stories of my life in Tucson AZ and NYC

Saturday, December 15, 2007

“City College Days and Nights”


Ronnie DeNota, NYC artist, Boats at City Island


Saturday, 8:26 am, 12/15/07

“City College Days and Nights”

Well it is cold as a witch's teat but our beauty is back. The sun returned and brought all the color with it. Our sky is so blue, our leaves are so green, the sunlight is so yellow. I am thrilled and overjoyed to have our beauty back.

“Cold as a witch's teat” is an expression I only heard one time, by a girl at City College, when the expression really fit. I mean it was one of those sub-freezing days, probably in single digits, and we were all high up at City College, high up above the river, where it is even much more colder. It may have been my second year at City College, which was my third year at college, because I had transferred from Antioch. And I had somehow wound up in this crowd, and the girl who said it was the center of the crowd.

I belonged to a lot of crowds at City College, either simultaneously or one after the other. And I never fit into any of the crowds. In cafeteria I sat with the kids who had been at Jamaica High School with me, and that was the closest I came to being with familiar people. They hadn’t been my own friends there, but they were either the sister or friend of my own friends, they were familiar. But everyone else I was friends with lived in Manhattan, near City College. And this crowd I was in, were living in Manhattan, near City College. We went to each other’s houses for parties, to dance, and since I didn’t know any of the new dances then, I would sit there and watch them all dance.

My first year at City College I became friends with Lisa Goldsmith, who lived on Broadway, maybe in the high 80s. She was a warm wonderful girl and I enjoyed my friendship with her. But she got a job at the Figaro in Greenwich Village, that is a coffee house, working in the evenings. Plus she suddenly switched over to wanting to do very well in school, she had been lackadaisical student before that. And between her job, where she made a lot of money, and studying all the time, she never had time for our friendship. I had to let her go. And it seems to me in my last year I became friends with a girl named Nadia, who had auburn hair, and had a job too. I forgot what it was called where you put in computer cards, before everything was on disk. She had time to be friends with me, and it was a lovely friendship.

And some time in the middle I became best friends with Diana Shay. I met her because a boy I had been to camp with, who wound up at City College, was in love with her. She didn’t stay with him, but in the course of it, I met her. And we became best friends, and that was a glorious friendship for me. I went to her house all the time after school, she lived on West End Avenue with her parents. And we had lunch in restaurants together. Eggplant parmesan in the Italian restaurant, and chicken paprika in the Hungarian restaurant. We both loved to eat, and we ate out all the time together. She was tremendous fun. And that friendship ended when she went off to Paris for her junior year. I would read her letters in science class. She loved Paris and was having a great time. Before Diana I had a brief friendship with Lydia, who I think came from Colombia, I knew she spoke Spanish. I liked her a lot, but somehow the friendship didn’t take off.

During the time I didn’t have a best friend to be friends with I hung out with a crowd. We would go back to someone’s house after school, and they would all dance and I would watch. Diana did finally teach me all the new dances, the frug and the shimmy, and something else, but by that time the era of dancing at everyone’s house had ended.

I don’t know who was in that crowd that I spent so much time with. Except I remember the girl who said “it is cold as witch's teat” seemed to be the center of it. Everyone in it was very Manhattan and seemed sophisticated to me. By sophisticated I mean spoke a whole lingo I didn’t know. I never knew where they were at, they never knew where I was at, but they were who I hung with. I don’t even know how I met them and got to join the crowd.

I must have been with them at a party at someone’s house at night when Tony and Louise and Eddie showed up. Someone there must have known them. Louise and Eddie must have gone to City College themselves at one time and knew everyone in that crowd, and Tony worked in the music department and was their friend too. I went home that night with Tony. And for a few months he was my boyfriend. He was the only boyfriend I had during that whole era, the era of sharing an apt near City College, and going to CCNY and being in that crowd. And it’s possible, looking back on it now, that the whole purpose of me winding up in that crowd was so I could meet Tony. We had nothing in common. He was an avante garde dancer with Judson Dancers down in Greenwich Village. And he lived in a tenement apartment way in the back behind Macy’s, and had a whole life in the Village. And was macrobiotic, and learning Akido, and sold some pot. He belonged to a world I got to know much much later when I lived in the East Village myself, where everyone is macrobiotic and taking Akido and selling some pot and went to avante garde events at the Judson Church regularly. But it was a world very very far away from me when I was 19 years old and just an earnest college student. Tony’s language was also peppered with the hip slang everyone used later, but he was the first person I ever heard to use any of those expressions and I would try to figure out what they meant. I had a huge crush on Tony and took it very hard when he ditched me for my roommate. In fact that precipitated me moving back home to Flushing.

Back home with my family in Flushing, life got more normal. I commuted to City College on the subways. After college I went to the Columbia library to study. And somewhere along the line I became the girlfriend of George. I had met him first at City College when Linda Webber was dating him. I met him again at protest rally at Madison Square Garden, Linda had broken up with him and he was there with his friend. Since he lived in Jamaica and I lived in Flushing, we all took the subway home together. I wonder if this was during the summer, when I was a camp counselor and had come in for my day off. I remember he came up to visit at the camp on one of my days off. And then when I returned to the city we were boyfriend and girlfriend for a lot of that year.

He was going to the high school downtown for evening classes to get his high school diploma. I think he worked in the fur district during the day. George made a big secret about everything, so I don’t remember when he worked in the fur district or when he changed jobs to be counterman at Greek restaurant. He would work during the day, go to Washington Irving High School in the evening, and then pick me up at the Columbia library and we would take the subway back home to Queens together. He would get out at my stop and wait with me for my bus to come.

He was living with his parents in Jamaica and I was living with my family in Flushing. It was a very calm time in my life and I needed it, there had been so much chaos during my Manhattan sojourn. I wasn’t in love with George but I liked him, we got along very well. He was warm and friendly and outgoing and affectionate, and a little crazy, he could get so emotional. Which is a type I like. I know I always fell for “sensitive but misunderstood,” but if they turn out to be like Tony, who always seemed so cold and foreign and different from me, it never works. I am just tongue tied. If they turn out to be warm and friendly and emotional, it works. I’m willing to put up with emotions. George was a little bit too much the other extreme from Tony. I was too intellectual to stay with George. But what a happy time I had the whole time we were boyfriend and girlfriend! He gave me just what I needed then, a warm happy life.

But I dropped him without a moment’s thought when Kenny got back from Italy and called me up at my parent’s house and said “let’s share an apartment in the East Village together.”

There must be some way to take away guilt. Why should it be such a crime that Tony, who didn’t particularly like me, went for my roommate Muffin in a huge big way. In fact they wound up living together in Soho the same time I was living with Kenny. Maybe I was the interlude in Tony’s life which brought him to Muffin, he wouldn’t have met Muffin without me. And Muffin was the right girl for him, not me. And to be honest, how could Tony have been the right guy for me, I was always tongue-tied with him. He brought into my life some wonderful new experiences (he taught me to waltz and I loved that) and I am grateful for those experiences.


Maybe the secret to letting go of Tony, not holding it against him that he jilted me, would be to believe in my heart of hearts, that despite my intense desire for him, it was a relationship which wasn’t working, it was just bringing me frustration. And maybe the wise part of my soul ended it this way, to set me free for new experiences. I would have to admit I wanted it to end, which is something I have never been willing to admit. But of course looking back on it, seeing the whole picture from a distance, seeing it in retrospect, it goes without saying of course the relationship had to end, and to end at that time. It wasn’t going anywhere, it was consuming my life. And by ending it, new life adventure and opportunities and experiences opened up for me. So strictly speaking Tony did me the favor by breaking up with me and going for my roommate instead, since I never would have done it on my own and it had to be done.

Jilting George for Kenny. George didn’t accept it. But of course I had a right to have new experiences and adventures in life. And George is a wonderful guy, with a lot to offer any girl. I am sure he found a new girl that he made very happy. And it’s possible this girl found George a more fulfilling boyfriend than I did. Linda Webber, the girlfriend who had preceded me, had been very serious about George. He told me she was always looking in the newspaper to find an apt to rent for them to live together. Whereas I was perfectly content with the relationship just the way it was. He’d pick me up at the Columbia library, carry my books. We’d get off the subway at Forest Hills. Cross that huge boulevard to Greek diner. I would get coffee and blueberry muffin. And then George would wait with me for the bus.

