Rating System

Welcome, 2010! …Time to change up the theme again…

For your reading convenience, click here to view the official Rating System for Downright E-fenzive blog posts.

At least you’ve been warned…

Reflections of Philadelphia: A Final Remembrance of Mark Werden

A towering structure of mirrored glass, intent not on its own perfection but on reflecting the grandeur of those around it, never truly understanding its own beauty.

I sat at breakfast that morning staring out the window at an edifice that magically disappeared into the backdrop of buildings, one that seemed to exist entirely to cast back the beauty of the city around it. The image became a metaphor for trying to create a picture in my mind’s eye of my old friend Mark Werden this weekend on a pilgrimage to express our brotherly love in the wake of his untimely passing.

We gathered together in his adopted home town of Philadelphia, friends and loved ones, to share the pieces of his life that included us. We made fun of his preening nature and his propensity toward full-on Narcissism. He’d always felt compelled to perform and entertain for any audience that would have him and he knew how to make the most of his physical attributes, attracting both men and women to his gentle spirit.

As we wandered aimlessly through the city, I could see him running around in a display of giant game pieces that were erected as interactive art outside of one building. He would have been playing and laughing with me and the goofy teenaged girls — now grown women — who had congregated here to see him off.

I saw him in the murals that had been painted on the massive walls of old broken down buildings in an effort to revitalize the city 10 years ago. His appreciation of beauty would have made for a grand tour if he’d been there to lead it.

I suppose he might have scoffed at our desire to see the historical section, trite as it can seem with all the tourists snapping pictures of the official birthplace of America, but he would have told us all about the wardrobe of the period, reflecting his vast knowledge of all things vintage.

He might have persuaded us not to go back to our hotel rooms and lounge out for the evening on our beds full of fluffy pillows and warm heavy blankets. He would have known where the fun places were and would undoubtedly have shown us a fabulous time.

Eventually, we saw even our most basic common bond with him at the “Bodies” exhibit at the Franklin Institute as we observed the perfection of the human body, the intricate machine that can’t seem to be truly replicated except by nature. Now contained in a small box of ashes, Mark had once been mere flesh and bone just like these people, just like us, yet he seemed so much more than that…. at least in my memory…

As I learned more about the subjective nature of the magnificent computer we call the human brain, I began to see some of the flaws in the reflection he kept gazing into. Scientists have sliced and diced the brain from all sides and directions, looking for the secrets of its mystical properties, but still the answers elude. They can’t explain the distortion that happens between the information perceived through the senses and its translation to the brain any more than they can illuminate the reasons for the choices we make that damage our lives. Neither can they quite describe why the heart breaks when a loved one disappears before our very eyes.

We looked at this tower of a man, each of us seeing our own personal reflection in the mirrors he held up to us. I don’t think we understood until this weekend how his strong arms had gently bent the sides of those mirrors to make us see a more perfect version of ourselves. Wide faces were made more narrow and angular, broad waists became slim and long. But the other side of that mirror reflected a different image, creating by its convex bend a mass of our imperfections and throwing them back at him. I suppose the biggest problem with mirrored glass is that no matter how hard we try to see what’s behind it, we can’t. We can only see reflected back at us the images our own brains perceive. We just see ourselves, and our own perceptions of memory…

We looked for answers this weekend about a man who essentially vanished from many of our lives, who had ducked behind that mirror each time we sought him out. Conversations with people who had known him at various times felt a little like a trip through a fun house, seeing image after distorted image as we tried to get a glimpse of who Mark had become.

Yet for a brief moment we were able to step through the looking glass that was his shield as we entered the tiny antique shop that had become his passion in the past few years. An eclectic collection of wonderfully chunky antique furniture was upstaged only by Mark’s exquisite taste in vintage women’s clothing, with pieces masterfully displayed throughout the space and highlighted that day by a buttercup yellow Chanel suit, his most recently purchased treasure. We fought to hold back our emotions when we discovered that on each of the items in the store was a tag, written in Mark’s own hand, neat and crisp as always, describing with his characteristic flair the value of each piece that had been so carefully chosen.

