"A Poem Called Home" Comes Home

Thanks to the Elizabeth George Foundation, I have been able to complete the trilogy, WIRE MONKEY.

On October 27, this coming Tuesday I will read a couple of chapters from the last installment, Poem Called Home at the Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike at Bluestockings Bookstore. I hope you'll join me.

A POEM CALLED HOME

Thirty years after leaving the ancestral seat on the Lower East Side, Bets returns only to accidentally break the arm of her mother, The Cellist. This send The Cellist down the rabbit hole of old age Armageddon, leaving Bets and her sister, The Other Daughter to face off with the law, the doctors and medicaid services. It's smack-down time at the Adult Day Program.


FEATURE WRITERS:
Claire Olivia Moed and Jan Clausen

WHERE:
Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Bluestocking Bookstore,
172 Allen Street, between Stanton & Rivington
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston

WHEN:
Tuesday October 27th

TIME:
7-8PM: open mike so bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word (you get 8 minutes)

8-9PM: featured writers (me and Jan)
(These are all approximate times.)

HOW MUCH:
$5 suggested donation

Hosted by Vittoria repetto - the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
http://www.bluestockings.com/

Open mike - sign-up at 7 pm - 8 minute limit

Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store

Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com

Sunday Memories: Check Mate and a Reading This Coming Tuesday

Once upon a day, a year ago...

Florence had just died. The memorial was over. The temp job ended. There was enough money to last for another two months. For the first time there was time. To write, to rest, to find out where the stories were. At least until the money ran out.

The money began to run out.

During a cold afternoon, all hope for this time to coax story from the shadows drained out of me in one swift moment.

I crawled into bed, stared at the wall festooned with notes and ideas and snippets and sentences and thought, "I can't do this anymore. I can't live teetering on fear and poverty and one rent check away from eviction. I need to give up writing. I need to find a job. I need to make sure that I have enough money so that when I'm old I don't end up in a nursing home like the one on Avenue B where Gramma died, tied to a chair and without her teeth."

How Florence had kept afloat teaching piano lessons for $5, $10 or $20 always puzzled my sister and me. I hadn't been able to do that. It was time to throw in the towel.

The doorbell rang.

There was the postman who had been our postman for the last 30 years with a registered letter.

I thought, "Oh. I'm being evicted."

Until I looked at the envelope. It was from a foundation I had applied to for a grant. Months earlier.

"They wouldn't reject me with a registered letter" I kept saying over and over again as I tried to grab the letter out of his hands.

"You have to sign first you have to sign first you have to sign first!" the postman kept saying grabbing the letter back.

The only reason I stopped grabbing was I knew it was a federal offense to assault a postal worker.

When I finally opened the letter, there was a check. For the first time, ever, I was given time, more than a couple of days, more than a week here and there, more than two months before the money ran out. I was given almost a year. To write, to complete, to be what I was - a writer.

***
Thanks to the Elizabeth George Foundation, I have been able to complete the trilogy, WIRE MONKEY.

On October 27, this coming Tuesday I will read a couple of chapters from the last installment, Poem Called Home at the Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike at Bluestockings Bookstore. I hope you'll join me.

A POEM CALLED HOME

Thirty years after leaving the ancestral seat on the Lower East Side, Bets returns only to accidentally break the arm of her mother, The Cellist. This send The Cellist down the rabbit hole of old age Armageddon, leaving Bets and her sister, The Other Daughter to face off with the law, the doctors and medicaid services. It's smack-down time at the Adult Day Program.


FEATURE WRITERS:
Claire Olivia Moed and Jan Clausen

WHERE:
Women's / Trans' Poetry Jam & Open Mike
Bluestocking Bookstore,
172 Allen Street, between Stanton & Rivington
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston

WHEN:
Tuesday October 27th

TIME:
7-8PM: open mike so bring your poetry, your prose, your songs, and your spoken word (you get 8 minutes)

8-9PM: featured writers (me and Jan)
(These are all approximate times.)

