Once Again: Just in Time for the the Holidays: Thanking the Problems for Being the Gifts

Originally posted Thursday, November 27, 2008

Years and years and years ago times were, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to make a list every night of three things that I felt grateful for that day.

I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard of. If there were things to feel grateful for, I wouldn't be in the shape I was. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. Often item 2 and 3 were the pencil and the paper I was using.  Sometimes item 1 was that I didn't kill myself that day. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel.

Then one day I noticed a gentle reprieve. Item 4 was the autumn wind and soon 5 was that great cup of coffee.  Each day the list grew. My life soften.


Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

Then things got, well, not so hotsy totsy. I was urged to thank my problems.

I told the bearer of such advice to go fuck himself. But desperate for anything better than what was, I did. And slowly a rejection turned into a reprieve from a firing line, a disaster led to the perfect place where things ran perfectly, a broken heart broke open bigger and I ended up loving someone else more.

Each obstacle held the gift I always wanted.

I was no fool.  I began to thank my problems. A lot.

Things got better, things got worse, things got different. Things got real. Life went on.

And then things got completely and unequivocally horrible grief loss rage insanity wiping shit off floors begging love not to leave sudden wakings in the middle of the night desperate to have those lost years back desperate not to feel it was all over desperate...



There was nothing to do but thank and thank and thank while pouring out pain like a mother giving birth, not always sure the gift I sought lay beneath such poundings, but thanking just the same.

The more I poured out pain, grief, loss, desire, yearning, unresolved, uncertainty, fear.... pages and pages and pages of thanks poured out too, like kisses that pour out when love invites.

Thank you for this crisis -- it got me to go deeper and recognize the bruised injury....Thank you for forcing me to practice loving even when I was being rejected. It hurt like hell and I was so exhausted from years of crying but I finally emerged from the prison I had always lived in ....Thank you for such sorrowful childhood moments. It taught me to stand in the heart of a crisis, a trauma, a disaster and understand war and choose peace ... Thank you for my desire and my passion. It kept me moving to bigger rather than smaller .... Thank you for the directness of your words, the clarity of your heart ... oh and thank you thank you thank you for that kiss that night .... Thank you for this pain that makes me weep with regret and love fearlessly .... Thank you for such a beautiful home -- it may be filled with decades of heartbreaking memories but it is a home that sheltered me all those years and I can still afford to live in it and it is now so rare and I am so blessed...

Thank you for the memories of where everything that went wrong was only on its way to going right.

A Crutch By Any Other Name

Years ago, Florence broke her leg in an unfortunate accident that involved relatives.  After that, I had a phobia about leaving anything at anyone's house because what if they tried to return it and broke something in the process.  Too risky.

 before the leg broke

Florence didn't do much doing those days of a heavy white cast and a pair of heavy wooden crutches.  She went from bed to piano to bed to kitchen, back to piano.  She didn't need to more than that.  She had me to do her serious walking. 

And so I did: to the Coop Supermarket on Grand and the Dry Dock Bank on Delancey.  To the Library on East Broadway or Houston, back to the Dry Dock Bank and then home and then the supermarket and then...

Only looking back did I wonder about my many visits the Dry Dock Bank.  For each day I would hand over a note, written in my mother's hand, requesting a withdrawal from her account to be given to me.  Who, I guess, the teller assumed was truly her daughter.

These days, things are a bit different.  Besides debit cards and photo i.d.s., crutches are lighter, casts are flexible and New York is a bit more easy to get around.  Especially if you don't have a kid to do the legwork.

**

From writer, Adrian Margaret Brune  who grew up in Oklahoma and learned a few things while temporarily "disabled" in New York where she now lives:

1. Locals are gracious and will hold doors, but don't expect package carrying -- they're going somewhere, too.

2. Subways have elevators, and if someone points it out, it means you're taking too long on the stairs.

3. Crutches come in handy when theatre-goers attempt to steal your cab.

4. "Pimping out" said crutches with extra padding is worth every bit of the $25 you spend.

5. Carpet is wonderfully soft for walking.

6. Despite former athleticism, if someone put a gun to your head, you still could not run; a fast "crutching and ducking" amounts to the best possible outcome.

7. Some passers-by look suspiciously if you are sans huge cast.

8. Riding a train during rush hour without a seat creates a strange sense of accomplishment and pride.

9. The East River will make for a wonderful javelin-style "crutch toss" when all is said and done.

10. Moving freely will never be taken for granted again.

**
Related Posts:

Adrian Margaret Brune: Blindfoli

Refugees Don't Just Look Like Sunday Memories

This is my family. Grandmother, aunt, great-grandmother, grandfather.