And George was content with it too. When I broke up with him he said “you mean I won’t be able to carry your books any longer…”

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

French Fries

Tucson, AZ by Felix Pasilis

Wednesday December 12 2007 8:24 am

"French Fries"

Yikes now it is a big fog out there. It is misty and not much visibility beyond my yard. We have now had loud hail, snow on the mountains, pounding rain, and thunder. The fog makes it complete. Is there any weather we have not had in the past 24 hours. We had more dramatic weather in past two days than in the whole previous year. On the desert weather is changeless. Except for yesterday and today, where it is dramatically different every hour. It rained while I was in swim pool yesterday, then cleared up and sun came out on way home. Then I looked out and the terrace was soaking wet, the rain had started up again.

And I guess it’s been raining ever since. The landscape out my window is sodden.

Yesterday we swam at Fort Lowell pool, that is our favorite pool, high up by the mountains with deep water. But it was closed for a month to save on heating bills. We had been at Jerry’s pool instead. Yesterday was the grand reopening. Jerry, who is in charge of all the pools, had turned the furnace on during the week-end, so on Tuesday (yesterday) when it reopened for swimming, the water would be warm.

Jerry keeps his pool at 82 degrees all winter and ordered all the lifeguards to do the same. But Samantha, who is head lifeguard at our pool, loves warm water, and usually keeps it at 84 or 85 in winter, which makes all the difference in the world. I told Jerry “Sam keeps it at 84 and it is a million times nicer, why don’t you do that.” But instead of taking my hint, he said “Sam is not allowed to do that, I will lay down the law to her.”

When I arrived yesterday in the freezing rain I said “how warm is it?” She said 82. “Oooo” I said “usually you keep it at 84 when it is this kind of weather.” She said “I will Anne, but don’t tell anyone.” I said “great!” I was so happy she decided to disobey Jimmy and make her pool more enjoyable to swim in.

My mother emailed me her pool is kept at 92 and my brother enjoys his long warm swim in it, before they have dinner together in restaurant at her complex, and he goes upstairs with her to help her with computer. I was flabbergasted my mom’s pool is 92 when I am fighting tooth and nail to get our pool raised to 84, and have had zero success so far. I cannot even imagine the luxury of swimming in 92 degree water. Our pool is only barely warm enough to stay in it, and you do have to swim vigorously. I am not a vigorous swimmer. I like to do a floaty yoga-like swim, dream my way thru the water. But even I, who rarely moves a muscle when I swim, am starting to kick hard, just so I can stand the cold water.

The showers are outside at Fort Lowell and it was raining, so I put my clothes under the little shelf in the shower room and hoped it would not get wet from the showers. Of course our towels are all soaking wet from the rain, so drying off after a shower is impossible. I put on my long denim skirt and a long sleeved cotton shirt over soaking wet me, and joined Bill in the truck. He had the windows shut and heat on, it was heaven to be so warm. And then I wanted breakfast out.

I have larder full of delicious food because we had gotten out of the habit of restaurants, so I market for everything we could possibly want to eat or drink. But who wants to go into that cold damp kitchen and cook bacon and eggs. So Bill went to the second-hand store to look for books he wanted to read, and I went to Alice’s. And changed my mind and ordered chicken salad sandwich with french fries. And he bought a sack of books for 10 cents each. And then I went to the bakery next door and got chocolate brownies and sticky buns and cherry danish. And we got in the truck to go home and suddenly the sun appeared, and I thought “great! finally the bad weather is on its way out and the good weather has returned.”

And suddenly I noticed all my happiness and well being was back. I stretched out my arms in happiness. My tummy was happy from chicken salad sandwich and yummy french fries with salt and ketchup. I had a bag full of delicious bakery items on my lap. I had had a great swim. Bill was delighted with his bag of books. And the sun was out and warm.

I experienced pure contentment, which had been extremely lacking in 4 days of shivering away from the cold. I had had a range of happy experiences, feeling so alive after my swim or getting an email which made me so happy or a lovely movie on tv. I had had nice experiences which dotted the cold shivering time. I had even had moments of bliss and moments of great happiness. But the one thing I did not have was contentment, the warm contentment of feeling all is right with the world and I am so happy in it. For that you need to be warm and dry and have a plate served to you with very tasty sandwich and luscious hot french fries with salt and ketchup.

Monday, December 10, 2007

"A Cloudy Day"

"The journey Home" photo by Toni

Monday, December 10, 2007, 8:45 am

"Joie de vivre"

It’s a cloudy day. It’s still so interesting to me that cloudy days were normal where I came from, a day like today would happen once or twice a week. Cloudy days were familiar to me, they were so frequent, but on desert they are almost an anomaly.

I looked out the window to describe this day and the words “a cloudy day” came back into my mind, like from a former life. Back where I came from this day has a name. But if I only knew this climate, it would not have a name, it would just have a description.

It rained all night and this morning the sky is gray. How odd to see a gray sky out there. The gray is soft and light like the gray of a baby kitten. The gray is not pretty, it is the color of pristine snow when it is ruined back in New York City, when the snow has lost its beauty whiteness sparkle. The sky looks as if it were meant to be white but someone add gray tint to it. It is dun, white tinted gray. It is actually one of the off whites someone might choose to have a room painted, but looking at it now, I wonder why?

Well what do you know. The sun must have peeped thru a cloud somewhere because suddenly for an instant the dimmer went off, and it all brightened out there and turned lovely. But now the dimmer is back on. It lasted an instant but it was glorious. I guess this gray is chosen instead of white (for a room or background color) because it is easy on the eyes. But it is not! It is simply unattractive to the eyes, it merely makes light dim.

O there is that brightening again, but not as bright and not as long, just for an instant, brighter than before but still a treat. The memory that the world is really bright, and all the brightness in the world will return.

The vegetation is glorying in all the rain tho. Even tho it is mid December they love this gentle steady rain day after day. The vegetation is flourishing, we will have a beautiful spring. And the birds are energized by it. For them their desert has turned into a wonderful forest, their world is transformed.

It is chilly and damp and not my cup of tea, but it is so fresh that it brings a lift anyway. There is an odd excitement to this day, which belongs to the trees. This is their day. They bathe and bathe in lovely rain water, they drink and drink of lovely rainwater. The earth at their feet is soft and mushy just the way they like it. It is the world of moisture, a big treat for trees on arid desert.

Jan and Harry are planning to return to this world, a world which has water in it. The world of lakes and ponds and streams and waterfalls. A world of trees galore with huge green leaves. A world where the earth is not sand, but that dark brown thing you see in forests. A world which has ferns in it, they are returning to the world of ferns.

They lived in the woods for so long and loved the woods so much, that I can understand they are returning to their first love. I was a woods girl once myself. I remember being deeply profoundly in love with the forest, and the forest lakes, and the animals who live in the forest, the beavers who build their dams.

Now I would never leave the beauty of the Southwest. For me brilliant sunshine and flawless blue skies have come to represent heaven. A world of sparkling mind-boggling beauty. And I am used to being dry and warm all the time, happy as a lark. I would never return to the land of gray cloudy days, the world I came from.

I am no longer a woods girl of forest lakes. Altho a part of my heart will always belong to the water lilies which grow on top of them, and the seaweed which grows at the bottom of them, and the joy of a soft sandy bottom, and a canoe gliding thru and past the water lilies.

But now I am a girl of the Tucson city swim pools. The enchantment of lakes is just a sweet memory, like a lovely border around my mind. If I go too far away in any direction, it will bring me back to the sweet lakes of the Adirondacks. But the center of it now is this new world, where there are no dimmers. Where the sun is always at its brightest wattage. And the beauty is breathtaking. And everything is always in full color, sharpest clear most vibrant color there is.

The Tucson swim pools may not be an adventure into nature but they have their own happy spirit. They were designed for Tucson children to splash in and have fun in the whole long desert summer. And that atmosphere is still there, even tho the only ones who swim in it all thru the chilly winter are grown ups. And there is another kind of sweetness to them, water lilies they have not, but lifeguards lovely as water lilies abound. And it’s nice to stand on the deck, while you are summoning courage to dive in, and chitchat with one of the lovely waterlily lifeguards. They are that pure Tucson breed. Common sense, good sense, intelligence, kindness, friendliness, and conviviality. I don’t know where they get their clear minds from, perhaps the desert is conducive to clear mind. And their friendliness has pureness and sweetness to it too, like flowers on the desert. Which you notice so much and appreciate so much because there is no profusion. Beautiful days we have in glorious abundance here, but flowers are special. Tucson does not have the profusion of people New York City has, so the lovely friendliness of each one is fully noticed.

