Shadows in Winter

Wintertime in the sun and shade (Pearl River, New York, 2015).

Idol Worship

And the winner is...me! "I'd like to take this time to thank my sponsor..."

Working on my own has obvious high points. I wear what I want (or not) when I want (or not). Then there's the extra free time that comes with my high level of productivity because, honestly, I worked in service to others who are far less gifted than me when I was younger and learning my trade. It was fine and I was glad to do so, but there are now gaps where there once was frenetic activity, just in time for my systemic middle age slowdown, the perfect time when most advanced experts strike out on their own.

So, there's a bit more daytime t.v. watching, though (also, to be honest), not as much as the average viewer, because most content is repetitive and boring. Why watch someone else's show when you can make your own? That's what happens naturally, kids. A lot of nighttime viewing is a bunch of artificial, canned, redundant, and equally awful "entertainment" shows that are anything but. Did you know most "celebrities" who are consistently featured on these types of shows are really fucking boring? I mean, like, a total formula for conformity: an early rise to fame, horribly dysfunctional stage parents, a plunge into drugs, alcohol and crime, followed by widely publicized stints in jail and rehab, then a viciously dull cycle of "lather, rinse, repeat", in a boring commoditization of tritely "rebellious" pseudo-types who appear over and over again on t.v., like the eerily identical Fembots produced by the Playboy franchise.

I understand that's what makes them appealing to viewers: it's comfort brought on by the familiarity and similarity of it all, but you have to draw the line somewhere. How many ass photos of a pinup can one look at onscreen?! Who cares? The opposite then is supposedly the "craft" of Acting, which the media serves up in ball gown after ball gown, again, in a supposed contrast to the barely clothed porn star, but only slightly. There's plenty of crossover. And what do we get for watching le grande "Cinema" (with a capital "C") over more commercial fare?

We get (by this count in 2010) 564 different entertainment industry awards. That's right. You read it correctly, 564 of them: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=101295. Wow! What a triumph of art over commerce right? We must be absolutely glutted with quality fare? Right? No? I hear crickets! My mom, and many other people like her, like to dream and fantasize more than they like living, and being a t.v. addict feeds that jones whenever she (and they) want it, but it is far from healthy. When I gave her my honest good review of the latest pretentious art house piece of crap that I had to suffer 3 hours of, hailed by "critics" as "brand new" and "revolutionary" because some shut-in director filmed a kid over the years (like many a long-running t.v star before him) in some long, boring, emo (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=emo) teen angst story, she immediately chafed against it, because she's been trained to.

"But...it won the (insert name of dull award show here) prize?" Bad? How?! It won an....wait for it...award. So, a pompous director won some award given out by other pompous film directors. Huh. Well, that is new. Oh, I have versions of it in my industry and so do you, but the particular vanity behind people addicted to the hype beast keeps these functions going, fueled on the idea that more is better PR, which is so not true.

Witness this tidbit. Well-known long-running actress Dianne Wiest can no longer afford her plush NYC apartment (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/dianne-wiest-pay-rent-article-1.2092324), times being what they are. I know! Oh, boo hoo :( But the conceit of these shows hangs upon one central idea, and that is this: if you win a golden statue, it means you're really good, and that means you win yet more gold! Be careful what you lust for. It is not the guarantee in this lifetime that you seek. Amen to you today, my children.

The Golden Calf.  

1 When the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for that man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.”^a  

2 Aaron replied, “Take off the golden earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”  

3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

  

4 He received their offering, and fashioning it with a tool, made a molten calf. Then they cried out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you^* up from the land of Egypt.”^b  

5 On seeing this, Aaron built an altar in front of the calf and proclaimed, “Tomorrow is a feast of the LORD.”  

6 Early the next day the people sacrificed burnt offerings and brought communion sacrifices. Then they sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.^c

 

7^d Then the LORD said to Moses: Go down at once because your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted corruptly.

8 They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them, making for themselves a molten calf and bowing down to it, sacrificing to it and crying out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”  

9^e I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are, continued the LORD to Moses.  

10 Let me alone, then, that my anger may burn against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation. 

Homecoming

Two doorways.

As I knew I would, I came home after many years away. They were good hard years of some fun, some heartache, some adventure, and some travel, with much added experience. I loved it, but it was time to go home, and I knew it. So one day, on the cusp of financial ruin, I gave in to what I knew to be true, cashed my last paycheck, packed what few bags I had left in the bare sublet room I slept in because the rest of my stuff was in storage, and moved to a spare room in my moms' apartment to weather the storm. It was rough seas all the way, but that's like any real passage of time: to stick with you it has to hurt a little bit and sometimes a lot, and so it did.

