Verse....

Here are some poems (or as my friend used to say, "verse") I wrote in the 70s and 80s

CIVIL WAR

there are moments of perfect happiness
when stones become transfused
by light and warmth

when tears are crystal drops
of celebration

and birds sing sweetly
from the empty trees

an hour's gladness overtakes us

building on the bones
of those we've slain

70s music

i used to write songs while driving back and forth to work in the 70s and 80s. here's one:

HAIR LIKE A BIRD

Hair like a bird
kind of absurd
swirling bending
standing on ending
hair like a bird

Face like a moon
bright as a tune
comes on the radio
at half past noon
face like a moon

Body like a child
free and wild and
happy and sunny and
smooth as honey
body like a child

Heart like gold
yellow and cold
hard and rich
jeez wotta bitch
oh, well

Just a few photos taken around and about in the past couple of weeks -- PLUS Vincent on the Green Line!!

Construction at GWU between the hospital and the clinic - all the small people and machines milling about reminded me of a hologram display of an archaelogical dig they had once at the Museum of Natural History in NYC.







Skool kids being frog marched past Starbucks by the Archives



Overhead lights reflected in the floor, GWU hospital -- remind me of the CROP CIRCLES by Peggy's in Wiltshire



Lavender, iris, and roses in the background plus a citizen in shades by Dupont Circle



That Van Gogh boy--he really gets around!!!

Sedentary Reporter, Continued

Long story short, the two kids and I got to be good friends in the couple months I lived there, and they took to inviting me along on their evening outings. They were especially keen on hauling me to some of the gay bars accessible by metro: Tracks (now defunct, alas...a great place with live music, pool tables, and a volleyball court!!), the Frat House (oof...the videos!) (name changed to maybe chi omega?), and the Fireplace (see photo on preceding post). Upstairs, the Fireplace also had hanging TVs (usually devoted to cable soccer, etc.) like any bar but with those videos that were so uninhibited they made me titter like a maiden aunt. The other type of outing the kids enjoyed was hauling me on the bus. They'd spend their time teaching me ASL, especially sex signs and fingerspelled dirty words. They would laugh and laugh as I blushed.

At the end of the summer, I moved out and have never been back to any of those places. Luckily, though, I met some of my best friends at Tracks in those early days in DC. "Oh, HI!! My goodness! I'm surprised to see YOU here!" followed by "And I am surprised to see YOU here!" We'd meet often on campus for lunch, and it was all very pleasant.

I moved to DC without knowing a soul other than the two people who interviewed me for my first job. I had decided I would NOT own a car in a place with such wonderful public transportation. This definitely cut into my social life, since almost everyone FLED the campus at the end of the day (earlier on fridays if they could manage it) to Maryland or Virginia and didn't return until time for work again. Thanks to the two rambunctious young kids who thought it was FUNNY to discover an adventurous old grandma living in their rooming house, I had a most enjoyable summer meeting new friends and learning all about lots of things totally unrelated to academia. (Well, not totally....)

Anyway, using the free wifi in this wonderful coffee house is as close to the Fireplace as I get now. The fire still burns behind the glass on the corner of the building (not sure if it's visible in this photo). A whole new generation warms itself there.

Sedentary Reporter

Here's the view last weekend from inside one of my favorite Dupont Circle hangouts, Soho Tea & Coffee. The red brick building across the street is a bar, the Fireplace. The FP has a signature glass-enclosed fireplace built into the outside corner of the building on P and 23rd Sts NW.

When I first arrived in DC in June of 1992, I got a second-floor room in a house a block from the university campus. My neighbors on the second floor were two incoming freshmen, in town for some kind of entering student program before classes began in September, and the mother of a local entertainer. The local entertainer was a nice young woman who visited her mother every evening about 11 p.m. to shower and get ready for work. I rarely saw her, but I loved her outfits: silver leather hot pants with a backless silver leather Eisenhower jacket and silver stilletto sandals was one I still remember. People in my Midweatern neighborhoods did not wear things like that. Our landlord was a deaf man from Singapore, and he slept on the couch in the living room every night. He kept a very big machete on the floor beside the couch to protect us from intruders.

Being a newcomer to both the university and DC and not knowing anyone, most nights I would go to my room after I cooked my supper and ate it by myself in the dining room. I'd read or write and then fall asleep, usually with the light on. I'd take out my hearing aids, open my book, and soon be in the land of nod. This would be about 7:30 or 8 p.m. Around 1 or 2 a.m., I'd wake up, exchange my daytime clothes for my pjs, and open the door to go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Several times, the hall lights would be shining bright, and the hall itself would be filled with police in uniform.

