Personal Blogs

This week has been challenging to say the least. Minor surgery on Monday, followed by pain and fatigue on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Friday, even though I am still not sleeping through the night as I try to sleep propped up on my back to reduce swelling, I feel almost normal again. I take naps throughout the day, not worried about whether my paid work does or does not get done. Sometimes, needs must. Right now, my need is for sleep. Only one person in my family knows the surgery and two friends, but I don't tell people what I've done. I'm a good secret keeper, like Elaine in Seinfeld. She closes her mouth, zips her hand across her lips, and the secret goes into the vault. That's me. Zipped. I will unzip at some to be determined future point. 

Today, I received my workshop feedback on my upcoming TMA, which leaves me 11 days to revise and perfect my first genre-bending piece. It's a new world for me and one I think I like. I start banging out free-writing for what may become personal essays in the future or might not. Good to hear what worked and what didn't. When two or three students who reviewed my piece in the workshop have the same observation of a specific section or piece, I refocus my energies on that. I also listen to the recording I had made of the piece earlier in the week. The reading aloud helps me find the arrhythms and clunky bits, but hearing it read a few days later, when I have some distance, enables me to hear the arrhythms and clunky bits. 

All in all, after five days of little intellectual work, I feel like I am back into the thick of it. Thank god. 

I have assigned one sense focus to each of the weekdays. Today is Smelly Monday, which simply means that today, I focus on how things smell. 

Today, I had fish for dinner, wild caught Alaskan cod, broiled with a dash of olive oil and citrusy garlic spice sprinkled on top. The fish was left over from yesterday, so it had that day late fish smell to it - not as if it were going bad, but just that it hadn't been popped fresh under the broiler. When I sprinkled the garlic citrusy spice on it yesterday, I took a deep whiff of the herb mixture, trying to figure out what type of citrus - lemon? grapefruit? The garlic was pungent, but there are other herbs in there, all organic. Lemon oil, lime oil, bitter orange oil, along with marjoram and garlic and a whole host of other plants. 

I am not an astute smeller. Per the dictionary "Medically known as hyperosmia, super smellers are people who have a heightened sense of smell compared to the average person." That is not me.

Then as an aftereffect of cooking fish in the autumn, i.e., I couldn't keep my windows opened because there's a nor'easter moving through with heavy rain and cold temps, my apartment smelled like day old fish. Prior to smelly Monday, my apartment had a funky smell to it anyway. It is a 150-year old building, but there are also about 300 apartments, and someone who's heavy into smoking weed lives in my section of the building, so there's often a funky, dope smell to the hallway anyway. Recently I'd bought incense at the local yoga studio I go to.

To me, pretty much all incense simply smells like incense. The two I have on my counter are Bitter Pink Ginger and Japanese Mint, and really, once I've lit them, I can't really tell the difference. When I hold the stick of Japanese mint to my nose, I can smell a woody almost tangy mint, but what type of mint, I couldn't say. Spearmint? Not peppermint - not sweet enough. The Bitter Pink Ginger is delightfully gingery, almost tangy, when I smell the unlit stick in the pretty pink and black box it's packaged in. However, once lit, they both smell like incense, nearly inseparable to me. I switch back and forth between the two, hoping that over time, I'll be better able to distinguish the mint from the ginger. 

While making dinner, I cooked up bacon while I was air-frying my frozen roasted potatoes, which I love, but which I am far too lazy to make from scratch. Trader Joe's does a much better job of the roasted potatoes than I'd ever do. The smell of bacon is like the smell of fish: it permeates everything. But since bacon is the food of the gods, I don't care that my entire apartment now smells like fresh cooked bacon, even if I won't have any until tomorrow's breakfast. 

While I've been sitting here with all these scents surrounding me, I opened the window to let in the smell of fresh air and the sound of rain dropping. For all the scents I've been describing, I really prefer the smell of fresh air and sunshine and new fallen rain. I'm not one for scented candles or glade plug ins or even the incense I'm burning. But winter is soon upon us and opening windows will let in frigid air, but even that is sometimes necessary.

