Category: Reprisal

A Memory or Two on V Day

by madamtruefire1, posted in Fabulous research, Heart, Humor Insights, Reprisal

OK, It’s time for a confession of sorts.  I am a powerful babe but Lord have I tripped on a few misconceptions.  Before the dawn of time, I found myself at University with some fairly cool friends.  We used to hang out at The Grill at USC and our one goal was to impress one another.  One had to race for the latest copy of Times to speed read it and then casually drop pearls at the table.  Whoever pre-empted the others got the booby prize: a startled look and a “Dang!” from the others.  In those days, women scientists were few among the mix so the gathering was always lopsided with guys.

But on the Eve of Valentine’s day I was desperate.  I didn’t give a damn about the Times magazine and impressing the dreary lot.  I wasn’t dating anyone regularly and so the possibility of candy, flowers and silky nothings was somewhat remote.  But undaunted, I decided to put out a tiny request.  Of course I did it with perfect covert tactics.  I removed myself from the dialogue at that sacrosanct Grill and then interjected a thought into the mix.

“Y’know? It’s a shame we don’t all just simplify.  None of us girls need a full blown dozen of long stemmed red roses.  We’d even settle for ONE, One sweet little red rose bud.  After all, it says the same thing.  And by the way, it isn’t necessarily I love you forever.  It just kind of says, Hey, babe, I’m thinking of you.

I deliberately avoided eye contact but noted a silence in the group at that fated table.  Next day, I showed up after Chemistry class.  There was the same crowed of intellectuals and as I sat down, one of them, a good friend, not a lover, quietly handed me that red rose.  I have loved that moment forever.

Two years later, I found myself again, in a similar position, only at a different university in a different grill.  By that time, I had kissed a few frogs.  I had two closeted gay friends and I issued the same rose treatise.  They were professors and very very formal men.  I don’t think they were a couple, but who cares?

The next morning, I called in sick.  I just couldn’t face Valentine’s Day without a rose.  Call me a wuss, but I needed that validation.

On February 15, I resumed my research post and put on my lab coat and prepared for the day.  As I opened the refrigerator to get out some lab preps, I gasped.  There was a single rose in a vase.  Oh ye of little faith, I told myself and smiled.  The card read:  Hey, girl, no need to play sick.  Here’s your damned rose!  Happy V Day,  Ron.

Now, decades later, I still remember those two roses, both from men who were not my lovers, just my fabulous friends.  And YES, it was simple.  One rose.

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Invitations of Various Kinds

by madamtruefire1, posted in Fabulous research, Heart, Humor Insights, Reprisal, Uncategorized

Disclaimer:  this is a casual trip around the cosmos, with absolutely no direction whatsoever.  Caution:  Read at your own risk and not while driving.

Years ago, I read a poem entitled “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain dreamer.  I strongly suspect that this was not her given name but it matters not.  She gave it to herself kind of like my non de plume Madam Truefire.  I’m sure each has its own story of origin. Oriah’s prose poem is not flowery and it doesn’t rhyme.  I envy her that poem because every word speaks directly to my heart. After many years, it remains timeless and most of all precious. I wish I would have written it, but that’s the beauty of words that fly across the page. Sometimes they are mine and I have to wait for the ink to dry.  Other times they are on a printed page written by another author. I get to choose a variety of options: asterisk the line, put a tiny pencil mark at the side, roughly turn the corner of the page down or use yellow out.  It then starts to appear “dog eared” which is an intriguing term.

When I’m reading something fabulous, the yellow out marker makes some chapters literally glow in the dark, and somehow this means I’ve owned the book.

I love buying used books on Amazon and in cool old book stores.  In truth, Amazon gets fairly prissy over the amount of usage.  They don’t have a loved to bits and beaten up and scribbled on choice.  Some of the kooky old nook stores accept books with notes on the side.  I love those notes.  They say:  someone out there read this book too and this is what he/she thought.  Getting a brand new book is a different story.  It is clean, immaculate and no thought forms stalk the pages save one’s own.  It feels sterile and requires owning in the reader’s hands.

