Apothecary Rose

The connection between American publishing and the English houses that supported them were as clear as day to me, as a young apprentice at St. Martin's Press. Editors went on annual buying trips "across the pond" to partake in the comfy literary markets of murder mysteries and tearoom gardens that are so quintessentially British. Excepting for some technical difficulties present in the differences between printing processes, our repackaged series were the house staples we could all rely on. Murder mystery readers are overwhelmingly female, and surprisingly devoted to their fictional, crime-solving heroes; a pat, easy formula that's the perfect armchair read on a chilly autumn night, served with a warm cuppa on the side.

Until a certain female protagonist caught my attention. Because I produced the advance reader copies sent out to reviewers, I usually knew the manuscript well enough to talk about it, and because of the lulls in my work, I actually read most of them, too. We did a bunch of medieval murder mysteries that sought to capitalize on the commercial success of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". This one began similarly, but with a twist: the prime suspect was also the chief investigator. She was a female apothecary working as a laywoman within abbey walls, tending to the same medicinal garden that produced the deadly herbal used as the murder weapon, found on her shelves. Neat plot twist, right?

I was reminded of my own botanist mother who'd cried foul play over my child's bouquet, picked to cheer her up during one of her many "moods". "Agh!" She dramatically cried out when I presented my flowers to her, at her bedside. "That's 'deadly' nightshade!" Oh? Pretty purple flowers. "Are you trying to poison me?!" Uh, no...but, thanks for the tip. End scene, cut, aaannnd...fade out.

Aside from the theater of her daily undoing, I learned a lot about the power of plants from her. She often knew their Latin names by heart, and if we couldn't readily identify the wildflowers we found, we'd look them up. She knew the trees around us by the shape of their leaves, and the colors they changed in the fall. It was a beauty and magic to me that lengthened into homesickness for the forests of my northern woods. Never would I forget the shape of sunlight slanting through the trees, or the happy yellow of a early spring daffodil.

It's become grounding to me with every move I've made, a steadying process that keeps me down-to-earth in a sea of change; collecting specimens, looking them up, and then pressing them between the pages of books. That is the strength of our collective gifts as a mother and daughter: a knowledge that is straight and true. 
And so very beautiful.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/england-to-be-re-dedicated-as-dowry-of-mary/

Telenovela

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenovela#

My grandfather practiced his Spanish by watching Univision (our Spanish-language channel here in New York) telenovelas, with his drugstore black-rimmed glasses and a small Spanish-to-English dictionary in hand for quick translations, sitting way too close to the t.v. with the sound blasting. It was great fun for us to see him watching his daily shows, too, because he could be such a tough Mick from the city at times, tempered as it was by his consideration for others and his innate sweetness. He wasn't just learning for the heck of it, either, though with his cool old-time vaudeville impersonations and great accents, his flair for language and communication was proof enough that he'd kissed "The Blarney Stone" probably more than once.

No, he did it because his older brother, my Uncle Jack, married a Colombian woman after his divorce, my Aunt Yolanda; a tall woman with a naturally majestic presence indicative of a native high-born to a good family from the mountains outside of Bogota. And it didn't stop there. My grandparents took a few trips to see them after they relocated to Colombia, once my uncle retired from his successful business that found him financially independent. They had two beautiful little boys I remember holding and changing at our house, as a little girl: Juan y Francis, with their classic mestizo coloring of olive skin, light eyes, and lush brown curls. Irish paired well with Colombian!

It was important to my grandfather that his brother's family feel comfortable in his home, and it was important to me, too. As guests, they could curse telling stories and smoke in my mother's house (my dad had to go outside or in the garage to smoke), while I refilled their glasses and emptied out the big glass ashtray we used for parties and holidays. Francis had fallen asleep, so me and my aunt took him into my parent's bedroom for a nap, using their pillows to make a barrier on either side of him so he wouldn't roll off the bed. I was so nervous about the baby that I kept going in to check on him, with their laughter following me down the hallway. "Is he still there?"

He was, and they were charmed by my youthful inexperience with newborns. "Oh, he'll sleep for hours not moving, Marie. He's fine!" Uh, you don't know that! My own parents weren't exactly careful with kids, and my uncle drank a lot more than I was used to with my more even-keeled grandfather. Still, they were raucous and fun, and we loved having a South American branch to our family tree that we'd describe as one big carnival tent for times when were we feeling less generous. Before they arrived at my parent's house, we went over simple phrases and basic sayings so we could greet them from the top of the stairs as they came through the front door. 

