(Above, a recent sketch I did of my dear friend, DS Levy. My reference was a photo taken when the amazingly talented writer known as little Deb had a typewriter already growing in her heart)
Man, it has been a long time since I’ve posted. Like you all, I’m juggling broken mugs and chipped glasses in the air trying to make a Venetian decanter. I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing and ‘arting’ offline. ‘Tis difficult wanting to do it all with the damn clock dictating the days.
I do hope you, your families and friends are doing okay.
Here’s a piece I wrote sometime ago. It was written in the kitchen of my previous home on a cold day with a bad cup of coffee in hand:)
The Lollipop Vanishes
The cold isn’t done yet. It remains bluster-gray. Steam from my morning coffee marinates my face while the pen hanging from the calendar on the pantry door draws pictograms. Shouldn’t have cracked the kitchen sliders open so early. Maybe scrawl from the beyond? I wonder, should I pray or wipe the ink away before it sets in?
Outside remains every shade of gray. Time flips on its head whenever the clouds sail that fast. Between sips of bad coffee, I remember me as a little girl in brown polyester, a tomboy with a pageboy, and a half-shirted party girl. Young woman with a career, an apartment, a sports car, a motorcycle.
As a lefty, I never learned biker right-hand turns. The bike went away. I totaled my car. The car went away. I got married. We moved from New Jersey to New York. I had children. We moved into a bigger home. Our dog died. We got another dog. And another dog for child anxiety. My children earned degrees.
Our family had a bad eleven weeks that killed my father and mother-in-law and gave my mother a massive stroke. My mother died three years afterward. I don’t remember being her caregiver. My children moved into their new lives. We downsized into a new “old” house. My husband’s hair turned grey. All my older relatives are nearly done dying. I have a box of Clairol waiting in the wings.
In one of my book clubs, I’m the oldest, in the other, I’m the youngest. I worry the elder members will pass on before reading the next book selection.
And the lollipop vanishes, but the goddamn stick can beat you into the ground.
Look at that, outside the gray is fading to light purple. How pretty. That’s something I haven’t seen in a while.
am:)
arrives, I will smile impossibly wide to pay Millie’s gift forward in a world that needs a hell of a lot more love
anntogether 