Lamplight at night.

But I'm here now, and very glad of it. I know this place like a seedling knows how to grow in soil ripe for the planting. I took to it and it has, in it's own turn, taken back to me. This is my territory and my kind of land, that of my ancestors, which stretches all the way up to Canada, and I plan to savor every bit of it, like the food here that feeds my soul, because I've been cooking and serving up versions of it with home ingredients all of my life, in preparation for this time period.

Blue light, yellow light.

Stay tuned for next week's feature that I alluded to last year (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/02/stay-tuned.html). I referred to it as obliquely and discreetly as I could, obliged as I was under certain legal circumstances with stringent conditions that had to be followed, lest I suffer the consequences that come from jumping the gun. I do not play a young man's game, my friends, and I am happy to report that particular storm has now passed, though I'm sure others will certainly follow suit, because our very human ups-and-downs are the stuff of life itself.

Curtain and window in mid-morning light.

"Bienvenue" to you, new to this here and now.
Welcome to the light that's always been.

Snow-Filled Days Ahead

Garage in snow.

Garage in snow, II.

Look, muthaf#ckas, let's get this straight: we have a blizzard on the way in the Northeast for the next few days, so if you aren't 1) the President of the United States of America (and he knows better than to push it, kids) or 2) the head of Médecins Sans Frontières, where the entire fate of the world at war hangs in the balance of your command (and when hasn't the world been at war with disease, starvation, and well, war?!!), then stay the f#ck home! The markets won't close without you, Wall Street assh@le. You ain't the entire market, and computers do work in your friggin' generic stucco McMansion, in yet another bland cul-de-sac. Sh*thead.

Bush in snow.

Bush in snow, II.

Bush in snow, III.

You do not control the weather, except the damage you do in excess with your pricey plastic trash that pollutes the earth. The world does not revolve around you, so, again, stay the fuc% home today! Stay off the roads, don't go out if you do not absolutely have to, and deal with being prepared ahead of time, like the rest of us decent humans do. Snow is not some g-ddamn demon sent to plague you. It's snow. It's f*cking weather. You know how this goes by now: Mother Nature always (and I mean, always) wins. What do think cold countries like Norway and Canada do? Die?! Just f&ckin' deal with it, sh*theads.

Carousel in snow.

Firehouse in snow.

I'll see you in a few days. Now, where are my candles? Ah, I already have them, because I know what to do under these conditions that I've adapted to. It's f#cking winter, and this is f#cking weather. It's called a f#cking "season". And this upcoming storm is called a blizzard. NOT a "POLAR VORTEX" super villain, not "The Plague" sent to you from G-d (you'd know it if it was that, homie), and you are not the center of all life on this planet. Enough with it, already. "Newsie airheads", that includes your dumb act and b$llshit routine, because we're totally on to you, with the phoney 20 questions and playing stupid, like "Golly Gee, this is soooo new!!". Go find a real story. It's time. It's the muthahumpin' 21st century, for chrissakes. Stay home, human! You are not needed! (with the exception of  our emergency personnel, but you already know who you are).

Bare Branches in Winter, III

Bare Branches in Winter III (Pearl River, NY, 2015)

Bare Branches in Winter, II

Bare Branches in Winter II (Pearl River, NY, 2015)

Bare Branches in Winter

Bare Branches in Winter (Pearl River, NY, 2015)

Baby Genius

"Look, Mommy! I can read!"

My oldest brother James was a baby genius, and he knew it. We all knew it. We taught ourselves to read to entertain ourselves during those long, tense quiet silences that fall over unhappy households, each family member in their own room (if they had one to retreat to, though privacy was always violated as needed, for leverage in yet another battle or war), after our parents fully checked out of their difficult marriage in these half-hearted attempts to solve the problems they have yet to fully resolve, in all the usual ways that adults do. And so it went: need to cook a gourmet meal? Oh, that what those books are for! You can read, can't you? 

Taunts, jeers, mocking tones, and much nasty teasing followed, and that was just when we were kids. Same with making a Halloween costume, or throwing a baseball well, or any of the other gazillion things that those pesky creatures called "kids" need to know, or at least want their parents to pass on to them, so they can spend some time with them. And so we did it, each and every one of us. Not one person in my family is a professional writer, reader, designer, artist, photographer, publisher, singer, dancer, martial artist, athlete, yogi, healer, counselor, therapist, master chef, mother, leader, public speaker, archivist, researcher, librarian, linguist, communicator, innovator, technologist, or naturalist except me, and so I became all those things, and so much more, because I had to.

"Here, you take him. He's too heavy for me to carry. My back hurts."

