From Dolphin To Whale & Back, Cont'd from the 8/23/09 entry

Elastic is Not Your Friend!

Looking through the vast lens of events that occurred between San Francisco, Sarasota, & The San Juan Isles, I guess morphing into one of the world’s largest mammals wasn’t really much of a stretch for me. No pun intended. From a size 0 circa 1996, to a size with no numbers, like Men’s Xtra Large in 2009 took 13 years of continuing education. Most people presume little energy is consumed while in school as research & reading are relatively sedentary activities. Literary studies, however, require massive doses of carbohydrates, and unless a person is engaged in a pre-established exercise routine and is a non-smoker, there is little interest in beginning such a program. I weighed 100 pounds when I re-entered college in 1996 and paid little attention to the weird cravings that threatened to overtake my usual lack of interest in food. When I began to ooze out of my tiny jeans and stilettos I simply moved into sweats & flip-flops, no problem at all, the rest is history. I chalked the whole weight gain thing up to coping; forget denial, I was simply not there yet.

In spite of my mercifully brief childhood, I took some heavy hits, which left me in an extreme state of vulnerability manifested by perhaps the longest ever oral pacification syndrome on record. I accepted it as gracefully as possible while munching away on family size bags of Extra Crispy Cheese Puffs and washing it all down with vats of white wine. Other than chasing after six kids and working two full-time jobs, I had in the past never actually exercised, nor had I ever been overweight or in need of a diet. By May of 2008, I weighed in at a hefty 180 pounds, and at 5’2” my waistline almost equaled my height!!

Coming to the realization that my skills, talents, and accomplishments were not the product of my addictions did not evolve easily and were not surrendered without a fight. I continued to be deeply submersed in the belief that my creativity would be compromised if I quit smoking and alcohol was the elixir that watered the magic. I was, however on an unconscious level, intensely engaged in memory-work, which was a necessary component of my dissertation, and actually healed myself while immersed in the five year period of doctoral research & writing. Kudos to Dr. Mary, whose path I followed to the discovery of the heuristic research process. More later

Over the Counter Philosophy

At the counters stacked with pain relief,
they know my name. By the ache
that's crawling up my face, I must
be smiling near the aisles
that meet the needs between
denial and withdrawal, stocked
on shelves that co-exist adjacent
to the cases lined in green glassed alcohol.

Either way, it's a long climb back.

The film I dropped that caught
you still alive arrived last week,
transformed to prints too small
to see the clouds that gathered overhead.

Like tapes retrieved from planes that crash,
they keep repeating vanished time,
leaving gaps of disbelief in doses
swallowed with the ease of numbing
remedies that try to keep us both alive.

From the Garden of Your Genius (A Pantoum)

From the garden of your genius
where promise blooms in cups of fire,
bouquets of broken vows
fall in showers, down

in cups of fire where promise blooms
amid the rain and weed.
Showers falling down
spread shreds of splendid lies

amid the rain and weed
on rusty leaves of peonies.
Spreading shreds of splendid lies
turn to ash and rise

on rusty leaves of peonies
like swarms of fireflies,
turned to ash and rising
in autumn's burning skies.

Like swarms of fireflies
the cinders of your pledges drift
to autumn's burning sky, then
drenched in wine-red mist,

the cinders of your pledges drift
like burnt flowers in descent,
drenched in wine-red mist
and drowned like embers melting.

From burnt flowers in descent,
I pressed your pale apologies
that drowned like embers melting
in pools of brilliant alibis.

I pressed your pale apologies
in pages torn from fallen flames
and pools of brilliant alibis
laid out on rose-soaked hills.

I tore each page of fallen flames
and honey spun from your golden sighs
to be laid out on rose-soaked hills,
arranged in petals, open.

I spun the honey of your golden sighs
around the wonder of your disguise,
arranged in open petals and
hidden from my eyes.

Your wonderful disguise
worn before each blossom turned,
and hidden from my eyes
of longing for one final bloom.

Loneliness Ocean

Tell me, muse, the final cost,
because I hold seclusion dear,
and paid my dues in empty fields
outside the shoals of solitude.

Let me see the sacrifice
for drifting, rippled in calligraphy
tattooed across these ocean arms
that move the shoulders of the sea.

Show me in the trim of foam
above the lip of tossing waves
and dimpled spread transcribed
before prevailing winds and brine.

Write it on a minion moon, describe
the sin omitted and the penance still
delayed, tell me in the trailing
swells the water is not drinking me.

