Dear Friends and Loved Ones; ?/20??
It’s the day after finals, and the whir, hum and moan of winter’s wind has been beating against the house like an ambient drone since the wee hours of yesterday morning. All of life is quiet, except for the fact that it all sounds as if it’s taking place inside a tunnel. The dogs are curled up on the couch and fresh coffee is brewing. Winter is here.
I decided to take a page out of my mother’s playbook this year and throw presumed deadlines out the window. This letter will be finished and mailed when I have time, and not a moment before. Those of you who routinely receive my mother’s letter around Valentine’s Day will understand.
The reason being is that this fall semester, my first at Kent State, took on an entirely different tempo than anything I’d grown accustomed to previously at Lakeland. The satellite campus at Ashtabula is startlingly diverse, with many openly practicing Pagans, Buddhists, and Hindus studying right alongside the Christian/Agnostic majority. Ashtabula is desolate at first glance, but a closer look reveals the shabby, weather-worn makings of an artistic scene. It reminds me a bit of downtown West Palm Beach, Florida in 1989: it’s on the verge of everything.
This fall I decided Lord Ganesh was in need of a new consort on the altar in my office. The Hindu God of success, remover of obstacles and bestower of blessings on all new beginnings is now accompanied by the Millennial Gaia, She who is pregnant with Herself; the Great Mother of us all. My ongoing prayer is for prolific creativity. So as I sit here now, resplendent in the knowledge that I don’t HAVE to write anything for anyone other than myself, I am exhaling and letting the dust of this past year fall around me like snow, so that I may see it, make sense of it, and draw from it some articulate locution for you all.
This past year has been one of healing and transformation. Some days felt like scabs being ripped away from old wounds, while others shed light on the realization that a little air might be just what that old wound needed.
Mike sold his Ultra-Classic last winter fully believing that Medical Mutual would finally fund his long awaited (15 years!) knee replacement surgery. After all, what’s the point of making payments on a bike you can’t ride? But once again, they re-nigged and Mike was forced to endure yet another year of cortisone shots and pain relief prescriptions. They have seen fit to approve his surgery this year, thank the Gods, for there is no amount of massage therapy, cortisone or vicadin that can alleviate bone on bone pain. It’s been a long time coming, but once he completes his rehabilitation, his seventy year old knee will finally be able to keep up with his forty-seven year old body which is under the impression that he is still twenty-one.
I suffered the ludicrous humiliation of getting fired from Family Dollar. Their explanation made so little sense,(I hit the register keys too hard?) that I managed to write a blisteringly funny thirty-seven page story all about the petty small town politics that seem to run small town businesses. Interestingly enough, unemployment has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Virginia Woolf is famous for her advice to female writers. She believed that the masculine slant on written history was merely the end result of a patriarchal monopoly on the written word. A woman aiming to correct this imbalance must first accomplish three things: she must marry well, accrue an annual stipend of her own and she must have a room of her own, a sacred space in which she may cultivate her talent away from any menial day to day interruptions.
Now marrying well may sound arcane in today’s language, but as my past life in New York can attest, it really does take two people working full time to get one artist off the ground. I would be lying if I didn’t admit my gratitude at finally being the sole artist in the relationship. I’m afloat in the land of student loans now, so I imagine that’s my annual stipend and the room we were saving for a nursery has been converted into a cozy little writing room. Ms. Woolf would be proud!
Ganesh and Gaia oversee everything as the altar is situated at my back as I write. Their magic has been working. I am prolific. This fall I have managed to write several short stories as well as a short play. Being surrounded by young twenty-somethings at school has also managed to bring my poetry writing back to life. More importantly, I’ve found a few publishers I am eligible to submit to. This is a step I have never undertaken before, in part because I didn’t know how, but also because I just never had the time to decipher the whole process before. I am finally living the life of a full time writer and I couldn’t be happier. Also now that I’m completing the course work for my major, English Literature, I have an insurmountable list of books to read each semester. I don’t know that I would have had enough time for my studies if I still had a “job”.