I'd smile at the officer nearest my door and say "hi." Other officers at the end of the hall would be signing with the two young students (they were deaf), and writing things down on clipboards. I could see the older woman sitting on the foot of her bed and gesturing--often with a raised fist--while another officer wrote in yet another clipboard.

"Can you hear that?" The officer would point to a boom box visible through the students' open door.

"No. Excuse me...." I'd smile, go get my hearing aids, and put them in. Instantaneous rock & roll would often make me stagger with its force. I'd point to the floor, which would be throbbing to the beat. "I can FEEL it with my feet now, but without my hearing aids, I can't hear it."

"Maybe you can tell the kids not to turn on the boom box when they come home at night."
The officer would wave his or her hand in the students' direction. "It's very disturbing to the other woman on the floor. She's hearing, and the sound wakes her up."

--TO BE CONTINUED--

Disrespect

Last night as I left Safeway with a pack of strawberry milkshake flavored OREOS, and a bottle of Niacin, 500g., one of the neighbors hailed me.

"Hey..."

I recognized him from last weekend, when he had started up a conversation, but I unfortunately could NOT understand what he was saying to me. He has a deep southern accent from somewhere I've never been, and he also has a bit of a speech impediment. I had thought, last weekend, that he was asking me for change, and not having any, I had told him "I'll be back...."

Which i wasn't. and then I forgot about it.

Until last night.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi...." I walked over to his usual spot next to the second pillar. He started talking, and I had to interrupt.

"I'm really sorry, but I absolutely can't understand what you are saying."

He pulled his furry hood back so that I could see his grizzled, shaven head. Surprisingly, it DID help me understand his speech.

"I apologize for disrespecting you the last time I saw you," he said.

"You disrespected me?"

"Yes. I apologize."

"Well, what the heck. That's ok." I patted him on the shoulder. "Not to worry."

I hurried through the rain drops from the front door of Safeway to my back door and disappeared inside to the warmth.

Who is this guy? And why does he think he disrespected me last time? Did he say something awful after I said, "I'll be back"? Why did't I ask him to clarify the whole thing?

This is another thing about being OLD. I STILL have the same weird shyness I had as a kid. It pops out on odd occasions--like whenever anyone tries to TALK to me. I'm sorry I didn't ask him WHY he "disrespected" me. Maybe I actually DID disrespect HIM. Clearly I have lots left to learn.

My Book

There's a lot more to being a writer than just writing the book. Before I write a book, I have to IMAGINE it.

•Romance or mystery?
•Funny or serious?
•Silly or sad?
•Historical or contemporary?
•With lots of characters or just a few?
•Hard cover or paperback?
•How much will it cost?
•Who will publish it?
•Who will review it? Rolling Stone? Rodale Press?
•Will Oprah pick it for her book club?
•Will Rachel Maddow hold up a copy and tell her audience to READ THIS BOOK? (Does she even do that kind of thing? I haven't seen her do any book reviews so far.)
•Will it be banned in Boston? (I don't know whether they do THAT any more, either.)
•Who is the book's audience? Grownups, teenagers, little children?
•What other books will it be like?
•What color will it be?
•Will it have illustrations? photographs? and if so, WHO WILL DO THEM? (Why not me?)

It's so much fun to picture mundane details. I'm going to go walking this morning and think about these things. I know the publisher likes to make these decisions regarding the physical book, but it's sort of like having a baby. For nine months you think of all the wonderful qualities the baby will have, and you get very excited. When the baby finally makes her/his appearance in broad daylight, she or he may be NOTHING AT ALL like what you imagined. Still, you do get what you wanted, which was a BABY.

My book may not be anything at all like what I'll be imagining it to be, but it'll be a BOOK!!

In Which She Visits the Cardiologist...

As I said in the preceding post, I was at the cardiologist's yesterday morning. my PCP's PA sent me there with a referral to do a treadmill test (or so i thought) to make sure i wasn't ready to drop over.

I was plenty worried about this. Are they going to make it go really FAST and for a LONG TIME like they did last time? (Until I finally said, looking at the blood pressure monitor inch upward, "Are you trying to blow my head off?") Am I gonna go and do the treadmill and then come home and drop dead of a heart attack? Or am I gonna wind up lying in a pool of my own blood on a cart outside the OR after having the old stents yanked out and new ones added? And so on and on...."Am I gonna go in there feeling good and come out feeling SICK and YUCKY?"