Swimming in the Tucson swimming pools is a social experience not an adventure into nature. But a lovely social experience. And altho no one in their right mind wants to go swimming on day like today, for some reason it still works. You’re out in the air, under the sky, swimming your laps. Your mind does empty itself, you do relax in water just warm enough to keep going. It is satisfying movement in water. And you do come out a new person. It is a form of yoga. Then you cross your fingers the showers are hot. And arrive back in the parking lot a new person. You leave with joie de vivre, which is all we ask of life, isn’t it?

Love, Annie

"My Mother’s Boyfriends"

Morelia, Mexico by Felix Pasilis

Happy Anniversary Mom

written Friday, December 7, 2007

This is the date my parents planned to marry but they postponed it to the next day because President Roosevelt said this date will live in infamy. They didn’t want to marry on the date which will live in infamy. My mom had just turned 23 and my dad had just turned 29.

She had had a lot of boyfriends in Rochester before she came to NYC to go to nursing school. The stories of her boyfriends were one of the stories she told when I came down with something and had to spend the whole day in bed, and we were up in the country, there was no radio or TV to divert me. She would move me into her big double bed which faced the window giving out onto the driveway and the road. And lie down next to me and tell me stories. The story of how she met daddy. The story of the doctors at the hospital she dated before she met daddy, and how the nursing students had a curfew, so the doctor would turn on the siren to bring her back in time for curfew and how much she loved racing thru the Manhattan streets with the siren blasting away.

And she told me about her boyfriends back in Rochester before she came to New York. The boyfriends were all named Max. One took her to the country club and dancing and in his convertible. The other took her to classical music concerts and they talked about books. I think that was the Max who worked at his father’s hardware store. And when I was very little girl and she went back to Rochester to see her dad and visit her relatives, I remember walking with my mom somewhere in Rochester and suddenly a man was in step with her, very happy to talk to her. And this was one of the Maxes. This was before I knew about her boyfriends. All I knew was a very eager young man, who seemed to like my mom a lot, was delighted to see her and talk to her. I am sure she introduced me, “this is my daughter Annie,” but he only had eyes for her. Everyone else we had seen was a relative, and they were very interested in Marion’s daughter and the new addition to the family. But Max was only interested in Marion.

He was perfectly willing to forget about me. And Marion seemed like she was half into forgetting about me and half into remembering me. I’m not saying my mother was embarrassed, but there was something inexplicable about her emotion when she was with him. She didn’t act the same way she did when she was with her relatives. She was a different Marion. She was not the Marion of her family, but Marion, an independent attractive girl who had been this guy’s girlfriend, and she was half in one, half in the other. I don’t know if she was constrained because I was there, or she was constrained because she was now wife and mother. Max was perfectly willing to forget it, but Marion wasn’t.

I was very interested in the very eager dark-haired young man, clearly so enthusiastic about my mother, and who talked to her in that intimate way as if I did not exist and was so overjoyed to see her.

I realize now he is the only one of my mom’s former boyfriends I ever did meet. The Max of the country club allure I never met. The doctors who put on their sirens to give my mom a thrill I never met. Neither did I meet her New York boyfriend, the guy she had been dating when she met my father. Altho because his father owned a store on 5th Avenue which sold pianos and organs, I can see the store window in my mind occasionally.

My father never mentioned his previous girlfriends to me, altho sometimes we would go to the ballet or a concert at Carnegie Hall, or something, and he would point at a woman in the third row and say “that is the woman I wanted to marry.” And I would look at her, and be so surprised. She wasn’t one bit pretty like my mom. She looked like a short dumpy woman not attractive and not particularly friendly. “All the boys wanted her,” my dad would say, “she didn’t choose me.” And I would be so surprised at this femme fatale of my dad’s circles before he met my mom. She looked like some classic Jewish New Yorker, a type I never felt that comfortable with. My mom was a long legged beauty athlete from Rochester, and my dad's former inamorata looked like she didn’t know what a tennis racquet was. My dad would have awe in his voice when he pointed her out to me, as if the guy who could land her was so much better than him. And I guess you could say that was the only one of my father’s former girlfriends that I ever did meet.

Altho I don’t know if Edna Pincus ever was a girlfriend, or he just had a crush on her from afar. He certainly pointed her out from a distance to me.

She didn’t look like a girl my mom’s boyfriend Max from Rochester would give a second look at. And whatever her mystique was it didn’t carry to me either. And part of me knew my dad was lucky he had not succeeded in landing his dreamboat. She looked like someone I would feel uncomfortable with.

It’s odd now that my dad never talked very much about his bachelor life before he met my mom. It’s almost as if it were a former life in a former lifetime. He had been to Mexico on his sabbatical and brought back from it a mandolin and whole lot of tiny black and white photos. And he taught me how to order eggs and toast in Spanish.

I guess he’s just not a story teller. Practically every time we went walking in midtown Manhattan some man would run into him and say “Leon!” totally delightedly and my dad would be totally delighted to see him too and they would talk a little. But my dad never bothered to tell me the story of how and when they had been friends. He would turn happy amazed face to me and say “we were friends 20 years ago.”

When he took me ice skating at Wollman Memorial Rink in Central Park and taught me how to ice skate, this was when we still lived in Manhattan, he would always run into one of his students. “Mr. Wilensky!” they would say all excited. And he would introduce me to a beautiful young man, and he would say “this is my daughter Annie, can you take her around?” And I would hold the boy’s hand while he helped me ice skate around the rink.

When you are a little girl there is nothing as beautiful thrilling and exiting as a beautiful teenager. I was far more exited meeting my father’s students from Seward Park High School then meeting his dowdy former inamorata in the auditorium of Carnegie Hall.

These were dashing young men of romance.

My father left a whole life behind when he moved to the hinterlands of Queens, almost as much as my mom had when she left Rochester for New York. My father was every inch a New Yorker, a Manhattanite, he had never lived anywhere else. Our neighbors all came from Brooklyn or from the Lower East Side but my dad had grown up playing on the rocks in Central Park, had gone to City College and Baruch College, and had an apartment of his own on Riverside Drive, way high up. All of Manhattan had been his world. He played tennis in Central Park, went to Carnegie Hall and on his first date with my mom took her on walk around the reservoir in Central Park.

In fact his first date with my mom was for a concert at Carnegie Hall. My mom’s best friend at nursing school, Ruth, who was also from Rochester, was dating a guy. The guy’s friend was Leon. Apparently there were 4 tickets for the concert at Carnegie Hall that night, and Ruth asked Marion if she wanted to go with her boyfriend’s friend. Marion said sure.

Marion was available that Friday night because her boyfriend, where they had steady date for Friday nights, decided to teach her a lesson. He felt that Marion did not show enough interest in him. So he decided to pique her interest. He would not call her for their Friday night date, that way she would miss him and be excited to see him the following week. So dateless Marion accepted the blind date with Leon, the friend of her friend’s fiancĂ©.

Leon got home from school teaching on the lower east side. It was Friday night after long week of school teaching, and the long trip on the subway to get home. He decided he was comfortable at home and did not want to get dressed up, take the subway and go to Carnegie Hall. He would just not show up. But at the last minute he changed his mind, decided he wanted to go anyway, and arrived at the concert late. Obviously the blind date was a success because I am here now writing this. After the concert he took her for a long walk around the reservoir. My mom said they discovered they had so much in common. She fell in love with my dad “because of his vocabulary, he sounded so educated." And that night she wrote her dad she met a wonderful man.

Two weeks later they married, they had had 3 dates. Her boyfriend had apoplexy. He had kept her waiting for two consecutive Friday nights now, the two Friday nights she went out with Leon. When he called her to say “let’s go out Friday,” she said “I can’t, I’m getting married.” Raymond was very mad, he had made her do without him, so she would be enthusiastic about him. He said “you can’t marry him you just met him.” “I am marrying him” Marion said. “How can you be so impetuous!” he said. Raymond must have had quite a vocabulary himself. Who calls the woman who jilts him “impetuous”! It is a word I have never once used in real life, and would never consider using at the height of emotion.

Exit Raymond, who she didn’t marry. Enter Leon, who she did. They married on a Friday morning at City Hall, she wore a suit. He took her to Longchamps afterwards for lunch. Then they went to her apartment, she had just started to share with her friend from nursing school, and got all her stuff. And moved it to Leon’s apartment on Riverside Drive. Then because he had tickets for Carnegie Hall that night, they walked to Carnegie Hall and walked home again.

Everyone forbade my mother from marrying my father after only 3 dates. Raymond the jilted lover said she is not allowed to do something so impetuous. And her parents wrote her she is not allowed to do this.

