What’s in a Name?

            I must have called her by the wrong name. She looked just like Linda at my old school, but in the new school she was Joyce. I almost never call people by their name because their faces shoot poisoned arrows when I get it wrong. There were always at least two Lindas and Nancys and Joyces in every school. If I didn’t have a name, no one could forget it or remember it. They would often spell my name wrong, with a “y” or a “j” instead of an “i.” I never met anyone with my name until I was 30 years old. It was exciting, like proof that I existed. A friend’s daughter was always one of two or three Sarahs in her class. When she went to college, she decided to change to a nickname. She polled everyone she knew and settled on Sadie, a name common among my grandparents. How does it feel to have a common name? When I first went to eastern Europe, there were three other Sonias at the conference, with the “i” and with the “j,” even a Sanya. I had slipped into a slot that fit exactly. My name had become a tribe. My daughter’s name, Christie, can be spelled at least six different ways, and it’s not short for anything. She hates to see it spelled wrong, as though she is someone else. A name has power, but to be nameless is freeing. A name ties you down to one meaning, an anchor to safety, but also a weight to drag you down.

Slice of Life Tuesday

Do Men Have a Better Sense of Humor, 
or Just a Weirder One?

            Recently my husband and I were discussing what makes something funny, and whether something being funny could ever be offensive. He thought that if something was truly funny, it couldn’t be offensive, and someone who thought it wasn’t funny had no sense of humor. I thought that it always depended on where one was in relation to the object of the joke.

            Came a case study today. My husband tells me the following joke someone told him once.

            Mickey Mantle takes his teammates Whitey Ford and Billy Martin hunting in his home state of Oklahoma. Mickey thinks the best hunting will be on his friend’s land, so they go to the friend’s house, where Mickey says he should go in and ask  permission, as a courtesy, since he knows the friend will say yes, while Whitey and Billy stay outside.

            Mickey and his friend exchange greetings, and the friend says that of course they can hunt on his property. But Mickey could do him a favor. The friend’s favorite horse is old and sick, and really should be put down, but he just doesn’t have the heart to shoot him himself. Could Mickey shoot the horse for him? Of course, Mickey says.

            When he joins Whitey and Billy, however, he decides to play a little joke on them. “That son of a bitch,” he reports, “he won’t let us hunt here. I don’t know why he’s being such a shit. I’ve got to get even with him.”

            He points to the old horse in the paddock next to the house. “That’s his favorite horse. I’ve got a good mind to shoot him.”

            “Don’t do that,” Whitey says. “We can go hunt somewhere else.”

            “No,” Mickey insists. “I’m going to shoot his horse.” And while he and Whitey continue to argue over whether Mickey will shoot the horse, they hear gunshots. Billy is shooting the friend’s cattle.

            I grimaced. How stupid, I thought. Yet my husband was laughing. “Of course,” I said, “that is only funny if you think men are really stupid.” Yes, my husband said, still chuckling.

            “And what’s really crazy,” I continued, “is that men tell this joke about each other, and they think it’s funny!” My husband laughed even more, since apparently what I’d said was really funny

Tuesday Slice of Life

I love small world connections; they make me feel like I am part of a community wherever I go. Two of them happened yesterday evening in one place.

     I’d gone to an author reading and interview at a bookstore in Brooklyn. Shortly before it started, a black woman sat at the end of the first row; she looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her. And just as the author was being introduced, a woman with curly blonde hair sat in the empty seat next to me. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t say anything because the author was beginning to read.

     As soon as the event was over, we turned to each other and almost simultaneously said, “Were you at the Voice?” Then she said, “Are you Sonia?” I nodded, and said, “I remember your last name, but not your first,” and she said, “Barbara.” She had been an intern for one of the investigative reporters, more than 30 years ago, and we hadn’t seen each other since, though it turned out she’s later been hired by the husband of a college friend of mine.

     And the woman at the end of the first row? We’d met at a writers’ event a couple of weeks earlier and, we learned last night, she’s a colleague of a good friend of mine.

     So, yes, we are no more than a few links away from everyone else on the planet, and only one or two from those in our own city.

Thank you, Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon

Thank you, JP Howard, and Samiya Bashir, and the Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon for your organizing and energy and support. I have not written anything for weeks, then today was the August Salon, and this is what came out. I will write more, and more often.

