Annie

I have walked thru many lives
I knew she could not take care of herself
I swore both of us to silence, cross your heart and hope to die
He always seemed not to be there when things went south
My sister has suffered many illnesses
He always seemed not to be there when things went south
She had his key; she did this without him knowing
I swore both of us to silence, cross your heart and hope to die
My sister has suffered many illnesses
When my mom dies my sister will be too ill and she will not be there
She had his key; she did this without him knowing
How was my visit, How was Annie, Did she let you see her?
He always seemed not to be there when things went south
When my mom dies my sister will be too ill to be there
But after a few stiff drinks, the truth may come out
How was my visit, how was Annie, did she let you see her?
My sister has suffered many illnesses
But after a few stiff drinks, the truth may come out
I swore both of us to silence, cross your heart and hope to die
Maybe Not
I have walked thru many lives





by Fran Angiulo

This is what I want to post.

A Bit of a Rattlesnake

I heard an old story from an Arkansas friend that reminds me of him. A woman was about to cross a road when she saw a rattlesnake curled up nearby. He looked up at the woman and asked her if she would carry him across the road so he wouldn't be hit by a passing vehicle. She declared firmly, "No, you'll bite me!" The rattlesnake hissed sincerely, "I promise I won't. Please, please take me across. I don't want to die under the wheels of a truck!" He looked so pitiful and vulnerable and pleaded so insistently, she decided she would do it. He bit her the moment they reached the other side. As she was dying, she asked, "Why did you do it? You promised not to bite me." He answered, "Well, you knew I was a rattlesnake."


Miguel was tall, slender, muscular and brown. His back, chest and arms were covered with tattoos. He got them and his well developed frame in prison. He grew up in LA, but he was born in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. His ancestry was part Tarahumara, part Spanish and that heritage was clearly visible in his face. He lived by the gangster code which permits crime and violence, but requires respectful treatment of women and non combatants unless they pose a threat or provide temptation, of course.

He had just served a ten year jail sentence for armed robbery when I met him.  It was hard to imagine this desirable man locked away in a cell with only other men for company. He had only a smattering of education and his English was ungrammatical at best, but he knew just the right words to endear a woman to him. He had a voice so seductively deep and resonant that although his flirtations were obvious, he could conquer women with a few well chosen compliments. He was aided by his good looks and his skill at making himself seem helpless and in need of love.

The women he sought had to be strong as well as attractive. He needed them to support him financially and emotionally. An ex-con and a drug addict, he had a hard time getting jobs that would pay for anything more than his alcohol, cigarette and heroin supplies. Having been viciously beaten and mistreated by his stepfather as a child, and having lived through who knows what horrors while incarcerated, his mental health was fragile. Paranoia was his constant companion and like most who suffer that way he believed his fears, no matter how irrational, to be completely justified. Like the rattlesnake, he never pretended to be any better than he was, but his very existence was a threat to any dream of true love.

When It Ended

Abigail felt old and tired. She looked in the long mirror and saw the body and face that Adam had left and she just wanted to cry, but her eyes were dry.

Adam had gone to Alaska to work on a fishing boat and make money, a lot of money, so they could be comfortable and he would not have to go to work each day, but instead by the miracle of three months of hard, dangerous labor which was very well paid he would be free. Free to do what she had wondered when he first told her? To sleep. to play video games, to drink coffee, to drink beer, to smoke hundreds of cigarettes? What was his goal?

That's when it came to her that he wanted to be free of her, of their life, of obligation, of any future at all. She had asked so little. Her brown hair was cut sensibly, she wore no make-up, she bought her clothes at Goodwill, yet, it was not enough. She would have to become no bigger than a dot on a page to satisfy him.

So she stood there, thinking how sad she must be, when suddenly it struck her, she was free. Free to buy a new dress, free to go out and have a drink, free to stay up late. She didn't ever have to worry again about being too much for him, she could be so big that she could fill the whole apartment with herself alone. Her hair could be long, her lipstick could be bright red, her jewelry could be ostentatious. She could speak loudly and no one would know. The smallest trickle of true joy began to flow in her newly awakened bloodstream.

Poetry

Courage

When our souls explode

Into a billion fragments

And tumors load the bone marrow,

Courageous paths are found,

Thresholds crossed,

And voices of the elders

Float through quiet woods.

We, like the ancient oaks,

Grow stronger,

Rooting in fertile soil,

Reaching towards the light.

When our souls explode

Into a billion fragments

Voices of the elders

 Whisper their sage advice

To hold dear

the heartwood.