I did realize as I practiced smelling today that smell and taste can't really be separated. The mint scented chapstick tasted like mint on my lips and I could feel the slight waxiness of it as I slid it across the surface of my skin. They're all intertwined.

Tomorrow is Tasting Tuesday, so there will be smelling and tasting and texture and all those other sensory components. This is a good practice for capturing all the sensory details I can. . 

• • Monday - Smell
  • Tuesday - Taste
  • Wednesday - Hearing
  • Thursday - Seeing (thus the walking around DC)
  • Friday - Feeling

There's no particular reason for the order, just the Tuesday-tasting and Friday-feeling had an alliteration that would make it easier to remember. And that's not to say, for instance, Friday (Trevor Noah show) can't overlap with Tuesday (Indian food here in DC). But on Wednesday, I'll know, remind myself, practice concentrating on what I hear, even the sounds that annoy me or pique my interest or confound me.  

In A803, I am reading about blending the boundaries of how one writes. As a historian, I learned long ago that facts are well, not always factual. There's the oft-quoted comment that history is written by the victor, which is true. But it's also the choice of what constitutes a 'fact'. One of the worst and most unreliable pieces of evidence is eye-witness testimony. I talk to my siblings and their memories of the same event is significantly different from mine, and their interpretation is even further away than what was seen, heard or felt. 

I remember my sister saying to me she never even wanted to take the clarinet in high school, but dad played clarinet so she took clarinet. I took clarinet as well but precisely because it was something I could share with my father. 

A friend of mine who turned 80 this year has been taking a memoir writing class throughout the pandemic. She sent a piece out to her four surviving siblings, all of whom came back with both a slightly different story about the same event and basically told her that what she wrote is not what really happened. I told her that it was "her" happening - that's all that mattered. So when one talks about bending genres, creative nonfiction or even nonfiction writing of any kind is always bending genres, crossing boundaries, erasing boundaries. It's all mutable. All of it. 

Today instead of CrossFit, I went to yoga. I set an intention at the beginning of the year to do 300 minutes per week of physical activity, which is really only 5, 1-hour blocks or 5 days of 1 hour of activity. It usually works out to one hour blocks. I've decided CrossFit four days a week is one day too much. My joints hurt, my muscles ache, and yet I love it. So I'm switching out yoga for CrossFit for the fourth day. My decision making about yoga studios is this: Is it within a short walk of where I live? Realistically, I'm not going to schlepp across town for yoga as I will for CF, but even that is barely 1.5 miles away. This yoga studio? 5 minutes walking, door to floor.

Much like my apartment, the studio is on the top floor of an old mill building with massive windows overlooking the rooftops. As I was standing around trying to figure out how to actually get into the building, I saw a hot guy in a Harley Davidson T-shirt with a sleeve of tattoos around his lower arm. Slung over his shoulder was his yoga mat! 

"I can only guess you're going to yoga. Can I follow you? It's my first time here."

"Oh sure, c'mon up. Fifth floor. Great place." 

I rolled out my mat on the side, not knowing what the traditions were and just lay down to stretch out a little. The ceiling was the original wide planks of the mill, but this time with little green pinpricks of light that moved and circled in slow motion. When we did our opening "ooooohhhhhhmmmmm" the room felt like it vibrated, not with volume but with base. As night fell, the yoga instructor slowly pulled the curtains on the now dark city and lowered the lights in the room, cocooning us in soft sighing space. My intention went I went to yoga was just to be there with my body and my breath and to ease into the movement and the stretches. This encircling space didn't need to be a space for my strength, but rather for my letting go.  