Schools stopped regular, standardized IQ testing in the 70s because it supposedly "hurt" the other children's self-esteem, but that's pure bullshit. They needed the bright kids to pull up the ratings for the rest of the class, and so I was docked in a senior year at high school that went very bad for me very quickly, because it was supposed to do just that out of envy and spite (so I wouldn't beat my mom graduating at 16, thus debunking her as the make-believe family intellectual), even though my oldest brother's last official IQ test in the public school system topped at 146. At 16, I already had college credits and all my high school requirements met. That book-reading served us well throughout our rough childhood years, when we were left to our own devices, so much so, that every decent professional I've related to has told me so, to my face: my parents are lucky we're not dead, because we should be, and several times over, each and every one of us.

And so, when I looked through a pack of old photos that were supposedly sorted by my mom specifically for me to have (more on that some other time), I found nothing organized into neat categories, but then, I never needed her to do that, did I? Instead I found more evidence in this ridiculous farce of an ongoing trial within my family that requires even more truth, and that's in just one photo of the two that I post here: that of a very sweet and very adorable, chubby-cheeked, little baby genius we called "Jimmy", reading to himself as my mom shoved food into her mouth, oblivious or simply spiteful to his needs, because he can.

We all can.

Snow and Columns and Trees (in Winter)

Wintertime in the Hudson Valley (Pearl River, NY, January 2015)

Genetics

Pamphlets and prayer, time and money, love and loss, pain and hope.

For years I've thought about oft-touted "stigmatized" diseases, (like alcoholism and drug addiction), as genetic conditions like mental illness, often incurring in the patient at the same time they struggle with substance abuse. It's a phenomenon I've seen up close and personal for most of my life. Mental illness, like cancer, does not discriminate, and so it goes with addictive disorders, which lead me to ask myself, this: if these various conditions and afflictions are so common among humanity, why haven't we properly addressed them?

I know all the usual arguments: "Oh, you don't know how bad it is when I reveal my illness to someone, the prejudice and the bias, blah, blah, blah", words typically spoken by a generic human to me, someone of the most rarest ethnic minority on the planet! I know true marginalization, and watching some random headcase get drunk is certainly not a new or atypical experience for me. Does it sound something like that? Yeah, well folks look at me like I have three heads most days of the week. I'm not exactly "run-of-the-mill" in human.

Most reluctance regarding addictions are due to the person alone, something so well known, it forms the basis of every type of self-help plan, and there are so many of them: AA for alcohol, NA for drugs, sex addiction counseling, Weight Watchers for food junkies, Gamblers Anonymous, it goes on and on and on. Whatever weird "jones" you got, someone else has it, and that's part of it, too. I interacted with some guy online who swore to me that he has a real fetish for frumpy down coats, when he saw a picture of me wearing one in a head-to-toe winter outfit that's common around here, which I then linked back to mental illness and the penchant the disturbed have for unique weirdness, often adopting S&M practices for their shock value. Shockingly, he did not reply and has (surprise, surprise) since stopped following me online.

On any given day. The Dr.Phil show is filled with kooks of varying degrees who have honed their lurid recovery tales over the years, auditioning for a spot on t.v., and finally landing that big audition by appearing on the show with their beleaguered, exhausted families, broke and in tears, in serious need of a vacation and expensive healthcare. Two of the more serious bipolar cases I have met in recent years admitted to their love of hammy bad acting, using their disorders for entertainment value by carefully honing their lies in front of a live (and trapped) studio audience that is the group therapy session.

Instead of feeling the "shame" they so often speak of publicly, it is, in fact, often the exact opposite dynamic in effect: they desperately want our attention, and the more beautiful the human, the more lengths said kook goes to invent a tale of disease and horror. Trust me, I know, though in truth, they never really succeed with me, versed as I am since childhood in the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King. Yeah, nice try, kid. Maybe next time!

In fact, since I've returned home, me and my friends and neighbors openly discuss our habits, tightly linked as a community as we are, because we share a lot of connectors in our shared genetic history. An upstairs neighbor and I talked one warm summer night when I was on the porch trying to catch a breeze about his many years sober, as I revealed my family's struggle with the disease, no tension or static between us; only understanding and empathy. Heck, I knew kids in Rockland County who bottomed out, left home, went abroad for awhile, and then came back from rehab to graduate, all before our junior year in high school.