When I was in my early twenties , I found myself smack in the middle of what Kerouac called the Beat Generation. By day I worked in tropical medicine research at UCLA  so I wasn’t exactly the type to drop acid and lie around in a pile.  However, my student dishwasher in the lab explored the universe nightly with his eclectic friends. I was invited to some of those soires where philosophy majors, drugs and wine and much pacing and dialog occurred.  I always stayed straight and sober enough to drive home. And hallucinogens were off limits.  I figured I did enough spontaneous trips on my own without them.

When I left that position at UCLA  to go off on a wild goose chase love affair which ended in an off shore marriage, two kids, and a divorce, I felt duty bound to divest myself of certain things.  After all, I was “in love” with a conservative Australian physician.  I needed to rise to some level of dignity.  I needed to grow up. So I began to divest.

I gave that dishwasher my wine stained, dog eared copy of “On the Road”.  He could have squeezed it out and had a good modicum of wine to sip.  That day, he looked at me like I had handed him the Holy Grail.  It’s been over 40 years since that book flew into his possession by fate, and I wonder where that darling boy is.  I’ve tried to find him a number of times, but he remains elusive.  With the way he lived, he may have left the planet.  He loved marijuana and LSD and living on the edge.   His life was one trip after another.  I’ve often thought of that ragged book and that look on his face. It became his bible.

An aside if you will,

I proved my somewhat straight laced life style a number of years later.  The “traveling folks” had progressed from LSD to Ecstasy, the feel good hallucinogen. I called my friend, an opera singer in Malibu.  It was New Year’s Day and I wanted to wish her well.  She was the Empress of Events:  kooky spiritual gatherings in a salon in a mansion above the cliffs that overlooked the Pacific.

I was there for several of her eclectic events and I’m here to assure you that she would never lose her position as Empress.  Of course she was gorgeous with long flowing blonde hair and a voice like an angel.  Couple those attributes with exotic Thai silk caftans and she looked like she floated several feet above the ground.  She also possessed the keys to magic.  We all played our parts in her royal court.  I dutifully lit 100 candles and then set up projectors with slides of beautiful transformational images.  A lovely older black man always showed up to spontaneously create ambiance on the grand piano and jam with that exotic diva.  And then there was the grateful audience who often brought poems or just jumped from their silken pillows to spontaneously recite some eternal truth.

I’ve often wondered if Walden Pond was a bit like this.  Still, Emerson and Thoreau were New Englanders not Californians so it probably was far more reined in.

What I’m remembering now is that during one of her majestic salons, the Empress taught us all freedom, the ability to express beauty in any way we saw it.

But I digress. It happened to be New Years Day around noon.  I dialed her number and that sweet voice of hers drifted across the line.

“Darling!  Happy New Year, Darling!  You must come up and join us! We’re all nude lying around snuggling and need your Divine Presence.  We’re about to do another round of ecstasy.”

Maybe there was a time when I would have accepted that invitation and jumped for my car keys; but that day, the vision of thirty or so nudes on ecstasy, cuddling in a scattered pile was not my preference.  I wasn’t ever a goody two shoes but walking into the room, cold turkey, let alone into a pile of stoned naked hippies did not appeal to me.

I graciously bowed out with an excuse of having children returning from time with their dad, or maybe the biblical I am sorry I have bought me a team of oxen…Even the bible is rife with usable excuses.

But hey!  Back to page one after this rocky trip around the universe.  I long for the salon gig.  I’d stand and read Oriah’s “Invitation” with a background of the sea and a hundred candles twinkling.  Then again, I just might read some of my own prose while someone spontaneously dissolved those images of mine on the wall.

But, now there would be interruptions of dings of approaching texts.  Unless of course, I demanded a cell free zone and put a basket outside the door where one could dump all electronic devices.

Much to ponder as the bath water cools and the snow outside melts.

Another day of of What if I had Nothing whatsoever I had to do today at all.

To the End of the Earth

by madamtruefire1, posted in Fabulous research, Heart, international travel, Reprisal, Romance, Uncategorized

A very stately elder gentleman friend of mine has recently stated that there are few people for which he would travel to the end of the Earth.  I pondered that statement and then said  “Tell me about this.”

He closed his eyes for a few moments and then tried to explain.