I did not fall off the earth. But I did get on an airplane, fly across an ocean, and take a road trip around Ireland and Northern Ireland that included: Hiking Slieve Binnian, walking Rossnowlagh Beach, swimming at Rossnowlagh, sea kayaking, eating fabulous food, crowd-watching after the All Ireland Game at Croke Park, which for once is an Irish word spelled exactly as it sounds, eating great Lebanese food in Dublin, watched the closing of the Harp Bridge, watched sailboats motor up the river than fly their spinnakers to get back down, watched a camogie game in of all places East Belfast, congratulated a friend who started the first ever East Belfast GAA, went to Giants Causeway but got so comfy in the cafe the sun set before we saw the Giants Causeway, drove the Antrim Coast, took a tour of the Bogside in Derry from a man who's father was the 13th victim on Bloody Sunday, crossed and re-crossed and crossed again the invisible yet ever present border between north and south, tried to remember which money was which because I had 3 currencies in my wallet, met my third cousin once removed, had cappuccinos, visited the graves of my great-grandparents, visited my cousins house, talked family history for hours because Americans are all rootless immigrants regardless of what the politicians say, watched my friend's daughter practice football while I sat behind the net, with the sun shining and clouds skittering, hung out with my step-grandchild if there is such a thing, had lunch and dinner and birthday cake with my step-kids and their mom, walked the streets of Belfast as if I'd never been there before, rented a car that cost more than my airline tickets, didn't clip a wing mirror or leave a scratch on it, took the express bus to Dublin Airport, forgot to get a PCR test before returning to the US, but I think the Irish were glad to just get us on a plane, touched down at Logan, and immediately wanted to turn around and go back. 

When I step outside this morning, the chill of the air raises goose bumps on my arms. I briefly debate going back for a hoodie, but can't be bothered walking up the three flights of steps. I know once I start walking and get into the sun, I don't need the hoodie anyway. Overnight it is as if summer switched off in the heavens, and autumn switched on. Technically, the first day of fall isn't until September 22, the day after Labor Day always feels like the first day of fall. 

I noticed two weeks ago how the rays of the setting sun were slanting in my windows earlier every day, and that the blazing dawn that used to wake me at 4:30 has crept later and later, and I find myself sleeping until eight o'clock. And yesterday was my last day of sailing at the boat club, at least for this season. 

I turn the corner on to Appleton Street, and the sun warms me as I thought it would. I zig zag through my gritty neighborhood, the crosswalks a patch of red paint and tar where they've attempted to spot patch the holes rather than re-do the entire crossing. I keep a wide berth of the shooting gallery, which has a nearly daily visitation by EMTs and fire trucks, but I notice lines of people outside the community health center. Only then does the connecdtion dawn on me. The methadone clinic must be at the community health center, and the addicts who aren't on methadone are the ones who end up in the shooting gallery getting narcan sprayed up their noses so they can live to overdose on another day.

I continue my one block up and one block over routine to Owls Diner, an old dining car that has now been permanently located and a full kitchen added in back. It's the kind of diner that's only open 6 hours a day and serves only calorie laden food. I order the Irish Benny - eggs Benedict of a sort to be considered Irish. The only Benedict part is that the eggs are poached and they are on an English muffin, but it sits on a bed of hash, and is drowned in cheddar cheese sauce, not Hollandaise, although I did have that option. Oh, and huge side of home fries. 

"Do you want baked beans, too?" the waitress asks, as if I need any more food on this plate. 

"Nah, I'm good. I'll get a real Irish breakfast in Dublin on Friday." 

Conversation ensues about flying, airlines, vaccination status, PCRs, and whether my flight will actually go. I don't says "It's all in then hands of god" but I do think that. Who knows?

On my way back home after breakfast, I'm walking past a corner block, surrounded by a chain link fence and fronted with some aromatic recycling bins. Then I noticed the black-eyed Susans popping through the fence, having overcome the barrier and hanging over the side walk. Then the purple salvias catch my eye, and I realize this is some sort of urban garden. Beehives in vivid black and white blocks are snug in one corner, and then I see Bruce. I come to find out that's his name as I circle the chain link looking for the entrance to what is clearly an herb and flower garden now that I've had time to see and smell it. Bruce is the owner of Red Antler Apothecary, just down the street from my apartment. 