Same with my mailman, in a chance meeting one morning at my front door: his many years sober, the hearing disability I inherited from my father, and the link between genetics and populations with food allergies, like Asians may have with dairy products and/or flush from alcohol, Native Americans and their inherent toxicity from alcohol due to a lack of the proper enzyme for breaking down our country's mostly European types of fermented drinks, and my stepmothers' serious case of Celiac's disease, born of her upstate Dutch/German family's rural farm diet of meat and potatoes for many, many years, in relative isolation from the rest of the world, including "The City" and it's highly varied cuisine. Uh, yeah you can't break down wheat gluten! That tends to happen over long periods of time and a lack of proper exposure to different types of food groups.

After me and my mailman conquered that huge intellectual hurdle of inherited human diseases in under five minutes flat, (it was a chill, brisk day and he had a full route to attend to), we moved on easily to other topics like his wife's training diet and athleticism, because I also follow a strict diet when I train in MMA. We pondered why such a thing as genetic disorders are still so taboo, leaving off the conversation for some other time. Perhaps today is a good day to end it.

And so it went that a week or two later, I spotted two lost souls "pamphleteering" outside our grocery store. One man had the wide, red-eye stare of a crazy ex-con, and upon closer examination of the brochure, I was right yet again! Turns out his father started the program in desperation of his son's constant incarcerations from drug and alcohol offenses, as is so often the case. Addicts do not belong in jail. It's like sending someone who hoards to a garage sale with $100 burning a hole in her pocket. Bad news will come from it! Same with the rather stern-looking and stiff young man standing next to him, who briefly chatted with me while not moving, breathing, or blinking his eyes once, because he was heavily medicated: their addictions are one just part of a much larger equation, one that includes mental illness and secret family dysfunctions, and that is the real reason why people don't talk openly about their problems: they know we know.

My ex-husband (soon to be annulled in connection to me, because of his inability to have an adult, mature marriage with his amount of disabilities): it isn't just the alcohol or drugs, or his Native American heritage, or his supposed "stupidity" that comes out whenever it is convenient for him to get out of trouble. It's his mental illness that he refuses to treat, because his psychotic behavior is the lone "power" he feels he can wield against healthy people the most, that he is so prejudiced against, much like his refusal to disclose. He feels that this is his one big "win" against me, by refusing to speak the words any person who cares about their health and those of their loved ones would say out loud or in written form: "Hi. My name is David, and I'm an alcoholic." ("Hi, David" , from the group in response. He goes on to speak some more.). "I'm also a drug addict and mentally ill. I suffer from manic depression that I refuse to treat, because I can use it to hurt my friends and family."

That's what all his time-wasting bullshit of a life comes down to, really; that one small disclosure above in bold, as I typed it out above. Those are the words he chooses to keep deep down inside, get sick from, and eventually die from. It's how he wastes his entire life. Instead of withholding these "magic" words from me, words that were supposed to make me afflicted, he stuffs them back down, choking on their toxic power, making himself ever sicker by it. But, not me. Not ever me. Never me. He has been in and out of rehab and jail many times over.

And so, on this day in Januray: Amen to you who are afflicted and seek solace in The Lord. May you find the peace and help that you need as we humans do, who all have afflictions to tend to in this life that is imperfect while on this planet. May you find solace and soothing in the arms of Our Blessed Lord. Amen to you who have the courage to live. Break the cycle of abuse, my friends. Rise above it! I want you to win and be strong, to become like I have, through the constant care, tending, work, and patience that has made me who I am. I await you on the other side with open arms, too.

Sunlight Series (Before Christmas)

Three Christmas trees (real and man-made), and a Hanukkah bush.

(Pearl River, N.Y., December 2014)

Folk Art: The Bazzanobago

Grrrrrr >:( It's game time! Get your "gameface" on!!

I'll just put it right out there by saying it bluntly: "guineas" love cars. Guidos have a big hot rod history here in the tri-state area, which is ironic to me, because my Italian-American grandmother never learned how to drive. She didn't have to because she was from the city and it was unnecessary. Besides, that was my grandfathers' job, because he liked cars and taking care of them. My grandma liked sitting in the passenger seat, so she could look out the window and relax, like a real Queen would. It was so cute!

But starting with junior high school, the kids in my town started going nuts about cars quickly, their hormones linking up to mechanical equipment that goes fast like peanut butter goes with jelly, and why not? This country has tons of curvy hilly back roads that are a blast to drive. Our humble little county goes dead at night, and as teens, we took full advantage of that road freedom to turn off the headlights and turn a mountain pass into a scary roller coaster ride. 

I had family that lived over the Bear Mountain Bridge, and the fastest route from here to there in this single terrifyingly narrow road with a tiny guardrail between the mountain side and the Hudson River lurking way down below. In the winter (just in time for Christmas holidays), it freezes with a fierce ferocity that randomly drops huge chunks of ice onto the road, making you swerve into another tiny single lane of murky incoming traffic that was blurred by the river's thick blanket of fog and the alcohol my parents may have ingested. We always made it home, but it was often an unwelcome white knuckle ride.