HOW MUCH:
$5 suggested donation

Hosted by Vittoria repetto - the hardest working guinea butch dyke poet on the lower east side

Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
(between Staton & Rivington)
1 1/2 blocks south from E.Houston
NYC
212-777-6028
info@bluestockings.com
http://www.bluestockings.com/

Open mike - sign-up at 7 pm - 8 minute limit

Take V or F train to 2nd Ave. and exit from the 1st Ave exit and walk south down Allen St. (aka. 1st Ave) 1 ½ blocks to the store

Press contact person: Vittoriar@aol.com

Got Lap?

Who knows why Ellwood's former owner couldn't afford the operation? Maybe he or she had only enough money for their own surgery but not their cat's.

The only thing anyone knows is that one very sad, bad day Ellwood, three years old and declawed, ended up without a home or an owner or a lap to sit in.

Dr. G of Cooper Square Veterinary said, "I'd take him but I've already have four at home." He wasn't even counting his bulldog when he said that. Just the cats.

Since Dr. G. saved Jupiter from himself, the very least I could do was try and get Ellwood a home.

So here's the skinny on ELLWOOD, one really great, delicious, loving, wonderful being who would make someone with a lonely lap very very happy:

He's three years old.
He's neutered.
He's on C/D wet food.
He's great with other cats and dogs!
He loves kisses and hugs and he head butts everyone he meets!!
He loves laps!!!
He's a TOTAL MUSH!!

Contact Emily at 917.573.8710 or emily10012@aol.com
kittykind.org
P.O. 961 Murray Hill Station
NY, 10156

Once I Was A Man

Now I am a fucking eunuch with a cone around my head.*





*According to Dr. Gagliardi of Cooper Square Veterinary Hospital, of all the hundreds and hundreds of neutering he has done on dogs and cats, Jupiter was the first to chew off all his stitches. And then after getting fixed up again, go straight for them again.

Cooper Square Veterinary Hospital
211 East 5th Street
NY, NY 10003
212.777.2630

Sunday Memories: Weapon Of The Spirit

It was 1988.

They had been invited to El Salvador but not by the government. By the students.

Traveling hours and miles through many military blockades and repeated searches, they finally arrived at a small town where there was to be a concert supporting the resistance.

But the military had destroyed the stage.

Somehow the sound man was able to put things back together. So they took the stage and began to sing this song about El Salvador, for El Salvador.

At that moment a military helicopter slowly lowered to tree level. Looking up, they saw M80s pointed directly at them. They still sang.

Twenty-one years later in the basement of a church built for peace and freedom, they sang that same song. With the same passion, with the same commitment, with the same courage.

***
photo: Frank and Bev, with Chris in the back, at the Human Condition reunion, 10-17-09 in New York City

bevgrant.com

Night Streets

This is like daylight to me. Decades of working inside cubicles sometimes never going outside during the hours of nine and five, nighttime becomes freedom and joy and play, skipping down dark and bright streets.

Welcome to Hailey's California

Born October 7, 2009 at 11:30 am weighing 7 pounds 8 ounces.

Born into the ferocious joy the Universe felt when she arrived. And the reality that the minute she is sick of sunny California, her New York auntie has an extra room.

Sunday Memories: The First Step

We met in a tiny office for NYU graduate students. It was 1993 and she was very friendly. That's because she came from California.

We pounded out the idea of friendship together, did office work together, survived so-called writing classes together, graduated together, wept together, wrote together, planned together. We buried ideas, ex-boyfriends hopes, and parents together. Sixteens years were filled with gasps from infuriating new ideas, risks of spirit and never enough meat-fests from BBQ.

Now Josslyn is in Divinity School. I say a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. She says when marching with Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel said "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."

And then there's the first step of recovery she and I had embarked on so many years ago:

We admitted we were powerless fighting the greatness of our mission and that our lives became unmanageable the minute we turned our backs on the Divine.

