; the twice- look-over of young women, making mental notes of outfits and visual statements- honey, practice is the language of age and the currency of perfection.
"What is the listing prize, this Pembroke table is exquisite! "$6,600, of course you probably know better than I the worth of such a fabulous period piece, I think it is 18th century".
Back to the obnoxious WholePaychecks for a French rose and why on earth they pull them out of the shelves before Labor day is over?????
The bitter old bird on the occasion of her 56th birthday
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Lichen's disposition
Sage, ruffled, weightless
Eternal and of the season, at once
Longing for the north
Attached yet need-free,
a triumph of symbiosis
The mystery and the unraveling of desire,
to hope for such an existence, to give up, to let go, to survive burying the dream.
Winter solstice, moss garden, scarce love.
Sage, ruffled, weightless
Eternal and of the season, at once
Longing for the north
Attached yet need-free,
a triumph of symbiosis
The mystery and the unraveling of desire,
to hope for such an existence, to give up, to let go, to survive burying the dream.
Winter solstice, moss garden, scarce love.
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