“Well, there are a lot of babes in my past:  You know, the good-looking girls with little to say, the  intelligent ones that could really converse, the good friend types that were comfortable, but I have to admit, I wouldn’t have gone to the end of the earth with any of them.  This one, this gal, I am willing to put my money on the line and see where it goes.  And yes, it feels different.  This feels different.  This feels like love.”   I stood up and gave him a standing ovation.  After all, I have been in his life for twenty years, and seen him in and outside of a marriage and wondered.  I never thought in a million years that he would find someone for the happy ever after.   And now he’s pondering the end of the earth junket?

I love the thought:  to the end of the earth.  I’m glad Galileo figured out that it is round, or we’d fall off for being goozy with someone and yes, following them to the end of the earth.

But wicked humor aside, it is a lovely thought.  I have to wonder how many people really have ever felt that way about anyone in their lives, even their spouses.  It caused me to sort of workshop my own history and so I went over a mental list:  no, never, you’ve got to be kidding, maybe, huh, d’know, another weak maybe and then I screeched to a halt.

OH YEAH!, John.  I would have gone to the ends of the earth for that fine fellow, and in many ways I did.  He’s gone now, left way too soon, or I would still be doing “Same Time Next Year” with him, somehow, even if we got to walkers and guide dogs.  But why John? why not the man I married? why not that other dreary list of maybes and d’knows?

I think it has to do with serendipity, magic, and the ole tried and true, falling in love.  Things look different from the other side of rose-colored glasses.  The practical to do list of a relationship simply flies out the window.  It makes no sense to make sense of any of it.  So maybe it also has the attribute of surrender, to a what the hell, I’ve never felt quite this way in my entire life.

Now some may run far from this realization.  Some may hide in a stable of wannabes…men are particularly good at that option,  But ever so now and then, the bug bites and the “victim” surrenders.

But I need to get back to the End of the Earth gig.  Sure, falling in love is written about in just about every category of existence.  It’s the bug bite thing, the itch that needs to be scratched, the feeling of falling…not rising…falling, through space, with a kind of out of control lack of direction.  I’ve always counselled that this feeling this falling in love thing lasts eight or so weeks.  The can’t live with out it business gets dusty about then and a more practical side sets in.  ……for most…..but then there are those rare couples that stay goozy for a life time.

I remember an old actor once talking about his marriage of 50 years.  He said, “Hell, I still want to grab her in into my arms as soon as I hear her key in the lock.”  WOW.  That’s impressive.  But, hey, that’s how I felt about John.  Every time I’d see him, even after thirty years, I just had to catch my breath.  The sex had gone to the retired end of things but the wow moment hadn’t.  I cherished him.  That’s it.  I cherished him.

So back to the 8 weeks of falling in and out of love for most, it takes a transition of sorts. Falling in love is some sort of whaky mechanism to get pheromones cracking toward the perpetuation of the human race.  Let’s face it, and let’s blame pheromones.  But science aside, loving is a completely different ball of wax.  It requires some sense of time, wounding, losing, finding, staying the distance but it ain’t falling off the rooftops with passion. …….unless it is.

After all the ins and outs of trying to figure out my life of princes charming, dark knights, cool dudes and just plain fabulous men, I guess the Ends of the Earth statement brought me to my knees.  TWO out of 50 or so (no I am not a trollup, I just have years on this one), made the cut.  TWO!  But John, could take all of my frequent flyer miles, if he had asked.

My proper gentleman friend is pondering this as we speak.  He and his sweetheart are going to Antarctica together on a boat cruise.  Now that’s the test of a lifetime, for me at least:  a boat surrounded by water for many many days, a tiny stateroom, and lots of folks we don’t know.  It can mark disaster or the most wonderful adventure of all time, but yes, it is to the ends of the earth, and he knows it.  Smitten? oh yes,  smitten.

As I sit and drink my second cup of coffee, I stare out at freshly falling snow.  Suddenly, I am sitting with John somewhere in time and the feeling I had has not diminished.  He passed some ten years back and I still love him to bits and will so far beyond my years.

And when it comes to the End of my earth?  You bet your sweet ass, I’ll be looking for him on the other side.

