PBX

P? Yes, I have to, but Mary Hitchcock’s already on break

B? A ballerina please. Toe shoes gleam in the light beneath my desk

X? Sí, Señor, puede obtener un X-Ray en éste dirección

I rattle off an address in English or in Spanish, more likely,

In the heart of the City of Angels, Ciudad de la Reina de los Angeles

“Good afternoon, Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association of

Los Angeles County.” A mouthful. A bounty of

Cumbersome spittle creating consonants. My tongue’s dry by ten a.m.

At 19 in my second year of pushing and pulling brass nibs into or out of

Exasperating round holes, I shorten it.

“Hi! Christmas Seals, how may I direct your call?”

No one the wiser, but me. I learned a lot of Spanish in two years.

Forty years later I still have the small Pacific Bell tin of brass polish

My now grown girls loved to play dress-up with the worn out toe shoes.

Dreaming of other than menial labor.

Sunsets

Rain storms make beautiful sunsets.

Los Angeles slurped up the recent dump of the wet stuff on its parched soil. My husband reported that Saturday was soggy at camp in the low foothills.

Some of that blessed moisture made its way north. The sunset Sunday evening in Oakland was one of those never to be duplicated displays by Mama Nature wearing her most flamboyant dress. Purple islands floating in a coral sea were shot through with the kind of slanting golden rays that makes me imagine I can hear angels singing. The colors had staying power, and didn’t slough off their warm oranges and crimsons until well past 9pm. The golden glow permeated the house, but I had to be out IN it, in the warm soft air. Perfect temperature. A colleague, who stayed a few days here while attending a training, and I basked like a couple of marshmallows, turning golden in the light.

I thought about my honey in southern California, how the sunset looked at camp with all that rain. Later he told me that he’d been of service as the kids were forced inside by the deluge for most of the weekend. His Magic (show), his gift of creating cozy energy to contain and entertain kids whose laughter is the best medicine for pain, is such a boon for so many.

Yet, I couldn’t help but miss him this sunset. Aren’t we in our sunset years? Aren’t we supposed to be together. No supposed to’s, Melinda… that’s only for movies and romance novels. But, I DO miss him. Absence makes the heart grow… confused. Three months is a long time. I can rationalize that three months is small potatoes in the context of forty three years of marriage, but my heart has trouble with numbers. It understands addition and simple multiplication, but struggles with division.

In 1952, my father took a classically beautiful photo of his brother, my Uncle Bob, with his wife and daughter at Malaga Cove, where our two families spent many Sundays in summer. The three have their backs to the camera, facing the setting sun as it drops toward the ocean’s broad horizon. Although the photo is black and white, you can tell it’s a beauty of a sunset. Aunt Nora and Uncle Bob always loved beach walks at sunset. They instilled in their children and in me that sense of awe and delight in Mother Nature’s artistry.

The recent tropical storm coming up from Baja has drenched Southern California, and deposited a Mother Lode of golden sunrises and sunsets all the way up and down the coast.

I look forward to a glorious reunion at the end of August, when Pun returns and the sun comes out edging the clouds with pinks and purples and golds.

Perhaps next summer we’ll find a different soul-lution more supportive of our viewing beautiful sunsets together.

Taming Emotions and the Beast

Saturday found me with older daughter in the iconic Grand Lakes Theater here in Oakland. I’d never been inside, only seen its imposing curved corner presence while driving by, or from a the Saturday Farmers Market across the street. It houses a truly grand pipe organ, ornate columns, and plush old seats - just right for viewing Inside Out, Pixar’s new flick about emotions.

We went to preview it with the six year old in mind who features prominently in our hearts. While we concurred that the film is not right for her yet, it offers a useful springboard for jumping into conversations about emotion.

Daughter and I found it to be a three hankie event, and were so glad to have seen it together. Any
time spent with her is golden time, for me!

After the film, we drove to one of the venues hosting BEAST CRAWL. What’s that? Lit Crawl, Lit Quake, and Beast Crawl offer readings and open mic opportunities for writers to share their work. In Oakland they call it Beast, which in Pig-Latin, of course, is East Bay.

We heard some wonderful works shared, and doubled our exposure by each of us going to different venues of the thirty offered over the course of five hours, hosting one hundred and fifty authors. We compared notes Sunday.