"I want to be able to greet my brother's family properly when I see them", my grandfather nervously explained to me again while we practiced. My grandparents always felt insecure about their lack of a formal education, because they had to leave school to earn money for their families as children. I could relate. I wanted to make a good impression, too, because in our households, family always came first. You did great, grandpa. You really did. It was just perfect.

para mi tía Yolanda

Walking Dead

We've learned about different types of soulless humans inhabiting this sphere with us: how to suss them out, bust them on their egregious bullshit (which usually sends with them running away), while keeping our heads above water. It isn't easy. I've known people so wrecked by life that they become easily programmable drones with nothing to lose (besides a soul that's gone), and those are the most dangerous types of people we have on this planet. What do you say to someone who's been brain-washed since birth to accept death as a part of their human sacrifice to some fictional netherworld? It's hell, boy.

And that's what this culture of death and fear is about: getting you to accept the premise that life is pain, and the only way out of it is through your death. But, how can that be? His Holiness the Dali Lama recently posted on Twitter that human problems require human solutions, and it couldn't be any truer. You don't want to know the life conditions divinity exists under, and be glad for it. Celestial levels exist for a reason. Faith requires trust, and nothing erodes trust faster than fear and pain.

I've seen rotting souls up close, and its even uglier than some bloody cartoon made for t.v. You couldn't put on television the horrors that warriors deal with excellently every day. Those taped-up rooms full of broken bodies are not sights for the uninitiated. It's take a lot of focus, discipline, and training to overcome the worst humanity has, to see through to better days. In our religious world, we repeat the sayings, prayers, proverbs, and gospels that carry us to the promised land of light and hope, but how to reach the ignorant and insane? Repetition helps, as does a solid foundation in education.

The analogy I've always used in my work with the disordered people I'm closest to, my own family, is that they need much more help than I do. I am their "Anne Sullivan", so if I don't get through to them who will? Doctors? Pharmaceutical companies? Therapists? Television? It hasn't worked so far, has it? So what if some nut plays head games with me? I can break through any mindset borne of sickness, because I'm healthy. No matter the stimuli or conditions, I will endure to survive. 

I was talking to a lovely older African-American woman here at the library the other day who is struggling from job loss, economic instability, and the destabilization of her family unit that comes with sudden changes in her life. Right, been there: "If Mama goes down, we all go down!" And she knew exactly what I meant when I said it. She's been through it before. But, why me? She wanted to know. "Because G-d always chooses the strongest to challenge, not the sickest and weakest among us." We laughed about it, as she nodded her head in agreement, because the cornerstone of our faith is the juncture where the warrior meets their own inequities to adapt and change to. 

She struggles with old technological advances like computers (typical for her generation) and as we talked, she realized that we were the same person, because I told her honestly than no one has ever helped me with my work. I'm largely self-taught, because there are no classes, or books, or television programs, to become "Master Illuminator". I've also been alone and challenged as the people around me fell apart, and it's always me that pulled me through. 

In this modern world of psychotherapy that fails so many ailing people, I consulted an expert on her turf and conditions, under my family's threats of financial hurt (as is typical for them) when 1) I lost my job in the economic crash, like so many other people around the world 2) my friend committed suicide practically on Facebook 3) I got punched in the head repeatedly during MMA training and 4) I finally lost my beloved and very aged grandmother—as my psychotic aunt guarded her hyper-vigilantly so I couldn't see her during her last days, caught in the grip of paranoia that marks schizophrenia—as the last good link to my maternal line, because if my world goes under, so does theirs. 

The woman I consulted under my then-doctor's recommendation already knew I was extraordinary, but she still wondered about my state of being. I couldn't help but smile when I brought her back in a full circle to my troubled family as the source of my lifelong woes (the place I always come back to, because it's true), which led her to ask me (and for this question, she leaned in, with her eyes shining brightly): how? I told her the truth: I am the source of my strength. Huh...but who supports you? Ah, yes, the language of any typical psychology student in these troubled times that we think are so unique to today. It always comes up short in the face of superior technology, doesn't it? I couldn't help but laugh to myself during this last session with a human healer who wants to be on the forefront of this new world with us; my very own Counselor Troi on the USS Enterprise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deanna_Troi). "I do", I told her. 

Normally so poised, she shuffled in her chair, adjusting her notepad on her lap, switching her pen to the other hand. She waited a moment to see if I would go further, so I did what I always do with people who are light years behind; I repeated it. "I am the one who supports me." And that's "my truth", a recurring motto of these times lifted from pop culture, as a justification for an insanity that cannot be explained away. I am the one who supports me. It's me. I am the strength I need. I am the one I seek. I have been all along. And so I became the one she sought after, too. I hope it was worth it, Dolores!

It couldn't have been easy for our breach into your usual patient confidentiality clause, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. Same with you, Dr. Elizabeth, and my fellow confessors. It's disturbing to be known like that, isn't it? There's no secrecy in our world. But, now you know and you can never not know it. Now you know the truth about transparency, and living a life beyond reproach. See you on-board my ship. Hope you make it! Until then, fight. Fight back with all your might. That's what I do. Life is worth it, all of it: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent. That's my mantra. Life is beautiful. So...what's next?

