Dance

The twirlly bits are most thrilling

And frightening.

In a flash

I lose my sense of self

Of balance

Of adult hood

No longer the grown-up

I throw myself

Into the air

Hoping to end

Up-right

But happy just to do it

The beat

The beat

Dance on the beat.

Dance on the head of a pin.

Angels watch me

Laughing

Dancing together

Again.

Seamus

In remembrance of the great poet Seamus Heaney


 

An old man dead

Or a dog that breathed a fetid stench

Irish both

But neither suited for the trenches

The old man glowers

With a 3 year old's jealousy

Of dead scholars

And poets

And soldiers

All past to dust

But having lived

Whilst he reconsiders

His dread of criticism

And sulks

To beat the band

Stories

Cold metal

‘Gainst fragile bone

Clasped in mouth

Upside down

Subway platform

Hmmmm

Everyone has a story.

One worries about the smell.

Disrupting the tempo of lives.

Bathtub

Warm water

Red

Overpass

Cling

Drop

Fly

Everyone has a story

Pow

Crack

Gasp

Sob

Sigh

Finish the story.

Write

The

End

Leaves

Red leaves were favored.
Chosen
Studied
Debated
Pressed between waxen sheets.
Hot
Burned fingers
"Et voila."

Better pressed in books.
Large
Heavy
Lost
Forgotten
'Till found a century gone.
Transparent
Disintegrating

"We did that you know.
I remember the day,
With Lulu and Belle.
Oh mon dieu,
We were so gai."

Summer's Leaving

Summer's leaving
Me, with fastness,
Lastingness
I've never known.

Rain drips down,
Continuum to the
Drone of time erasing,
Time erasing ever,
Everlasting time,
Again, never.

Finality surrounds,
Last rush of warm,
Its deluge wet
And burning,
Rouses a last...hope.
No. Summer's gone.

Maire

I couldn't bring myself to post this last May, I was too sad, but now I feel I can. It's an excerpt from my journal.

May 1, 2011

This afternoon I heard that my closest childhood friend had cancer; things did not look good.

Now, a few hours later, I find myself imagining my way through her wake. Burying her before she’s had a chance to heal, to survive, to vanquish that SOB cancer.

Too much death. Not you too Maire.

We are not close. Have not been close since those early prepubescent years. Yet, she’s the one I think of when those awkward, babyfat days come to mind. Not my brothers, always mean, or crying, or dirty diapered. They were legion. They outnumbered me four to one. And sisterless, I sought  out Maire.

May 2, 2011

Dear Maire,
Well, I've been thinking about you. My most positive, warm, hopeful thoughts are with you right now. But I'm sure you know that everyone in this crazy Tevlin family feels as I do, everyone wants you up and around, the sooner the better.

But, enough of that, let me tell you what I've really been thinking about. It's not the middle aged gal that I no longer know very well, and haven't seen in a dog's age who's been on my mind, but that little brown haired version of me....skinny, scary, full of questions, afraid of boys, dogs, and fish touching small white feet whilst swimming in the good ol' Gatineau River. She, like me, is surrounded by younger siblings, has a beautiful mother, and a father who sings....that's what I'm thinking about....the singing girls....

Last night I fell asleep thinking about the evenings we used to spend singing with our 2 Dads. I've never really analysed those evenings but they were magical, the 2 of us, high girlish sopranos, and our 2 fathers, Irish tenors, sweet and sheer. Such simple beauty...so perfect....and so natural we thought nothing of it....just sang what we were told and taught to sing.....lovely days they were my dear Maire.....such fragile delicate memories. We did well with Moonlight Bay...do you remember? And as we grew, and times changed, we adapted the words to modern times. Funny eh? Are we that old?

Get better Mary, you're the closest thing I ever had to a sister.

Much love,

Suzanne

I Write To Understand - The Final

It has been four months now. The pain is lessening, though the mystery remains.

What interests me most is the way he seems to have been thrown away, discarded, ignored, by everyone, the whole world. He was swept up and shuffled under the carpet. He ceased to exist.

Christmas came, and not a soul lamented his passing, my loss, or the difficulties of modern life.

T drew a line under his life the week before Christmas, and even my closest relative, the person I thought to be my dearest friend, did not remember me, or him, or my loss of him that Noel. I too was left alone. Alone.