Rain Delay for Sunday Memories

Due to special guests Sunday Memories will be posted Sunday afternoon.

When It Used To Be Healthy

Smoked for 30 years, the last 13 spent trying to quit, 8 years since the last smoke.

Cigarettes were commerce and connection and a key to a tribe until they got so expensive they became the symbol for "do I look rich get your own..."

And the truth about those health issues like addiction and cancer were too serious to ignore.

Still, in the midst of 12 hour days, heavy workload, tired bones, that man's break look good.

Good like a fantasy about an old boyfriend who really wasn't that nice and wasn't that cute but in the fantasy he was.

The Definition of Heaven On Earth

I said it was those firefighters playing baseball. The best game, the yummiest men.

But my colleague shrugged, said, "Nah. It was that hot man on the 6 train from the Bronx who made woo woo eyes at me me because I was doing the London Times crossword puzzle during rush hour. Without a dictionary."

Sunday Memories: The Surprise Of Things Not Turning Out As Expected

Yvon.

Queens boy. Speaks fluent French with a New York accent. Still talks to the kids he grew up with. Married to a Honda but fools around with this Ducati. When she's not in the shop.

All the landmines missed, accidents avoided, disasters survived, hardships endured, healing revealed, life unfolded.

Suddenly the age never expected to be reached arrives.

And memories as old friends with new babies show up to celebrate.

The Secret Of The Fruit Man

For the first time ever the Fruit Man by the Avenue A bus stop on Clinton and Grand was closed. Well, the first time not a Jewish holiday. I knew he couldn't have been evicted because the building was a city building sold to the tenants so that everyone could stay there without being kicked out because they weren't rich.

I said to Irene, "Where's the Fruit Man?"

His stand, basic and built on old boxes, a beat-up space inside for the stuff that couldn't stand the heat or the rain or the snow, was like all the fruit and vegetable stands in the neighborhood, but his remained while the rest dissolved into fancy supermarkets or gourmet coffee shops or Chinatown where fresh fruit sold from their shipping boxes still meant something.

Everyone in the neighborhood went to him. Even Florence who hated him. Irene loved his cantaloupe.

"He retired," Irene said.

"Really? Why? Was he sick?"

"No. He was 90."

"He was mean."

"No. He wasn't.

"He yelled at everyone."

And Irene said, "All his customers were old and hard of hearing. That's why he yelled."

Guest Artist Dana: The Pot of Gold

Marian and I had high expectations. We were about to go to see a one-woman theatre piece calls “the Amish Project”. It referred to the tragic murder of thirteen school kids whose Amish classroom was invaded by an armed lunatic.

At first I refused to join Marian in reliving such a terror. But word came from several critics of its unique value. Travel plans were finalized, and I was nearly dressed when Marian called at the last moment to tell me that there was a long, steep flight of steps from the street entrance up to the theater.

I am too disabled to manage those damn steps.

Marian decided to go alone. This was another time I had been rebuffed by architecture. Suddenly my missed evening struck me harder than the play’s tragic subject. I moped regretfully the remainder of the afternoon.

Stepping outside on my terrace to relieve the blues, I was thrilled to see a dazzling rainbow its enormous arc embracing the sky from mid-Manhattan to north Brooklyn, I began shouting to the strollers eleven stories below to “look up, look up, a rainbow!” But no one heard me. I was the sole beneficiary of the splendor. I was Finian himself.

Sunday Memories: St. Marks Place

That street was normal to me. It's where folks crashed either from drugs, booze or too much fucking.

It's also where people went to get the drugs, the booze, the fucking from which to crash.

If those buildings were beautiful you couldn't tell because everything was, well, normal which meant real people lived there and there were florescent lights in the hallways and if there was graffiti I didn't notice because graffiti was all over the place so how could you notice anything different?

It was part of the world we owned, from Avenue A all the way to the Nedicks on Sixth Avenue, from Washington Square Park to the youth center on 12th Street, and sometimes 14th Street when the rich merchant marine, who lived with his aunt and had really good pot, was back in town.