What baseless worries.

The nurse called my name and led me from the waiting room to a cubicle. She said, "Since this is your first visit here, we need to EKG you."

Yup. That's what she said..."first visit here." I didn't say anything..,.what do you say to THAT? They operated on me 4 years ago. This is a first class hospital, and one of my fellow cardiac patients is none other than Dr. Evil, Dick Cheney himself. Although come to think of it, cardiology used to be on another floor. Maybe they threw everything out and started fresh now that Cheney is no longer VP.

Anyway...the EKG went well, apparently, cuz the tech didn't say anything encouraging. They don't get really enthusiastic unless something's bad.

Then the cardiologist's assistant came in. He asked me to breathe a few times while he listened to my chest. Then he squeezed my bony ankles.
"Do your ankles ever swell?
"No."
"Any chest pains or shortness of breath when going upstairs?"
"No."
"Have you had your cholesterol checked?"
"Yes, two weeks ago."
"Here?"
"Yes...in the blood lab down the hall."
"Oh." (Much typing on computer).

At this point, the cardiologist arrived, and the two of them excused themselves and went into a small conference room, where they poked around on another computer. Paydirt! They came out smiling.
"Your cholesterol is very high. I know you don't like to take pills (this is written somewhere on my chart--right under where it says "Ms. Know-it-all"), but I'd like you to try"....and so on.

Nobody breathed a word about any treadmill or stress test. Whew! Getting a prescription is a small price to pay for dodging that bullet.

What is so different about going to the doctor now as an old person is that I disagree with at least half of what they say, and I know when they've goofed on certain vital bits of info (like that being my first visit or when they haven't got the results of a test done two weeks ago not 20 feet away).

When I was a kid, I was THRILLED to go to the doctor. The doctor was GOD! He asked my name! And my mother made sure the doctor knew that her oldest son was in MEDICAL SCHOOL!!! We came from a family that produced GODS.

"It takes a heap of loafing to write a book." - Gertrude Stein

Today I read somewhere that a blog is like a DIARY. OK, fine. I've had this perfectly good blog lying around unread--mainly because only a couple of people are permitted to read it, and they, being congenital lurkers, mostly DON'T.

But I really want to talk about getting old. I don't think it's a terrible thing or a horble experience or a great pain. It's just different, and I really am noticing all the many ways in which it IS different. So, welcome, dear readers (both of you, when you finally get around to noticing that it's possible to read this, my "other" blog, without signing in.)

Here's my entry for today:

Took a statin drug last night per doctor's orders. She was giving me major grief about my high cholesterol reading. She actually called it my "wild and crazy cholesterol reading." Fine. I tried to tell her about my Aunt Mary's cholesterol reading. Aunt Mary herself said her cholesterol was "off the charts." So this, I said to the doctor, was a family thing and not just unbridled consumption of steak, eggs, bacon, ice cream, and....well, not cheese. I'm not so much of a cheese eater. I also mentioned that Aunt Mary, despite her terrifying blood chemistry, lived to the age of 95, compos mentis all the way. And her favorite drink was a Grasshopper, which was ladylike and delicious and had LOTS of cholesterol compared with, say, a Martini or a Rob Roy.

I didn't want to take the statin cuz at various times in the past 4 years, I'd already taken several others, and I am allergic to half of them. The last one didn't make me break out in a whole body rash, but it did make me feel crappy--tired and listless and achey, so I persuaded my Primary Care Physician's PA to let me drop it and take Niacin instead. With Niacin, my cholesterol bloomed, but I felt good. I can finally walk for more than an hour a day and not limp cuz of a sore hip or knees. I explained this to the doctor, and she said, "Just try it. Your cholesterol level is a big threat to your health." So I did. I took one little pink pill last night and woke up with no rash. Score! By 4 p.m., however, I realized that almost all day I'd been feeling tired, listless, and achey.

Do I want to take another little pink pill tonight? Unh unh. I can't even have a drink if I take it, and that bothers me, too. I know, I know...no drinking, not good for you, etc. But I like it. I like the taste, and I like the warm feeling I get in my poor allergy-scarred lungs. And I like the IDEA of it. St. Thomas Aquinas says somewhere in the Summa Theologica (I know...I read it myself--in Latin) that it's good for a person to get a little tipsy. Why? Because it makes a person humble. I'm not talking about getting tipsy, though. I haven't been really, truly blitzed since oh, maybe 1978 or so, when I made the mistake of going out after work with some coworkers to a farewell party for one of the typesetters who was moving to Chicago. I wasn't keeping track of how many beers I drank, but the woman who moved to Chicago gave me a ride home, and all the way I kept saying, "Gee...I forgot my bag!" "OK," she said, "We'll find it." The next day I managed to call the office about 10 a.m. and tell them I was not feeling well and wouldn't be in." They were filled with solicitude. "Oh, too bad. Take care." Then they added, "Viv wants to know if you found your purse." Hmmm....Damn. It had been in my lap all the way home. Embarrassing.