How to Connect When You Do Not Feel Connected

1. Connect  one thought to another thought.

2. Connect one thought to an action.

3. Conect one action to another action.

4. Connect yourself to yourself.

5. Connect your pain to your fear.

6. Connect your fear to what feeds it.

7. Disconnect your fear from its source.

8. Bypass your pain with a dream.

9. Chase your dream into the underbrush.

10. Track your dream with stealth and love.

11. Ambush your dream as it steals away.

12. Hide from your dream.

13. Let your dream find you.

14. Connect yourself to your dream.

15. Connect others to your dream, one by one, until you are multitudes.

Dancing at the Reunion

Dancing

            The music started, a little jazzy. Where was the Motown? Where was the disco? The punk? It was my 50th college reunion, and this was the Saturday night dance.

            My college had had two weekly dances. Friday night was folk dancing, Saturday night was the twist party. I loved rock and roll, had loved it from the moment I heard it on the radio years before, on "Jukebox Saturday Night." I loved it even though my mother was soft on Elvis Presley -- she didn't denounce him like all the other grownups did. I loved the syncopated rhythm, the rough yet crooning sound, the harmonies.

            I only knew how to dance by watching "American Bandstand." No one ever asked me out on a date, so I didn't get much practice. Instead, I would hold onto the doorknob of my bedroom, as though it was my partner's hand, and try out steps.

            Now, at college, the twist was hot (go, Chubby Checker). I was shy, didn't go anywhere by myself, but my roommate, from Long Island, was brash and had enough attitude for both of us. The twist was the quintessential lone dance -- you could have a partner, but you didn't need one. I would stand near the wall, but still feel part of the dance floor, and twist away. It was easy, and I felt wrapped up inside the music, the rhythm (Ray Charles, "Hit the Road, Jack"; Del Shannon, "Runaway"; the Shirelles; the Everly Brothers). I almost didn't want a boy to ask if we could  dance, because then I would become attached to him, I would have to talk, ask questions, wonder what he would want to do next or if he would want to take me outside, and that was the part of dating I knew nothing about.

            More than 50 years later, I was no longer shy. Dancing was still the abandon of movement, rhythm taking over my feet, arms, hips. I no longer needed to stay at the edgeofthe dance floor, though I couldn’t be the first one. A woman, maybe in her 50s, danced onto the floor, and then I leaped up. I could be second.  (She said, maybe a little gleefully, she was humiliating her son. He remained in the darkness, a beer in hand.) We danced in the old rock and roll style, alone but but oriented around each other. The couple from the 1950s class joined us, with a friend. I was glad that the first people out on the floor were the oldest.

Slice of Life, 50th Reunion

Reunion

            There are so many slices I could report from this past weekend. It was my 50th college reunion, two days packed with events, weather, people I knew, people whose names I vaguely remembered, people whose faces were definitely not familiar. But the main reason I was there was Saturday night’s Div Dance. (It’s too complicated to explain wht “Div” means, so I won’t.)

            Saturday morning and into midafternoon, it rained. A deluge. A big tent on the central lawn, the venue for our meals, and the dance, was on ground that had become a quagmire. So the dance was relocated to the theater building.

            After dinner I wandered down to the theater, fireflies flickering right and left. Outside the building half a dozen people had gathered, one woman with a bottle of wine on a folding chair. (Was the chair hers?) We were waiting for the sound system to be set up. I chatted with a man from the class of ’75, a faculty member around his generation, and a graduate from 2007. But I was impatient for music, so I and the ’07 graduate went inside to see what was the holdup.

            The theater stage was the main floor to the left of the entrance, with stadium seats rising to the right. Near the back wall was a table with an array of electronic equipment. A faculty member I knew from New York was testing the fog machine; it worked. He was waiting for the  DJ to arrive with the computer.

            The DJ turned out to be a lawyer from one of the 1990s classes. She was wearing a blue T-shirt that proclaimed: "Antioch College Bootcamp for the Revolution." She needed a min-in cable, but no one knew what that was. She was handed a USB cable, but that didn’t work. There was a lot of unplugging and switching of cables. The soundboards looked like the control panels of a small plane, much more complicated than a pile of vinyl, stacked on a turntable. I wandered over to the seats and talked to a graduate from the mid-’50s.

            Finally the music started, a little jazzy. Where was Motown? Where was disco? Where was punk? The empty dance floor lit up, but I couldn’t be the first one. A woman, maybe in her 50s, danced onto the floor, and then I leaped up. I could be second. We danced in the old rock and roll style, alone but but oriented around each other. The couple from the 1950s class joined us, with a friend. I was glad that the first people out on the floor were the oldest.

Tuesday's Slice of Life, a little late

Yesterday I took part in the Urban Librarians Unite Read-In, a movement to promote and support public libraries and also protest budget cuts to public libraries. People read for 15 minutes at a stretch for 24 hours straight. (Yes, all night too, and that's when people can read their favorite porn and erotica.)