Lastly it is with great regret that I touch upon the sadness of this past year briefly. As we watched big oil cut open Mother Earth and let her bleed out in the Gulf of Mexico, I was more distressed by how helpless I felt than anything else. Mike shipped a box of Dawn dishwashing liquid down to help with the animal rescue but beyond that, we didn’t know what else to do. Then we witnessed not one, not two but three people in our family fall ill with cancer. I can’t help wondering if there is a correlation between the way we treat our planet and the way we treat ourselves. With only my words to offer I share this prayer with you for the coming New Year.
Dear sweet Mother Earth, the Mother of all Mothers, Great Mother of us all, created from Light and Love ,the Mother of all the Heavens, who performed the Great Rite with Eros, and is thus the Mother of all humanity and Life upon her own dark fleshy soil, we offer you barley and honey, and all our honor and respect. We entreat you go forth with Ganesha, who is Lord of all infinite wisdom, who disperses all barriers to success, in his pine grove he shall heal you, Great Mother, and feed you fine oranges and gold. Let the union of Gaia and Ganesha, heal the wounds of the Great Mother’s crust in the Gulf of Mexico. Let Lord Ganesha remove the obstacles in the way we treat cancer at present, that make the therapy as painful as the disease. Let the ultimate cure gestate within Gaia. May we heal our planet. May we heal our people. May we unite in peace and harmony to bless one another in love and compassion from now until eternity.
Blessed be to you all this 2011. May the wheel of the year treat you kindly.
Love, Mike, Gabby, Frankie, and Mavis
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label letters. Show all posts
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
YULE LETTER 2009
Dear All; 12/21/09
Fall semester marked a first for me here at Lakeland. The parking lot was full to capacity the first day of school. I had to park on the grass next to the soccer field because quite literally, it was the only way I could be anywhere near my classes. The only legitimate parking remaining was across the street in the old Smokey Bones parking lot. Between graduating high school seniors trying to save a few bucks by spending their first two years at a C.C. and older students, like me, looking to add a few credits to their resumes learning seems to be the buzzword born from this economic depression. (Let's call it what it is, shall we?)
I am in part, like the mini-majorettes with their windshields awash in “09 Forever!”, trying to stave off the impending fact that KSU will inevitably cost three times as much as Lakeland but no one can argue that a B.A. in this or any economy is my only hope of real gainful employment beyond my beloved little hometown dollar store.
And then it hits me. As I search for a seat in my (!!!!!!!) 8AM (!!!!!!!) algebra class, the difference between the forty something students and the mini-majorettes becomes alarmingly palpable. In those moments before the professors arrival, I am bombarded on all sides by pony-tailed cheerleaders and baseball scholarship hopefuls all infecting my under-caffeinated senses with the push button sound of texting. What could possibly be more important than a venti quad soy caramel macchiato at 7:58 in the morning?
In my head, I immediately launch into an acrid, resentment filled diatribe about how phones used to plug into walls and people used to know how to properly spell out “Oh My God” and “Too Much Information!”and I realized amidst another yawn that this is all emblematic of a generation gap. The cheerleaders may have LOL, WTF? TMI, and OMG! But I have a cornucopia of pop culture catchphrases forty years in the making; catch phrases that can sum up whole philosophical concepts these baseball stars and majorettes are still decades away from embracing.