But she did and 15 months later I was born. I have the letter she wrote to my dad in the hospital the day after I was born (she sent it to me on my birthday last year). She said the nurse had brought the baby out to her that morning, and she had gotten a chance to take a good look at her, and the baby had a chance to take a good look at her. And baby must have liked her because she did not scream. And then she had her breakfast and read the New York Times. And there was a review of the concert at Carnegie Hall that night. And how did Leon enjoy it? and who did he get to take with him to it?

The day I was born my mom was sitting up in bed writing to my dad about the concert at Carnegie Hall.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

“My friend Pam”

"The Heart of the Matter," McCloud Falls, Mount Shasta, photo by Toni


November 14,2007 8:43 am, Wednesday
“My friend Pam”


Pam Travis was my friend at Antioch. We met in the middle of my first year there, altho she was 2 years ahead of me. We met because me and Marilyn and Peter had all gone to Antioch together from Jamaica High School, we were good friends in Jamaica High School. And Peter’s brother, Stephen, was a 5th year student at Antioch. His girlfriend was Pam Travis, and Stephen introduced Pam to all of us. And somehow instantly Pam and I became best friends. At first I treated her like a queen because she was two years older than me and the girlfriend of Stephen, who was a VIP at Antioch. Stephen clearly treated her as his prize. He didn’t so much introduce her to us as show her off to us. But Pam had zero interest in being anyone’s queen, we became fast friends. And the friendship remains as strong and flourishing as it ever was, which is something of a miracle I think.

And makes Pam my oldest friend, I met her at 17 years old. We were best friends from the ages of 17 to 23, which were the most confused years of my whole life, so it’s hard to want to turn my mind back to that time. I can say we were friends during my first year at out-of-town college, but first year at out-of-town college is awful time. I can say we were friends when I had my work study in Ann Arbor Michigan that year, but that was an awful confused time. I can say we shared an apt. in Manhattan the year I was 19 and going to City College but that was an awful confused year. I can say we shared house-sitting fancy apt. on Riverside Drive the summer I was 20, but that was an awful confused summer. I can say I visited Pam when she was living with her husband and baby in London when I was 23, but it was an awful confused trip to Europe.

We shared so much of the living adventure of life, but all my living adventures of life took place during that awful confused period of my life.

I got off the phone from calling her two nights ago, we had been out of touch, we talked for two hours, there was a lot to catch up on, and when I got into bed I was surprised and interested to notice there was a sweet stream in my mind. It was as if the experience of talking to Pam for two hours so intensely on phone-- altho all our conversation has always been intense, she loves intensity-- left a sweet stream coursing thru my mind. There must be something extremely sweet and extremely wonderful about Pam to have that effect on me. It would be something I would not be conscious of, Pam’s sweetness and wonderfulness, because of the extremely difficult (for me) years in which our friendship took place. And because Pam had always, right from the start, pushed the line that she was the benefee of our friendship and I was the benefactor. She always emphasized so much what I gave her, no attention was paid to what she gave me. It wasn’t till I noticed that sweetness coursing thru my mind two nights ago, that I realized she must have given me quite a lot.

Because she did the identical thing in our friendship phone call two night ago, as she had always done, she had not changed.

I used to like to do all the talking in our friendship in the past, I loved expressing myself, and Pam always gave me full interested attention and loved it. She was interested in everything I said. She may not have had a Jewish New Yorker friend before, who is so revealing, I held back nothing. This time in our phone call I wanted to be the listener, which had never happened before. I wanted Pam to talk, I wanted to hear all about Pam.

And happily she wanted to talk. A lot was happening in her life which thrilled her, she wanted to tell me all about it. But a point came in the conversation after that, when she turned that interested attention on me, and I started to tell her what I had been doing, and I saw that there is something irresistible about Pam’s interested attention. There was just no way I could not get totally excited telling her everything I had been doing. I guess we each have our forte in life, and Pam’s is the quality of her interested attention. There is nothing like it. It is an elixir. You just become thrilled telling her all about you. It is a thrilling experience, it makes you so happy, it is delectable. But I am very glad I resisted it at first and got her to tell me all about her, because I don’t think I could get to know my friend Pam at all, unless I get to hear all about her.

I did read a whole manuscript she wrote soon after I moved to Tucson, and you’d think I would have learned all about her from that. But I didn’t. The manuscript was mainly about her relationship with her girlfriend Linda over a period of years, Pam had become a lesbian. And the Pam I encountered in her book, was the same Pam I had known, I mean the same muted version of her. She was mainly reacting to everything Linda did. Since it was really Pam’s journal, Linda never came alive in her own right. Altho clearly she was the star of the story and Pam was the satellite around her. But all you got to experience was Pam the satellite.

Altho Pam is not and never has been a satellite. So it is the odd experience of a star pretending to be a moon. Which was my experience of Pam too. You knew with every fiber of your being this is a genuine star, and yet all you could experience of her was her muted satellite being. It never frustrated me at the time. The reverse. Who else in this wide world wants only from you that you be a star and shine and shine and shine and dance and enjoy in your light. Pam made me a star and I loved it.

Our conversation two nights ago really did come at the perfect time, because I wanted something totally mutual. I wouldn’t have wanted the old way, Annie shines like a star and Pam makes her shine. I really did want to hear all about Pam, get to have full experience of her. And why our conversation came at exactly the right time, is because 10 years ago Pam got together with Mary. She had fully expected with Mary, to repeat the pattern she had in my friendship with her, and her relationship with Linda. That Mary would be thrilling star and Pam would be the enthralled satellite, and the relationship would be filled with intensity sparks communication drama.

But it wasn’t what Mary wanted at all, and no matter what Pam did she could not get Mary to budge. For starters, after they bought the ranch together in the foothills of Sierra Nevadas (their moms gave them the money) Mary stayed in town working at her job for 3 years, Pam lived at the ranch alone. And then by the time Mary lost her job and moved to the ranch, a pattern had been set. Mary likes to be quiet. And altho Pam obviously likes big talkers, with tons of interaction, she could not get Mary to do it. For Pam, who only wanted her whole life a relationship of intensity and fireworks, she left her husband when that did not happen-- found herself with Mary, who likes to be quiet. And Pam, to her absolute amazement, after it being the last thing she ever wanted, found herself in a relaxing relationship. It’s relaxing to be with Mary.


She is still mad at Mary for supplying the exact opposite of what she thought she wanted, she hasn’t put two and two together yet, that if her home life is so relaxing, then she will have to find her excitement out in the world. Which she has done! What Pam has found out in the world, which she loves, would drive me crazy, just as much as living an intense talking-all-the-time drama fireworks relationship at home would drive me crazy. I am like Mary, I like to be quiet. But Pam has to take the pressure off Mary, because what she found and what she loves, is so intense and dramatic to the max, and so high energy. She has to have peaceful homefront to sustain it.

Apparently some guy decided to teach himself psychology, why people do the things they do. Why they can be exceptionally loving one moment and very violent another. He had grown up watching his cousin take exquisite devoted care of his bedridden mother, and at same time terrible violent riots had broken out in Detroit where he lived, and he wondered why humans can be such extremes. He came up with perceptions theories insights, which he then tried to put into practice, with groups, not only on an individual level but a world-wide level. He would travel around the world where warring tribes were warring, and have them all sit down together, and do his technique and they would be friends again.

This is what captured the interest of my friend Pam. There are probably 98 forms of group therapy which take place in the safety and seclusion of a shrink’s office, and which do not involve traipsing off to Afghanistan week before the war began, to make peace between warring tribes. And you get a good idea of my friend Pam’s adventurous dramatic nature, that this is the one she chose to be practitioner of.

Apparently it began when Pam and Mary met with some of their fellow lesbians in the very rural area they live in, in someone’s living room. It was a meeting and they were working on something. Towards the end Pam said “I have just learned this new role playing thing to solve problems, do you want to try it?” And they said yes, so Pam did it with them and everyone loved it. And they said “let’s have a meeting where we do this thing.” And Pam, who had just started doing this thing, was way too nervous to volunteer to lead it. And to her amazement Mary said “OK I’ll lead it.”

But a week later when it was time to have the meeting Mary refused to lead it, she told Pam she was too scared to do it. So Pam said “OK, I’ll do it for you, but Mary what would you have done if I had not volunteered to take your place?” Mary said “I just would not have shown up.” Which shocked Pam to her pants. But I understood it perfectly, I would have done the same thing in Mary’s shoes. Pam is such a courageous warrior soldier to her boots, she cannot conceive of such cowardice in the face of onslaught.