This year it was next to City Hall, as the City Council is currently debating the budget. I read from 5 to 5:15 (from Carola Dibbell's new, and first, novel, The Only Ones, which I highly recommend), and hung around for an hour altogether, before and after. The scene around the read-in was almost as fascinating as the readings and readers themselves.

There were two tents, one for the reader (with mike), the one with three rows of seats for anyone who wanted to stay and listen. I was there around the time people were getting off from work. Most people walked right by between the tents. Some looked over to see what was going on, a few paused to read the signs, but some walked on as though they didn't notice a thing out of the ordinary. A few did detour around the audience tent -- they noticed, and didn't want to interfere.

The woman before me read all of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, and then something from a book about Beatrix Potter and her garden, to fill out her 15 minutes. The person after me was a father and his three-year-old daughter. The father read from Dr. Seuss's I Wish I Had Duck Feet, and the last word of every fourth (or so) line was supplied by the little girl, who had obviously memorized the whole story. Once she realized that the mike magnified her voice, she could hardly wait to shout her word into the mike. And when we all laughed, she was even happier. I'm sure she will demand a microphone for her next birthday.

Friday Slices of Life

I

            In the Village for an errand this afternoon. Walking down Greenwich Avenue, I passed the school yard at P.S. 41. Boys and girls were running around and playing and shouting, but the gate to the street was closed because school hadn’t let out yet. Still, many parents were massed around the gate, waiting. (Did they want to get their children home quickly so they could leave for the long weekend?)

            Twenty or so minutes later, I walked back past the school yard. The gates were now open, and lines were forming at the Delicioso ice cart (mango, coconut, rainbow) and at the ice cream truck. Leaving town would have to wait for snacktime.

II

            At 12th Street, the sky over the West Village looked ominous, but looking north, it seemed like it was clear over midtown. But when I got off the train at Columbus Circle (yet another errand), it was cloudy there, too. Venders were already selling “ummm-brellas,” and there was moisture in the air. But there was blue sky further north. And when I got up to 112th Street, it had clouded up there, too, yet still further north, it was clearing. Was I bringing the clouds with me as I traveled uptown?

The Perfect Game (Slice of Life Tuesday)

(This Slice of Life is almost 60 years old.)

            Monday, October 8, 1956, I was in my ninth-grade home room at the end of the day. The assistant principal, as he was announcing school bus departures over the P.A. system, also noted that in that afternoon’s World Series game, Don Larsen of the Yankees had so far pitched a perfect game.

            The word “perfect” clicked in my mind. Was there actually something a human being could do that was “perfect”?

            As soon as I got home, 15-20 minutes later, I went immediately to my parents’ bedroom, where the TV was, and turned the channel selector until I found the channel broadcasting the game. (There were only about five channels then, and no remote.) I saw the final three outs that climaxed that amazing 27 up, 27 down accomplishment. The catcher, who I didn’t yet know was Yogi Berra, ran toward the pitcher and jumped into his arms. There was only one camera shot, middle distance, probably from the level of the press box.

            With that perfect game, baseball cemented itself in my heart. 

(MLB.com has a short video of the highlights and the end of the game, with interviews with the participants and the announcer of the game.)

Slice of Life Tuesday (it actually happened on Monday)

Subway Sight

    A mother gets on the #1 train with her little boy, about 4 or 5 years old. He is hungrily licking on a paper cup of rainbow ice. A woman sitting next to me gets up so he can sit down, since it's obvious he is paying way more attention to that rainbow ice than to keeping his balance on the moving train. He is slowly sipping melted ice from the edges of the cup, then pushing the ice up from the bottom. "Look," he says, "it's getting higher." Is he pretending that there's more ice in the cup even as he sucks up what's there? His mother suggests that if he's eating the ice, shouldn't there be less? No, he shakes his head, "it's getting higher."
    The boy runs his fingers over the ice. "See, there are different colors," he points out to those of us sitting nearby. "It's a rainbow!" Then he licks his finger. His mother suggests that he not eat his ice by way of his finger. He goes back to sucking melted bits of ice.
    At 59th Street, mother and child get off. So we'll never know how long it took that little boy to finish his ice, or what he said when it was all gone.

Poem a Day, #22 (looking back)

Looking Back

Looking back, she could only find the names of

Towns her grandparents left.

Khotin, Vitebsk, Lodz.

The Russian Empire held them all

A hundred years ago.

Looking ahead, those towns ended up

In new countries,

Ukraine, Belarus, Poland.

All those lands, then and now,

Saw her grandparents as interlopers,

Jews, Christ-killers, usurers.