My generation had LiveAid, Rock the Vote, and Artists Against Apartied, and although pride in this is debatable, we also had FRANKIE SAYS RELAX (spelled out in full thank you) and lest we forget 1982's “Gag me with a Spoon”.(Thank you, Moon & Frank)
With LiveAid, we, the pastey white, Reebock wearing suburban Roxy Music fans got to remind those Reagan loving drones that in fact Africa did exist and that feeding it's inhabitants mattered. Rock the Vote got me to vote for Dukakas and Clinton and pissed my father off to no end.(which of course, delighted me until he lost his job due to Clinton's defense budget cuts)
But as I approached my thirties I wanted something I was sure could never be encapsulated in a catchphrase. Amazingly however, even massage school was aflurry in new age buzzwords. “Yes” summed up the harrnessing of a client's Craniosacral rhythm. “Five Element Theory” was a new way to summarize the totality of a client's health picture and “Archetypes” held my hand and led me on a path through my dreams that at least started me on my way out of my darkness. How is it that concepts so complex as Craniosacral theory, Eastern medicine and Jungian Psychology landed in the buzz word cauldron? Is this systemic of the learning process? Or are buzzwords how we shrink wrap and mass produce concepts? I don't know.
Last May, I was told that I have less than a 10% chance of ever getting pregnant. I cried for a few days but after that, the news seemed almost like a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I've spent my whole life waiting to be a Mom. In the interim, I've managed to lead a colorful and fascinating life. Should I sit around and continue to wait for my life to happen? Do I care anymore about some one other than myself completing me?
... no ... this was accompanied by no feeling what so ever.
Mom came out, as mothers will do in times of emotional crisis, and I expressed this feelinglessness to her. I felt obligated to mourn a time when I felt for men with great intensity. As certain as I am of my love for Michael, there's no pang in my chest when I look at him. There's no pang in my chest over anything anymore. Mom explained that I had finally reached the age of understanding. I was coming into Nirvana. As is always the case when your mother is an anthropologist, Mom's answer left me with more questions than it answered. Is this my new buzzword? My new catchphrase?
Nirvana: a state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual existence and by the absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit, or by the extinction of all desires and passions.
I don't care anymore. Is that it? Is that the key? I don't care that I don't make fifty grand a year anymore. I don't care that I'm not skinny anymore. I don't care that I don't live in the capital of the world anymore. Or to quote Lennon, (he who inspired me to write in the first place) “I don't believe in Tarot. I don't believe in Buddha. I don't believe in Yoga ... I just believe in me ... And that's reality” The dream is over and I don't care anymore whether or not I ever become a mom. But for the first time in my life I care about whether or not I become a writer.
... so we go to school and we take classes ...
...even parenting classes (prerequisites for adoption)
I'm still meditating on the definition of Nirvana. Like it or not, she's right. Mom is always right; even if it takes me a couple of years to fully adsorb whatever concept she's just laid on me. Would the extinction of my individual existence happen by my becoming a foster mom? Or would my soul be absorbed into the supreme spirit if I was to become fully absorbed by a child's life? Have I fully extinguished all my desires and passions?
No. Because I want to write more than I want anything else ... even children.
I don't have an answer yet. I don't even have a catch phrase. But I am still willing to learn.
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Wouldn't you know it? You can't sum up life in a catch phrase after all.
OMG!
Blessings,
Gabby
Fall semester marked a first for me here at Lakeland. The parking lot was full to capacity the first day of school. I had to park on the grass next to the soccer field because quite literally, it was the only way I could be anywhere near my classes. The only legitimate parking remaining was across the street in the old Smokey Bones parking lot. Between graduating high school seniors trying to save a few bucks by spending their first two years at a C.C. and older students, like me, looking to add a few credits to their resumes learning seems to be the buzzword born from this economic depression. (Let's call it what it is, shall we?)
I am in part, like the mini-majorettes with their windshields awash in “09 Forever!”, trying to stave off the impending fact that KSU will inevitably cost three times as much as Lakeland but no one can argue that a B.A. in this or any economy is my only hope of real gainful employment beyond my beloved little hometown dollar store.
And then it hits me. As I search for a seat in my (!!!!!!!) 8AM (!!!!!!!) algebra class, the difference between the forty something students and the mini-majorettes becomes alarmingly palpable. In those moments before the professors arrival, I am bombarded on all sides by pony-tailed cheerleaders and baseball scholarship hopefuls all infecting my under-caffeinated senses with the push button sound of texting. What could possibly be more important than a venti quad soy caramel macchiato at 7:58 in the morning?