Before the meeting 8 of the women called each other privately and had a lot to say about a problem which had arisen and finally they called Pam and told her about it. Awk! This is the kind of thing I keep away from with a ten foot pole. I’m willing to put up with a little weirdness when it is thrust in my face and I can’t get away from it, but I walk a mile out of my way to avoid it. The whole world of meshegoss between people. Which, altho sometimes is interesting as gossip, sometimes is just the muck of mishegoss. Tempest in a teapot. If 8 women were involved in it, I would walk as fast as I could in the opposite direction.

But not Pam. She had zest for it. She is a remarkable woman. She actually thought, no problem, it will be an interesting challenge, I will turn this mishegoss mess into pure clear clean water of loving friendship, I will replace it with love. Which of course is not what happened. Pam claims it was because she was way too inexperienced then and she would have handled it all differently now. From my point of view only Jesus or Buddha could handle it and I am not so sure they could succeed.

Before the workshop began, and before they were going to do all the agenda for the workshop, of course Pam brought up the mishegoss mess to try to solve it. Apparently two women were friends, and one woman lent the other woman a book. The woman who had lent the book lives with her husband, who at that time had some illness which made it nearly impossible for him to get out of bed, he couldn’t do anything. When the other woman came to return the book and rang the doorbell, his wife was not there. He really tried to get out of bed and was able to get his shirt on, but he was not able to get his pants on, so he answered the door that way. The other woman was very surprised to see him standing at the door with his penis showing, and she claims he had grin on his face, that he was enjoying her discomfort. So she called up the wife to yell at the wife. The wife was enraged that her friend would not understand her husband was ill, and called him a monster instead. And now the two women hate each other, and the other 8 women are all involved in taking sides. This is the hornet’s nest my friend Pam approached with zest, to replace all this with pure love for one another.

I would have just thought they are all nuts, and I would have been very careful in my dealings with them, just talk about the weather and nothing else.

Of course it all turned into a disaster and most of the group barged out, and the ones who remained hated Pam. But Pam said she didn’t care, because the most extraordinary thing happened while she was in the middle of trying to facilitate this, suddenly she didn’t care what she looked like.

And guess what! I actually understood the experience she was talking about because I had had the same experience. I had terrible travails with Bill during my last years of living on the Lower East Side before I moved to Tucson, during the early years of starting on my own spiritual path. And I forget now which trauma drama I was in the midst of, but I had started my spiritual path, I didn’t want to fight. I don’t remember now what was going on, the nature of the drama, the story of it. I just remember where we were sitting. And even tho my living room was a tiny little room, it feels like I was sitting across from him in a big room, as if there were a whole circle of chairs, but in fact it was just him and me. And whether I had detached from my emotion or had decided to return anger with love, and was just purely loving him, I don’t know what I did, all I know was the effect. Suddenly I didn’t care what I looked like. I knew I was beautiful, and it had nothing to do with what I looked like. I knew I was perfectly beautiful and perfectly loveable and for first time I loved myself, and I was in bliss from that feeling, I loved it so much. The next day when I thought about it, I decided I had been in a state of grace.

So when Pam said “I didn’t care about the disaster because suddenly I didn’t care what I looked like, and it was such a wonderful feeling I knew I loved this thing and would always continue it, because of what it gave me,” I knew exactly what Pam had experienced, and I also knew this thing was her spiritual path.

I said to Pam “it is your spiritual path, it is such a rocky one and such a difficult one I don’t know why anyone would choose it, but you did and you love it.”

And she does love it. It is her whole life now. My friend Pam is flourishing, she opened up like a beautiful rose. She found her path.

It brings her everything she ever wanted in relationship, but you can’t have this in relationship, it would make a relationship go combust. And it brings Pam to loving herself because she said “all I want when I facilitate these groups or participate in them, is for everyone to realize how absolutely beautiful they are, and all I want in the whole world is to love everyone to death.”

And that is a spiritual path, walking into the lion’s jaw and only wanting to love everyone to death.

I have had more than my fill of walking into the lion’s jaw myself, and it has always been something I tried as hard as I could to run away from. I do not approach it with zest, I approach it with dread. But the outcome is the same. And you have to admire a girl who consciously willingly asks for it.

When the conversation was all over I said, “I am happy to hear all this, Pam, this is great. You and I have known each other a long time.” “Yes we have” she said. “And everything turned out great for us.” “We are both flourishing” she said. “Yes we are both flourishing.”

Love, Annie

Post script, I now realize what it was Pam had experienced and I had experienced too, it was the first time in our whole life, we experienced our real self and did not identify with our image. And that is bliss.

Friday, November 09, 2007

"I buy airline tickets"

painting by Felix Pasilis, Tucson AZ


7:02 am, Thursday, November 8, 2007
"I buy airline tickets"


I like this time of soon after dawn in Tucson. I think I actually first opened my eyes to the first loud bird chorus of after dawn. Now my yard is still in shadow, but I can see the top of the tree to the west is lit up, so the sun must be part way above the mountains to the east. It could be all the way risen but very low on the horizon. By November the location of the sun in the sky is so different from mid-summer it seems to me, like long slants away. There seems to be some birdie chorus or business going on to the west of me. O there is more light in my yard now, and the sky seems bluer. I know what it is! it is a bird twittering. That is why he sounds busy. It is a nice twitter. Very melodic.


Bill’s kid sister Mary invited him to spend a few days around Christmas with her and her family, and since Bill wanted to spend Christmas with Mary in San Diego he is delighted to be invited. He was there in June, when their mom went to Heaven, and he had a nice time being the guest of his sister. She and her husband were wonderful to him. And he liked the warmth and closeness of family, of having a sister and brother-in-law devoted to him. And getting to spend time with them and getting to know them. And liking them so much. They are both such nice people, and so warm and loving to Bill. His sister loves him very much, and he loves his sister.


This summer one of the summer lifeguards told me she and her mom are going to New York City for two weeks, and she is so happy because she went on internet and found round-trip ticket for 100 dollars. Her mom grew up on Long Island and she is going to see all her family back there. And her daughter, my lifeguard friend, is so excited about seeing all her cousins and spending two weeks in New York. I never got to hear about her trip to New York because by the time she returned, the school kids in Tucson were back in school, swim pools were no longer on summer schedule, and the summer lifeguards were no longer there, just the regular staff was there. But it had stuck in my mind that she found round-trip ticket to NYC for $100, and it had cost us close to $400 when Bill went to be with his sister in June. San Diego is such a short hop from Tucson.


So yesterday, when there was no one in the pool but me and Bill, and I had more or less finished my swim, when Samantha was in the lifeguard stand-- Samantha is the head lifeguard at the Fort Lowell Pool and whenever I have a question about anything I usually ask Samantha, she knows everything-- I treaded water and called up to her “Bill is going to San Diego for Christmas to be with his sister, how do I find a cheap ticket?” She explained to me that the earlier you make the reservation the cheaper the ticket, and if I had made the reservation last month, it would be even cheaper than it is now. Which I was vaguely aware of, but not fully. I knew I had to make reservations early because Bill was leaving two days before Christmas and coming home two days after Christmas, and the flights would be filled up, that is busy travel time. Sam explained to me that I go to Travel Zoo.com, and they have all the best sites on there like Expedia. The girl who had gone to New York had told me she found a new site on the internet which had the great deal she got. I wasn’t clear what any of this meant. When Sam said “Travel Zoo has many of the best” and mentioned Expedia and another one, I said “are those airlines?” I travel so infrequently I thought maybe a bunch of new airlines had started up with these unusual names. I said “how come they have these cheap tickets?” and she said “maybe there are group tickets and cancellations.” I said “what do I do when I get to Travel Zoo?” She said “just type in when you want to leave and return.”


So I thanked Samantha and memorized TravelZoo.com in my mind. And in the car going home I told Bill everything Samantha said. “Do you want to try it when we get home?” I asked. “No, let’s do it tomorrow” he said. “Well I might start to research it when I get home” I said. “Good” he said, “thank you.” “You have to decide how long you will be there and which day you will leave and return.” I had been thinking 4 days would be good. Bill said “4 days would be perfect, I’ll leave two days before Christmas and come home two days afterwards.” “I would like to make the reservations early” I told him, “because it is busy time, and Jim said he’d drive you to airport and pick you up, but he goes to sleep at 8 PM, so he asked for you to come at 7 pm. I want to find a flight which returns home then. He said he can take you to airport anytime in morning.”