It was here that the deceptive mirror of Mark’s life shattered before us and we each carefully gathered up a jagged shard that could either cut us deeper or be a reflection from a dear friend of who we really are now. We could see, at least in a sense, the truly beautiful man our friend had become as he finally bared the difficulties of his own life to allow us to see the redemption possible in our own. Through his partner we could feel the sense of real value he had found in himself by choosing someone who so well reflected him – not as a mirror image but a perfect complement whose opposing qualities fulfilled those missing in his own psyche.

We are all mirrors for each other, bending and shaping the reflection back to each other as needed, but striving to not interfere with the image that most needs to be seen. It takes great love and courage to allow the “reflectee” to see him or herself for who they really are so that they may learn to truly love the person behind the mirror….as much as we do….

My Children….

I don’t have any kids….

Well, that’s not entirely true. They just don’t live on the outside of me like other people’s do.

Maybe that’s why people bear children at all — so that they can see those parts of themselves in the flesh rather than just in their imaginations. But those of us who don’t have actual physical children are no more lacking in offspring. They’re just not as visible to the naked eye.

My favorite kid is my 3-year-old. I know we’re not supposed to pick favorites but I can’t help myself. That’s her there in the corner. She’s truly the best part of me. She laughs, she’s coy, she’s charming. She’s the part of me that used to inspire my dad to say, “You were such a cute little kid. What happened?” She’s unashamed of her emotions and hasn’t yet learned what to be ashamed of. She just LIVES!!!

My other “kids” are jaded. They’re sarcastic, sardonic, witty, explosive. They can be a lot of fun too, but I find myself counting the days until they GROW THE HELL UP AND MOVE OUT!! They’re the ones I see in other people who piss me off. Sometimes they make me wish I could just shove them back into my mental womb and start over again.

But my 3-year-old forgives them all. She knows what it is to be happy even when the world around her is blowing apart. She knows how to ignore it all and pay attention to only what matters — the love and nurturing of all who surround her.

I go to her when I need redemption, when I just can’t deal with my snotty 13-year-old or my young adult know-it-all 21-year-old. She’s always up for a game of pattacake when I need to come back down to my most base self. She high-fives me in the mirror when I’m on the verge of tears with frustration at my inability to parent myself sometimes.

She’s my hero, my little 3-year-old. She’s the one I’d be again if I had the choice.

To Be An Artist….

Recently I made a pronouncement that I resolve to be “a real artist”. What does that mean?

To some, it means that I intend to make my living as an artist; someone that creates on a daily basis in return for monetary compensation.

To me, it is a statement of awareness… an intention to be intensely mindful of the world around me.

It is a reminder to….

…listen for the music in the banging of hammers that struggle to rebuild our failing economy…

…remember the colors of the day when the night of my mind seeks to obscure them…

…breathe in the acrid stench of nature’s capricious devastations and their requisite suffering…

…know that the taste of resentment is fleeting and that sweetness is the norm…

…feel the pain of others through the fingertips of my compassion…

In these moments of deep reflection the world becomes my canvas.

When I remember to live in these moments…. I am an artist….

New Year, New Mood, New Theme….

I’d like to bottle the mood I’m in today and sell it on the Internet and get RICH!!!

Or maybe I’ll just be selfish and save it all for myself…

Nope. That’s the point of this post. I’ve got it all and I want to GIVE IT AWAY!!!

What, you don’t believe me???

That’s okay — it doesn’t matter if you don’t. The important thing is that I believe me….

This year I’m ready to S – T – R – E – T – C – H….

I’m ready to SWING….

I’m ready to FLY !!!

We Ought To Be Committed!

It only takes a short week away from my usual surroundings for me to find my groove again. Do the walls of your life ever close in like they do in mine? Time to change that mindset….

Damn, it’s a new DECADE!