This street was our through-way and it's where we sauntered and stomped. It's where, before there was any way to instantly call or write or text to find a friend or a boy or a boyfriend, we had to actually show up, hang out on a favorite stoop and hope to run into whoever it was we were hoping to run into. And sometimes we did and some weeks we just waited.

In this picture on this stoop is my second boyfriend (my first was in 7th grade like years earlier). He was homeless and a runaway and crashing at Gypsy's on 4th Street. He came to New York to become a famous folk song artist. The new Bob Dylan. He was peppy and sweet and voted seriously most ugly. One night he and his best friend (also in the picture) went to Club 82 on 4th street and he thought he was kissing a woman but really it was a man who just knew how to look prettier than any of the girls we knew. He and I were already going out but I didn't care.

Years later I saw him running down our through-way screaming as some drug deal went south.

Happiness Is Where the Heart Is and The Heart Is Always Home

Around a table.

In front of an audience.

Just being with together, even while packing up stuff in a condemned studio in Long Island City.


Bouncing all over the place in between late night TV and a 4am"wake up and scratch my ear" appointment.


A rare visit with someone wonderful.


And the world crowded together to witness a new era of hope.

Thirty Years Of Pressing My Nose Up Against The Bakery Window

The first time I went in here was in 1982.

There was a women's theater group I was beginning to get involved with, and sometimes they would hold meetings at De Robertis.

I was shocked. I had never met anywhere for anything unless it was the principal's office because I was in trouble or the bar (which was certainly a place to meet but not for meetings). So stepping both into the unknown of this group of women, none of them from here, and a bakery I somehow thought was against the family law to enter (the wonderful cake beyond our self-esteem and wallets), it all felt very foreign.

I got used to going in but it still took years to order a pastry.

Now it's a place I meet others at often. Old friends, former classmates, even blind dates. In this picture, I'm meeting with Robyn and Joyce whose writings and struggles to write urge me forward.

Still have trouble ordering pastries, though.

De Rebertis Pasticceria
176 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009
(212) 674-7137

An Encore and Special Sunday Memory #1: "Tonight I can write the saddest lines." - Neruda

Last year, on September 30th and the first day of Rosh Hoshonah, my mother, Florence died. She was the inspiration and core spirit of this blog series and its sister video.

However, each year the date of Rosh Hoshonah changes as the Hebrew calendar is lunar. So, as was her life, Florence's death is equally complicated and multi-layered. This year, for Rosh Hoshonah, I've re-posted the three 2008 entries that my sister and I wrote for Florence. On September 30, I'll re-post the freezing cold day our community came out to celebrate her life.

Perhaps such writing is unusual to do in response to the death of a parent, but Florence lived art before she lived anything else. Writing these posts when she died was the most appropriate way we could honor her.

C.O. Moed, 2009
****
In The Still Of The Night




The call from Penny at 2:13 am. Something is more wrong than the usual wrong.

I scramble for clothes….no, not that tee-shirt! I like that one.  I’ll always remember I wore it this night.

I throw on a shirt I hate.

The cab driver doesn’t realize Columbia stops going two-ways at Delancey. He tries to speed on the East River Drive service road but hits all the red lights on Grand.

Does running fast through an empty courtyard in the middle of the night - past the fountain I sat by, down the same stone walkway I played on as a child - does running fast slow down bad things?

Two years of opening Florence’s front door to a constantly changing, always different "normal" - from a woman who could walk to the supermarket on her own - to this moment, a fragile sparrow held together by ancient skin struggling to breathe, her only seeing eye already traveling to other places.

When I ask her “can I take you to the doctor” the sound "no" shoot out, not from parched lips unable to close for fear of suffocation, but from a gut clinging to home.

So I sing the sutras.  She sips some water.