So when I got home I did click on Travel Zoo and put in departure and return dates. And they suggested two links. The one Sam had mentioned Expedia and another one. But to my shock all their flights meant either one or two stops on the way, with very long waits, one was 4 hours, one was 8 hours. It seemed so illogical to me, San Diego is only one hour away from Tucson by air. The stops were either in Los Angeles or Phoenix. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and tried a few times, but I kept getting the same answers.


So finally I gave up on it, and just clicked on Southwest Airlines, the one I had called when he went to San Diego in June. The prices were much cheaper, it does make a huge difference that it is 7 weeks ahead of time, instead of two days ahead of time. It is about half the price. I looked at the flights the day he wanted to leave and day he wanted to return and found the ones which were best for Jim driving him to airport and picking him up. And then I called Bill in to look at what I found.


We both agreed they were the right ones for us. He’d return to Tucson at 5:15 on Thursday after Christmas, and even tho Jim didn’t want to drive in rush hour traffic, the one after it was midnight, so it was the best one. And the one arriving in San Diego, arrives at 11 am Sunday, which Bill said is perfect for his sister picking him up. It also seemed like a good time for Jim in the morning when he had to take Bill, altho now I realize Bill will have to be at the airport 2 hours ahead because Christmas is busy at airport.


“Should I just call Southwest Airlines and buy the tickets?” I asked Bill, “put them on my credit card?” “Yes” he said, “yes.” “Don’t you want to call your sister first and find out if this is fine with her?” “No” he said, “this fits into her schedule perfectly, just go ahead and call.”


“OK” I said. And I dialed the number. The announcement said it would be 3 minute wait to get to talk to a real person and I should have my credit card out to expedite things, but I was so nervous about doing it, I didn’t want to get out my hand bag. It was in the chair just behind me, on top of all the clothes.


The woman who answered said she was Kathie, and I told her everything, about Bill going to San Diego to be with his sister, and how we have to work out the times, because Jim is driving him and picking him up, and his sister is doing the same in San Diego. And she said “it is nice to have family at both ends," and I said “yes.” Altho Jim is actually a good friend, very good friend. On my computer screen there were 4 choices for tickets, from most expensive to cheapest. Cheapest said “internet.” Altho the two cheapest for return, said “not available.” But Kathie had different things up on her screen, so I just asked for the cheapest she can give me.


We did the ticket for Bill going to San Diego, she came up with same flight as I did. And she asked if I want a return ticket too. Which for some reason made me burst out laughing. The idea that you could have such an effortless divorce. Buy a ticket for your husband to go to San Diego over Christmas to be with his sister! And then buy no return ticket! And he stays in San Diego and that is that! When you’ve had a long marriage and there have been so many ups and downs, you have given serious consideration to divorce during some of the downs. And it is so immensely complicated what is involved. Fixing up the house! Selling the house! Making a new start somewhere else! Where do you make your new start? Dividing up the money from selling the house! Is he going to cooperate in all this? It’s incredible all the complexity, it is mind boggling. It is always such a relief when all the treacherous waters have been navigated thru, to discover you are not going to divorce after all, things are back on track, and you will just go right on living in your house with your husband in Tucson, and don’t have to go thru any of these difficult long complex hard labor.


Which is why I totally cracked up when Kathie asked “would you like a return ticket too?” “Yes” I said, “I'll keep my husband, I want him back.” And then I giggled again and said “altho there have been moments.…”


I cracked up again when Kathie asked me if Bill would like to sign up for Frequent Flyer. I said “we took the airplane with the dog when we moved from New York City to Tucson, and then he flew to San Diego to be with his sister this past June when his mom went to Heaven, and now he is flying out for Christmas, and that is the only times he has gone in an airplane in his whole life, I don’t think he is a frequent flyer, altho my cousin Betty started out as stewardess so someone in my family has flown a lot.”


Kathie was very sympathetic about Bill's mom, and she didn’t find anything wrong about Bill flying so infrequently, “if you like where you are, stay there, that is fine.” And she guessed that we like Tucson better than New York. “You must enjoy the warm winters” she said, “altho maybe it was hard for you to sleep at first, you were used to all that noise at night.”


I said “we arrived in the middle of the night, we didn’t even know what Tucson looked like, we had never been here, but our apartment was behind the car dealership, where they let all the guard dogs out at night, they barked all night, and it really saved us, it was so reassuring hearing that barking all night, that familiar sound of dogs barking, it helped me settle down, and I bet my dog loved it too.”


It is true what I told Kathie. We were serenaded by dogs barking our whole first night in Tucson and it did help us, and when we woke up we were serenaded by the birds. And in the light of day we saw what Tucson looked like, and we were floored, it was so beautiful. Opening our front door on second floor, stepping out on the balcony ramp, and looking up at those beautiful mountains, it took my breath away. I could not believe my good fortune that I was here. No one had told me Tucson had mountains.


And it was one of those beautiful days you only get once a year in New York City, but which in Tucson turns out to be every day.


Kathie worked it all out for me. I was so happy and I went to get my Credit Card. “My purse is right behind me” I said to Kathie, which for some reason made her giggle. It was only after she took down all my numbers on my Credit Card, and she was about to give me Bill’s confirmation number, when it occurred to me to ask “how much did it all come to?” “180” she said. “That is great” I said, “you did good, it is half what it cost for him to fly out in June.”


She asked if I wanted her to email me all the information, and I said “yes, please,” so she took down my email address. And then she tried to explain to me how I do the boarding pass on my computer the day before. She said “do it! even if your printer is not working.” I said “I don’t know if my printer is working, it ran out of ink two years ago, and I haven’t replaced the ink cartridge yet.” She explained about doing the boarding pass, but it was too much information for me to absorb. I thought, I’ll figure it out with Mary, Bill’s sister, the day before he leaves, she is very good with computer. Kathie said “do it! even if it doesn’t print out for you, because it means they know he is coming and are expecting him.” So then I thanked Kathie for all her excellent help and got off the phone and told Bill his tickets are bought and he said “great!”

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

“Out of this World”

by Felix Pasilis, Tucson Yard

Tuesday, September 25, 2007, 8:06 am,
“Out of this World”

Well Tucson’s beautiful weather has returned which is a treat, and makes things feel familiar again. Since beautiful weather here is the norm. Flawless blue sky and brilliant sunshine. Altho our sunshine has a new soft lovely radiance to it because it is autumn and there is a yellower light.


Yesterday was an interesting day alto nothing happened.


I don’t know what is going on with the vibrations. Perhaps there has been major frequency change, or major stepped-up frequency. I began to notice it yesterday afternoon and it just kept intensifying all evening and into the night.


I had written a story yesterday morning. Just an ordinary story about my Sunday. But for some reason as soon as I started to write my story I remembered my dreams. Which is rare for me these days. I no longer remember my dreams. I had written the first paragraph about the change in weather, and how shivery cool the house is for first time, and then I remembered my dream. And when I wrote down my dream, about being in the kitchen of my old tenement apartment on Lower East Side, and Deva (the daughter of the French woman next door) being in the kitchen, and asking Deva how old she is now. She was a young lady in my dream. I realized as I was writing it that she didn’t look one bit like Deva, who is a beautiful knock-out like her mom, but instead she looked like I would imagine a young Eleanor Roosevelt to have looked.


As soon as I wrote that I started to write what I am learning about the young Eleanor Roosevelt from Bill who is reading her biography. She is only 18 now, so I have learned about her till she was 18. I got very interested writing about Eleanor’s young life, but I forced myself to stop because I wanted to get back to writing about my Sunday. Altho I noticed I started up again before I finally went to telling about my Sunday. So then I wrote the whole story of my Sunday, and in the last paragraph I wrote about where Eleanor is now in her life. It fitted into the story because it is how my day ended. Bill came in for supper and told me while he was eating his dinner.


After I finished writing the story I began to fix all the typos. And in the middle of doing that I suddenly decided to move all the Eleanor Roosevelt stuff to end of the story, and take out all I had written about my dreams the early morning before I woke up. I had never changed things in my story before. I accept the way they came out. And I lied down in the sunshine for a little to think how to do this.


I found my 3 early paragraphs about Eleanor interspersed in the beginning of the story and moved them to the bottom. And was thinking about how to work them in, when Bill said “OK close your window, get your stuff, we're going swimming.”


So I grabbed my stuff but not my purse. I planned to come home and work on my story. And we had a nice swim. The water was just the itsiest bit too chilly for me, but it was still great. And it was a nice swim and the beautiful weather had started up.