We made it through the first 10 years of the millenium much to the surprise of the survivalists of the Y2K era and it hasn’t been until almost the end of this year that we experienced another attempt at terrorism on our own soil with the unsuccessful effort of the dude from Nigeria trying to burn himself up on a plane on Christmas. Personally, I think when he found out his destination was Detroit, he freaked. Can’t blame him these days. Everyone else seems to be leaving the Motor City in droves…

Once we calm down from this hysteria that whips us up from time to time, we Americans are pretty resilient. We like to piss and moan about the hand life deals us sometimes, but that’s usually just the first step in reinventing ourselves. We don’t like to let go of the old, even when the new holds so much more promise. But like it or not, death and rebirth are the order of our world and much of the time the latter would not be possible without the former.

My decade has been all about my own “death and rebirth”. I set up my own “death panel” to evaluate which part of my life needed to die in order that a new part might be born. I like to think of myself as a “re-birther” rather than “born again”. Having paddled around in the proverbial primordial ooze for the first part of my life I finally just let go and allowed myself to be flung into space, shot out of the warm safety of the womb, naked and slimy and crying.

But regardless of the thrill of detachment, the desire for the coziness of the womb takes over again. It’s time for me to be re-birthed, to abandon my sense of personal security and jump out into the unknown. If I learned anything from doing that the first time it’s that the birth need not be dramatic or messy. It doesn’t require a change of place but rather, a change of s-p-a-c-e, the kind that fills the area between my ears.

But even subtle change requires The “C” Word — COMMITMENT. To me, commitment implies a loss of liberty. Yet with too much liberty, I crave commitment. Somewhere in the middle is fulfillment — and by the time I get to that place I probably will be dead!

So, I begin this decade with the appreciation of my considerable liberties but with a renewed sense that with this freedom comes a responsibility to commitment. Perhaps all of us could use that reminder as we peek out into this strange new world that is being born of a decade of chaos.

We ought to be committed to the change we know is necessary and those of us who have watched from the safety of our liberty need to step forward and put our pissing and moaning to the test. Our strength as Americans need not be measured by our desire to bear arms but instead by our willingness to offer our own strong arms to be counted and used in this rebirth.

Forceps, please — Oh, and Biceps too!

Merry Christmas, My Little ‘Hood…

Who would ever have thought I’d become a suburban housewife? NOT ME!! Thus, I chalk up another point on the scoreboard for the “Never Say Never” adage…

These days I live on a cul-de-sac of about a dozen houses in west-central Florida. My inner liberal-conservationist-free spirit just shakes its head at me and I must avert my eyes as the various chemical-spraying companies do their thing to keep my home from being overrun by multi-legged crawling things and make my grass just-so-green as to match the other lawns as mandated by the Homeowner’s Association. The back woods New Englander in me mutters knowingly, “ayuh, I knew you’d sell out”….

But as each day passes, I find more ammunition to defend my decision to be here. On December 18th my grass is still just as green and I putter around the house in my shorts and bare feet. The world is quiet around me, almost as quiet as my little house in Vermont, save for an occasional airplane overhead. I’ve come to love the sound of the planes powering down as they approach the Tampa airport. I hear the subtle noises of the day that most of the office-goers never hear. So do my dogs, as they leap up at every little squeak and jostle of palm trees against the windows. In the late afternoon after school gets out the noises change to shouts, screams, bouncing balls, and laughter.

The best payoff has been the coming together of a group of neighbors on the last Friday of each month. We call it “Happy Hour” (though it has never lasted less than 4 hours) and we gather with various sumptuous noshes and whatever beverages suit our taste. Everyone on our street is welcome, but the primary group seems to have distilled itself down to about 5 or 6 households. We are diverse in our family make-ups, our politics and religions, yet we have found in each other the most important qualities of common appreciation for each other’s circumstances and journeys, along with the depth of experience that each has to offer as together we raise up a new generation of children in our “village”.

In the spirit of Christmas, I will boldly say that this group of people, this unexpected fellowship of souls, has become my church. We don’t talk about scripture (much) nor try to win others to our way of viewing the world, but at the heart of our community is the spirit I believe was intended with the birth of Jesus Christ.

Of all the gifts in the world, I could not ask for a greater one than the acceptance and sense of purpose I feel within my own little neighborhood. May we all experience this love for those around us in the year to come….

Merry Christmas, my little ‘hood……I can’t imagine the grass being greener anywhere else.

