(When Cora called me 7 years ago to wish me Happy Birthday, I assumed she was still back in NYC. At the end of the conversation I asked "what time is it back there in New York?" She said "I am in Tucson, Anne, I moved here two years ago." Since then we have talked 3 times on the phone, last night was the 3rd time. But we still have not seen each other)
“Cora called last night”
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Well Cora called yesterday evening right while I was in the middle of writing an email to Linda. I did recognize her voice, even tho my mind had to travel a little to recognize it. I was happy she called because the day before, and that morning, I had planned to call her sister to get her phone number to call her. I wanted to talk to her. We seem to go a few years in between phone calls which is fine with both of us. And then suddenly we each want to talk to the other. She doesn’t live very far from me, and we probably pass her apartment complex every day on way to the pool. We shop in the same supermarket, Fry’s. We both use the same bank in Fry’s, but we have not seen each other in Tucson. The last time we saw each other was on the Lower East Side of New York.
I got very excited when I found out in my first phone call from her she shops at Fry’s every day. When our supermarket close by closed down, and we moved over to shopping at Frys too, I thought “I will bump into Cora.” I had my eyes peeled. But then I realized she shops at night, I shop in the day, of course I will never see her. And when I told her last night “we shop at Fry’s now,” she got very excited and said “I will look for you.” But I said “it won’t do any good, you shop in the middle of the night, we shop between 3 and 4 in the afternoon, that is when you are just waking up.”
She told me she is notorious for spending all night at Fry’s and I am sure she is. She arrives at 2 AM. I started to tell her about the public swimming pool we go to which is close to her, I thought she’d like to go. But my impression is she doesn’t get out of the house till 11 PM, and what swimming pool is open then. She said she really wants to get off her schedule of being up all night and sleeping during the day. But I thought, what is the point, she has been on this schedule for past 40 years. It seemed to me when you have spent 40 years trying to change something and you haven’t changed it, why not just accept it. “So you’re a night owl, big deal! why not allow it?” I asked her. “Because it is very hard when I have a doctor’s appointment or a dentist appointment” she said. She said “I stay up so late sometimes the dawn comes, the light and the bird song, and I love the bird song, and it seems natural to be up with the light, not going to sleep right afterwards.” I said “not all animals are day animals, some are night animals.” “That’s true” she said, “I forgot about that.”
Sitting here right now it occurs to me Cora likes this business of trying to change her schedule. At the time I thought, she should either just change it, or accept it, it makes no difference which one, but to be on her own back about it all the time seemed like a poor solution. But she said she read a book about insomnia, and her friend told her it is natural to go to sleep an hour later each night. So maybe she finds it interesting to research this topic. Maybe she likes the project of trying to change her sleep schedule.
She does have a boyfriend in Tucson, Larry, who was born here, who is 7 years younger than she is. According to Cora there are major problems in their relationship, and just the night before, she had psyched herself up to try to break it off with him. In the past Cora has always had a boyfriend which was a major sex affair. And now that we are no longer little chickadees, I was wondering if this pattern still holds. It does in fact. I now realize all my friends who never married, who had boyfriends their whole life, are still going right on now having boyfriends. They each have a boyfriend now.
I said “O Cora I have to tell you, Edgar Cayce says the Signs are all two back, so you’re not a Capricorn, you are a Scorpio, and your Mercury and Venus in Capricorn are Scorpio too, you have a lot of Scorpio.” I thought, that sure makes sense to me. From the minute I became best friends with Cora when I was 22 years old, I heard a lot about her sex life. I never knew anyone who talked about their sex life like Cora. For everyone else it is like a blanket drawn over it. Either they don’t talk about it, or if they do, there is a kind of hush which goes with it. You experience them pulling back the blanket and deciding to tell their secrets. When they talk about their sex life, it is in a different tone of voice, and in a different atmosphere than when they talk about anything else.
Not Cora! For her it is totally natural. There is absolutely no difference when she talks about her sex life than when she talks about shopping at Fry’s, or any other experience in her life. In fact there was more drama in her voice when she talked about trying to take a cab home from Fry’s on Mothers Day at 1 PM when it was so hot outside. “I thought the wait for the cab to arrive would only be two hours” she said. “But I kept calling and calling. And when he did arrive he charged me 4 dollars for such a short distance. I gave him a five, I said ‘I want to give you a tip.’ But I really thought he charged me too much.” She went into a lot of detail about this famous cab ride. All the waiting. All the times she called from the Fry's telephone.
Just when I put up her chart on my computer and realized she is Scorpio, and all the Scorpio in her chart and that is why she talks about sex so much, her topic had changed to Larry's attempt to seduce her the first time. She said “you don’t know how much self-control it took to say no. I don’t know how I did it. I was so lubricated. I walked home so lubricated. And it was strange because I thought I had become dry. I thought I had become dry from the menopause. But I was so lubricated.”
Now she is mad at Larry because she said “he just thinks I am there to service him sexually and he won’t commit.” So I gather it is a big sex affair. I am not concerned about Larry being unwilling to commit. Because my experience of Cora in the past is she got rid of all the boyfriends who wanted real commitment. Larry’s refusal to commit is probably what keeps her hanging on.
She said “the problem is we have a life style conflict, he says so proudly as if it is a badge of honor, ‘I am a red neck.’” But when I tried to put his chart up, and they asked for first name and last name, and she spelled the last name for me, she said “it is Jewish name.” Cora has had so many boyfriends they couldn’t all have been Jewish. She has had Japanese boyfriends and Chinese boyfriends and Scotch/Irish and Italian and everything. But back in New York it does seem maybe half of them were Jewish, and to my astonishment here in Tucson she found a Jewish boyfriend too. A red neck western Jewish boyfriend.