In my head, I immediately launch into an acrid, resentment filled diatribe about how phones used to plug into walls and people used to know how to properly spell out “Oh My God” and “Too Much Information!”and I realized amidst another yawn that this is all emblematic of a generation gap. The cheerleaders may have LOL, WTF? TMI, and OMG! But I have a cornucopia of pop culture catchphrases forty years in the making; catch phrases that can sum up whole philosophical concepts these baseball stars and majorettes are still decades away from embracing.
My generation had LiveAid, Rock the Vote, and Artists Against Apartied, and although pride in this is debatable, we also had FRANKIE SAYS RELAX (spelled out in full thank you) and lest we forget 1982's “Gag me with a Spoon”.(Thank you, Moon & Frank)
With LiveAid, we, the pastey white, Reebock wearing suburban Roxy Music fans got to remind those Reagan loving drones that in fact Africa did exist and that feeding it's inhabitants mattered. Rock the Vote got me to vote for Dukakas and Clinton and pissed my father off to no end.(which of course, delighted me until he lost his job due to Clinton's defense budget cuts)
But as I approached my thirties I wanted something I was sure could never be encapsulated in a catchphrase. Amazingly however, even massage school was aflurry in new age buzzwords. “Yes” summed up the harrnessing of a client's Craniosacral rhythm. “Five Element Theory” was a new way to summarize the totality of a client's health picture and “Archetypes” held my hand and led me on a path through my dreams that at least started me on my way out of my darkness. How is it that concepts so complex as Craniosacral theory, Eastern medicine and Jungian Psychology landed in the buzz word cauldron? Is this systemic of the learning process? Or are buzzwords how we shrink wrap and mass produce concepts? I don't know.
Last May, I was told that I have less than a 10% chance of ever getting pregnant. I cried for a few days but after that, the news seemed almost like a weight lifted off of my shoulders. I've spent my whole life waiting to be a Mom. In the interim, I've managed to lead a colorful and fascinating life. Should I sit around and continue to wait for my life to happen? Do I care anymore about some one other than myself completing me?
... no ... this was accompanied by no feeling what so ever.
Mom came out, as mothers will do in times of emotional crisis, and I expressed this feelinglessness to her. I felt obligated to mourn a time when I felt for men with great intensity. As certain as I am of my love for Michael, there's no pang in my chest when I look at him. There's no pang in my chest over anything anymore. Mom explained that I had finally reached the age of understanding. I was coming into Nirvana. As is always the case when your mother is an anthropologist, Mom's answer left me with more questions than it answered. Is this my new buzzword? My new catchphrase?
Nirvana: a state of perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of individual existence and by the absorption of the soul into the supreme spirit, or by the extinction of all desires and passions.
I don't care anymore. Is that it? Is that the key? I don't care that I don't make fifty grand a year anymore. I don't care that I'm not skinny anymore. I don't care that I don't live in the capital of the world anymore. Or to quote Lennon, (he who inspired me to write in the first place) “I don't believe in Tarot. I don't believe in Buddha. I don't believe in Yoga ... I just believe in me ... And that's reality” The dream is over and I don't care anymore whether or not I ever become a mom. But for the first time in my life I care about whether or not I become a writer.
... so we go to school and we take classes ...
...even parenting classes (prerequisites for adoption)
I'm still meditating on the definition of Nirvana. Like it or not, she's right. Mom is always right; even if it takes me a couple of years to fully adsorb whatever concept she's just laid on me. Would the extinction of my individual existence happen by my becoming a foster mom? Or would my soul be absorbed into the supreme spirit if I was to become fully absorbed by a child's life? Have I fully extinguished all my desires and passions?
No. Because I want to write more than I want anything else ... even children.
I don't have an answer yet. I don't even have a catch phrase. But I am still willing to learn.
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Wouldn't you know it? You can't sum up life in a catch phrase after all.
OMG!
Blessings,
Gabby
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