He tells me one of the hives was robbed, but has to explain to me what that means in bee language. No one stole the hive, but honey bees invade another hive and steal their honey. Bad Bees, I think to myself. 

"But the other hive is good and healthy," Bruce tells me. 

"And it looks like your garden is, too." I say. 

We chat about the hot rainy summer and how most of his plants thrived. I tell him about how my lavendar was so water logged it started to get root rot and died. 

"It's our first summer here," he says, as he continues to harvest for his natural remedies. 

I head the last block home, sliding my face mask back up as I cross the street from the methadone lines, not out of fear but out of fear of Covid. I'm getting on a flight Friday, and I cannot get sick now. 

As I head back towards my fourth floor loft apartment overlooking the old canals that fed the Lowell textile industry, I'm glad I moved here. Glad to meet Bruce. To join the conversation at the Owl Diner. Even to see how hard some people's lives are. It reminds me that even on my worst days, I have a very good life indeed. That flowers and addicts and diners and gardens all exist side by side in this new city of mine.

Here in the US, it's the Labor Day weekend, the last holiday of the summer that opened with Memorial Day, was intersected by the Fourth of July, and closed by Labor Day. There is no laboring going on. There was, however, sailing. Today was nearly perfect sailing weather: Sunshine with brilliant blue skies, with a just a few wispy white clouds very high up, as if staged to make the blue of the sky and the turquoise water even more brilliant. The wind was a bit lighter that perfect sailing requires, but enough to get a good, long race in. 

This time was a W, upwind, downwind, upwind, downwind, upwind so that we finished close to the mouth of the harbor. The course was a mile long, so only one race today. Partly because we'll race Sunday and Monday, but also so people can spend time with visiting family.

We blew the start - crossed over two seconds too early, so we had to tack around and re-start, which put us behind the rest of the fleet. Still, with good skippering on Tom's part and excellent crewing on my part, we managed to pull ourselves up, sail fast, and finish 3rd in the race. Super end to a great day of racing with two more to go. 

And then, on Friday, I get on my first flight in 19 months and will get off the plane in Dublin. This is all assuming Ireland doesn't close the door on tourists. Life, where I live at least, is starting to feel normal. We have about 70% vaccination, but still Delta is spiking and I wear my mask when in grocery stores or inside areas with heavy traffic flow. Just in case. 

When I return from Ireland, the second year of my OU course in Creative Writing, A803, will begin in earnest, but that's okay because sailing season will be over, dark will fall at 4:30 PM, and I won't be yearning to be outside - or at least not as much. Although I do already have my first winter snowshoeing, cross country skiing trip planned...

But that's another blog post.

The tag line in the town where I live is "Lowell - a lot to like." Around the old mill buildings, converted to so-so loft apartments, the banners of "a lot to like" have started to fade from the sun and rain and maybe winter. I moved here in July, so I don't know when they were placed on the lamp posts, as if by looking up at them I won't see the smashed jar of Ragu spaghetti sauce, spattered over the side walk in shards of glass and puddles that look like blood. A lot to like but not the person who had neither will nor initiative to clean up the mess they created. 

And yet, as I walked across the rain damp street so I could get a better look at the massive Queen Anne brick building that was the First Congregational Church, I thought, there's still a lot to like here. As I gaze at the building with its massive point-arched windows and slate roof, I see the red square with the white x in it. Behind me, also stunning in its scale is the Lowell Public Library, of which I will soon be a member. I think the red/white sign means demolition but I hope not. That amazing Victorian brick building needs a new life, an investment so that it lasts another hundred years, creates a new history for a new century. I don't know what the red/white sign indicates, so I turn into the library.

"Are they demolishing the building across the street," I ask the librarian, behind her plexi-glass shield.

"Oh I hope not," she responds. Clearly as upset as I am that a building as magnificent as the old church would come down.