Looking back, she knew she’d missed her chance

To learn their stories.

The little she thought she knew

Was sometimes wrong.

The cigarette smuggler fleeing the “old country”

To avoid police

Owned the cigarette factory

Fleeing the “old country”

To avoid paying a cigarette tax.

Why else did they come?

What was it like in the towns they left?

What did they think of their new country?

Looking back, there were too many questions,

Forever unanswered.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem-a-Day, #21 (words coined by Shakespeare)

Champion Critic Does Not Grovel

Champion Critic felt out of sorts.

Her latest review had garnered no comments

On her blog, while

Attracting hostile backlash from

Writers she had judged harshly in the past.

Champion Critic had written novels

Over the years , which, she thought,

Gave her the right to judge her peers,

Writers in her own genre of lit. fic.

As well as writers of romance and fantasy.

Champion Critic felt out of sorts, for

None of her writer or critic friends

Had come to her defense.

The critics of her criticism had her all wrong.

They misread her judgments as dis, not sis-

Terly wish that they do better, as

Champion Critic knew shey could

She never took on a work

She knew was bad.

She never made demands she knew

Could not be met.

Champion Critic reread her latest work,

Persuaded still that she was right.

Critics and friends alike could be assured

That history will judge her

Decisions to be correct.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #20 (across the sea)

Across the Sea

Two ships sail west across the Atlantic.

The first carries what the shipowners call "cargo," men, women, children stolen from their homes and turned into property, a notion propped up by the shipowners' religion.

The second carries passengers, many escapees from empires Russian, Prussian, Austro-Hungarian, men, women, children fleeing pogroms, poverty, hatred for their religion, hatred embedded in a religion descended from theirs.

The first ship carries "slaves," a word for people forcibly bought and sold, who some history books tell us had a better life in the United States than in their "primitive," "warlike" villages back home, who other history books tell us came from civilizations older than Europe's.

The second ship carries "immigrants," a word for people voluntarily leaving their homes to, as history books tell us, "seek a better life."

The people on the first ship have skin colors from brown to black. Their "owners," with their paler skin, assign them a different "race" to justify their "ownership" of these human beings.

The people on the second ship have skin colors from pale to tan. They have different religions, come from different countries, but the pale "natives" assign them many "races" to justify keeping them outside the privileges of those who came here earlier.

The passengers on the second ship are greeted in New York Harbor by a statue whose inscription welcomes the "tired," the "poor," the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

The statue does not welcome the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free on the first ship. The statue did not exist when their ship sailed into New York Harbor. When the ships ceased to sail west with their human "cargo," the people consigned to slavery continued to bear children, still called property by their "owners."

A great war ends the institution of slavery, but many of the people freed are kept enslaved by terror and their former owners' power and "tradition."

The children and grandchildren of the people on the second ship melt into the privilege of whiteness even if they do not acquire the privilege of wealth. The melting pot absorbs their culture and heritage and turns it into novelty.

The children and grandchildren of the people on the first ship, as people of color, are not allowed to melt into whiteness, although some do acquire the privilege of wealth.

Some unknown number whose lightness of skin does allow them to melt in, melt at the cost of losing their families of color and their heritage and culture.

Two ships sail west across the Atlantic, the skin color of their human cargoes imposing vastly different futures by forces beyond their control.

  http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

This feels a bit labored to me, like maybe it should be an essay rather than a poem. I don't know.

Poem a Day, #19 (a moment)

The Moment My Mother Died

It was quiet in the hospital at 7 p.m.

She was hooked up only to the morphine drip

And pulse oximeter glowing green

As its number dropped, 53, 45, 40.

When we arrived in the morning,

her eyes were closed, her breathing rough.

She gasped for air like a guppy.

But she was aware. She turned her head

Toward her doctor’s voice.

“Do you want more oxygen?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want to be more comfortable?”

She nodded.

She pushed down the sheet, the hospital gown,

Till she was almost naked.

Did she want to leave this world the same way

She’d entered it?

She swallowed water from a sponge.

My sister talked her through a guided meditation,

Holding one hand while I held the other.

She turned her closed eyes toward my sister,

Then toward me.

Did she want an alternative from me?

I wished I had words to say,

“I know you don’t believe in this spiritual bullshit,

“I know you’re ready to go,

“But we’re not ready to let you go.

“There’s still so much you have to tell us,

“There’s still so much we haven’t asked you,

“There’s still so much we went to know.”

The skin of her neck fluttered with

Each slowing breath.

The oximeter read 25, 14, 9.

When it read X, I watched her neck,

A minute, two, three. No movement.