And then I came home to work on my story and tried to read it thru once, and the oddest thing happened. I just went blank. Instead of being able to absorb my story so I could work on it, it was as if the surface of my mind had some coating on it, so that water molecules, instead of being absorbed into soft wood, just sat on top, as if there was something impermeable on surface of my mind. I couldn’t take in anything. I tried to read my story, and I couldn’t take it in. And I tried to work on the Eleanor Roosevelt parts and couldn’t, because my mind just would not click. The whole thing was like one huge blank. I never had this experience before. At first I thought my story must be terrible if I can’t connect to it at all. But it was just too odd what was going on in my mind.


So I gave it up and just went to lie down with a mystery. I really did want to complete my story before the day ended and send it out on email, because it gives me a thrill to write it, fix the typos, and send it out on email all the same day. And I like the idea my friends get it the same day I write it, even tho they may not read it. Still the very day I wrote a story it is there in the Inbox if they want to read it.


So even tho I knew the sensible thing was to just put it aside and work on it another day when my mind functioned, my desire to send it on email that day overpowered that. I came back and tried a few times. And finally, it was early evening. My mind had still not come back. I was still in that blank but I decided “so what!” I just moved all the Eleanor Roosevelt stuff to the bottom, fixed the typos in it, and sent it off. Still there was no way for me to read my story and absorb it in anyway, the disconnect was still total.


Then Bill’s friend Jim called just when I had started emailing, about the football game on Friday. And we chatted. He stayed on phone much longer than he usually does, he wanted to chat, and by the time the phone call was over, it was like a heavy sleep had crept over my mind. I could barely keep awake. But I forced myself to email my story off, and then I went to lie down with mystery again. And then all kinds of peculiar things began happening with my mind and with my mouth.


I have now had nearly all of the “ascendancy symptoms,” that is a short-hand name for peculiar physical symptoms which arise when we were being hit with big packet of energy and much higher vibration and frequency. The explanation given is the body is adapting to the much faster frequency. There are too many varieties of symptoms to name. And oddly enough each comes one at a time, you never have two at the same time, or very rarely. Certain ones occur regularly and some only come once. Soreness inside the mouth and the feeling you have bitten your tongue occurred once about 5 years ago, it lasted a long time then, two weeks. And oddly enough it came back last evening. And along with it some of the strangest thoughts I have ever had. My mind was in a whirl too.


It began off with what I had read in Gloria’s earth log the day before. She is the one who writes “Heaven Letters,” letters communicated by God each morning. In her Earth Log she writes her own spiritual experiences or her experience in life. And she said she is going thru a big change. That the night before she dreamed she was in her house and discovered there was a whole set of rooms up in the attic, like a whole floor she had not known existed. And the rooms were all covered with dust and the furniture was covered with dust. And she knew she was entering a part of her mind where she had never been before. And it was time to clean it all up and make it habitable. It was so disused she had forgotten it even existed.


And I remembered when I had a series of dreams like that too. Just before I left New York City, and after we first moved to the Tucson house. Altho it seems to me the last one of those dreams, my house had been transformed into a mansion, and all those rooms upstairs, which I was not aware existed, were now luxuriously furnished and absolutely beautiful.


I was very drawn to Gloria because I was surprised what we had in common. She was Jewish girl like me (but some things were different). Her parents were immigrants from Russia and Poland, she grew up speaking Yiddish. And her bothers and sisters were 25 years older than she was. And her parents were never around, her father had butcher shop and her mother worked. A young woman from the next town came to take care of Gloria when she got home from school. Also Gloria grew up in New England in a town, actually a rich town, where there were no Jews, but when they visited their cousins in another town, most of the people were Jews.


Like me Gloria’s parents were atheists and scoffed at religion. Like me Gloria’s dad said God was superstition.


She didn’t get interested in spirituality until her daughter gave her a tape of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and she watched it 20 times and became very involved.


Then she found “A Course In Miracles” on sale for 20 cents in a barn sale and tried to read it, and could not take in one word. Her eyes glazed over and she fell asleep and this happened 5 times. And then one day she started to read it and could not put it down. She read it four times and did the Workbook twice.


And then she began communicating with God, and started writing her God Letters on the internet.


My heart beat faster when I discovered Gloria was Jewish like me, and had read “A Course In Miracles” like me. Of all the channeled stuff on the net Gloria’s “Heaven Letters” communicated by God are in a class by themselves. They are so much more real than anything else. It takes your breath away.


I don’t know why thinking about Gloria now having her dreams about all those dusty gray unused rooms in unknown upstairs of her house, all those dreams which preceded my move to Tucson, provoked so much intensity. And then I thought about all the big changes others write in their earth log, after they post their channelings from Archangel Michael or whoever. Celia Fenn who channels Archangel Michael wrote her earth log. She just changed hemispheres, she moved from Cape Town to Holland. She just went thru the Fall Equinox two days ago and it is her second Fall Equinox this year, because of changing hemispheres. And suddenly it seemed like there was momentous change going on. Gloria is beginning a whole new chapter, and I know that chapter. And Celia changed hemispheres. And I could feel there was a big change in me too. But I didn’t know what that change was.


It was all odd and intense because it was a line of thought I never had before. And because by this time my mouth was totally sore, I was able to swallow, but Coca Cola stung my tongue.


Then Bill came in from listening to Monday Night Football on the radio outside and began to prepare his supper and I hung out with him, and that made everything return to normal again. His conversation was so in the world and I had been so out of the world, that it brought everything back to earth again for me.

But one amazing thing did happen. When I was lying on my bed, being so out of the world thinking of all these things, very softly, not loud at all, I heard bird call (and it was in the evening, it was dark outside) that was the prettiest bird call I ever heard in my life, such a lovely music.


And I remembered how the quail had arrived in my yard for first time about 3 weeks ago, 8 of them, and have been hanging out in my yard in the mornings ever since.


And it seemed special to hear that pretty bird song, just once, but so lovely.


But I have to admit when Bill walked in the house and everything settled down and went back to normal, and I read my mystery again after dinner, it felt good for things to relax and be normal. And I woke up to relaxed and normal beautiful morning, made the coffee, put up the dishes. But I still knew something interesting was happening even if I had no idea what it was.....

I went to the movies

Tucson Arizona by Felix Pasilis



“My Sunday”
written Monday morning September 24 2007


We turned the cooler down to low last evening and still it is very cold in the house this morning. And the outside was a little chilly when I had my coffee and buttered toast out there. The season has changed. I left the coolers on for the dogs last night, but even tho they were at low, I had to sleep under two blankets. It is a tiny too chilly for comfort right now on my bare arms, I am still in all cut-out summer clothes. But it is still very refreshing to be tad too chilly rather than too warm. After the long hot summer, this new chilliness is like a delicious frosted drink.


Everyone is delighting in the new weather. Beanie and Lulu played in their yard all evening, screaming and racing to the fence, carrying on, having a ball. The torpor from the heat is over, everyone is active and happy now. It’s like a big blanket of oppression being taken off, we are all free again.


I fell back asleep after I woke up first, pre-dawn, and got up to make the coffee. In my dream someone was telling me our friend Jill makes the most delicious fish salad, “you have to ask her to make it for you,” he said.


Bill took me to a movie at noon yesterday that he had enjoyed a lot, he found it so interesting. He sat with me for the first half hour, and then he switched to another movie he had not seen, the movie cashier had told him that was fine to do. So I was alone. And after he left the segments got weird. It is a movie of 18 segments. I stuck it out for one full hour, and then went to ask the movie cashier if I could switch movies too. There was another movie playing called “Becoming Jane” about the life of Jane Austin, and I thought I would enjoy that one. The cashier said she saw my movie and the first hour isn’t good but the second hour is good, and am I sure I don’t want to try to stick it out. So I went back but it got worse. And I decided not to see “Becoming Jane.” So instead I sat at a cafe table in the lobby to wait for Bill.


I put my purse on the cafe table and went thru all my receipts, the ones at the bottom of my pocketbook and the ones in my wallet. I threw out all my grocery receipts and receipts for clothes I had bought that I was already wearing. I was very happy going thru all my receipts and throwing out the ones I had no reason to hold on to. When I finished that I polished my fingernails with the new red nail polish I had bought the day before. And I liked the red and I liked how my fingernails looked. Then I found a tiny little purse with two lipsticks in it, and I opened up the lipsticks but they had not survived the desert summer heat. One seemed to be in fairly ok shape so I lipsticked my lips.


I thought I really shouldn’t tell Bill I couldn’t stand the movie, he put so much effort into bringing me because he wanted me to be happy. And I managed to keep my mouth shut for about two seconds. But instant he said “did you like the movie?” I said “no.” And then I said how I walked out after an hour and threw away my receipts and polished my nails, and I liked that a million times more than watching the movie.