"Everyday I Write The Book"

Don't tell me you don't know what love is
When you're old enough to know better
When you find strange hands in your sweater
When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote
I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions
And I'm giving you a longing look
Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book
Chapter One we didn't really get along
Chapter Two I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of Chapter Three
But you were up to your old tricks in Chapters Four, Five and Six
The way you walk
The way you talk, and try to kiss me, and laugh
In four or five paragraphs
All your compliments and your cutting remarks
Are captured here in my quotation marks
Don't tell me you don't know the difference
Between a lover and a fighter
With my pen and my electric typewriter
Even in a perfect world where everyone was equal
I'd still own the film rights and be working on the sequel

  

Miscarriage of Justice

Like the history of modern medicine and its marginalization of traditional home-based herbal remedies that used to be the expertise of women (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2016/02/bad-medicine.html), women's healthcare has been similarly co-opted by disordered interests, rife with harmful hidden agendas. When was the last time a prominent urologist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urology) was murdered for performing a vasectomy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasectomy) on a man, or his patient publicly vilified for receiving such a procedure? No? There you go! That's all the answer you ever needed.

When I was in school, we studied the intricacies of debate and logic to dismantle false constructs as quickly as possible, given the normal mental capabilities of the particular human we would be in conversation with, or maybe not. Even at my teacher's college in upstate New York, "Special Needs" and "Special Education" were separate coursework from the regular curriculum, designed for average Liberal Arts students, that formed the basis of our freshman and sophomore years, before the student chose a Major (and/or Minor) to specialize in.

In short, we're taught to tell a normal person about the flaws in their perceptions as grounds for their re-education, even in extreme cases of the most cult-like indoctrination present in the minds of the people who've been brain-washed (perhaps in social isolation), manipulated for someone else's benefit besides their own. That's unfortunately where healthcare for women has ended in America: stuck in the worst minds we have as human beings, creating bizarre social distortions that feed public fears about the human body from a steady diet of ignorance and hype that's typical of mentally ill households. Who holds sway there? The biggest strongest douchebag, that's who.

Even worse for most average American families were the men who loved their women enough to take care of them, or speak up for their human rights. Every single intellectual argument I've ever had about women's healthcare that's still seen as "controversial" I have won (and I mean, EVERY SINGLE ONE), so this is not an open invitation to you, as my reading public, to become a right rotten cunt to me about something that I solved using ancient Aristotelian logic at S.U.N.Y. Oneonta, at 19-years old (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_logic). 

It was such a huge victory for me that the entire class came up to me to talk about it, because my boyfriend and I had planned to argue "pro" and "con" sides of any argument we had within class beforehand. Like I'd written before, we were so good at masking our romantic relationship that the entire class was fooled, though one cool homeboy from 'round the way in Brooklyn told my boy to tap my ass, " 'Cause she's feelin' you, man! You got her all worked up tho', bro!" After which time, at the end of our very last class for the summer, we told him the truth: that we were boyfriend-and-girlfriend all along. He. Freaked. Out. "I knew it! I knew it!", he shouted out to the rest of the class.

To reiterate old scholarship from my teenage years, let's go over some key points ONE MORE TIME (for yo' dumb ass, and not mine): Roe vs. Wade* will not be overturned by The Supreme Court, no matter how many partisan games are played. Okay? Time to grow up about "icky" female bodies, because they exist whether you like it or not. Women are not sexual slaves for public consumption, and I expect you to understand that as clearly as I have explained it here, again. If you do not, and you respond to reason with artificially-heightened rhetoric at any point in the future, I will immediately understand that you have mental problems, just like you've read in my prior works on this site. 

Sexuality is not a crime in these modern times, and as such, it is not actionable as a just cause on its own. You still have to prove malicious intent, which you will not, because women are not always aware of their inner workings (like a man isn't), because we do not come with specialized, high-end, digital-imaging equipment, nor do we have an instruction manual attached to our bodies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrics_and_gynaecology). We do, however, come to the table educated nowadays, because health and hygiene classes begin in grade school. If you have a fifth-graders knowledge twisted, once again, I will know (as will many others) that you are sick-minded.

Here are some simple numbers that even a high-school drop-out like you should be able to process: "Unlike men, who produce new sperm daily throughout most of their lifetime, women are born with all their eggs in one — okay, two baskets (ovaries). To be more precise, a woman is born with about one to two million immature eggs, or follicles, in her ovaries. - Jun 12, 2015" (Columbia University)

If you continue prejudices against nature, you must then also include (in this era of civil rights) legal actions against men who choose not to reproduce: "...the average male will produce roughly 525 billion sperm cells over a lifetime and shed at least one billion of them per month. A healthy adult male can release between 40 million and 1.2 billion sperm cells in a single ejaculation.- Jan 24, 2013"

That means, every time a man knowingly prevents a pregnancy, he must be held accountable in the same way a woman is, because even though our biologies are different, our human rights are not. It's worth nothing that men have not been legally accused of murder for birth control in this country, ever. Given your (new) understanding of the numbers involved in our human reproductive systems, it then stands to reason that women are not "murdering" fertilized eggs during its earliest reproductive process, just like "Plan B" and other types of early-induced miscarriages are designed to be: not harmful to a later-stage fetus or the woman, but to accurately simulate the earliest stages of human gestation, a time when most women naturally miscarry anyway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage). 

