Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

The day I arrived in New York to help deal with my father’s medical emergency, they were repairing the sewer pipe under my parents’ house.

The onslaught of noise was deafening as workers cut through an entire square of concrete then lowered themselves into the cavernous maze of underground pipes to search for the blockage. It took them two days to find the troubled spot, which had already plagued my parents for a week: no showers, no laundry, minimal dishwashing, and a directive to flush the toilet only when absolutely necessary. And after all that noise and digging, the blockage turned out to be not in the area where they’d dug at all. They found the problem in the sad little brick-enclosed square of dirt my parents call the “front yard”–under a rosebush that had already been reduced to small rootball and a few aspiring fronds.

The next day, when my father was officially referred to hospice and people rained all that “death is a passage” stuff on us, I thought about that sewer pipe–also a passage. And I also thought about the Dylan Thomas villanelle and its repeating haunting lines: Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It isn’t that I want my father to fight against the reality of his dying. I feel grateful that he is not–and has never been–an angry or vengeful person. Even in his compromised state, while depressed about what is happening, he continues to exude kindness and express love and gratitude to those around him.

But I feel like raging. Not at the inevitability of my father’s death, but at the sadness of seeing him so frail and unable to do things for himself–the “dying” of my image of my 90+ year-old parents as timeless icons of longevity.

And I feel myself raging against the barely flickering “light” of my country. Yet this rage feels like a fruitless kick-the-floor-and-flail-my-arms temper tantrum. Pundits tell us to keep breathing and find joy. The sun is brilliant on the half-inch of freshly fallen snow today. But where is the balance between digging and doing what we can and totally abandoning ship, closing our doors and taking out whatever might constitute our modern-day “opium pipe” to lose ourselves in a stupor of disempowerment and apathy.

I’m forever grateful to Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde, who was able to channel her rage into a calm and quiet plea for mercy, focusing the whole time she spoke, toward whatever light might be left that’s still shining on who we could be–individually and collectively. And I’m wondering if that’s the kind of light that flashes before our eyes as we near the end of our lives in addition to reliving all of our life’s significant moments. I’m wondering what my father, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is thinking as he sits hooked up to his oxygen machine with the New York Times spread on his lap, trying to stay awake long enough to get through more than a paragraph and make sense of all that’s happening around him.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

While we all have to accept death, as hard as it is, we mustn’t go gentle into this dark time, or accept the numerous attacks on our Constitution as the legitimate prerogative of a new leader. I feel grateful for the many in our community who are joining together and channeling their quiet rage into action. Death may be a lonely endeavor, but raging can be a community enterprise. I’m grateful to the many who are standing up to support immigrants, transgender people, the environment, and the many other important issues that are under attack.

In fact, what keeps me finding joy is knowing I have community–both to support me during this difficult personal time and to work together on keeping the light shining.

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Getting to Carnegie Hall

Today my mother turns 90!

While I have many reasons to be grateful in my life, one of my biggest sources of gratitude is having healthy parents who are still enjoying and making the most of their later years. My mom–and my dad, who is 92–are cultural aficionados. They love going to Carnegie Hall and Broadway. In fact, often when I announce my plans to come into New York, they search for tickets to something they think I would enjoy. In their eyes, tickets are one of the best forms of showing love.

The COVID years were hard for them. “It’s like jail!” my father would grumble. But as vaccinations have become abundant and restrictions have relaxed, they’re out in the world again.

© Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar

How do they get to Carnegie Hall? I know you’re thinking–practice! But they’ve paid their family musical dues and don’t need to practice any more. They take the subway–about a 30-minute ride. That they’re still able to do this is a wonderful privilege for people in their 90s, but when I mention it my mother looks confused. How else would we get there? she asks.

When I wrote my memoir, Imperfect Pitch, about the generational baggage of coming from a family of musicians and my struggle to meet what I perceived as a family expectation to be the next in a line of musical “prodigies,” I was pretty nervous about sharing the book with my parents. Not everything in the book I wrote about them was complimentary (LOL). But I realized, as I delved into the material, that they were just as much victims of the generational expectations as perpetrators. Like me, my parents both played music through high school, but didn’t have the ability–or (unlike me) the desire–to play professionally. And also unlike me, both of them accepted their limitations and went on with their lives, getting their “musical fixes” at Carnegie Hall, rather than from their own playing.