He said his movie was weird too, but for some reason Bill doesn’t mind weird movies. He likes going to the movies, he has a good time. But I guess entertainment only works for me when I am home on bed with my doggies. I enjoy the books I read, I enjoy watching TV. I even would have liked this movie if it had come on tv. At night before I went to sleep I asked my Higher Self why I didn’t like the movie and She said “it was unreal.” But if I had been comfortable at home I wouldn’t have minded it. It would have been a diversion, that it took place in Paris and was in French. And I wouldn’t have gotten impatient at the bad segments, I would have closed my eyes and just chit-chatted with my Higher Self all thru them. I guess I don’t like movies to be in my face. I prefer them on tv so I can choose whether to have them as a backdrop or actually concentrate, or go back and forth. And I like being sprawled out in comfort clothes on my bed, instead of dressed up for movie theater date.


Bill likes to be out of the house. He is like me as a kid. Any bad movie was better than just staying home at loose ends. Just being out is an adventure and exciting and more interesting than being home. Being home is the place I didn’t want to be as kid, except in the evenings. And Bill is like that. He likes activities outside during the day, and just coming home for the evenings. Even when he does get back home, now that the weather has cooled down after sundown, he reads his book outside and listens to the radio outside, until he comes in to make supper at 8:30.


It’s inconceivable to Bill I would not enjoy a good movie. But I like to be at home if I am not swimming or shopping or buying myself a treat at the store, or going to the library. I love my own outside activities, but if it is not one I love, then I would rather be home. I enjoy being at home. Because I did not enjoy my treat of a movie one bit I wanted a treat I would like. So after the pool I asked Bill if he would take me to OPT (Old Pueblo Traders) which is on the way home, not very far out of the way. He hates going there, it is just a clothes store for women, there is nothing else around, he has to sit in the parking lot, and it is a boring parking lot. He said “can you do it in 10 minutes?” “Yes, I said, “thank you.”


I wanted to buy new shoes. Ever since I read a channeling by God 3 nights ago, in “Heaven Letters” where God communicates a letter to Gloria each morning-- This letter was about how to be happy all the time. And it began off with, “think about the things which make you happy, fresh air, beautiful weather, bird song, buying new shoes, a bargain, hearing from an old friend.” I don’t remember what else was in there. As soon as God said buying new shoes, suddenly I wanted new shoes. Shoes is something I rarely buy because I go barefoot all the time. I haven’t bought shoes in a long time.


Altho the last time Maria and I went to the Authors Luncheon, she said “look at my new shoes aren’t they pretty!” They were hot-pink patent leather flats. I wouldn’t have chosen them for myself, but Maria loved them and kept dancing around in them and looking at them and loving them, and the more I looked at them the more I liked them. “Where did you get them?” I asked. “I got them yesterday, on sale for 20 dollars at TJ Max.” “I like them I want them, I will go and get a pair too.” “They have them in black, and white, and this color, no red!” she said. Maria loves red. So the next day I asked Bill to take me after the pool and sure enough they were there. It was in the middle of the hot summer. I wanted to do it all very fast, he was in sweltering hot parking lot. They are cute and fun and give me a lift, but they aren’t me. I don’t mind wearing them, and maybe they were the perfect shoes to wear during a summer which was so hot I lost my mind.


But when God said “buying new shoes makes you happy, and a bargain makes you happy,” I instantly had a passion to buy beautiful new shoes, which were me, which I wanted. I went in the store very quickly, I only had 10 minutes. “Where are your shoes?” I asked the women who greeted up. “Up on the balcony” she said. I saw a room off the balcony saying “Clearance,” and went there right away. It said “All shoes are $9.99.” I saw flats which were a pretty shade of blue, they are a little odd but I like the shade of blue. But I really wanted heels. Suddenly I like wearing high heels again, if they are not too high. It took me a while to find the section which had heels. But there was pretty pair of sandal heels in persimmon, and a pretty pair of sandal ones in a light green. The woman was willing to help me find the box in my size. So I took all 3 to check-out, the flats in nice shade of blue, but a little peculiar; and persimmon heels and light green ones. I said “your sign says ‘Buy one, get one free.’” She said “that doesn’t apply to shoes.” I said “that is OK, these shoes are a bargain anyway.” And I bought the 3 pairs.


I instantly told Bill “I got 3 pairs of shoes and they are a bargain and I am so happy.” I thought he would like it that an outing made me happy, he had worried so much I wouldn’t like the movie. Of course I didn’t let on to Bill that the rest of the way home I thought “what have I done! are these really the right shoes! are they really the right color!” But I always go thru that after I buy anything. I afflict my mind thinking I made a mistake. But it’s still exciting having new shoes.


I thought maybe Bill didn’t like to wait in the parking lot, I was very fast, but it was still 15 minutes. So to distract him I said “do you think I am a tiny bit too plump?” I know Bill thinks I am as fat as a house. He is so thin and he believes in being thin. He said “I can’t talk! I am in traffic!” But I thought, I bet he returns to this topic, he would love the topic of me being on a diet. And so I sat quietly, and sure enough, when we were out of traffic and on our way home, he returned to the topic.


It was so funny because he was putting so much effort into being subtle and considerate, and I had only brought up the topic because I knew it was one he would go for big-time. He said “why do you ask? did you try on clothes and couldn’t fit into any of them?” And then he reminded himself I had gone in to buy shoes. “That’s right, you just bought shoes” he said. Actually I had planned to wear the brand new skirt I had bought last year this time to the movies, and when I tried it on, it sure was a pretty skirt, but loose at the waist. I actually have gone down one size, and I have to remember that because everything I buy is now just slightly too big.


I said to him “I went down one size.” “Good!” he said “good!” But he still wanted to discuss my diet. “You are fat because you eat all the time” he said, “and drink a lot of soda, soda is very fattening.”


He was so happy talking about what I eat, and how I should eat like him, he never eats, that this lasted all the way to our driveway. My main preoccupation is I didn’t want him to be unhappy that he took me to the movies and I hated the movie, so I said “I had a great time, Bill, I loved my swim and I love my new shoes.” And he said “it was ok we went to the movies, cause otherwise the morning would have gone on way too long and it wouldn’t have made us happy.”


And to my surprise he turned out to be right about that. I hadn’t liked the movie, but the outing had shortened the morning, and been an activity, an experience. And I had great swim and I bought 3 pairs of new shoes. It wound up being a great Sunday. And I went in to read my mystery completely happily on my bed. And fed the dogs delicious supper. And Bill went for long bike ride in the cool air.


While dogs had glorious time carrying on in their yard and at the fence.


And when Bill came in to make his supper he told me all about Eleanor Roosevelt.


He is reading her biography. So far in the book she is 18 years old, and has to face her Coming Out party which she doesn’t want. She doesn’t want her coming out party, and all the balls and social season which follows. Her family had sent her to finishing school in England, but the head of the finishing school, Madame Sylveste, was an intellectual and a socialist. She had fired up Eleanor’s idealism and her mind and when Eleanor had finished finishing school and come back home to New York City, other girls from Eleanor’s class were all caught up in the settlement house movement to help the poor. Plus unions had just started, they were started by the shirtwaist workers, all girls. Eleanor was 18 and the girls were all 20. They were Jewish girls and Italian girls who had gone into the shop right off the boat, and they were on strike. Eleanor did not want her coming out party and her social season of all balls and being written up in the society pages, she was scared. Plus she wanted the new world Madame Sylveste had introduced her to. And back in New York City it was all happening and she wanted to be part of it.


She did not have a happy childhood. Eleanor’s mom had gone to Heaven, her father was in disgrace with the family, and sent down South, and Eleanor had to live with her grandmother on East 37th Street. Her grandmother dressed her in clothes which were totally old-fashioned and awful, and the result is that at the private school Eleanor was sent to none of the girls would have anything to do with her. Eleanor spent all her time in the attic reading and having fantasies. She had a horrible childhood. Altho she loved her father dearly and he loved her dearly, but things didn’t work out for them to be together. He would promise to come see Eleanor and then get drunk and forget to see her.


She is just at the point when the coming out party is being prepared for her. It will be in November, her birthday, and then the social season begins right afterward, and she is dreading it. The newspapers write it all up, and she doesn’t want to be in the newspapers. And after she came back from Madame Sylveste’s she is disgusted with all her uncles, all they do is drink and carry on, and one of them actually fired shots out the window. They have spent the summer at their country estates in Long Island or Westchester, playing tennis, having sport, and they are all looking forward to the horse show at Madison Square Garden.