Truthfully, any woman will tell you that she's had as many miscarriages as she's carried full-term successfully, if you bothered to ask to her. It's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of! In fact, there are typically no real bodily signs for most women who miscarry, whether intentionally performed by their doctor, or without us even knowing it, because material rejected or expelled by women is usually incorporated into our next menstrual period. In which case, we didn't even know it happened, which is what we still insist on calling all "abortions" today, like the mischaracterized horrors certain sick minds want it to be, when it is so clearly not that (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/bride-of-chucky.html). We know you know that, by the way.

So, what will happen? Well, "welfare queens" will be rightly prosecuted for using their natural child-rearing capabilities as an excuse to make money from their children, just like selling a man's sperm without his consent would be actionable in a court of law. Then, the healthy women living happily among you, who voluntarily had minor medical procedures designed to keep their lives intact (and who care so much for all life on this earth that they willingly chose to become excellent women first before becoming mothers), will be given the credit they both deserve and earned for being socially responsible citizens. 

It also means your that bloodily-staged shows of the past will become the trite comic fodder it's always been for enlightened minds like mine. G-d wants us to be happy, healthy, productive, and (most importantly) part of His Loving Family. Planning parenthood wisely is about the most beautifully humane gift any woman can give her future family. You were wrong. You are wrong now. Adjust accordingly. That is all.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights 

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade

Spotted Fever

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_spotted_fever

When I was 18 years old, I almost died from a tick bite. My college boyfriend was visiting Rockland with me, and we were going back to school on a slow difficult bus ride through the mountains of upstate New York, with stomachs full of my mom's spaghetti and meatball dinner. After the second time I threw up, the bus driver began telling students that someone was sick on the bus before they got on, so they could weigh their options on the staircase. Later, my idiot boyfriend would tell me that he finally knew he was "in love" with me when he realized that he was more worried about my health than being embarrassed by the smell of vomit, which didn't dispel any of my notions about his relative immaturity in comparison to mine.

It was so serious that I couldn't make it back up the hill to campus, after the bus dropped us off in Oneonta. We had to crash at his brother's downtown apartment above "The Black Oak Tavern" that he shared with his hipster girlfriend, arranged by my boyfriend on a payphone while I sat on a suitcase waiting for his brother to let us in. Their "crash pad" was exactly what you'd expect from them as a couple: one big exposed brick wall, with arty black-and-white partially nude photographs taken of his girlfriend in very favorable angles hanging on the other walls, and an acoustic guitar resting in its stand in the corner, just in case you missed every other cue that you were around seriously "arty" types. I had to stay there for at least a day or two to regain my strength for the bus ride back up to campus.

Once there, I immediately went back to bed. My best friend and my boyfriend took me to the health center on campus the next day. We were told that I simply had the flu, and if we would have believed them, it would have been of horrible consequence to me for the rest of my life. But (thank goodness for our college arrogance), we didn't listen to some young, rather dumb, and woefully underpaid healthcare aide working in a remote hick town, because I wasn't getting any better, and I couldn't hold down food or water. My roommate called my mom from the dorm's pay phone to keep her abreast of my condition (which was hard for us to do, because we budgeted our precious quarters for laundry use), and she asked her to take my temperature regularly.

She called back with the results, saying it was high, and that she couldn't even stay in her own dorm room because it smelled so bad from vomit. Touching, eh? But, that's exactly the way it was for us back then; too much sympathy directed attention away from you that could make the difference as to whether or not you also went down, and we didn't want that for any one of us. We fought hard to stay alive. After another few days, my mom made the important decision to pick me up from school and take me to see a real doctor, my childhood pediatrician Dr. Dreyer. She still counts it as one of her great acts of mercy towards me, that she interrupted her busy life to care for me this one last time. If she had refused to do so, I'd be dead or seriously impaired right now. So, thanks for not letting me die...I guess.

That must seem cruel to you now, as a younger generation raised to believe that you might hold all of the potential of a magical golden statue, priceless in your own estimation, but that's not how my parents saw it then, or how they see it now. Pragmatism ruled the day for working class religious families, because tragedies happened every day. That's the way it was (is). They had an "heir to spare" (in their own words), because they already had two male sons to carry on the family name and inherit any property or family assets through their future children. I was considered a mistake, because my mom didn't want to get pregnant so soon after my brother was born, and yet here I am writing to you today. It's rather miraculous, when you think about it.