There is still too much distress, I tell Penny.  Penny is silent.  She knows she can’t say anything.  It’s not her job, it never was.

I pull out the the wishes made ten years ago. What decision can I live with, what decision can I not, old papers, words scratched out, other neatly typed….I read them again….what decision can I live with, what decision can I not? 

Penny listens, tilts her head, raises her eyebrows, nods, listens, tilts her head, raises her eyebrows, nods...

It is near 3am. Doctor Russia calls back immediately. He assures me if it is another flare-up then the hospital can treat it. He assures me if it is the end I can get her home.  He assures me I can refuse intubations. He assures me.

It's win-win I say to Penny. I’m calling 911.

I turn back and murmur to Florence “you are in so much distress I want to take you to the doctor I promise you I'll bring you home I promise you I'll bring you back home I promise you I promise…

“O.K.” whispered back - her trust in me, her trust she raised me not to lie.

EMT appear suddenly.  HE is tall huge like a redwood. SHE is officious. They both stomp around with many big FDNY emergency bags. Two more show up. Such heavy boots. The neighbors below must know something is happening. SHE orders everyone around.

Suddenly Florence, my mother, my mother is suddenly no longer mine. She is THEIRS and I cannot stop THEM or the massive amount of medical equipments flying out of boxes and bags or the law that says the form we didn't fill out means THEY get to do everything.

When I hear my mother cry out I snap "no more" or "stop that" or something that attempts to get back my mother back to me.  One of THEM steps in front of me and keeps me from stopping THEM.

The stretcher doesn't fit in the elevator so THEY tip her up. If THEY went a bit higher she'd be on her own two feet for the first time in months.

SHE tries to put me in the second ambulance.

"No! I'm riding with my mother."

HE points to the front seat - I can only ride shotgun, not in the back holding my mother’s hand.

SHE says, "Stop taking pictures please."

"I'm not taking any of you, just my mother."

SHE says, ”It's breaking HIPAA patient confidentiality."

"She's my mother. I am her HIPAA person."

SHE says, “Ma'am, it's breaking confidentiality."

I mutter under my breath, "I'll take a picture of my mother if I want to." But I'm too tired, too tired, too tired. "I'll take a picture of the coffee cups instead."

HE grins. My camera malfunctions.

I hear a siren from a distance and then realize it is ours.

The fundamental things apply
As time goes by

In March, when Florence and I spent 10 hours in the ER (The ER Visit-Part Two: The Walls of Jericho) there was a doctor there some addict was screaming at. I remembered him. Tonight he became Florence's ER doctor.

"Do you understand what that means if we do that?"

"Yes."

"Ok honey, ok sweetheart, I'm sorry, we're almost done, it's a bit uncomfortable, we're almost done..."

"Your mother was biting the tubes.”

"Biting?"

"Yes. She didn't want them."

"I'm glad she was biting them."

"Let's make her as comfortable as possible now."

"I want her home."

"This is Dr. Palliative Care."

"What seems to be happening is..."

"Should I call my sister or can we wait..."

"Call your sister, now. Tell her to get here as soon as she can."

"The lab result just came back. It looks like she had had a heart attack and that's why..."

"I'm on the train platform. I couldn't find any cash for a car service."

"Mom, she’s is on the train platform. You have to hang in there until she gets here. You have to. I know you can do it. Hang in there."

"You're looking at the machine to tell you how your mother is doing. I'm going to turn off the machines so that you can just be with her."

"I can't remember the Cole Porter song, You're the Top. I didn't bring her cassette player to play her old songs..."

"Do you know when your sister might get here?"

"My mother will wait. She's going to wait until my sister gets here."

"Here. I just downloaded Pandora on my I-Phone. It's not all Cole Porter but similar. Here, put it by her ear..."

"Mom! She’s is here!"