The Quintessential Writing Tool

by madamtruefire1, posted in Fabulous research, Humor Insights, international travel, Reprisal

As a budding corporate marketing specialist, some 40 years ago, I lived a screaming, stress-filled life of early rising, getting the kids off to school, freeway madness and the thorough nonsense of a job that didn’t fulfill me.

I began the search for the quintessential writing tool.  It was a board to fit across the bathtub to enable me to have a wee glass of wine and write.  My daughter, seven years old at the time, found the perfect match.  This board supported my glass, journal and pen.  Both of my girls knew that this time in the bath was MINE.  Aside from the return of the Apocalypse, I was not to be disturbed.

During that healing time, I realized something profound:  it helped me heal all three:  mind, body and spirit AND I did not punch into somebody else’s time clock.  Lord, I hated that time clock!

Sometime that year I started a “Be Do Have” workshop.  It was pretty much the beginning of what came to be known as the New Thought Movement.  Heck!  This kind of stuff was ancient.  We robot humans had simply forgotten.  It ignited my longing for change.

So I soaked my sorry backside while I balanced the board and wrote whatever I pleased. Wow!  No more stunningly boring reports on chemical processes or biomedical white papers.  I now have come to suspect anything that has to do with white papers.  They signal pontification and falling asleep after the third paragraph.

So I wrote poetry, free-lance anything that came to my pen and it was delicious.

When I had enough of time clocks, I escaped to the orient and eventually to Kathmandu.

…..

As the water was draining from my current bath, I realized that the precious board enabled me to write without getting water spots on my pages, so I am now putting out a call for someone with a board of precise dimension (29 inches x 7 inches, x 1 inch width).  Looking back, I have no idea how my daughter found that exact dimension which fit perfectly across the enamel enclosure.  I even wrote a resignation letter from that board.  It was time to move on and explore other options.

What I then remembered was a wish I have always harbored:  to be a syndicated columnist…you know,  one that writes pithy stuff that is quick to read.  Abby made a ton of bucks advising folks and she was the queen of pith. I’ve never really done the Dear G stuff but I’m kind of a fantasy historian story teller hybrid.

When I was twenty-four, I got bored with a research position at UCLA.  It was prestigious but also hideously repetitious.  I looked to the horizon and asked for co-ordinates to the best escape route I could find.  Since a friend was signing up for “Project Hope”, a hospital ship that cruised (do ships themselves cruise?) to parts unknown, I applied as well.  All I knew is I didn’t care about the somewhere.  It was pretty much anywhere.

So I interviewed and when my walking papers arrived, they said Nicaragua, Central America.  My boyfriend and I had to take out a map to find Nicaragua.  So much for U.S. Citizens and their knowledge base of even the Americas.

At that time, the Sandinista revolution was on the back burner.  The esteemed Anastasio Somoza was running the country. That year was what I call my before and after year.  I came back changed forever.  I would never be happy with North American status quo again.

And as for the after, I’ve continuously longed for far away places. I have become the High Priestess of frequent flyers. I’ve written in the dead of winter on an island in the outer Hebrides.  I’ve sat behind mosquito netting in Kenya and read to a local tribal woman.  I’ve also been accused of a certain addiction to travel when I hopped on a plane to go do a video documentary on a pig farm in Uganda. That is the gig that had my wings clipped for awhile.

But back to Nicaragua.  My mom and dad bought me one of those fancy reel to reel recorders.  I would sit out on deck at night and dictate letters.  There was no email or Face Book then and it was either dictate or write a letter and still chance it getting lost.

When I returned stateside, my mom handed me the letters I had written home.  Without telling me, she had contacted a journalist with the newspaper and yes, he had a syndicated column.  He shared my stories word for word and never gave me a byline.

Mom told me that when I went on hiatus for a while, this same journalist called frequently for more stories.  Readers had loved the pieces and wanted more adventures of the wild dame in the tropics.

As I write this today, that journalist is likely 6ft under, (turkey that he was and is).  He stole my credit, my byline.

But hey, I still somehow qualified  a “syndicated columnist.”

Reading the day to day of that year is now priceless.  A girl friend honored me by mixing her famous margueritas and asking me to read those letters aloud.  It was my birthday somewhere in my sixties, and well, she loved the stories.  It was magical as I stood and read them, sipped the marg and shed a few tears.