She also found in Tucson, as she had found everywhere she lived in New York City, a wonderful girlfriend, very close by, who she confides her whole life too, who she loves and who loves her, and helps her with favors. Sylvia does drive her to the dentist. Altho Cora said it was so hot in Sylvia’s old car without air conditioning that her dark glasses with plastic frames started to melt against her face. Cora thinks the problem is Sylvia’s car. But what does Cora know about heat! She’s up all night and sleeps all day. She was only out in the summer heat that one time in Sylvia’s car being driven to her dentist appointment. We don’t have A.C. in the car either. That is how hot it is! It is not because Sylvia has an old car. I wanted to point out to Cora that that is one of the advantages of her nocturnal schedule, she has missed all the heat. But I guess she was already on another topic.
Her reason for calling me is because she watches PBS all the time, on some tiny 5 inch battery operated TV. I said “TVs don’t cost anything anymore, why don’t you get a normal size one?” She said “because I don’t want to miss anything even when I am on the toilet.” Apparently Dr Dwyer was on right now, telling us all if we change our thoughts we will change our life. And Cora had decided to call me, after we hadn’t chatted in years, to tell me about it, so I could turn it on right now and watch it too. She loved it that much she said “PBS is doing its fundraiser and said ‘if you donate $100 we will send you Dr Dwyer’s book on how to change your life by changing your thoughts.’” And Cora said she wants the book so much she is thinking of contributing the 100 dollars.
I said “what is his name again?” “Dwyer” she said. So I looked it up on google and there was his website. And there was the book in hard cover from Hay House, his publisher, for $22. I said “the book is 22 dollars, you can buy it.” She said “KUAT said the ONLY way to get the book is to contribute $100 to them!” I said maybe the library has it.
And then of course we each told each other our sad tales about how we are forbidden to use our library cards now. Cora because she had taken out 2 books about insomnia and forgotten to return them. And when she finally did, they said you have to pay for the books now. Which Cora is actually planning to do so she can have library privileges. I started to tell her my experience, why I don’t have library privileges. But she said “wait! let me turn the phone down, you are so loud Anne.” I said “that’s OK I can talk softer.” I had been loud because her phone conversation was such a steady stream, that to say anything I had to interrupt in the middle of one of the stories. And then I shouted because I figured I had such a brief time to say anything. “I can talk softly, you don’t have to turn the phone down, I don’t have to shout” I said.
Every 15 minutes she interrupted her flow of conversation to say “I am so hungry, and I knew if I called you, I wouldn’t be able to get off in 2 minutes after just telling you to watch Dr Dwyer now. Plus I want to go to Fry’s.” I didn’t let her off the hook. I figured she goes to Fry’s every night and spends all night there. We only talk once every 2-3 years, and last time she called me she was in the middle of moving, I had to let her off, because she was supposed to have all her boxes packed for her friends helping her move. Two hours was a very long time for me to be on the phone too. I haven’t had a two hour telephone conversation with a friend since I left NYC. And it took a few hours afterwards for my mind to be able to think again. I won’t do it again for another few years, but I am not sorry I did it last night. Whether Cora is crazy as a coot or not, I have no idea, but she is my best friend and I love her more than the universe.
The only interesting dialogue we had was about astrology, but unfortunately it was too short-lived for me. 99 percent of the two hour phone conversation was Cora’s long stories about her life. I realized it made no difference whether I listened to them or not, I was just happy to be on the phone with her. I didn’t even hear one word when I was putting her chart and her boyfriend’s chart up on the computer. Or finding out the book she wants with all her heart is only 22 dollar hardback. She said KUAT said she can have the DVD with 200 dollar contribution, but I don’t know why Cora even mentioned that. She has a 5 inch battery operated TV. What would she even do with the DVD.
When we talked about astrology Cora demonstrated all her intelligence. I actually have not connected with her intelligence since the days we were both in our early 20s and sat in my kitchen in the East Village over coffee. Since then all I have ever heard is her long stories about her life. I forgot what a fine clear wonderful intelligence she has, and how much I enjoy it. And I love communicating back and forth with it. But this never happens. At least I know for next time, 3 years down the line, that if I bring up astrology, we can have it for a little while. Cora is so astute about astrology. I learned it from her. She really has a great mind, I have really missed it coming forward in all these years. In fact I completely forgot it existed, until we got on topic of astrology last night.
All in all it was a great conversation altho the ending was not so great. Apparently her doctor told her she has an Attention Deficit Disorder, and Cora does not want to go on psychotropic drugs for it. She read up about the disorder, and it says “you have it if you like to be alone a lot and if you take notes all the time.” I don’t think there is any harm in Cora liking to be alone a lot, so do I. And so what if she likes to take notes! She read up in some natural healing book how to cure this disease (which she does not have!) and it said “Give up tomatoes! give up peaches! give up plums! give up butter! give up milk and cheese! give up sweets and dessert!”
So Cora who loves peaches and plums has given up peaches and plums. And given up all the other things (she loves them too). But luckily by this time my mind was shot, and I did not try to talk her out of giving up all her favorite foods. She tried to get me to give up cigarettes, “you are killing yourself Anne.” I said “I went to the doctor for a check-up some years ago, and he said I am radiantly healthy. And he asked me ‘what is your secret for radiant health?’ And I looked him straight in the face and said ‘I don’t smoke.’”
“Why did you lie to your doctor?” she asked, “did you think he would give you a lecture?” “Yes” I said. “That is my problem” she said, “I lecture too much.” I don’t think Cora lectures too much. I mean maybe she does but who cares, it doesn’t bother me. Isn’t that interesting, nothing Cora does bothers me at all. For me Cora is perfect.
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