You Travel With My Soul, Mark Werden…

I woke up the other day from a dream where my mother was the embodiment of all the Disney femme fatales…. Cinderella, Snow White, Belle…. All the women who’d been given an unfair shake up front and ended up carrying off the prize and living happily ever after.

What does that have to do with anything? I’m not sure, but maybe it makes about as much sense as the events of the past week when I lost yet another old high school friend. That makes 5 in the past year+. The first four were tough, but this fifth one is a doozy…

I first met Mark Werden when he came to the Walpole Middle School from North Walpole in 7th grade along with his classmates. I was a year ahead of him. It was our first experience with “integration” and everything we Walpolians had known to be ours now had to be shared. But they made it easy for us; they didn’t want anything but our friendship.

Mark was a handsome boy with dark features and curly blondish hair. He was taller than most of the other boys and refined in a way that seemed unusual for someone his age. “Preppy” was the style of the day and no one wore a turtle neck under a tailored shirt with corduroys better than Mark did. He was the model for all things prep.

Jammed into the 12 x 12 foot band room with about 20 other kids, Mark and I were trumpet players in the band. We would snicker and cower when our music teacher would become enraged and threaten to throw a heavy Manhasset music stand. It didn’t help that her actual target was Rich Neilsen, who was sitting next to us experimenting with his gum by blowing bubbles through his mouthpiece.

Junior High was awkward for all of us but Mark always made me feel like I was a little less strange. At our dances, held once in a while on a Friday night where we would aimlessly shuffle around the gym floor to songs from Boston, Dan Hill, Styx, and England Dan & John Ford Coley, Mark would always graciously accept my invitation to dance. Slow songs only — I didn’t do that wacky-chicken gyrating stuff — and I remember the feeling of his thin wool sweaters against my cheek. He smelled so clean and though my feelings for him were entirely fraternal, I felt close to him like I never had to another boy. It was a pure love for another human being.

We moved up and out, on to high school. By then, Mark was becoming a striking young man and won the role of Charlie Dalrymple in “Brigadoon” his freshman year. His tenor voice had begun to fill out as had his legs beneath the kilt that was his costume. He was becoming major swoon material!

Over the next few years we performed together in choir, band, stage band, etc. Mark was ever present in my life, like a little brother. He’d come to me, a trusted older sister, and tell me about his struggles then ask me questions about what to do. He was so gentle, so guileless, and always in the company of a gaggle of girls. Little did we realize, he was their femme fatale…

As was true for many more of us than we realized at the time, Mark was gay. He hadn’t acknowledged it for himself any more than the rest of us had — it was rural New Hampshire in the early 80s, after all — and with that came a messy period of trying to come to terms with it. I lost track of him and the details of his life after that, only periodically hearing about sightings of him from mutual friends. My mental radar simply wasn’t picking up his signal.

About a year ago, through the magical reconnecting properties of Facebook, we found Mark again. He and his partner of 8 years, Brad, had been running an antiques store in Philadelphia and everything seemed to be going great in his life. I still didn’t have any direct contact with Mark but felt sure we’d have an opportunity someday soon.

Then came word a couple of weeks ago that Mark had been admitted to the hospital suffering from a bout of pneumonia. While there, his heart stopped and it took 15 minutes to revive him. Though he remained alive on life support, it was clear that too much damage had been done to his brain while it was deprived of oxygen. On Monday, Dec. 7, in the company of Brad, and Mark’s immediate family, the life support system was turned off.

There are still many blanks left to be filled in for me about Mark’s life, but there is something so satisfying to my heart about the purity of my memories of him, about the innocence of our lives during the time that I really knew him. Many of us probably feel that there are parts of our lives we’d just as soon take to our graves with us but as I compare notes with my peers of the day, there is a forgiveness that erases our missteps, that only remembers our mutual experiences as teenagers, and reminds us of what really matters: our friendships and that early recognition of fellow soul companions.

Regardless of our time apart, Mark has been with me and will continue to travel unconditionally with my soul and I will rest in the knowledge that he is with me always….I love you, little brother….