While I had a much harder time letting myself off the hook for not being able to play better than I could, I also moved on to my own life, spilling my creative passions into writing. But in 2020, my way of dealing with “COVID jail” was to return to the piano bench–tentatively at first, with a lot of finger stumbles and tears–and now, with a fluidity that pleases me. Even if I’m never going to win accolades for performing music, I’m happy to spend around 30 minutes every evening (the same amount of time it takes my parents to get to Carnegie Hall) to play for an audience of one–me! This is another thing that I’m profoundly grateful for.

And a final note of gratitude: when my parents did read my book, my mother said, I think this book will be very helpful to people in our family. We’ve gone through many birthdays together, and seen many shows at Carnegie Hall, but of all the gifts I’ve received, this affirmation is the one I cherish the most.

Happy birthday, Mom!

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Silver Linings in a Snowstorm

Yesterday I was supposed to have my book launch reading for Immigrants at the Odyssey Bookshop, but the weather gods had other ideas. The forecast was for snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain starting in the late afternoon and continuing all the way into this morning. While accumulations were not expected to be significant, the roads were expected to be slippery.

While I’m an admitted snowphobe when it comes to driving, I knew I’d likely be able to make it to the bookstore, which is only 5 minutes away from my house. But I also knew that others who were planning to come were driving much longer distances. I didn’t want to ask people to risk their safety. And I didn’t want to risk a low turnout. Even though I’d already bought the snacks and the ingredients for brownie-making, I decided it would be best to postpone.

I don’t know if it’s from being born under the sign of Gemini, but communication has always been huge value for me. My pet peeve is when people don’t return my calls or texts, and it infuriates me when I’m not communicated information I need. So, even though the bookstore was willing to post on social media and notify the people who’d actually signed up to attend the event, I wanted to make sure that people who were thinking about coming, or might have been planning to come and not signed up, didn’t make an unnecessary drive through the slush or ice only to find out the event had been cancelled.

This meant a whole lot of texting, emailing, FB messaging, social media posts, etc. And it meant I ended up connecting with people I hadn’t spoken to directly, which felt really lovely. While my core identity is introvert, I definitely have an extroverted side, and all that communication gave me a surge of energy that kept me going and focused on the task. I was so touched by how many people answered my messages in a warm and personal way who thanked me for making a call on the side of safety. And I was surprised by the number of  people who said they had planned to come, or that they couldn’t have come tonight but they could come on the new date. It felt like such an overwhelming bubble of support from my community, this big universal love…

Between all this, I was also using that surge of energy to attend to political issues involving real immigrants, working with my immigration justice affinity group on a short emergency mailing to drive calls to Congress against the potential Senate deal that would trade away current protections and due process for people at the border seeking asylum and expand deportation of people who are already here, all in exchange for more military weapons for the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. You can read more about that here.

So, I guess there are silver linings in a snowstorm–including the beautiful scenery when I woke up on Wednesday morning.

And, I was told by one friend that the new date February 7, has much better numerology–#8, a number which supposedly resonates with self-confidence, inner strength, and inner wisdom, among other things. I don’t know very much about numerology, but I’ll take it.

Hope to see some of you local people at the Odyssey Bookshop on February 7.

Gratitude

It seems fitting to start the new year with a post on gratitude.

Even if it at times it might feel like too much of a cliché to switch up the angst of the day with thoughts about what we’re grateful for, I do believe the recipe works. Expressing gratitude may not always result in the gourmet meal of your life, but it can be like a sauce you pour over your food to make it taste better. Or what was that line from Mary Poppins, Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. In the most delightful way. Emphasis on delightful. 

And for the new year, I’m trying a new way of thinking about gratitude. Instead of generically thinking about what I’m grateful for, which often brings up variations on the same list: my partner, my children and grandchildren, my close friends, the beautiful area in which I’m lucky to live, having good health and privilege, yada, yada, I’m mentally cataloging my day with discrete moments that brought me gratitude. I got this idea from my friend and colleague Tzivia Gover’s book, Dreaming on the Page.

Tzivia suggests the prompt, If I could preserve just one thing from this day it would be….

On Monday, January 1, what sprung to the top of the list was the long, leisurely brunch conversation over homemade crepes in our dining room with my partner, Shel, my younger child, Raf, and their partner, Nick. It wasn’t so much that any topic stood out as much as an ease of being and connection that felt precious. And even sweeter: gone was the usual nagging voice reminding me of all the tasks I had yet to complete and should be doing instead.