T’s decision to end his life has changed my world in the most subtle way. No longer will I maintain relationships that are deleterious to my self-esteem. If those I love do not love me then they must leave me to my work, my art and my own ways.

I suppose I will never understand why people refuse to acknowledge a suicide. And I hope never again to need the support of people who will not give it. But, these people - do they not realize that those who are left, those who have been violently, physically rejected, by death, need to understand, need to talk, need to mourn. They cannot discard those they loved as easily as may be wished.

I Write To Understand - Part 3

The others chat amongst themselves. People whom I have never met, but know so much about. I know their foibles, their attitudes, the good and the bad. When had confessor become part of my job description? And for a priest. Why is theology such a strict, and forbidding mistress? Why couldn’t he break free from those early days of shame and punishment?

My eyes are drawn to his face, his cheeks. I search for scratches. Search to find evidence of a last minute change of heart. Other than that I can’t bring myself to form the vision of his final tremors.

But his preparation, that I wonder about. How did he arrange his final morning? Did he play that African song he loved? Did he have a cup of the tea that hung like an albatross around his now marked neck?

And ritual.

In what self-anointing ritual did he steep himself that dawn? Ritual was a great love and comfort to him. I laughed on more than one occasion, telling him his love of ritual could easily qualify him as an honourary Roman Catholic. But this lost Calvinist minister would only become more intense in his observation of the rite, be it tea brewing or discussion.

And then gone, as though he'd quit the inner sanctum before the offering had been accepted.

Or had he simply realized that he was to be the sacrificial lamb?

I Write To Understand - Part 2

The reluctant terror that forced my feet to follow their regimented norm drew me into the pulsating world of the ICU.

In a glass box, reminiscent of a 60’s Francis Bacon, he lay with pale-green mechanical units surrounding him as once, perhaps, his followers had. The cult leader come to rest.

An enormous torso dwarfed the tiny, utilitarian hospital palette, making one wonder what extreme physics equation held his now living, now dying body in place.

“You are such a Taurus.” I thought sadly. “Toro in mind toro in body. You great bloody bullheaded man.”

His pale accordion respirator whispered a hushed response.

His face was turned away from the others. Over his jaw ran a deep red striation. Where the cord had lodged ? His hand, despite the scars, seemed so soft for someone who had enjoyed hard work. His brain, well his brain had never been soft, had it?

Is it true then that you can be too smart for your own good ?

I WRITE TO UNDERSTAND

“So I went on alone and even farther
Along the seventh circle’s outer margin,
To where the melancholy people sat.”

I suppose it’s futile, even foolhardy, to try to understand why someone would take his own life.

But I do.

I wonder almost every day now. And when I look around at what I now realize are the facts, I even wonder if he hadn't suddenly found himself so enmeshed in his silky web of lies that he had nowhere to go.

Nowhere to go.

What a thought. He had me, of course. But he had rejected me. Told me, in response to my declaration, that I was attacking him. He could get all the love he needed from his male friends, he said. They were the ones that mattered.

But he wasn’t gay, and no, there was no reason why we should stop seeing each other. He wouldn’t say he loved me, he wouldn’t say he didn’t, he simply wouldn’t say. And I was to blame for his lack of verbiage. I made him feel trapped-but I wasn’t to see anyone else. And nine months without any physical contact was not abnormal. He said. He said. He said.

To be continued......

Coffee Spoons

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons:”

Elliot describes the hopeless, lethargic, paralysis of loneliness, where motion slows to a liquid stillness, as chopped and pasted together as a stop action film….Tom Stoppard would understand. Language.

A coffee spoon is tiny, miniscule, less than one half the size of a tea spoon, so to take the measure of one’s life with such an implement would surely make time stand still….Language.

Once, in France I explained to a French friend that after the disintegration of my marriage I was so shattered, in so many pieces, that my self seemed to no longer exist…She smiled knowingly and said “You mean you had to collect yourself with a coffee spoon”... une cuillère à café… God, I laughed when I heard that! That was a new way of putting it for me …..and ultimately an optimistic one for, even though a body broken into bits will take a long time to pick up with such a tiny spoon…it can be done. I love the French…..optimistic cynics that they are ….or cynical optimists…you choose. Language.

