TIME’S BEEN PASSING…

1. Attended the annual PEN LIT AWARDS at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on 11/11/14. I am proud to be a decades-long, active member of PEN.

2. Completed New Screenplay — FOR SALE: a subversive, provocative, sexy, political screenplay set in 1974 and 1984, LOVE IN HIS VEINS.

3. Luke and I celebrated our 31st anniversary on 11/15/2014.

… AS TIME TENDS TO DO.

To say I was speechless, lost in what used to be familiar territory over 20 years ago, doesn’t come close to the disconnect my heart experienced during my recent visit to Independence, Virginia, from my memories, from my childhood, from the California romantic writing vision I had of the town of Independence, where my father practiced law for over 50 years until he died in 1989.

It was the poverty that first struck me. And struck me again. And again. Nothing but poverty, no end in sight.

Independence used to be a thriving town. I was born in 1955 in Galax, Virginia, a short drive from Independence. I lived with my father, 45, and my mother, 20, and our maid, Nanny Katharine, in a house in Mouth-of-Wilson, Virginia, a short drive from Independence where Dad’s office was. Our house was on the New River. When I was 3 years, 3 months and 5 days old, my mother gave birth to my sister, Susan. My father lifting me up to look at her through the glass partition in the nursery is my first memory. I had a pony. We were rich. Pictures of my mother in furs, my father beautifully dressed, debonair.

i am hobbled by tears
by the passing of the years…

It’s been humid and hot and steamy and stormy in San Diego for weeks now, so many weeks I can’t even remember if it’s been weeks or months. I think months. Humidity has never been a San Diego thing. Until now. Humidity kind of makes me crazy. I’m reminded of the movie “Body Heat” with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. The hotter things got, the hotter their characters got. And the crazier the plot got.

Yesterday afternoon, all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky, I saw big lazy drops of rain abruptly falling from the sky. In San Diego. In September. So I rushed out to my top floor patio and put Merit in the soil around my potted ficus tree which is eaten up with White Fly, thinking a brief rain would slowly work the Merit into my ficus tree’s soil. Then I came back inside to resume my air conditioned survival. I had no more than sat down when I heard a loud crash followed by what was then pounding rain I could see out the windows, along with mountains of clouds and bent-double palm trees. When I opened my front door, my ficus tree had blown over and was halfway down my long flight of stairs. The wind was howling like a dog; the rain pelted me like pocket knife blades. The air smelled like Eucalyptus. And dirt. I grabbed onto the middle of my 12 foot ficus tree that I’ve had for 10 years and like Hercules, I pulled it back up the stairs into a standing position, just as a crack of lightning popped somewhere close by. Worried I’d be struck dead but not willing to let my ficus tree blow down the stairs again, I wrestled it back toward the wall and somehow managed to brace it with two metal chairs next to my front door. My downstairs neighbor’s plants were flying through the air then crashing on the cement. I heard sirens going every which way in the distance and decided I better get my ass back in the house.

Once I was back in the house I realized my television had come on by itself, who knew? A voice was warning of a flash flood and high winds, (no kidding). Had I signed up for an emergency package with Cox cable or was it standard emergency procedure?

An hour later, sopping wet from the humidity, I walked through the complex. Tree limbs and palm fronds and Eucalyptus leaves covered the ground. The big ficus tree planted in the ground in the park by the pool had broken in half and had fallen to the ground. I didn’t think until later when I was in bed that maybe I should have looked under the fallen half-tree for bodies. (There were none.)

Looking back on the storm today, 24 hours later, I am reminded of an old aviation quote which is repeated in “Vanity Fair,” the October 2014 issue:

“The reasons you get into trouble become the reasons you don’t get out of it.”

There are times
when the times
are like the times
before our times

you know those lines.