I was so weak that I couldn't walk down the flights of stairs from the dorm's third floor, so my strong young boyfriend wrapped me up in a blanket and carried me downstairs in the harsh cold weather to my mom's car, putting me into the passenger seat. She'd arranged a makeshift garbage bag in the car for me to get sick in, which I did throughout the trip home, even though I had nothing in my stomach. I'd never been so sick in my life. When I got home to my mother's house, I could barley walk the small steps from my childhood room to the bathroom we all shared as kids, and that was barely four steps away.

I felt like I had really bad arthritis, because every joint in my body ached. In between fever dreams, I had to steady myself against the wall with shaky hands just to make it a few steps, and that was becoming harder to do with each day that passed. I felt like I was dying. My mom got me to see my childhood doctor right away, and he diagnosed me with one look, because I had definitive red target rashes covering my arms, like a textbook case of tick bites. He took a blood sample, but prescribed antibiotics for me to start right away, before the test came back, because beating this disease meant that time was of the essence. If the disease settled into my bones, I would have been crippled for life, because it meant we waited too long to start a course of treatment. We later surmised that I'd been exposed to deer ticks walking the wooded path from campus to town, and that the bite site was somewhere on my head, which we never found, because I had a crop of big curly 80s hair to rival Bon Jovi's back then.

Of course, Dr. Dreyer was right, because he's the best doctor I have ever seen in my life. He came from an Observant Orthodox Jewish family, a kind and fiercely intelligent man who often had Hasidic families in his waiting room. They seemed even more scared than we were of being sick, because their exposure to the outside world was so rare. They'd established a successful religious community in Monsey called "New Square", and they were attacked often enough that it didn't help their communication with the outside world. They sat silent and mute, apart from us by worlds and centuries. Still, I admired his commitment to their devoted families, because they were often biased against by seemingly rational doctors who defied their advanced education with superstitious beliefs.

My mom told me he was a great man for tending to them. They were often on welfare and vastly underage, in comparison to our more sophisticated and educated families, which meant that he charged them a sliding fee for their office visits that they desperately needed, because like strict Catholics, their young women didn't use birth control. I always liked that about him, and today I remember him with you during this High Holy week. Thank you, Dr. Dreyer! !חג פסח שמח

http://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-ronald-dreyer-39qpx

Getaway Car

Takashi Hososhima from Tokyo, Japan

My ex Dave was known by a few choice nicknames at Oneonta, notorious as he was for his good-looking "bad boy" ways, at a school famous for being the hardest partying school in the entire S.U.N.Y. school system back then. We called him "Dangerous" (because he was, to himself and others, but more for him than me), and "Mad Dog", because he raged at the machine like he was alien to it, which he was. His parents were high school sweethearts who thought much higher of themselves than two hard-partying, working class kids from upstate New York should have, and that was Dave's biggest problem.

They coddled him for being sick and beautiful, just like they did his older sister. Their kids had certain rock star components that they couldn't back up intellectually, which always left them frustrated, angry, confused, and feeling alone, attacking anyone around them during certain phases of the moon, like the half-deranged mixed Indians they are. It was maddening, because they can plateau for a few good years of productive work before bottoming out during their up-and-down cycles that characterizes the average manic-depressive. I hated it for them, but that was the best I could do without some hardcore medical back-up, which his parents refused to acknowledge, because it meant drying out for all of them (at the same time), as a lifestyle change too significant for arrogant Baby Boomers who refused to grow-up, stuck in their down cycles like the mental children they are.

They can shop and they can consume, and at their heights, they can party with the best of us, but during their dark times, they become rabid beasts unwilling to take a simple anti-depressant pill that's been around for ages, because their character flaws (like their arrogance) won't allow them to admit that they need medical help, minor as the cure sometimes is. It saddened me as I watched them make asses out of themselves in public from the sidelines of their disorders, powerless as you are when they are in the grip of their madness and addictions, knowing that one good doctors' visit is all they really need. Have you ever known someone like that?

I bet you have. Heart-breaking, isn't it? They were gorgeous on the outside only and deeply flawed from within, like a lunatic lion with his lioness, suffering from the same thorn in their paw that you can only pull out for them so many times. Get a grip, man, and get help, will you?! At the end of it (with certain types of Indo-Europeans), that's really the best you can do for them, by backing away to give them the space they need to disappear into the bottom of a bottle, and hope that they can finally learn to see through the haze of booze and their own distorted visions. It's actually born of a cowardice that can seem shockingly needy and co-dependent to healthy people, which is part of why they don't last that long around us.