It's the kind of picture you find in sentimental exhibitions at so-called museums touting immigrants in America.

My family came in steerage class on crowded boats because they believed the poem at the feet of the Statue of Liberty.

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

My family believed that poem.  Living in poverty on the Lower East Side, working grueling jobs...  no matter.  They believed.  And because of that leap of faith, I got to get an education, buy a computer and write about them.

But that's not what pictures of refugees look like today.

They look like this.

 Reuters/Dimitris Michalakis

And my job and yours and each and every one of us, especially those of us who came from that heritage of diaspora and flight and fleeing murder and slaughter and genocide, each and every one of us must do everything we are capable of so that child in those arms gets to settle some place so that maybe one day her descendant will get an education, be able to buy a computer and write the story of the day, as her family was fleeing certain death, her grandmother was carried to shore and to safety.

Shame on you, 31 so-called governors from the United States who are refusing to welcome in Syrian refugees.  Shame on you.  You did not earn that poem and you do not belong in our country.

For the rest of us who are American citizens, here's how you can help:

The Guardian: Where to donate to help the Syrian refugee crisis



**
Related Posts:

Sunday Memories: It Was His New York

Sunday Memories: The Daughter, The Granddaughters, The Women From Her New York

Respite

Years ago, I asked a medical examiner about how she survived the daily heartbreak of her job, so often having to investigate the aftermath of insane evil, of brutal cruelty, of raging violence.   

She told me she had asked her boss the same thing.

"I surround myself with beauty," he had answered. 

Good plan.

**
Related Posts:

Faster Than a Cable Car Going Down a Hill and Way More Fun

This Is What A Muslim Looks Like

Adel Termos tackled a suicide bomber in a market place in Beirut.  He died in the explosion but saved dozens, maybe hundreds of people.

This is what a Muslim looks like.

He looks like a hero.

Pass it forward.


 **
Related Posts:

CNN: Widow of Beirut bomb attack hero Adel Termos: 'He made us proud'

When the F*#&$ Will This JUST Be a Sunday Memory: Use Your F*#&$*g Words

When the F*#&$ Will This JUST Be a Sunday Memory: Use Your F*#&$*g Words

Originally posted after the bombing at the Boston Marathon, and then as an encore after the "Charlie" massacre, today it is posted for Beirut and for Paris and it heralds and celebrates the #NotInMyName campaign 

**

10:30 at night, the United Nations still toils

Before my auspicious interview with a famous artist to be his intern, Florence  begged, "Please don't curse. And don't talk about sex."

I'm not sure where she got the idea I talked about sex with strange men who could or could not allow me gainful employment.  I had never slept my way - literally or metaphorically - into any professional commitment.

But the cursing? Perhaps she had forgot lessons learned at the feet of masters, me following her down beaten-up streets as she screamed at me or my father curses more foul and vicious than the shocking comments I sometimes spy on a niece's facebook page or now overhear on nicer streets.

Perhaps her spewing blew off enough steam that she was too tired to make a third attempt at stabbing her husband with the letter opener.  Perhaps it was why she only swung at us with open hands or closed fists, not with knives.

Perhaps, like my dad locking himself behind bedroom doors so he wouldn't destroy us, her cursing allowed her to say what was on her mind and not go to jail for murder.

In the middle of a 12-hour day hammering out words of peace, news came of the bombings at the Boston marathon.

It's tougher to find words than throw punches.  It's harder to curse than to destroy. It takes longer to build than to bomb.

But, if you really want to change the world, use your fucking words, asshole.  Use your fucking words.

**
Related Posts:

God In The Details

Getting Lost In The Dangling Conversation

Same War, Different Day

#NotInMyName

Shades of Blue Take the Stage!

IT'S TONIGHT!!!!!

IT'S AT PARKSIDE!!!

IT'S....SHADES OF BLUE!!!!

WE HEART NYC WRITERS NIGHT + OPEN MIC!!!!

THURSDAY!! 
NOVEMBER12!!

PARKSIDE LOUNGE!!

317 East Houston Street, NYC

8-11pm

A great lineup of featured writers: 

Nicole Hefner Callihan, Sarah Gerard

AND FROM SHADES OF BLUE 

Amy Ferris
Matt Ebert
Claire Olivia Moed
Elizabeth Rosner
Sherry Amatenstein

Hosted by Megan DiBello.

21+ age limit.

**
Related Posts:

When This Was Normal

Sunday Memories: The Walk and the Talk

This is Leigh.

She's brilliant.

I know because on a rare free night we went to see her one-woman show.

It is a wild stroll down her memory lane, some 30-years ago, of days that crushed her heart and left her hope in rubble. 