"Jetting" away, but still makin' stops.

As a result, I've learned to have a healthy respect for the climate here, and the dangerous twists of weather that occur so quickly, you have no choice but to drive through it. I'm an excellent and safe driver, but such is not the case with a lot of my friends, family, and neighbors. As their 80s mullets grew in, so did the cheesy red cars their parent's bought them for their 16th birthday fill the parking lot before school started each morning, making it a testosterone-fueled danger of its' own, with smirking, nastily leering boys sitting on car hoods wearing big gold chains. Uh, pass.

I love cars, but unfortunately, they tend to be of the suavely cool 60s kind, hard to drive and even harder to maintain. Sigh. C'est la vie. Luckily for me, my paisans in Pearl River have cars and trucks so weird, that the garage next door has turned into a cooler and less scary version of that high school parking lot of my youth, with a procession of tricked out pieces appearing every week. 

Also lucky for me, it's football season, another big boy-time filled with beer, food, parking lots, and cars. Every time I see this proper GuineaMobile back for a tune-up, I smile to myself. Can't you just hear their conversation? I wonder what their horn sounds like? It's another piece of Rococo genius, the owner having rigged a series of ever-smaller orange horns in descending order behind the front grill, and that's just fun.

Enjoy the game, guys! Have a great season, and have a beer (or two) for me.

The 'Bago's back!

Like Water for Chocolate

http://barkthins.com/

I had a really weird day this week. During the morning, I saw the most beautiful movie I've ever seen (http://vimeo.com/38263988), and then I went food shopping in an insanely large grocery store. It was like a lesson in opposites from "Up High": this great, perfect beauty followed by lots of bad sh#t in triplicate lining every friggin' grocery shelf. 

I sought some comfort because I felt lonely away from my Brothers in Christ shown in the movie, and I'm also forever in mourning for my grandparents, people who shared a deep abiding faith in The Lord, and all the earthly delights as they happen everyday in nature (life philosophies and a real happiness that is rare). And so I went looking for them in the guise of my grandmother's recipe: a basic dessert (or so I thought) made of chocolate cake, whipped cream, and a jar of peaches preserved in a simple syrup, something we've enjoyed during wintertime when foods run scarce for many a year throughout the ages.

It was so hard, I thought I was going to cry. I couldn't find chocolate cake without reading an ingredients list that read like something written out by a mad scientist for some crazy project that never gets off the ground, and then I couldn't find real heavy cream without cancer-causing ingredients in them like Carrageenan and High Fructose Horseshit. I found a brand of preserved fruits in glass a few months back, so I put those peaches and pears in syrup in my basket, which made me feel slightly better (pear juice is a natural throat soother that elicits helpful, productive coughing: thanks to Dr. S in  Park Slope ;) But, I was starting to feel nauseous from the store's overheating with too many layers of clothes on, and lots of morbidly obese sick people with their bad energy and overloaded carts...it was too much.

What could I have for dessert? My time window was running out. Aha! How about chocolate? How bad can someone fuck that up? But...someone had. Package after package that I turned over to read listed high fructose this, and corn syrup that. No "cocoa" or "sugar" or "milk" or "cream". I felt like a monk, or my grandparents transported into the future, when everything is rotten and sick, like a "Soylent Green" fantasy gone wrong, until there it was; BarkThins. I turned it over, and there it was, too: the language that we speak to each other, in words easily understood, like childhood lessons we learned about good over evil, on a simple foodstuff package; words like "non-GMO" and "Free Trade Certified". The ingredients were the same type of words, too: real cocoa, and actual sugar cane. Yes! Score!! 

Later on, when I got home, munching on chocolate so good that it tasted like food I hadn't eaten in years; good, wholesome, rich, delicious chocolate, I looked at the package at little bit closer. 
And there it was, in black text on a light background, the name and address of the chocolatier in a town five minutes from the place my grandparents lived for many years, just a mere ten minute drive from the home in New City I grew up in Rockland County, New York. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa. It was just what needed, exactly when I needed it, and that's just the type of love they always gave me: the really good stuff, of the kind that sustains you by lasting and being there whenever you need it, wherever you go.

Amen to you, on this winter day in 2015, from your beloved granddaughter who will always cherish, adore, and miss you. 
I honor you daily by not squandering the gifts you so lovingly gave 
to me, the first of which is this great lesson that so very many 
people miss: knowing the good from the bad. Amen.

Goodness, right here at home.