So...work. The reason I decided to write in here was because I read an online article today on "Living to 100." The first rule is "Don't Retire!" Ouch. I'm loving not having to go to an office any more, but I need to WORK, and the only work I've ever been remotely good at is writing.

Time unfolds itself differently now that I'm getting old. I'm realizing I don't have a lot of it--time--left. One of these mornings, I'm going to eat my very LAST bowl of oatmeal. Still, the days seem full and happy even if I'm just walking around town doing errands. But I should get cracking on the two books I've written that need REwriting. That's important, the article said. Keep doing what you've always done well. If I had a little truck farm or a vineyard, I could keep pottering around fixing holes in the hen house (yes, we had a tiny hen house once, Peggy...I made it myself with no knowledge of what hens need in a house) or pruning the vines and that. All I have are piles of paper upon which I've written many words. So I'll work on them.

Husband and Wife Meme

Wot's this? A husband-and-wife meme! Or, if you're from IOWA, a husband-husband or wife-wife meme. Hmmm...how will they handle the nomenclature, now that Iowa has become the third state to legalize gay marriage? The free dictionary has this intriguing, possibility-laden note:

Interestingly, Old English did have a feminine word related to Old Norse hsbndi that meant "mistress of a house," namely, hsbonde. Had this word survived into Modern English, it would have sounded identical to husband surely leading to ambiguities.

Hey, ambiguity time is HERE!! We've managed to figure out what it means when we write blond (adjective for male with yellow hair) and blonde (adjective for female with yellow hair). So...how about husbande and wife??? I love it.

I am very happily a spinster (old English meaning: elderly unmarried woman or old maid!!) these days, so I don't have a husbande or a wife. Not even a dog or a cat or a fish or a bird or a hamster (quel dommage)....so I'll just borrow my good friends T & L's info and make believe:

♥ What are your middle names? Mine is Anne, and so is hers. ("Gay" does not mean clever or original.)

♥ How long have you been together? 22 years.

♥ How long did you know each other before you started dating? Something like two years.

♥ Who asked who out? She asked me.

♥ How old are you both? We're both in our 60s.

♥ Whose siblings do/did you see the most? We both see our sibs several times a year, but her sister is in the same profession, so they meet at conferences, too, maybe another time or two a year.

♥ Do you have any children together? No.

♥ What about pets? We used to have this little, exuberant dog, but she's gone now.

♥ Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple? We don't have much privacy as a couple.

♥ Did you go to the same school? No way. She's from Chicago, born and raised there, and I'm from Long Island.

♥ Are you from the same home town? No. (See above.)

♥ Who is smarter? We are both terribly bright, but she's got TWO advanced degrees, both of which are more advanced than mine.

♥ Who is more sensitive? We're both very sensitive, but she's more resilient.
♥ Where do you eat out most as a couple? The Farmers Market.
♥ Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple? Israel, so wonderful!
♥ Who has the craziest exes? None of them is crazy. They're all very nice.

♥ Who has the worse temper? I do, but I don't hold grudges. She's very laid back, tolerant, cheerful, jolly, but she never forgets anything.

♥ Who does the cooking? We both cook, but my schedule is more regular than hers, so I have more time. That means I cook more.

♥ Who is more social? I am.

♥ Who is the neat-freak? We're both neat, but we're not freakish about it.
♥ Who is more stubborn? Definitely she is.

♥ Who hogs the bed? I do, definitely.

♥ Who wakes up earlier? Mostly I do, but that's because I have a longer commute to work.

♥ Where was your first date? As a couple? Some friends invited us for dinner.
♥ Who has the bigger family? We both come from small families.
♥ Do you get flowers often? Yes!
♥ How do you spend the holidays? With friends and family.

♥ How long did it take to get serious? Two years.

♥ Who eats more? She does. (She has a very healthy appetite.)
♥ Who does/did the laundry? Our wonderful maid.
♥ Who’s better with the computer? We're both very good.

♥ Who drives when you are together? It depends on which of us is more rested.