And between laughing and crying and gnashing my teeth because HOW COME I DIDN'T WRITE THAT LINE, a light dawned in a dim brain and a memory bubbled up.

I remember a walk she took with me then.

My heart was also crushed and and my hope also in the rubble.   I couldn't trust myself to be alone and safe at the same time.  Leigh was someone who seemed so together and stable and strong enough to withstand the disaster I suddenly was so I asked her if I could for just a few hours visit with her.

We visited.  But at some point she needed to keep an appointment.  I remember us walking down Second Avenue as the light faded. I was bracing myself to get through the next couple of hours.

I don't remember the words we said.  I just remember this strength and stride of Leigh's.  I just remember wishing I could be her, be stronger than what ailed me, and so much did then.

It was now 30 years later.  I was suddenly hearing how those days for her were just as crushing as they were for me.  Only this time, in a dark theater, it was me keeping her company... 

And still, I marveled at her, marveled, and even though those days were long behind both of us, I still wanted to stride as fiercely as she did.

**
Related Posts:

Why Water Falls

Leigh Curran 

Encore: Just in Time for the the Holidays: Thanking the Problems for Being the Gifts

Sunday Memories of When This Was Normal

Fucking Him Flies to Switzerland!

 
If you are reading this, FUCKING HIM, the video collaboration of C.O. Moed and Adrian Garcia Gomez, is in competition at the renowned Kurzfilmtage Festival in Winterhur, Switzerland and Adrian is representing!

And if you are IN Switzerland, you can find the list of screenings HERE.

 And be sure to say hello to Adrian while you are there.

This is Adrian in Switzerland!


**

The piece asks the simplest of questions:

• What is fucking?
• What is love?
• What's the difference?
• When do you know?

Adrian Garcia Gomez is an interdisciplinary artist working in film/video, photography and illustration. His artwork, which is largely autobiographical, explores the complexities of race, immigration, gender, spirituality and sexuality. His short experimental films, photographs and drawings have exhibited around the world. He currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. (superadriancito.com)

C.O. Moed chronicles the heart and soul of a disappearing family and a city in the throws of extinction and evolution on IT WAS HER NEW YORK. A recipient of the Elizabeth George Grant for fiction and a Rockefeller Media Arts nominee, her short stories and dramatic works have been published in several anthologies and literary reviews. (myprivateconey.com and myprivateconey.blogspot.com)

**
Related Posts:

Sunday Memories Turn Into New Announcements

Special Announcement:  Hands Across the Waters

Sunday Memories of the Millions of Burgers and the Millions of Moments

Operating Instructions

Forgot early morning was like deep night.

All this promise of something magical about to be revealed

...almost like traveling the last couple of hours to your birthday or Chanukah or Christmas or whatever day had a ton of presents waiting for you.

I didn't want the tram to land.  I wanted to float a little longer in the last possible moment of magic.
 

**
Related Posts:

The Walk to Hope

Sunday Memories: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

It's so lovely and easy to,  like the angels in Wings of Desire, slip invisible through millions of people's stories.

 Returning to a little piece of Heaven on Earth that felt like Home, that's all there was, a sea of millions of other moments in other peoples' lives.

Who was Addy and who painted this for her birthday?

Christ by the rolls of shipping paper and boxes and envelopes you always needed when you didn't have them.

And how come we all gathered so many pens and markers? 

The perfect place to have an angel to pray to.

Somebody once loved these white tigers.

and the clothes...the clothes just begging to be tried on, even if there wasn't one thing needed...

All it was buoyed by a delight of wandering through, unfettered but engaged.  Almost like an interesting chat with someone also waiting on line for the bank.  Amused but not involved.

Then a pile of blank notebooks beckoned.  Could always use those.

Except...

There was nothing blank about them.  They were, in fact, filled with parts of my own story.

The phone number of an old high school classmate, the amazing one who one day in English class, got up and tap danced on the teacher's desk and we all knew he was destined for greatness, the one who died too young, too soon...

the beeper of another...his photos so astounding they capture rare moments of our souls so well his name has become a verb to us (have you gotten "..." yet?)...

the daily reminder notes of a third...the one who, decades after being a young professional dancer, literally danced up a wall at a party..UP the wall... there's a picture somewhere proving that...

HEY I KNOW THESE PEOPLE IN THIS BOOK!  I shouted to the guy who was selling all this stuff.  I KNOW ALL THESE PEOPLE.

"Anything happens here," the Heaven on Earth guy shouted back at me.

And anything does.

I went to school with his brother.

**
Related Posts:

Wings of Desire

Heave On Earth Feels Like Home

Sunday Memories of High School Stairs