You can either a) take care of them (for their families), or b) watch them they cling to someone else, like a barnacle stuck on the side of a rapidly wrecking ship that's taking on massive amounts of water. If you aren't a fucked-up "enabler" (and I most definitely not that), there's nothing in it for us to watch someone fall down drunk and then stagger slowly to their feet once again. It's sheer torture to watch sick people do that to themselves without reaching for help that's often inches away. So, I simply didn't do it after awhile, because getting ego-gratification from propping up a sick person is often ten times more sick than being the alcoholic him/herself. Know what I mean? What kind of sick fuck does that weird shit with loved ones, over and over again in a broken-down cycle? Not me!

Still, I loved Dave for loving me for so long behind my back (I admired his loyalty with its requisite hidden agendas attached) and he was incredibly physically beautiful, which warped his poor mind into further social distortion, because he couldn't handle his own looks. Some folks think it's "fun" to be almost inhumanly gorgeous but it's actually really scary, and it never goes away. People act so fucking weird and abusive to you, it's insane, and it's their kind of weirdness, not yours. People have these strange ideas that it's like wearing a pricey fur coat, or buying really expensive shiny jewelery that you can take on-and-off whenever you feel like it, but it sure as fuck isn't that. It's bone deep and it stays with you, despite weight loss (or weight gain), seasons of the year, age, hair color, skin tone, hair, or any other kind of superficial shit that average people get wrong all the time.

They thought (because their parents taught it to them) that they could barter off their beauty like their were prostitutes, which they sometimes verged on becoming, trading off their looks for petty shit like money, jobs, purses, and cars, as objects that are easily given and just as easily taken away. I thought they were dumb college kids saddled with their parents false expectations about creating scholars out of thin air without any effort, which is total bullshit. Ask any teacher. And that was it, too: we knew they were doomed to fail, because it remains the established pattern backing their disorders.

As working class New Yorkers, me and my best friend Karen were way beyond sympathetic to their pain. We lived with it at home with our own families, and because we'd already seen so many people go down as teenagers, you take the chance to help a brother out, man, when you can. You don't easily pass that up. They were more than our friends. They were family, and you don't disrespect soulful people in pain, you know? We were in it together. I didn't want to just help, I wanted to help them heal along with me, as we returned home to our families armed with knowledge and information, as they still struggled in pain. As soon as we learned lessons in college, we almost immediately tried applying it with vigorous strength to the family living in our homes, whether it worked or not, though we desperately hoped it would. What do you think motivates two teenage girls from roughly abusive families, besides minimum wage and part-time work?

We put our very heart and souls into the fight for our lives and the lives of the people around us who were drowning in drugs and alcohol, thanking our lucky stars everyday for the better health we felt so fortunate to have, hard as we worked for it. We knew they weren't made of the same stuff as us, but oh, did we want to help a brother out. It became the stuff our lives were made of, too, our life's mission and raison d'etre for being in it with them, for as long as we could manage it. It meant (and still means) that much to us. And so, when they fell down, we picked them up time after time (actually physically picking them up and supporting their often greater weights, athletes that we all are), and carrying them back home to the safety of our humble houses that we held together with our love, blood, sweat, and tears, but it wasn't something we could do on our salaries for very long, without facing down the fear of bankruptcy, which I finally did.

It went far beyond kicking someone when they were down, because we'd seen it up close for far too long, even though I'd escaped some of the worst facets of addictive disorders from my parents abilities to maintain drug- and alcohol-free existences for periods of time, weird as their disorders expressed themselves in other areas of their lives. Without healing madness at the root of it, it simply went into different odder directions, sublimated into an ever-stranger series of "fetishes" (self-described to me), like obsessive counting games, or folding laundry long into the night. We'd seen it's weirdness up close-and-personal in the people closest to us, as the very people who gave birth to us, and we hated their diseases with a passion that fueled our work at an almost inhuman pace, as we frantically tried to outpace their madness, sometimes falling down hard in the face of it by becoming overwhelmed, awash and swamped by the sheer number of illnesses we had to bear up under and support on a woman's salary.

We carried them as long as we could, and then we had to cut the chord to save ourselves, an enormously humble and selfless act that is not for juniors or beginners. Don't do it like we did, unless you have our gifts and genius, okay? Don't try this at home, folks, and don't "go it" alone. Gird yourself with as many strong healthy warriors as you can, and fire at it with everything you have in your arsenal, because that's exactly what I'm doing with you who are along for the ride today with me, out there in my audience, thinking that you're alone. You are not.

For all of David's supposed bravado in the face of life's challenges (as well as the normal day-to-day stuff he shied away from, too), at home he was just another scared New York kid too afraid to drive a car from my aunts' Brooklyn apartment to our parent's houses upstate. Despite his exaggerated tales of car chases and bank robberies gone wrong, you should know, my dear friends, that it was always just me driving him in-and-out of the city in the early morning light to avoid traffic, tourists, and fast-moving cabs that could cut you off at any moment, because he simply didn't have it in him to navigate an urban jungle as deadly as my native New York City. I did. You should know that.

