Memoirous

Last night was a momentous occasion—and I neglected to get a new outfit for it. Nevertheless, we had a great time at this: Goreyesque . As you can see from the details, my daughter, Grace Hertenstein, was a featured reader, reading her creepy short story (completely in the Goreyesque vein) “The New Arrival.” She was second to last before Joe Meno, whose work The Office Girl I loved. Anyway the reading gala gave us free access to the exhibit, where coincidentally one of the first display cases I visited made mention of Gorey illustrating V.R. Lang’s memoirs. The name rang a bell, but could it be . . . ? Bunny? What triggered this question was the fact that Gorey in 1949 was at Harvard and was initiated into drama poetry—this was exactly what happened to Frank O’Hara, AND one his muses was Bunny Lang. He would often return to Cambridge to write and perform in the Poet’s Theater. Gorey said of Poets’ Theater, “I was connected with this thing called the Poets’ T...

A friend just posted at her blog ( click here ) about how she was recently rescued by her friends when the car she borrowed because her’s had suddenly stopped working got towed while picking up her daughter from school. I know, convoluted. But in a matter of ten minutes life got even more complicated, Usually this happens to me when I have especially low blood-sugar and can no longer function rationally—that’s when crazy gets even crazier. Why is it that things decide to go haywire when I need to either eat or pee? Anyway, Tammy blessed me with her blog by basically telling her readers I was a saint. Not really. So I wanted to pay it forward today also. Wednesday I had to drive up to Winnetka to pick up some artwork for a show I will tell you about at the end of this blog post. Driving back at a relatively slow speed I hit what felt like the curb. It was that abrupt. Wham! But, what was likely a pothole. I swear I NEVER saw it. Right away the car did this far-rump, far...

Here is some information about the Dune Shacks in Cape Cod ( see my previous post!) . The shacks were originally built to house life-saving personnel or serve as shelter for shipwrecked seafarers. I believe there is a bit of the seafarer in me, one who has lost her way and needs a place of respite. The structures were built in the 19 th century and today there are only 18 left—most incorporated into the National Park Service, part of the Cape Cod National Seashore. They are weather-beaten and storm battered. The boards like bleached bones. Airy, mice-ridden, more open to the elements than protecting from them. None has electricity, running water, or toilets. You come to commune with nature or find your muse amongst the sand or the saints who have gone on before. Apparently the playwright Eugene O’Neill, who spent many summers there with his wife, Agnes Boulton. O’Neill wrote Anna Christie (1920) and The Hairy Ape (1921) while living in his shack. My shack has a name...

This Luci Shaw poem expresses how I felt on my bike ride--was it only TWO DAYS AGO that the ground was covered in snow and the wind whipping around me?? I was praying for an April thaw at the time Psalm for the January Thaw Luci Shaw Blessed be God for thaw, for the clear drops that fall, one by one, like clocks ticking, from the icicles along the eaves. For shift and shrinkage, including the soggy gray mess on the deck like an abandoned mattress that has lost its inner spring. For the gurgle of gutters, for snow melting underfoot when I step off the porch. For slush. For the glisten on the sidewalk that only wets the foot sole and doesn’t send me slithering. Everything is alert to this melting, the slow flow of it, the declaration of intent, the liquidation. Glory be to God for changes. For bulbs breaking the darkness with their green beaks. For moles and moths and velvet green moss waiting to fill the driveway cracks. For the way the sun pierces the window ...

So on my way back from the Festival of Faith and Writing I got a phone call. But, first I have to tell you about coming back from Grand Rapids. If you read part one of this post, I’d alluded to my fragile sense of mortality. This past winter had snowed me, the cold wore me down. What I considered part of my mental and emotional psyche had been buried under what meteorologists were calling a mini-ice age. I felt like a giant ground sloth.   from Field Museum So I cooked up a plan. I was going to ride my bike back from Grand Rapids to Chicago. Of course I came up with this idea back in the warmth of December. I did research and booked tickets on Greyhound because I could bring my boxed bike, re-assemble and be good to go. Sort of. I unpacked the bike at the GR bus station to discover I’d left the front wheel back in Chicago. One snafu behind me. I had my husband UPS the wheel and borrowed a bike to get to the conference the first day. By day 2 and 3 I was using my ...

Festival of Faith and Writing I cannot begin to tell you how much I was looking forward to this writer’s conference after what seemed like a forever winter (ongoing?). I kept checking the website at least once a week to see if new writers had been added as speakers. I signed up for the Festival newsletter and got updates. I read the recommended books—not all of them, but enough to tell you I loved Chris Beha’s Whatever Happened to Sophie Wilder . Please read this book—it is a mystery, not really, in a style that reminded me somewhat of Oscar Wilde ( Pic of Dorian Grey ). The mystery it turns out has to do more with incarnation and transmutation, about grace in the face of struggle. I also needed this conference. I needed a piece of warmth in the midst of what felt like human coldness. It was a spark. A rekindling. What I hoped would be the start of spring. Well . . . . I’d been attending the FFW since 1994, twenty years. So I’ve gotten used to what to expect. The...

Memoirous is about memories. Memory-ish. Last week I taught a class in Winnetka, at OCWW (Off-Campus Writers Workshop. Not sure why campus, because we are definitely not on any campus.) I led a seminar on writing memoir. My abilities are of the –ous and –ish variety. A kind of instructing where I tie in life experience and what I think of as horse sense. Reaching back in our mind for a memory, and from there building. One memory leading to another. Preparing for the class I had a synapse flash of memory. It was triggered from reading the Collected Poems of Ron Padgett, a second-generation poet of the New York School (which was never a school—just as OCWW was never on a campus). There was a line hidden Valley Ranch and immediately I wanted to Google my memory banks. As a kid my family went two or three times to a horse farm in Kentucky—not even to the horse farm country of that state, closer I believe to the wasteland side, where nothing grows except commercial real estat...

People can be so awful. Nicolae Ceaușescu was awful. I was horrified when I saw pictures of little AIDs babies crying in their beds, rocking back and forth in their cribs, infected and abandoned because of Ceaușescu and his repressive policies. Then I felt sorry for Ceaușescu and Elena his wife when they were shot, their bodies lined up for evidence on Christmas Day 1989. Then later I hated all the ugly regime architecture that he wasted million, trillions of leu building while his people starved. But I was sure to visit the Palace when I was in Bucharest. At the time I was checking out Casa Laura built for AIDs orphans, but now empty. All the children had managed to grow into adulthood and the ones still needing supervision because of disabilities were finally placed with loving families. I felt sad that the house was no longer needed, but heartened that it had fulfilled its mission. I felt bad about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Hapsburgs, an...