And then thinking of my Grandmother’s endless lessons of etiquette… ”The teaspoon with the tea cup….always use a good cup and saucer, never a mug....it tastes better.... The coffee spoon with the demitasse … The teapot is short and stout like the rhyme …the coffee pot tall and lean like Aunt Lucille….And don’t ever let Aunt Lucille see you put a carton of milk on the table!… We’d never hear the end of it. Mon Dieu! "

Language!

The Priest, The Sister and Me

I'll tell you a funny story.

When I was a little girl, perhaps 7 or 8, I went to a tiny parochial school on the outskirts of Ottawa. Now I'm talking about the 'burbs ...the real "boonies", so far out of our Nations Capital that there was nothing but trees and ponds and birds and fields as far as the eye could see......idyllic.

St. Monica's was the proverbial 2 room school house set in the middle of acres of farmland, bordered at a discrete distance by new post war suburban architectural nightmares. This little red brick legend was run by a black skirted dynamo named Sister Gladys, small of stature, big of heart.....I loved Sister Gladys and would have done anything to gain her approval.

Well, almost anything.

One day Sister arrived at the door of our class room, clearly in a state. "Father" was coming to visit.....we were to prepare....he would, perhaps, quiz us on questions of catechism and dogma....well, possibly not dogma, but he would more than likely pose other questions on religious or spiritual theory, such as, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin (answer-as many as can manage to stand upright at the given moment) and it was up to us to prove our moral rectitude to this great man.

As the morning of the great questioning dawned, we, the little green clad Monicans, struggled over snowy fields and frozen ponds, with admirable stoicism, to meet our fate. Frostbite and snow blindness would not stand in the way of our defence of Sister's pedagogical wizardry.

The dark towering silouette of "Father" solemnly entered the room. Show Time! Hands waved like sea grass begging for attention...hoping to be chosen, wanting to respond to any question he dared ask. And man, did we perform. We sizzled and sparkled and shone! We were like little stars in the theological firmament.

Then, as Father turned to leave, he glanced back, "Little girls...little girls...little Flowers of Christ," he chuckled. "Tell me how many of you hope to be Brides of Christ? How many of my darling little girls wish to be nuns like your dear Sister Gladys?"

Every childish arm shot straight into the air, like dewy green shoots in a spring garden. All, that is, save mine.

To this day I am told that I think too much and I guess I'd already started, but truth matters and integrity costs. I loved Sister G but I had seen how, after a long day of teaching, the nuns often could be found on their hands and knees washing the floor. This puzzled me. I had also noticed that priests didn't wash floors, ever.

Oh, I knew that I couldn't be a priest...but there was an alternative. Sister had been telling us stories about the childhoods of various female saints. I adored these tales. And we were always being told to aim high...."Aim low, you hit the dirt", they said.

I did what I had to do. I decided to become a saint.

The Gift

Tonight, this last night of 2006, I will be dining with my Musical Mother, the elegant, the talented, the stubborn, the independant, the determined, the magnificent, grand old lady of the ivories, Miz Minnie. She will be dressed like a tiny 85lb queen mother, her make-up will be flawless (she's been trying to get me to get with the make-up thing for decades). She will be finely coiffed, subtly perfumed and ready to party. Don't misunderstand me when I describe Minnie, she can be earthy, even raunchy, as well as elegant....though not so much in mixed company anymore and we will be escorted by two excellent gentlemen.

Minnie will celebrate her 100th birthday in 6 weeks and the party will rock. She will laugh, and flirt, maybe even rant, depends who's there and what the subject of discussion. And then, more than likely, with a little prodding from her Musical Children, who's ages range into the 80's, myself being the baby of the group, she will play for us....and some of us...2 of us actually, along with Minnie, will sing....Les Girls will sing...probably musical comedy type stuff...but our 3rd "girl" is a bit operatic, so who knows what we'll do.....thank God for my childhood days of improvising harmonies for my Dad's Irish tenor.

My earliest, happiest memories all involve music and my father. Usually singing with him or for him or listening to him sing as he taught me how to use my voice. Dad loved jazz and opera. Sunday mornings are still synonymous with that miraculous harmonious crunch of notes created by Art Tatum, Jackson Teagarden, Enrico Caruso...oh yes and Irish Freedom songs....Will my Soul Pass Through Old Ireland still passes, like a stiletto, through my heart and brings tears to my eyes.

Music, the ability to express oneself through song or instrument, is such a precious gift. It bares your soul. It strengthens your soul. It inspires, calms, beautifies, excites. And it gives that very occasional opportunity to glimpse the truth.