R.L. June ‘13

Beach Trip to Connie's Cottage

      Seven of The Portland Nine have just returned from a retreat at Connie's beach house in Longbeach, WA. We missed Kathy, Wendy, and Heather, but want them to know we actually did do some writing along with the more important aspects of these visits to Connie's: eating, drinking, laughing, crying, and telling our stories! And yes, there was some beach time, but the weather was not conducive to much of that.

     I hope the writers will post some of the great writing and poetry that was done over the weekend. Here are a few shots to give you the flavor of it all.

      Ruth

Ephemeral moment: the clouds slipped to the edges and the rain stopped.

"Is this how we do it?"

"I've never been around women like you!"

100% involvement on all projects

"I want to spend my life doing this!"

Hear the buzz?

Without going slow

Conversations flow

Commitment challenges

Emerging

Making decisions critical

The essential ripple:

Change…

Goes all the way.........

(Found poem by Ruth)

Finding Words

Angie

Even in her sixties and carrying some extra pounds, Angie was as cute as the proverbial bug's ear. A tiny woman in her youth, she had been a knockout. Later, she was still very appealing with a ready smile and a quick laugh. Everyone loved her.

Unfortunately, poor Angie was as gullible as she was sweet. Her life had been a series of run-ins with cruel Lotharios who saw her small figure and easy going disposition as an invitation to domination. They pushed her around with words, fists and. sometimes. religion.

Her first husband was an absurdly handsome man, whose beauty, as it often is, was in inverse proportion to his madness. He beat her, humiliated her and was unfaithful to her, but he always returned on his knees, in tears and begging for forgiveness. She was a sucker, but twenty years of that nonsense finally wore her out, so she took off for Florida, leaving him alone in Tennessee. He jumped in his car when he found out and swore he'd drive until he found her and killed her. Luckily, the car broke down and he ran out of murderous energy before he reached the state line.

Her second husband had a birthday within a few days of her first. But, he was so full of wonderful promises in his letters that it didn't seem possible that he could turn out anything like Damon. A clue to her should have been that he sent those letters from prison, but she just didn't see it coming although there were some pretty big road signs along the way.

She ended up in a Texas trailer with him. He didn't hit her, and he didn't play around, but she had to support him and he barely let her out of his sight. She tired of his demands but her rose colored glasses stayed as thick as before, so she never left him.

“Ocean Spray”

Inspired by a Miller Paint Sample

The winter blanket of gray

Lifts and morphs

 into feather pillows

on an azure firmament

Volatile winds 

scoop up ocean splinters

and hurl them to the wind

as western sun shards

 backlight

  pelican parades

heading home

to roost.

 May 10, 2013

Being Alone

3 min.

When the T.V. is silent

and Pandora and the radio

are turned off

and I am alone,

I love the wave of peacefulness

that envelopes me.

It slows my heart rate

and I relax

into the comfort

of knowing

 there will be no surprises

until I choose to open the door.

Joyful Tears

Anna Maria stood outside her trailer exuding an air of frustration and irritation. Her director had just asked her to display "joyful tears" when her boyfriend returned from the war in Iraq. She was not an actress who found it easy to cry at a moment's notice, and to add that she had to weep for happiness just completely flummoxed her. Who the hell, she thought, really cries for joy? Anyway, Anna Maria was a soap opera veteran so she knew she could do it, and nobody would be too much the wiser if the emotions weren't real. She went in the trailer and cut up the usual onions and stuck a few in her pocket. When Joe called "Action!" she was ready. She embraced the dumb SOB that played her boyfriend/ returning war hero, smiled, pressed her onion juice coated fingers against her eyes as though trying to stop the flow of tears, and lo and behold, a profusion of clear salty liquid wet her lovely cheeks.

The Dance

The dress was iridescent green and blue satin. It moved slowly and sensuously almost by itself as she watched herself in the mirror. The pain of a new high school and no real friends was eased as she imagined the success she would be at the party. Milwaukee seemed so dull and lonely after New York, but her grandmother was socially prominent and able to foot the bill at the exclusive girl's school where she felt out of place, but still happy to be among the elect.

Her great aunt Missy had bought the dress. To her grandmother and her sister nothing was more important than family and social success, and Jane felt the subtle, but omnipresent pressure to join the elite and be popular. Her previous life in New York had been more humble and middle class. Her father's salary as a teacher, while maintaining his social status as a professional, did not touch the expenses of a girl in high society. There was no question of being a future debutante like some of her classmates, but at least she could attend cotillion looking as good as any rich businessman's daughter.