Eternal Love

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5180263

This Lenten season I am devoted to fighting for better healthcare for all families, particularly the children, teens, and adults I grew up with who suffered terrible abuses in private that were caused by the illnesses of others around them, without us having any recourse (besides the systems of Child Welfare and Foster Care, two horrors I would never submit to, nor would any of my native New York friends), which means I won't be doing the exact same type of pilgrimage as those of you who frequent church, but you still have to go. Sorry, though not very much so, because that's the deal: I take on the world, you take on our faith. This covenant extends to our entire faith, as well as those of you who have remained our dear faithful around the world. You are not alone.

In addition to today's message of hope, love, and mercy (during Our Most Holy Father in Rome's aptly titled "Year of Mercy"*, a time of great reconciliation and forgiveness for all of us, worldwide), I wanted to share some fun facts with you, too. We don't just work hard. We also work hard to enjoy each others company as well, both in celebration of St. Valentine's** legacy of eternal glory through love, and our continued recognition of the weekly Sabbath, as necessary breaks from our labors, so ordained for us to maintain our balance with communal care.

During my almost daily acts as a publisher, I scan through thousands and thousands of images. In my expertise, you learn to see the truth behind a great image that's immediately recognizable as art, and then you see all the rest. For a time, I "pinned" the ones I liked onto a public board for all of you to enjoy, until that application stopped the practice, intimidated as they are by the image-makers who make it great. It came to a head one afternoon for me, when I came upon the strikingly beautiful image of a native Indo-European boy from a prominent New York tribe. I did the customary actions I usually did with that software, went back to my home screen and POOF! He was gone. I mean, his image wasn't there for me and my subscribers to see.

I began a protracted and deliberately frustrating online chat with their "IT" support, along with the other users who complained about this big change in their successful company practices thus far. My subscribers could only see the image if they "liked" the category subfolder I placed it in, but the beauty and symmetry behind my purposefully and excellently designed stream of images on my home page that was done with my expert eye was gone, and that's what did it in for them with me. They couldn't find anyone better to design "their" advertising-sponsored boards that they wanted to re-route my audience to, hijacked as they were by far better talents than they, as a group of computer programmers and "webbies", will ever be. I knew it was done with a timing that speaks to both a love and a prejudice that hasn't died with the ages, enmeshed as he and I are in this timelessness.

I went on the warpath after that, furiously complaining and writing about their exposed hack onto our boards designed with "their" software, in this petty show of envy that hasn't dulled with time. C'est la vie. The image I was drawn to of a pair of lovers buried together will endure long after trendy social media apps come-and-go with an amazingly quick frequency in our fast human time that is dwarfed by both geological and universal time. After a while, it became irrelevant in the face of my daily life, a forgotten social footnote that probably won't make design history like I will, so who are they? They are no one to you and I because here we are together again, and that's what counts.

Besides, sexiness is found in far more places than some obscure image app, and heart-shapes mean way more than some bland teenager's cartoon emoticon easily placed but devoid of any real meaning. Care to dicker with my assertions? Oh, please do! It's what every parent lives for; schooling kids who know a lot less. See it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29. "Happy Hearts" to you and your loved ones this holiday weekend made for love, because in any century or time, love is always the greatest answer you can have as a human being. Love is the key.

*  http://wwwmigrate.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/new-evangelization/jubilee-of-mercy/ **  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine 

Exodus (Movement of the People)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War

Year after year after year, we see the same dysfunctional pattern: corrupt government goes bad in yet another bloody coup, blundering rich white people attached to relief agencies swarm the area to witness first-hand the same type of atrocities (again), equipped with an effete cameraman as their only protection. 

These are desperate people seeking fame, fortune, glory, and the spoils of war (with maybe an award or two for extra boasting power); the area becomes flooded with conflicting tribes, petty warlords, and other opportunists there to catch the gold drippings hanging off of each and every well-meaning (and oh so charitable) drop from the American Red Cross by, that's right, those infidel American pigs!! Praise G-d!

As much as I love the idea of an unchanging homeland that continues on forever and ever, I know that the ground moves beneath our feet, as does the air above our heads, and the water in the oceans we cross. So do we as humans. You are not a plant rooted to only one type soil. You do not need any more oppression from people who do not love you. You can change. You can move. And so you must.*

I'll be here waiting, and I always keep my word to my people. Come here; live freely like we do. Amen to you during these days of upheaval, great stress, and extreme worry. May your journey to other lands see you arrive safely upon those shores, to a peaceful, law-abiding people who wait for you with open arms. Amen to you today, my many faithful who are free.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

To my Syrian (and former cab driver) friend from New York, now the proud owner of his own air conditioning business, a big success if ever there was: thanks for helping out a neighbor in need with A/C when yet another corrupt landlord failed to do so, knowing that she is disabled and cannot move about freely. You came to her in her time of need, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service. Also, your knowledge of Aramaic** is most encouraging to me. 