Angry Christmas

Yesterday, Mama Nance leaned over from the seat right next to me at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, and in her loudest voice yelled right into my ear, “This doesn’t sound like holiday music to me — it sounds like ANGRY CHRISTMAS!!”

I don’t know where I got the idea that the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is nice holiday music. I don’t know where half the audience got that idea either, because there were young kids in attendance with their Christmas sweaters and Santa hats on, covering their tender ears. If I was confused about the intent of the program, it must have been completely beyond them.

The seizure-inspiring laser show and hell-fire pyrotechnics were about as far from Christmas as I’ve ever imagined. Mid-stream, a new piece from their latest album featured helicopters on 20 different monitors blowing things up as the fire machines on the stage gushed flames as from the mouths of dragons. The temperature in the arena (gratefully) rose about 20 degrees by the time the song was over.

I’ve never been a heavy metal fan though I know there are plenty in my age group who are. For those in the audience who like it, I’m sure it was a great show, but now I understand why half my peers can’t hear a word I say most of the time.

If I look at this more symbolically, it does represent something deeper this year.

I looked around at the mostly middle-aged audience, drinking beer and snapping pictures with their camera phones, some subtly doing head-banging movements with their scalps now shaved short to disguise the lack of hair that probably went through a stage of being at least shoulder-length at one time. Gyrating beside their little mouth-breathers, rock’n'roll dreams danced like sugar plums in their eyes as they tried to pass on a tradition to their children that once meant so much to them.

Maybe I was just born old or maybe I was raised to eschew this sort of display of “music”, but a small part of me thinks that perhaps I missed something in never having learned to appreciate the raw connection this sound makes with my very innards, shaking and rattling them with sonic force, appealing so violently to every sense that I could almost forget that all my pieces were integrated in one body.

And maybe this is a good representation of what the world is like right now. There is so much anger and disappointment floating around this Christmas, disconnection from the comfortable sense of integration we are used to, and the relief is in exploiting this powerful feeling of  powerlessness — letting go for an afternoon, releasing the need to acknowledge the holidays as something lovely and heart-warming. For some people, it’s simply not this year and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra knows how to musically illustrate the discomfort with their over-the-top performances.

The only other place I can imagine being as dark, loud, and full of fire is a place most fear spending eternity. But yesterday, we got to experience it and still walk away, our body parts surprisingly intact. Maybe this is how we’ll feel next Christmas when we re-emerge from the place we are in this year.

I probably wouldn’t have said so yesterday, but there was value in experiencing a TSO concert. But next time I’ll remember to wear earplugs!

Losing Control of Good Intentions

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone… They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot….” — Joni Mitchell

Doesn’t it always seem to happen that, what seemed like a good idea at the time mutates into a monster once others catch on?

Take Tiger Woods, for example (if there’s still a piece of him left in the scrap heap that his life is rapidly becoming). I try like heck not to get caught up in media frenzies, but if I’m going to partake of any media, I have little choice. The news is everywhere….

This phenomenal young talent was thrust into the spotlight well before he was mature enough to handle it and we have the gall to chastise him for being immature. Now he’s gone and done what so many celebrities fall prey to by involving himself in “relations outside of marriage”.

And then there’s my friend Sarah Palin who has everything Janet Reno didn’t: good looks, charisma, star power. But in contrast, she lacks everything Janet Reno had: brains, education, experience. Palin is a feminist’s worst nightmare, even though she represents in some ways all the things that feminists fought for the freedom to be.

This is where the mutation happens.

In one of my previous lifetimes (I’m living them all concurrently in this one), I was a sales rep for a natural products distributor to independent natural food stores. The old hippies had found a way to create a socialistic system of acquiring whole and organic foods to share among their friends and neighbors. But as with all such good ideas, people grew weary of those late night clandestine meetings where they’d split up 100-pound bags of flour and scoop thick oily peanut butter into containers. Like most average Americans, they decided they just wanted to be able to go into a store and buy it like normal people did. So they opened retail store fronts in an effort to change the world and get people to start eating healthy food.

Still, they were on the fringe. Those so-called “normal” people wouldn’t dream of setting foot in such an establishment, often dingy, dirty, smelling of incense. They struggled to attract customers in order to sell the quantities of products necessary to be able to get the best prices. Antithetical to their mission, they ended up throwing a lot of stuff away.