Foundation, eye shadow, eye liner, mascara and lipstick, she felt ever more excited as she applied each magic elixir to her girlish face. Then, slipping into the matching shoes, she was ready. Of course, she couldn't really think that she was beautiful, but she hoped that someone might believe the illusion she was creating. She had a blind date, who no doubt felt equally awkward at the thought of going to a dance where he knew no one, but who would be glad to have her by his side, no matter how she looked.

When they entered the dance, the band was playing loudly and they immediately jumped in with the others to dance as passionately and wildly as they could in their formal attire. Allen was tall, thin and not very impressive. Neither he nor she had much to say, but they could dance and not worry about conversation, a near impossibility anyway, the music was so loud.

Halfway through, one of her new acquaintances from school approached her with the news that Sam, from a neighboring boy's private school, had been watching her and had said that he liked her moves. He wanted to know if they could switch dates and leave the party. She hesitated for one shimmering, gossamer moment, but then, sucked into the glory of having an admirer from afar, she acquiesced and they made the arrangements.

Later, and for many years after, the moral ugliness of that agreement filled her brain in a way that having a date with a cool boy never could have. Sam had turned out to be even less exciting than Allen, and she only saw him once more. However, everyday she had to study with her classmate who had been so casually dumped. Francine belonged to an even more unattainable and admired group, the intellectual crowd. There were three of them and they were always at the top of the class. Jane's shame prevented her from ever making any overtures of friendship.

Now, far from Milwaukee, in California, each year the summons come to the annual reunions. Francine is often in the pictures, still in glasses, but looking confident and successful. She has aged gracefully and seems quite unconcerned about a small humiliation that occurred fifty years before.

Skating on thin ice with The Portland Nine

The Walkabout Woman blog has been languishing. The truth is . . . I have been busy making a living.

The loss of my pension in February sent me off in a new direction, one with less time for writing or art. I am actually enjoying my foray back into the working world.  I find meaning and value in the work I am doing.

I am also grateful for the previous months of solitude I spent in deep communion with myself.

Everything seems to come in its right time and place, but I am aware that I am living more on the surface of life now.

It is as though I am skating on a frozen pond, with just a thin sheet of ice between my busy everyday life above and the shadowy depths of my inner life below.  I am relishing the frosty air on my cheeks and my strong graceful competent movements.  I feel joy and exhilaration with this new slippery speed that sends me careening into contact with other people.

My months of solitude taught me a lot about the magic of being present — and I have not lost the habit.

As they say, “It’s all good.”

I joined a writing group made up of  nine women – The Portland Nine.  I am # nine, the new one. Each Thursday night, from 6:00 pm to  8:30 pm, we gather, respond to 10 minute writing prompts and share what we have written.There is a lot of freedom in this and I feel myself loosening up as the evening goes on. It is only with these women now that the sheet of ice cracks and I fall through to the depths below.

Sometimes when I am reading aloud, it touches a nerve and I cry.

And try as I might, I am unable to write a scrap of fiction or come up with the colorful adjectives or metaphors that the others do. I can only write plainly and starkly about myself or myself thinly veiled. In this group, however, I feel accepted and appreciated for my voice. I am only slightly embarrassed by my tears. The other women seem unperturbed, and the  hostess just brings out the Kleenex.

What is profound for me is this — day by day, art or not, work or not (or maybe because of it), I am witnessing the unraveling of the tangled threads of my life. Sometimes my tears are  from the relief of finally setting my burden down.

I bought a scroll for my wall which says:

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” Buddha

As I welcome in my own humanity and claim the wisdom of the crone that I am, the love I have received and given so far wells up inside me. I see that, in big and small ways, I am beginning to be able to love myself.

http://thewalkaboutwoman.com

“He’d always been that way…”  10 min

“A risk I took…”

(Writing inspired by Tinkers by Harding)

            It was fall 1981. Farmers who had taken out bank loans for fancy farm equipment worth more than the land they were farming, were going bankrupt. Foreclosures, auctions, livestock sales were the talk of the rural areas of the Willamette Valley. But this didn’t affect Stanley Swanson in any way…he didn’t go to equipment sales or enter into the gossip at the Lutheran Church on Sunday mornings. He wasn’t like that.

            He’d bought his sixty-nine acres in Evans Valley with cash in 1931 when he and his new bride had come by train with their thirteen cows and a trunk full of Alma’s items for the house. Out from Minnesota they’d come to start a dairy. He’d never borrowed a dime or hired anyone to help with the farm. He was like that: proud, self sufficient, and solid in all ways. He did the farming. Alma did the housework and took care of their daughter and two foster children. Being an orphan himself, Stanley felt it was important to take in foster children as a payback of some sort. But he didn’t much like the antics and silliness of children and left Alma in charge there.