To my new Syrian-American/Syrian- friends: Mike might not say it to you, but he wanted a big warm hug from Mommy, and he got one with a smile:) This one's for you, homeboy.

*   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Exodus
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language

 

Focus

Doubly exposed, with a tensely unhappy look.

All my life, my mother has taken really bad photos. It's always been weird to me, because before I was born and for some short time afterwards, my mom loved painting. I still have the precious little watercolor that she made me for my baby room, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet floating on a watery green background that was supposed to reference grass, but I don't mind the abstraction. My first oil paint kit was my mom's old discarded one that I pulled out of the back of a basement closet. I was reminded every time I opened it, with it's old brushes, linseed oil, and postcards that she used for reference. She wasn't very good, but she also didn't stick with it. There's one painting I found (now hanging above her bed at my putting) that she did of a landscape from a photo. It has some brilliant elements, but just like me with a fondness for science, her vocations led her elsewhere.

Which made her utter lack of ability with cameras even more troubling. Why? She hated posing for pictures, gladly showing me her sulky pouting baby pictures in black and white that my grandparents made her pose for. She cited all sorts of excuses: she hated getting her hair set with curls, she didn't feel like posing, or she was "too busy" to take a good shot. Baffling answers all, but they didn't tell me the real story, because unlike my mother, I could read pictures like they were books. Her photos were all over the place; bad angles, blurry shots, jarringly off composition, always out of focus, or she had a really tight, forced expression of her face when she did pose.

Cutting me out of the picture, and getting away with it.

I didn't really make the connection until many years later, years after I expertly learned the businesses of visual communication, and the various methods of those mediums, because it's that complex. My mom hates posing for photos because she looks crazy in them, and she knows it. It gelled for me with my oldest brother and his wife: with all their compulsive traveling, not one single travel shot produced by them (they also shun the creativity of most social media). Not one. Oh, years of oddly posed Christmas cards of them that they framed for us as "gifts", my savvy marketing family even hiring a professional photographer for their staged Greenwich, CT shoots, but not once did they pick up a camera. They'd admire it in others, market themselves through the medium and put it on their walls, but not once have I ever seen one of them take an actual photograph. They say they don't need them or like them either, which is doubly weird, because they work out to maintain their images all the time. But, I suppose if I had a suicide mom and kids on serious psychiatric medication (like my brother and his wife), I'd hate reminders, too.

Ditto with pictures of me. Not one of me on any of their walls. My mom has these strange plastic-wrapped bundles of pictures, sometimes correctly labeled for the individual in the photo, and sometimes not. They come to me as she finds them stored throughout her household, or when her cleaning lady moves old furniture around. Her handwriting on them ranges from the perfect schoolgirl of her youth to the much more recent scrawl of her senior years. I have no idea why she randomly selected some pictures to be packed away in baggies and some not, except for the obvious proof that these photos show me, like time capsules of her madness: because she still struggles to make sense of the world around her, and who the people are in the photos.

Posing behind me, like I'm a trophy fish on the wall or a decorative lamp.

 
Nowadays, I use them as a form of art therapy for her, just like her onsite caregiver Lynette does in much more vivid detail with her, one image at a time: who are these people? What do they mean to you? Do you remember taking them, or how you felt at the time? More and more, I feel like all of my very learned expertise comes down to the feeling Anne Sullivan must have had breaking through Helen Keller's massively intricate self-defense system: I have done all this for her, to break through the walls of her mind that are like prisons for the many facets of her fractured self. I use my art to break through, very often to her, violently and aggressively, as you can plainly see why here. 

Some days, I simply sign the same messages of hope and loss, love and anger, here on this site and through other media outlets, over and over again until you get it. And sometimes, like this perfectly framed summertime photo obviously taken by grandfather for its' astonishingly stand-out clarity, I get help exactly when I need it, through a man who openly supported my art and personality without prejudice at great contrast to our unhealthy and immediate family. I can feel the power of His Eternal Undying Love, spoken loud and clear across the ages, through one simple, humble, and very beautiful photograph of a little girl trapped and angered by the madness of others, because that's exactly what my healthier grandparents lived through with their children and grandchildren, too.

It was the summer of '75 for me and my awesome Grandpa.

For the Many Faithful of the World: today I give thanks for the loving, beautiful, and gifted grandparents who were essential to my good health growing up. I would not have survived this life without them. Their patient care was often just a phone call and five minute drive away. I also give thanks for all of you who have survived the cruelty of other people's madness to achieve great personal success, by breaking through the many walls around you to greatness. Long may you reign in peace with us. Amen to you.

 (for Bernard and Ann, two of His Most Faithfully Devoted Servants)

Here's a hint: I'm the one in the middle.