But then things changed. Someone finally figured out that the only way to get people to eat healthy food was to offer it to them in a way that felt familiar — in a big grocery store format. Suddenly, people who would never have considered eating tofu or wheat germ were exploring these venues. Sales started to boom.

The dirty little stores cried foul. “Hey, this was our idea!” they complained. “WE were going to change the world!” Little did they know that they had changed the world but not in the way they’d intended. It was the existence of these big stores that helped the little ones survive by exposing the public to products they would never have known about. In turn, they created a demand that allowed suppliers to lower prices so that shoppers could more easily purchase the better quality food. People then started exploring the little stores and enjoying the personal service they couldn’t get at the big stores, as long as the little ones were able to remove the giant chips they had developed on their shoulders and take advantage of the free advertising. Not all could do it.

Back in my present life, I look at the conundrum that is Sarah Palin and wonder, Where did feminism go wrong? How did our good idea get hijacked?

The days of defiant fist-waving are over. Victoria’s Secret now has to rely on the sale of lacy undergarments to powerful, confident women who actually wear them rather than burn them. Untamed body hair no longer represents solidarity but rather, “ewwww!”…. We’ve gotten what we wanted — so why are we mad that a woman is being taken seriously as a politician despite the fact that she looks like Yukon Barbie?

Because of the mutation factor.

What started out as good intentions about changing the world has come to fruition but not the way we imagined it would. It’s not the crunchy-granola, sea-salt-of-the-earth version we envisioned. Instead, it’s an antiseptic, shiny floored, health department monitored example of everything we were working against.

If you’ve ever eaten a piece of organic fruit, if you made it past the often repulsive-looking exterior, you know the flavor, nutrients, and sense of holistic care for yourself and the planet cannot possibly be matched by a shiny, blemish-free, dye-colored specimen.

Maybe, like the big box natural food stores, Sarah Palin has hit on something we’ve been ignoring. People want packaging. They want to be surrounded by safe walls, whether they are churches, stores, or ideas. They’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of assurance that the food they eat, the politicians they elect, come with a reasonable guarantee of “good looks and cleanliness”. They are entranced by shiny objects….

But most of us will never get past this need for packaging. We won’t experience the substance and depth of character to be found in the quiet, unassuming person (or the intense flavor of an ugly-ass apple) who will not hog the spotlight, who will not erase the rough edges for the sake of popularity, who will not wear a recognizable uniform. We won’t feed ourselves with the nutrients that ensure long-term good health for ourselves or our country. Instead, we’ll continue to stuff ourselves with the empty calories found in the ostensibly beautiful.

And most of us will never know the pressure of excessive media attention, the merciless scrutiny of a pathetic public desperately wanting to think that there’s more underneath that lovely exterior, unrepentantly digging into the dark recesses of our lives and daring to be disappointed at what they find. Tiger Woods will never know what it’s like not to be there, and Sarah Palin will forever change the way we see feminism – Dammit!!

Remembering Doug Bashaw on Thanksgiving…

It’s been a little over a year since Doug was taken from us in a motorcycle accident. Those who were closest to him must feel his absence more acutely than I do since I hadn’t seen him but once since high school. In the wake of Doug’s death, I had written a remembrance of him on my blog in which I realized what a true artist he had been.

On Thanksgiving, I felt Doug’s presence more strongly than I ever have as I shared a meal with a young man who is hoping to be an artist when he grows up. As I listened to this young man, a sophomore in high school, tell me about his love for sketching and his hopes of attending the Ringling School of Art someday, I recalled the thoughts I’d had about Doug.

“Don’t wait for someone to teach you how to do it–just do it. Learn to see the world through your own eyes before someone tries to tell you how to see it through theirs. Do it because you love it and not because someone hands you a piece of paper that says you are qualified to do it. If you want to be an artist, be an artist…”

A chill ran up my spine as I realized that I had truly learned the lesson that Doug left behind. Know who you are and what you have to offer, then share it with all your might….

Happy Thanksgiving, Doug…. You are always with us.