At my first venue, Sweet Bar Bakery, I met two of my writing buddies for readings from a group called Bay Area Generations, which pairs two writers of different generations who read somewhat on a theme. Funny and fine readers included: Colleen McKee & Jon Sindell; Eileen Malone & Kathleen McKlung, who is going to lead a writer’s workshop at my home later in July; and Nina Serrano & Garrett Murphy. We enjoyed wonderful music from Stella Peach, who played violin with the new technology I first heard used by Wah! at Shakti Fest, and Lisa Fischer, most recently, at Kate Wolf Festival. It allows the musician to sing/play with her/himself by way of recording and playing back the loop.

At the second venue, The Beer Garden on Telegraph, my most memorable readers were Peter Bullen, who does a stream of consciousness flow that is so in the moment, you can’t believe he’s reading it from the page. The dude only began writing when he was 49 - a couple decades ago. Think Kerouac, but sober. (Maybe.) His work may be found at  WETRIEDOURBEST.WORDPRESS.COM

Then there was Maisha. This woman is eloquent. I want to keep track of her skyrocket to success! This is from the program: Maisha Z. Johnson is an Oakland-based writer and activist of Trinidadian descent. She writes poetry, fiction, and essays, and works at the intersections of the arts, healing, and social change. Maisha has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University and she is the author of No Parachutes to Carry Me Home (Punk Hostage Press 2015), Through Your Own Words: 51 Writing Prompts for Healing and Self-Care(Inkblot Arts 2014), and three poetry chapbooks. Her work has been published in numerous journals and nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and she writes for online publications including Black Girl Dangerous and Everyday Feminism. Visit her at www.inkblotarts.org.


At the third venue I visited were readings from published authors Joshua Mohr, Ethel Rohan, Janis Cooke Newman, founder of Lit Camp, which I plan to submit for this year, and a recent Lit Camp attendee, Morgan Davis. Truly, an inspiring group reading from beautifully rendered texts.

Sigh… my work is cut out for me. Butt in chair, fingers poised over keyboard, ready set...

I think I’ll take a nap, now…

On Furniture

If tables turned, and furniture could talk, and people could sense how different elbows feel, when placed just so upon them, it would be an interesting conversation, I think.

Cousin June’s elbows captivated our Megs. Whenever June came to visit, little Megan would make a bee-line for Junie’s soft lap and reach around to touch and gently pinch her soft elbow skin, all slack and gappy around the knob of her bone. I’ll bet the table liked June’s doubly soft elbows too, and how padded her forearms were say, compared to mine - all bone and angles with hardly any flesh at all over them.

To this day, I expect there are dents from my butt bones on that chartreuse Naugahyde chair of my youth - where ever it is. I wonder what it would say, you know, if the tables turned, and furniture could talk. “Ouch?” Or, “Go get something to eat, little girl, and fatten yourself up, child!?”

What do you suppose Winston Churchill’s wooden suit valet would say when it accepted the weight of the world as the Prime Minister let slip from his shoulders, and dropped his suit coat onto its oaken rack just before getting into bed?

Or, Einstein’s desk. Do desks get head aches? All those numbers would make mine spin. I wonder if its surface developed a groove from the movement of his calculating hand.

I don’t know if it’s possible, but how loving a cradle might feel toward the weight of a couple’s first newborn placed so tenderly there with hopes that her first sleep in it would be restful for all.

I’m fairly certain that the wheel chair of my friend from the 1970’s, Frances Rainbow, felt very proud to be her understanding and to stand under her every day and every night of her too short life. Frances used to give tours of her chair to all who would listen: “This lever makes it go backwards and forwards, this one is for steering, and this is the all important eject button which no one but I, Frances Rainbow is allowed to touch.”

Brittle Bone Disease made her lighter than a feather, and her voice sounded as if she’d inhaled helium, or like that of a small child - delicate and high pitched. Imagine how proud of her that chair felt the day she piped up and testified before the Los Angeles City Council on behalf of all people in wheel chairs. Frances’s testimony and her sturdy chair helped so many folks with accessibility issues in the city. Pretty soon the idea caught on all over the country. Her chair’s cushions must be puffed with pride.

When I was no more than six years old, I wished for a chair that could hold and rock me, like a pillowy, bosomy mama, whose enveloping softness would almost swallow my angular boney self, ’til I could hear its inner-workings, and it could hear mine. How would it interpret the gurgles of my always hungry belly? What would it think about my pockets full of pill bugs and foxtail filled socks? And what would it say about my dreams of running so fast that I’d take off - lifting into flight?

I imagine furniture made my humans has a lot to say. Conversely, I believe we humans have a lot to learn about how it feels to be interacted with respectfully.