The In Crowd

At twelve I longed to be best friends with
the least of them, the stunning useless
kind that carried sin inside the whisper
of a pillow fight, in homes where
parents chirped their very worst,
"You're grounded" was a joke to me
and sent me into fits of wild hysteria.
I loved them for their aptitude
and drawers and drawers of cashmeres

worn buttoned down the back. The collars
they called "peter pan" matched the socks
rolled thin as dimes stuffed inside a pair
of white buck shoes with dusting bags
they plumed in class, especially during math.
Math, they somehow passed in notes
behind the cheers devised for guys
that waited on the playing field.
These girls held mass in toiletry at 6 am

inside the kind of rest room sanctity
known only by the chosen, where
small shrubs of twisted hair were sprung
from curls secured in bobby-pins the night
before, while I blew smoke into the toilet.
Aching to belong, I traded secrets
for those moments spent in guidance
shared vicariously between the best
of them and the worst in me.

In the Narrow Slip of Night

Wearing her sneakers on streets
below freezing she steps ankle-deep
with no socks and torn jeans
in gutters backed up with crime.

Searching the cracks of asphalt-black
snow, she's looking for cardboard to cover
the floor of a doorway chosen
for sleeping tonight. A place to get laid,

a chance to score, next to the subway
that grips slow suicide in the pockets
of hustlers pushing their way past the smell
of gas rags and trash burning in cans.

Leaning on buildings condemned
to death, she waits in the shadows
torn down to spill her pain in the well
dug deep in her arms. She holds a knife

unfolded in the cradle of a battered
photograph, pretending in the trains that
scream for mercy as they pass unseen
in tunnels carved through rivers of bone.

LaBoheme

A child of the streets at nine, I slipped
through a door left ajar, marked "stage,"
blocked in red and facing an alley I always
cut through on the way to a school I would never attend.
In the darkness I followed what felt like a hall
of diluted shadows and muffled sounds to a
circle of stairs that led down to a crack
in the dimly lit path to a room that blossomed
in rows of red velvet chairs. I sank deep
in a seat that reclined in a way and smelled sweet,
like a department store.

An oboe complained out of tune to
insistent reminders of corrections being made
by a piano played unseen in a pit.
There were cellos competing, repeating each note,
responding like echoes to violas engaged
in a struggle to find missing chords.
Soon people in makeup began a parade,
costumed in clothing even more frayed than mine.
Each of them wailing off key and not
in the same time as the instruments tried
to keep up with them.

An abrasion of sounds piled abuse on my ears
and I strained to listen but all I could hear
was the chaos of ricochets off the cracks where
sidewalks meet walls and doors slam for the night.
Then a shift was arranged in the mood of the stars
and Rudolfo stepped out on the stage with Mimi,
dressed in her jeans and a shawl.
They shared the libretto of Puccini's duet
controlling each piece of the harmony
without a baton or spotlight to guide, they
relied on the genius of performing for one.

From Dolphin to Whale and Back, 8/23/09

May 2009, was pretty busy; I celebrated my first year ever without smoking, lost 45 pounds & umm, oh ya, earned a Ph.D.

In May 2008, I weighed 180 pounds, 80 more than when I re-entered college in 1996. I was desperate to lose weight!!!

But, to get from whale back to dolphin proved to be an impossible challenge, until the elliptical that I ordered arrived. In spite of my aspirational goal of 15 minutes, I was too weak to work out longer than 2, a pathetic performance indeed.

My wobbly legs and unwielding body angered me and created a will so strong I could hardly believe that it was me. Not only was I of whale-like proportions, my lungs were too compromised to exercise on my brand-new, extraordinarily expensive, elliptical. Ironically, after 59 years of smoking, and hundreds of failed attempts at quitting, I was forced to admit that I was in denial, and that these coping mechanisms, which may have been useful at one time, were no longer required. That is, I needed to surrender the irrational fantasy that my addictions were somehow equated with my creativity, and I would have to re-learn the art of working without stimulants.

By placing my weight-loss goal at the top of my to-do list, my love for both cigarettes & white wine became more than obstacles, they went straight to the top of my #%&# list.

It never occured to me in the past that I might have to "trick" my brain to re-invent the new me!

However, when Nicorette failed to do more than create a new addiction, and diet pills caused my heart to race, do flip-flops, and in general cause binge attacks, I grudgingly decided to give exercise a try, after all, if that failed, I could always start smoking again. I actually told myself that, and by prioritizing my challenges, (placing weight loss over smoking cessation) I succeeded in refusing to boo-hoo over the loss of my best friends (cigs & white wine).

Yup, that's how I tricked myself into losing 45 pounds; gaining the discipline to lengthen my work-out time to 45 minutes twice per each day (burning 500 cals each) and now have just 35 easy pounds to lose. I will never smoke again and although I'm not sure why I stopped drinking, as I thought alcoholism was extremely difficult to control, apparently my particular brand of binge drinking was tied to smoking, making the transition easier than most. I then created a delicious menu of wacky recipes to fit into my microscopic budget. More later