"I don't know," I said. "It has that funny sign. The red square with the big white x. Isn't that a demolition sign?" I am heartened that she is as emotional about that splendid edifice as I am, even as she works in a splendid edifice that has clearly been lovingly saved. 

"I hope I'm wrong," I say as I gaze at the heavy oak shelves holding thousands of books. "Can I walk round?" 

"Oh yes, we're open until 9. I'm going to call someone. He'll be able to tell me what the sign means." 

I don't see her again as I wonder and wander around this granite Richardsonian Romanesque building fulfilling its purpose as a center of erudition. Only after I'm home, and I start writing this blog, do I go online and learn the red/white x sign means: "structural or interior hazards exist to a degree that consideration should be given to limit fire fighting to exterior operations only." 

I hope it never comes to that. I hope the librarian was able to find the person who could tell her that, 'no, the building isn't going to be knocked down.' And I hope someone comes to save it. 

Two short pieces I'd written as part of my TMA - one a poem about Cork and one about life, death and writing during Covid were published this summer. I feel validated as a writer. Not that publication means it's good or makes me a better person, but it just reminded me that what I write can have a larger audience than just me, in my living room, with my red leather journal and a cup of coffee, scribbling away. I'm getting braver. 

The curtain falls: https://herstryblg.com/true/2021/8/10/the-curtain-falls

I was in the kitchen pulling the slightly wilted romaine and mushy radishes out of the fridge, when Penny came and leaned up against my legs. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth, almost purple at the tip and her eyes were red and watery as she leaned up against my bare calf, panting, panting, panting, like she'd run a mile and couldn't catch her breath. Her rib cage was heaving and I knelt down onto the marbled rubber floor, and put my hand on her head, her chest, her ribs, all hot and sweaty but she'd only been sleeping in the living room, on the couch, which I knew she shouldn't be doing. But before my brother went on vacation with the wife and kids leaving me with the four cats, and Penny, their beautiful Brittany spaniel who always greeted me at the door with a frenzy of delight. When they'd left, I said "my job is the same as it is when you used to leave the boys with me. Keep everyone alive until you get back." And here she was looking like she was having a heart attack if dogs can even have heart attacks. And they're at Atlantis in the Bahamas and I don't have the vet's name or phone number and I don't even know which of the five or twenty-five hotels they're staying in and my brother isn't answering his cell phone, no one's responding to the texts. 

I breathe deep and slowly as I bring Penny over to the chaise longue that sits under the air conditioner that I've had turned off, even though the days have been muggy, the constant noise and cold air is worse than the still mugginess.  I get Penny up there and turn on the air and spend the next five minutes on the phone with various operators in Atlantis spelling my brother's name, and finally, Hamilton, my teenage nephew comes on the phone and I don't recognize his voice. And then he wants me to call another number, in the adjoining room, and I tell him "Just go get your father or mom. I don't have time to call back." So he does.

"Does she look like she's having a seizure?" Sandra asks. 

"At first, yeah, she did, but she's a little better now. Less distressed, like she's slowly catching her breath." 

"She's had these spells before. She might be overheated. She might be having a little seizure. one time her legs gave out when we were walking down the steps to the park and she was shaky and confused."

I lay damp paper towels on her, slowly pat her head, let her lick the water from my fingers. She won't drink from the bowl but will only stick her pink tongue out to lap it off her paws, my fingers, the damp fabric of the chair. Slowly, in fits and starts, she returns to normal, her breathing slows, the racing heart beat returns to normal. Now she lies on the cool wooden floor behind the sofa, resting softly. Occasionally her head pops up when she hears one of the cats or something catches her attention, as if nothing has happened. She's back to normal. But I'm not. I'm alert to every sound she makes, every time she moves her body and I hear her nails slide across the floor. I have the vets info now. I know who to call. I can relax. And so can Penny.

If I set my "Who can read this?" option to "Visible to anyone in the world", how does that work? Anyone try this?