Yesterday (Tuesday January 2), the moment that edged its way to the top was visiting the tree I call my friend–a stout and stately presence on the Bachelor Brook Trail. I always stop to say hello, and this time, I took a picture of the view upward, made even more special in the bright blue sky on the first sunny day we’ve had in over a week.

Today (Wednesday January 3) is young yet, but in the running at this moment is that feeling of my chest expanding and energy releasing from my body when doing a cardio-work out earlier this morning. It’s not uncommon for me to experience those endorphin rushes, but it was still different to stop and appreciate the feeling as a discrete and special moment.

I often feel flummoxed and shut down when I think about what I can do to prepare for aging, because ultimately, none of us know what challenges might lie on the horizon. But I do think gratitude can be an important foundational practice, and better to institute now when I’m healthy and strong, rather than waiting to find silvers of good in the midst of more challenging times.

So I’m looking forward to continuing this practice for a while, and perhaps, mining these moments that give me joy and finding homes for some of them in poems and stories.

 

TAKING STOCK OF 2023

As the year draws to a close, here’s what I’ve done in the publication/submission universe:

POETRY:

  • 86 rejections
  • 18 journals accepted 22 poems (Including one poem in Rattle!)
  • 1 chapbook accepted–Very excited about Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, which is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2024. This dedicated and spirited small press has been a dream to work with. Cover reveal is coming soon!
  • 2 Pushcart Prize Nominations: Thank you so much to Gyroscope Review and the River Heron Review for this recognition.
  • 20 submissions still pending

SHORT FICTION:

Since I knew Immigrants was coming out soon, I only sent out one short story that wasn’t in the collection. That story got 12 rejections, with 2 pending.

The more exciting news on this front was that Immigrants did come out just last month and has already gotten some lovely reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. (Of the 13 stories in this book, 8 have been previously published by other journals.)

For those of you playing the submission game, be aware that stories, especially those on the longer side are harder to publish than poems, especially for a print journal that has to deal with space considerations.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION:

Essays I sent out were rejected 11 times, with 6 submissions still pending. One of the rejections made it to a final round and one of the pending submissions is in the final round. Also in this category–2 guest columns submitted to and published by our local newspaper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette: Losing the Light and Let Them Wear Tutus.

LONGER WORK:

I queried 27 agents this year about my music memoir, Imperfect Pitch. Three agents sent actual rejection letters, 3 are still pending (sent within the last three months), and 21 ghosted me. Of those that ghosted, 2 of them first asked to see a proposal and then ghosted when I followed up.

I also sent the book to three small presses and received 2 rejections. One small press submission is still pending.

And finally, I did take another stab at submitting a novel I’d given up on when I found out that Delphinium was considering unagented queries. The editor asked to see the whole book, and rejected it a month later with a letter that began, “Deer Dina…”

All these rejections may sound depressing, but I’m really okay with them. I’m glad to have far exceeded my goal of getting 100 rejections, and as I’ve said to many fellow writers, I make a point of not letting any rejection bother me for more than 10 minutes.

Besides the successes are incredibly sweet, and I’m grateful (and, quite honestly, also terrified) any time some of my words make it past my computer into the big, wide world.

Onward to 2024. Happy New Year!

Showing Up

Last night I participated in an on-line reading organized by Colossus Press to celebrate their newest anthology of writing about the body. I was happy to be one of eight featured readers sharing deeply personal and compelling material. Tonight, I’m heading to our local monthly reading, Writers Night Out, to see my friend Carolyn Cushing, the poet laureate of Easthampton. Tomorrow night, if I didn’t have another meeting, I’d be hanging out on Zoom with my poetry gals extraordinaire, an invaluable support and critique group that someone I met at Writers Night Out invited me to join. Had I not come that night, I never would have found these folks. Yet, as usual, I had to ignore my introvert leanings and force myself to go.

Showing up pays off–nearly all of the time. As much as I might not be able to totally void myself of the notion that the ideal writer lives alone in a cabin in the woods and doesn’t speak to anyone for days in order not to interrupt the precious chantings of the muse, I’m happiest in my writing when I know there are others on my team who are all rooting for each other–supporting each other through challenges and celebrating successes.