We hear cries
of despair
of hysteria
in the streets

Comeuppance
and
come what
Mayance

weaponry renders
armies
invincible

galloping
like Alexander
and his greats

the police
scared to death
too many guns
no one on their side

the dead
the dead by police dead

scared to death
too many guns
no one on their sides

When did it get
easy
to cut heads
off
make a video
post it
in the 21st century

when did we
turn into a police state?

Armored tanks
driving down a
main street
in a suburb
of
________________.

Dennis died two months ago. He is Joyce’s son and Susan’s brother and Linda’s brother. He left behind a trove of brilliance and independence and because I knew him for a short time because of Joyce and Susan, I understand, in my way, his ability to inspire love in the people he loved and inspire despair in the people he loved but it was primarily an abundance of sexy independence that he left in his wake, so as a result or a reaction to his passing a caravan is forming to drive his truck and camper to his mother’s compound near La Paz because that is the way people who live like Dennis behave and the reason people who love men like Dennis react - artists and renegades and lovers - they form a caravan through the desert mountains and create an earthly wake where once a man surfed his way through a life that jiggered and danced because he was present - he could not be ignored, he will not be ignored, ever, because he was Dennis and he is Joyce’s son and Susan’s brother and Linda’s brother and his life matters more than even he could have imagined.

Sanna Jean died two and a half years ago. Today is her birthday, her 80th birthday. She is my mother and Susan’s mother and Randy’s mother. On the day she was born her head fit in a teacup and her body inside a shoe box, with room to spare. Mother grew up and out of that teacup and shoe box and lived a life with nary a dull moment. Her emerald eyes and ruby hair shimmered in the light, shimmered in the dark. She was a force of nurture and nature. She loved profoundly and desperately. People were drawn to her, desirous to twirl in her orbit. Her life matters more than she ever imagined.

There are times when love fills me so robustly that I can barely catch my breath, like my love for Luke or my love for friends who may not even know I love them because I am quieter about love now that I am older - for whatever damn reason.

There are times when I succumb to the despair that whispers inside me, the despair I feel around people I love who are irresponsible with my desires as if my quiet and observant nature is an invitation for them to ignore me and run roughshod over my raw nerve-endings. I know one thing, despair is a distraction that will destroy me in the long run but for short periods of time it is manageable because…

… there are times when I struggle against the tide of worrying about why I am not more successful and that worry corresponds directly to the beseeching looks I get from people who are thinking the same thing.

There are times when I think I am paranoid.

Ouch.

There are times when the countless books I read disappoint me. But every now and then a book, a popular and bestselling novel in this instance, comes along and outpaces my expectations for it. I am speaking of “The Fault In Our Stars” by John Green. Anyone who reads my Bloggy Blog will certainly have heard of this novel and will most likely have read it and may have seen the film adaptation, out a few weeks now. I have not seen the film so I do not know if my favorite passage from the novel shows up there or not but here it is in all its glory (and I am not being facetious):

“The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”

There are times, Almost All Of The Time, to be honest, when my Singular Joy is NOTICING things. Whether or not I am a hero is a question for others. The question of my NOTICING things is another story, my story,

crying

out

loud.

Your poems and songs will fill the heavens, the stars will dance, and I will be listening. And watching.

and finally,

TO ME:

Excerpt from Michael Connelly’s novel, The Last Coyote:

“Stop beating yourself to death with it,” she said. “The past is like a club and you can only hit yourself in the head with it so many times before there is serious and permanent damage. I think you’re at your limit. For what it’s worth, I think you are a good and clean and ultimately kind man. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t ruin what you have, what you are, with this kind of thinking.”

My heart breaks and then the pieces smash together and form wide-opened eyes and in seconds I can see my path,

Forward.

David Harrington Campbell says:

“I am my own pre-existing condition.”   

Along the promenade this morning in Balboa Park I saw a man leaning against a concrete wall underneath a budding tree, looking down at his cellphone screen.  The sky was azure, the heat of the sun lifted a breeze from the canyons that conjoined the internal and external temperatures. 

I followed the man’s cellphone cord down the concrete wall and saw that it plugged into an outlet.