How lucky I am.

Abuse

Every abuser believes that their victims are responsible for what they do or say to them and how they treat them.

Every abuser refuses to acknowledge the abused as an equal...but the abused does acknowledge the abuser, the abuse probably couldn’t happen otherwise, it’s hard to abuse someone who doesn’t respect or care for you. Of course that will change with any luck. Ideally we learn from our experiences. This is where the really serious psychological consequences occur because every abuse has the ability to shake the foundations of our ideals and beliefs and after a series of abuses we can start to question our very life’s philosophy.

Every abuse is accompanied by that rush of frigid air into the heart of the abused as just a little bit more of the love and respect once held for the abuser is chiseled away, until finally all that is left is a wintry void.

Every abuse is followed by an apology until finally the abused realizes that the faster and sweeter the apology the sooner the next episode of abuse.

Every abuse is conceived in the mind of the abuser and not the abused, thus, the abused, because they don't understand why the abuse began in the first place, constantly expects it to end. The abused initially develops a desperate optimism that allows them to survive an otherwise untenable situation, but this is often replaced by paralyzed silence as they watch the abuser, in their attempt to destroy them, destroy their own soul instead. This of course involves psychologically removing oneself from the situation, but it does make the abuse more bearable.

Denial helps too.




"Every" has been used as a literary device.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY

As she opened her eyes and looked across the empty bed, Colleen was filled with a warm sense of well being, knowing that this birthday morn she was alone...he was not there...he had gone away...for good...she was free of him, of his base obsessions and miserely, ungenerous habits...and she had managed to find her freedom without guilt... guiltless freedom...what a concept.

Her thoughts returned to that morning one year ago. For the first time, the night before, she had made him dinner, a secret gift on her birthday‘s eve. It was with a certain delicious forbodding that she had done this, for it had been years since she’d cooked for a man, domesticity having fled her life along with all other accoutrements of married bliss. She had successfully cut men out of her heart for a decade and had been rewarded with feelings of confidence, strength and optimism, the likes of which she had never experienced in her 18 years of marriage.

But the previous night she had wanted to cook for him because he had asked her to...and she wanted what he wanted...she hadn’t even noticed that she was falling...falling into that shameless, hopeless quagmire of trying to be... what?.. what ever he wanted her to be.

"Gawd.." thought she..."What a fool....what a pathetic fool."

To have him in her bed as her birthday dawned seemed like sheer delinquent delight to her misguided psyche. He tended to drift off after an evening...perhaps he’d have disappeared for a week or more (no she didn’t see the writing on the wall, dispite pleas from friends to wake up, she was already drowning in denial and self-delusion). The one thing she wanted was to not be alone on her birthday, she wanted him there when she woke up...and there when she went to sleep....just one day....what a treat that would be...

"Boy, s'funny how things change." she muttered to herself, as she noticed the special oversized pillow she had bought for him discarded on the floor....no use to her...hmm..yah..funny.

Things changed that morning. Her cell rang at 8am, she was wanted at work, someone had cancelled and they were desperate, apologetic but desperate. As she walked into the next room she explained in a hushed voice that, as it was her birthday and a Saturday, she couldn’t help them. She closed off with a satisfied giggle and hopped back into bed.

"So when were you going to tell me it was your birthday?" he laughed.

"I didn’t want you to feel you had to buy me a present. I’m just glad you’re here." she aligned her body with his, pressing up to it...savouring it's heat.

"Had you told me, we could have gone out for a nice dinner tonight, instead of just a film." he averted his eyes as he mouthed these words, they both knew it was still only 8am.

"Oh that’s okay, a film's great..." she murmured, as demure and chaste as a 10 cent holy card. And then, for one brief moment, the scales fell from her eyes as she watched his face gleam with satisfaction, mentally calculating the amount of money he wouldn’t have to spend. A knife pierced her heart but she ignored it. "Just like the old days," whispered her soul, but not loudly enough to hear.

He left mid-morning saying he’d come back around 6 and they’d walk to the cinema. And she...she spent a wonderful day dreaming about the potential of the coming evening.... dinner... dancing... flowers....a long walk...who knew what surprises lay ahead...he was still a novelty in her life, she was still full of hope for the future.

Do I need to tell you what actually happened? Of course not....

She just wanted to believe and he...he knew it...