The room was quiet, empty, lonely,

The moment my mother died.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #18 (history)

Personal History

Can you say, “Fifty years ago, I (did, was, etc.)...”?

Is fifty years ago ancient history to you?

Do you think someone who is fifty is old?

Fifty years ago, I had just gotten married.

Fifty years ago, I attended the first big anti-Vietnam War demonstration.

Fifty-two years ago, I was at the March on Washington.

I never asked my parents,

“How old were you when your life became history?”

When did they start to remember “Fifty years ago, I...”?

When does your life become history?

How old do you have to be to become historical?

Is history happening every day, but

You don’t know it until fifty years later? 

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #17 (my something, the something)

The prompt is "My (blank), the (blank)" so here's my effort.

My Memory, the Traitor

I learned early my memory can lie.

The memory:

Riding in a car on a summer day,

Riding to the beach on the Housatonic River,

Listening to “Volare,” sung by Domenico Modugno.

The truth:

I was not living anywhere near the Housatonic River

When “Volare” was released,

In 1958.

In 1958 I lived in Levittown, Pennsylvania,

Nowhere near a beach I could be riding to.

In adulthood, my memory worked well,

Well enough to make a living as a copy editor,

Remembering the spelling of a name

Many pages ago,

Remembering the title of a character

Many pages ago,

Remembering whether the word “sychophant”

Had been used to describe the assistant director

Many pages ago.

Memory matched up with locations and years,

As I moved homes or jobs.

Past 70, memory doesn’t lie, it fades.

What is the name of that song on the radio?

The melody and rhythm as familiar as an old sweater,

But the singer, the lyrics are lost in a fog.

I wake in the morning and puzzle out

The name of the day, is it Sunday or Monday?

Or maybe Wednesday?

Why did I come into the kitchen?

Should I have gone to the bedroom instead?

What is the last name of my college roommate,

The author of that great book I read 10 years ago,

The actress who lived across the street,

The Mets pitcher of the playoff game we saw in 2006?

I still remember what my keys are for, but

Not where I left them.

What is to be done?

And where are my glasses?

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #16 (authority)

The prompt for this was some take on authority, so I thought about what I know and don't know.

I'm Not an Expert

I’m not an expert on

the internal workings of the human body.

I’m not an expert, but

I know the difference between “which” and “that.”

I’m not an expert on

getting blood out of a living human to test it.

I’m not an expert, but

I know where to put commas in and take them out.

I’m not an expert on

what makes blood clot at the right time and place.

I’m not an expert, but

I know what punctuation goes inside or outside of quotation marks.

I’m not an expert on

veins, arteries, the deep vein thrombosis, the pulmonary embolism.

I’m not an expert, but

I know that pronouns have to agree with their antecedents.

I’m not an expert on

kidney function, urethers, bladder infections.

I’m not an expert, but

I know editors and book sellers aren’t “curators.”

I’m not an expert on

keeping a human alive when the body goes berserk.

I’m not an expert, but

I know celebrities and buildings and attitudes are not “iconic.”

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #15 (a two-vowel poem)

The A&E Channel

Father tells a tale tale

As we travel past the beach.

A man can’t make ends meet.

He trades an ass for a cat.

A week later he seeks far and near,

Darts between paper reams,

Past a lengthy lake.

He awakes near mangled fangs,

Fearing all tears.

Then we bake a cake to eat

At the lake.

The sky shades we three,

As we reel beneath the real. 

  http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a Day, #14 (swing)

Swing music might have been my parents’ soundtrack

If they danced.

Swing dancing always looks like so much fun,

But I’m bad at learning steps.

I would have swung high on a backyard swing

If my father had hung one.

I loved to swing a bat at a softball

But never played on a team.

I’ve never lived in a swing state or

Cast a swing vote.

I never have mood swings

(my moods hover around the midline,

boringly so).

Swinging is more fun than standing still.

Swinging left is more fun than swinging right.

Swinging opinions are called flip-flopping,

But why is changing your mind a bad thing?

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png

Poem a day, #13 (science)

Biology is the birds and the bees,

how life works, from the flea to the elephant.

Chemistry makes us high,

explains the carbon cycle, spins the periodic table.

Alchemy turns lead into gold,

distills the fountain of youth.

Physics searches for the origin of the universe,

from quarks to quasars.

Astronomy names the stars

and moves faster than the speed of light.

Astronomy reads the stars

and names their links to us.

Paleontology delves into the history of biology,

finding life in bones and fossils.

Geology rakes the earth, dirt to rock,

volcanoes to earthquakes.

Mathematics, the language of science,

ties them all together,

excluding the pseudo from the real.

 http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_carriage.png