"Hi Mom."

thank you thank you I love you thank you so much for giving me I'm so grateful for I love you music is the most important thing in my life I got so much from thank you for my passion I'm so sorry so grateful for this I love you thank you so much I love you I'm so sorry I love you thank you


Then softer than, a piper man - one day it called to you
And I lost you, to the summer wind

Near 6:25am, on the first day of Rosh Hoshanna, while my sister and I were taking turns holding her hand, the two of us talking to each other in that allegro molto staccato of words that we've always done, Fred Astaire, Ela and Sinatra playing into her ear from of the I-Phone of Dr. ER, in some brief second of some brief exhale, Florence (Frances) Deutsch Moed died.

My sister and I offer profound gratitude to Pearline Edwards, Ghislaine Carrington, Dr. Portnoi, Nurse Peters, Dr. Pool, Dr. DeSandre and the incredible staff of Beth Israel on both the 5th Floor and in the ER, the many FDNY EMT we rode with, and our incredible friends and her students and neighbors and beloved family who loved, supported, and travel this road with Florence and with us these past two years.

An Encore and Special Sunday Memory #2: In Lieu of Flowers...

Tell the truth.

Tell yourself the truth.

Don't let your bullshit compromise either of the above.

Don't lie. Unless you're drunk. Then really don't lie.

Don't steal.

Accept hand-me-downs.

Look fabulous in your own clothes. They may have started out as hand-me-downs but they're yours now. Proudly recount their lineage. Never feel ashamed about that.

Never take a taxi.

Walk everywhere.

Don't wear a coat in winter.

Carry your own weight to the point of pathology. Better to err on independence than not.

Refuse to lose at the hands of cowardliness, mediocrity, stupidity, and the need to blend in.

Suffer aloneness at the risk of fitting in with any of the above.

Refuse to feel fear. If you do, ignore it and keep going. Just like Florence did that night during a World War II blackout under the Manhattan Bridge by the movie theater (now a Chinese market).

Always put your work first.
Always do your work.
Always put your work first.
Always do your work.

Rage against the Machine. Even when it looks like it's related to you.

Risk being laughed at by morons when you do something no one else is doing. Just like when Florence put on those roller skates in 1972 and skated up and down Grand Street and all those people laughed at her and then a couple of years every one had disco skates.

Start your entire life over at 60 like you were a 14 year old. Because on some level, you still are.

Fight back just like Florence did all the times someone mugged her or tried to mug her during the 1970's.

Don't EVER quit.

Know that that beer, that sandwich, those shoes, that jacket, those pants, that avenue, that movie house, that proper grammar, that street, that bar, that woman, that dance, that etude, that sonata, that scale, that subway, that bus, that hotdog, that boardwalk, that beach, that ocean is Your New York.

It Was Hers.

An Encore and Special Sunday Memory #3: "Louise is the Smart and Good One." - Florence's description of my sister. (I was "the Nice One)

From Louise:

"My mother, Florence Moed, died on Tuesday, September 30, at age 84. She had dementia and had been failing for a while. The immediate cause of death was a silent heart attack and her death was quick. My sister and I are relieved. She was quite uncomfortable and no longer herself.

My mother had a difficult and often unhappy life. She had little love or support growing up from her extremely dysfunctional parents. She dealt with that, in large measure, by focusing intensely on being a serious pianist and piano teacher. Parallel to her devotion to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms was her love of the popular music of her era, sometimes referred to as the Great American Songbook. It drove her nuts that she was so emotionally attached to these songs whose lyrics she sometimes found insufferably sexist. She was a lifelong progressive and a contrarian, especially regarding anything she viewed as bourgeois, such as marriage, sleepaway camp, taxis, and boasting about the accomplishments of one's children or grandchildren. She was very hard-working, honest, both very thrifty and extremely generous, and humble to a fault. She could be extremely irrational and volatile about personal emotional issues that she couldn't handle. Childhood with her and my father was not easy. Nonetheless, despite her quirky and difficult characteristics, she was a great mother. My sister and I were very devoted to her and tried as hard as we could to make her feel better about the life she had lived."

Louise Moed