I met my life partner, Shel at the first poetry reading I dared go to, in Greenwich Village when I was in my early 20s. My inner hermit screamed for mercy as I walked up five floors of smelly stairs in a green-walled brownstone tenement, finally landing in a messy closet kitchen, where poet Emilie Glen, a woman in her 70s with dyed blond hair wearing a frilly pink negligee, greeted me effusively. Welcome! Her accent had a tinge of south in it. Would you like orange juice, lemonade, or passion fruit? 

Shel and me in front of 77 Barrow Street in 2014. We met at a reading in this building in 1978.

Emilie’s reading attracted a quirky crowd, from established New York beat poets to street people, and getting to know them opened the gates of my world. I quickly made a new set of friends, as I did again when I moved to western Massachusetts and got involved with Amherst Writers & Artists and the National Writers Union (where I found my fiction group that’s been meeting for more than 30 years). More recently, I’ve made new relationships from my involvement locally with Straw Dog Writers Guild and the Forbes Library Writing Room, and–more peripherally–with my Lesley MFA alums and people around the country I’ve connected with through offering work to their journals and anthologies. What I love about these communities is that they’re mixed: containing people who’ve accomplished far more than I have as a writer and also people who have not yet been published. Yet, there’s no hierarchy. Everyone’s work is taken seriously.

As shameful as it is to admit, there was a time in my life, shortly after my two YA novels were published in 2006 by “the big guys” (Simon & Schuster and Farrar, Straus, Giroux) that I broke away from many of these community writing groups. I’m a real writer, now. I told myself. I don’t need to hang with the “wannabees” any more.

I could not have been more wrong.

In hindsight, I equate my bad behavior as analogous to suddenly being accepted into the “mean girl clique,” and thinking that to stay there, I, too, had to act like a “mean girl” –better than everyone else. But when the “big guys” didn’t accept any more of my books and I was metaphorically kicked out of the clique, I found myself with much less of a writing community. While my inner hermit enjoyed the reprieve from being “on” so much of the time, the rest of me felt lonely and depressed.

It’s taken years to build back to a place where I have many friendships and mutual support networks with other writers. And I feel so much gratitude that they (along with my other networks of friends and family) are supporting me by buying and spreading the word about my new book, Immigrantsjust as I will continue to make the effort to buy and spread the word about their books.

And, whenever I can, I will show up.

 

Accepting the Hard Stuff

I’ve been in Florida for the past few days visiting my 92-year-old father-in-law, who was been plagued by dementia. Despite the warm, sunny weather and proximity to the beach, this is never a trip I look forward to–even as I’m touched by N.’s stretches of cogent lucidity between the storms of anger and confusion, where he talks poignantly about how sad he is that his life has changed so much. As someone who valued his independence above all else, as he continues to point out when asked to look back on some of the happier times in his life, having to succumb to 24-hour care and supervision often makes him feel that his life isn’t worth living any more.

But I know I need to accept things, he says to me over dinner. And enjoy what I can, like this food. And be happy that I can stay in my apartment, and that I have a wonderful family. I know I need to be grateful for all of that.

It’s an easy adage to repeat. But much harder for anyone–those with dementia and those without–to implement. How do we truly reach a place of gratitude and acceptance of whatever happens to befall us? Especially, when we can’t change the situation, but even when we think we can?

I recognize the extreme privilege I’ve had in my life up until now of not having dementia or some other life-changing debilitating disease. And yet, as both a continually aspiring and a recovering perfectionist, I find myself constantly navigating the question of when I should push myself to do something better than I’m currently able, and when I should accept the status quo. Especially in my creative pursuits. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about learning Kol Nidre on the piano, and trying to accept that I would likely never play it at the level I wanted to. And in writing, as well, while I’m generally pleased with many of the things I’ve written, it’s hard to stop berating myself for not writing as well as ____________ (hundreds of names could fill in that blank) or not having accomplished as much in my writing career as more recognized writers.

As I sit on the beach, I try to practice some of the meditation techniques I’ve learned from the app I’ve been using this past year. Label the breaths: in/out, try to match them up with the waves. I get distracted easily. There’s a radio playing. A helicopter overhead. And I’m still on edge from just having to tell N. at least five times–or seven–or ten–what the plan is for the next day. He’ll have lunch with his aide at the senior center, as usual. We’ll come over after he gets back–in the afternoon, and take him back to our place and make him dinner.