            Everything changed for Stanley the day the stroke blinded him. He’d been tilling his lower alfalfa field when everything went black. In the days that followed, car keys, tractor keys, milking, haying, bill paying, and all chores requiring sight were turned over to others. But from the confines of his walker and rocking chair, he managed to hold the place together and care for his beloved farm until the weeds littered the pathways and tractor trails, skunks and coons nested under the floorboards of the barn, and wasps’ nests hung in great paper globes under the eves of the house. Then, when Stanley could no longer care for himself or the place, he lay down in the woods and died.

Ruth

Motherhood

What a week!  The car got a flat and the furnace broke down.  It’s still winter and the kids have been complaining about how hard it is to get out of bed when it’s so cold. Thankfully they are all off to school, and I can take a break and have a cup of coffee.

My mind wanders back to the good old days when my worries were small – things like what to wear to work, should I get my nails done this week or next, what to do and where to go on the weekend. 

Thank goodness for coffee! It’s invigorating and gives me a good excuse to stop, rest, put my feet up and let the dishes that need doing sit awhile. The quiet is so restful, but I know won’t last. The five year old will need picking up in 3 hours. Better get busy! But no . . . just a few more minutes.

I hear the birds singing. I can see a miraculous display of clouds – white against the blue. I noticed the crocuses coming up yesterday. “Spring always comes”, I tell myself.

I glance down and notice what I threw on after I rolled out of bed this morning – before I poured five bowls of cereal, wiped three runny noses, cramped three pairs of small feet in shoes, looked for lost coats, homework, library books, and backpacks -- and finally shooed them out the door.

I am wearing my old blue house coat. “A house coat,” I think! I had no idea I would end up wearing a house coat like my mother used to wear. I was determined not to turn out like my mother and now I believe I have.

These days I have to check myself before leaving the house to make sure I am not wearing cereal.

****

Words I picked from above: Complaining, wanders, nails, quiet, singing, bowls, determined

“I’m not complaining. I love my life,” I think to myself. I say it out loud to myself in the bathroom mirror. I struggle to shake the sleepiness off and begin the process of plastering a loving, cheerful smile on my face. I want my children to remember their mother as a sweet gentle soul, not a marauding monster wandering about the house biting her nails.

I keep trying every day to be a better mother, but mostly I just become quieter and quieter -- stuffing the rage, the boredom and the exhaustion.

To hide my feelings I sing. When I start singing to the kids, they know things are bad. They become quiet and the chomping and the chewing and the ringing of the spoons against their cereal bowl dies down, and a miraculous quiet settles in. Then I plaster the smile back on, determined to be a better mother. To be Mary Poppins or Mother Theresa. To not be tired and lonely and bored.

In the background I hear the baby begin to squeal. It is like nails on a chalkboard. I just smile broader and brighter.

“I’m not complaining. I love my life.”

Mad Confusion

Like a damn fool, I agreed to come with Ishwar to America. "Rich," he said, "we will be rich. Beautiful houses, fabulous cars, luxurious clothes. We will live like maharajahs!"

But, no, we live in a rat and cockroach infested apartment in Oakland, a town so full of drug addicts and thieves that they have to kill each other to survive. What do I know of the blue green Pacific Ocean and the sandy beaches that I saw in pictures before we came?  Nothing, I tell you, nothing.

I sit and watch TV, game shows with people like me who wish they had more money or soap operas about the rich Americans who invent a stream of problems to make their lives seem important. I feel nothing for these people and even less for the commercials for drugs and deodorant.

My formerly honorable and respectful children come home from school talking about Facebook and dances. They listen to hip-hop and rap music. I have to cover my ears in my own home to keep my sanity. Do they study? I don't know. I only see them on their IPhones all day.

All is mad confusion to me, but I miss the familiar mad confusion of my own country. In the old days I would spend hours in the open markets bargaining for food, and even more time sitting in the shade of a patio talking with friends. Now I hate to go out. People can't understand my accent, although I think my English is better than theirs. They make fun of me behind my back.

My husband is working two jobs to earn this American dream. We see each other at dinner. He won't allow me to complain about anything. He says he's too tired to listen and he wants the children to be like other Americans. He wants them to fit in.

I may never see my mother and father again. My heart feels as though it might break. Perhaps I will find a neighbor who is Hindu like me. There are Muslims and Punjabis in my neighborhood, but what have I to do with them?