He frowns. I need to go to the senior center.

I tell him one more time that we’ll see him after the senior center.

The lady (his aide) will be lonely if I leave, he protests.

I’m sure she understands that it’s important for you to spend time with your family. 

I keep trying to understand things, he tells me. And when I ask someone to explain it to me, I can tell that they think I’m a pain in the ass, but I’m just trying to understand. 

You’ve always been very persistent, I tell him, remembering the hours and hours he put in every day, writing down steps, studying videos, when learning to ballroom dance. It’s both a strength you have, but now it’s also a curse, because there are some things your brain can’t process. Please trust us and don’t worry so much about tomorrow. The day will work out. 

But he doesn’t let go of the worry. And why should he, just because I tell him to? Cultivating  faith that things will work out is a hard habit for those of us who’ve spent our lives priding ourselves on our own agency in making things happen.

I get up from the beach. No way I’m going to get anywhere near a state of inner peace tonight. Yet, I make sure to express gratitude for the sloshy sound of the waves and their dependable rhythms as the world just keeps doing its thing–with us, or without us.

 

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Hiroshima Commemoration: August 6, 2023

Thousands of people filled Peace Memorial Park on August 6. It felt, in some ways, like many of the large demonstrations I’ve attended over the years, with people displaying colorful posters and handing out flyers. A small group of girl scouts looked quite serious as they handed out programs, but also proud that they were doing such an important job. And the security people who searched bags in the extremely orderly array of lines were efficient and respectful as they handed people shrink-wrapped cooling towels, which seem to be a staple in the “wicked hot” Japanese summer–consistent temperatures in the 90s that feel even hotter due to the high humidity.

 

 

 

 

My husband and I got there too late to get seats under the tent, but with our NYC superpowers of threading our way through crowds, we found a small shaded spot on the ground at the tent’s periphery where we could hear well and see the speakers on the Jumbotron if we stood up. The ceremony was short, centering on the ringing of a bell at exactly 8:15 AM, followed by a moment of silence. Then, a whoosh of doves made spectacular shadows against the white tent canopy before they soared off, staying in our view-scape for barely a moment.

And yet, a moment was all it took for the bomb to drop and change everything.

The day before, we had gone to the city gardens and seen a large ginkgo, one of only three trees that survived the bombing. We also went to the Peace Museum and barely made it through picture after picture of burnt bodies, story after story of people wracked with despair as they stumbled through rubbled streets, trying to find their loved ones. This was made even worse by the short political exhibit that followed, which emphasized how the U.S. felt it was “worth it” to drop this new weapon on already nearly defeated Japan if it would keep the Soviet Union from entering the war and sharing the spoils.

How could anyone do this? The question, like a heavy bell clapper, pounded against my head. And especially, after learning about the unspeakable devastation and suffering in Hiroshima, how could they drop another bomb three days later in Nagasaki?

And what is it in humans that give us the capacity to torture and kill others when ordered, from instances of all-out-war, to the countless genocides of one group against another, to the shocking Milgram experiments?

But on the flip-side of such evil, one story that emerged was a story of goodness and hope. In 1945, medical people came from all over, risking their own health to help the victims. In each continuing generation since then, the city has continued to take it upon itself to educate people about the bombing, not in order to sink into the horror, but to come through it to a better place. As the mayor declared at this year’s ceremony, (referring to the city’s recent hosting of G-7 leaders this past spring) “Enduring past grief, overcoming hatred, we yearn for genuine world peace with all humanity living in harmony and prosperity. I believe our spirit is now engaged in their hearts.”

Later that night we went to see the lanterns in the river: hundreds upon hundreds of lights along the blank, each light symbolizing a dead body that was found in the river after the bomb exploded. While the mood was mixed, the thousands on the river’s banks were more hopeful than sunk. And, I too, was struck more by the beauty of the image than by its symbolism, a sentiment echoed by the two children who read a poem in the morning ceremony that gives hope for the future. I’m grateful for these children and their authentic, hopeful words. Here’s a piece of the poem:

Today Hiroshima is a city full of greenery and smiling faces.
Thank you for surviving
It’s because you survived that we were given our lives.

And there is something that we can do for others, too.
Thinking about how others feel before saying how we feel.
Finding the good in our friends.
Doing what we can to make others smile.

 

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