So I’m calling for the board.  I just found a shelf I could improvise. besides, who needs more doodads on a shelf when I just might write the Great American Novel with that shelf in the tub.

I’m also packing a mini laptop and sorting through my frequent flyer options and still valid visas.  Before I escape, however, I’m going to gather all my stories in one place and honor them.

Time passes far too quickly and Emily Dickinson, eat your heart out.  I’m not dying with my boots on with a trunk load of writing to be honored posthumously.

Get out of the way snooty agents and publishers.  I’ll do it myself and yes, I’ll take the by line.

 

 

More than a moment of pause

by madamtruefire1, posted in Heart, Human Rights, Reprisal
I have written several op eds on gun control and bigotry.  This morning,
I rose before the sun to pray and then watch CBS Sunday Morning.
I have been traveling and so not in touch with immediate news.
I was shocked to see the news from South Carolina.   There are no words for this author, save “We Shall Overcome”.   In the silence of a Sunday morning even that tried and true, powerful and poignant prime directive leaves me wondering.  WHEN, HOW, WHY?
My heart hurts for us all.  As a friend told me and I quote:  History doesn’t repeat itself, People do……
Later this morning, I will write yet another op ed.  Gun control?  Civil Rights?  Bigotry?  All seem to be mixed in a dismal soup.
I happen to be at home in the Sierras for a brief few days.  I witnessed bigotry yesterday morning from the minister who is judgmental about women, gays, and the glory of war and bring it on, yeah!  Armageddon.  This little white girl didn’t stand still.  I wrote a somewhat strong email to said pastor about it all and his elegant shaming techniques and tricky politicing in this wee village.
We are in a world of strife, mirrored with joy and father’s day and all the media related see saws.  Staying balanced through profound grief is the challenge.
My heart hurts for yet another act of bigotry and gun violence and loss.
I stand in a silent anthem:  Let Peace Begin with Me.  The eery reminder of the 4 little girls so long ago echoes in Charleston.
May God bless all the folks at Emmanuel AME Church.   and may God bless those who will stand and speak for Change.

 

We Remember Lest We Forget

by madamtruefire1, posted in Reprisal

45 years and 15 minutes ago, a tragedy occurred in the midst of an ugly war.  It was a time when history was hardly on stun mode.   Viet Nam  was raging on and increasing numbers of young people were being sent off to die, be wounded, or be returned with a lifetime of lingering PTSD.  Some burned their draft cards.  Others fled to Canada.  Ah the sweet trappings of  war.

In 1970, President Nixon broke a promise and expanded into Cambodia.  Those of us who remember when have varying thoughts of who and how such a hideous thing could have been endured.  It wasn’t.  College students and youth everywhere started protest movements.  They gathered, demonstrated, shouted protests and marched with signs.  Some of it was peaceful.  Some of it was angry.  Some of it was volatile

On May 4, 1970, things escalated on the campus of  Kent State University in Ohio.  It wasn’t the only protest but it was one that left its own own bloody aftermath.  The National Guard was called in.  Kids had  gathered and radically demonstrated over the weekend and were now forming a protest at the Commons. Other kids were innocently walking past on their way to class.  Some kids were warned away. Oh, and need I remind us? Some of those kids were members of the National Guard.  Those on the common at noon witnessed the dying of a dream.  America the land of the free.   The flag of the First Amendment was flying half mast.

In thirteen seconds, there were 67 gun shots, 4 students died and many were wounded.  To quote someone who was there at the time:  “It was frightened kids shooting at other frightened kids”.

Others just might remember it differently.  Hate letters emerged calling the demonstrators “communist hippy radicals”.  .War supporters were inflamed at the messy protests of the younger reckless generation.  After all, we were in a war and needed to support our country.

Four were dying on the ground.  Others lay wounded.  An entire country watched on the nightly news in horror.

Generation gaps aside, I agree with Alan Confora who survived that day.  “When the young people of this country move, things change.”   Will they or will we stop remembering?

An aging hippie radical who I am proud to know, said to me:  “History doesn’t repeat itself. People repeat history.”

 

And so I bow my head and remember:

Alison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, William Schroeder and Jeffry Miller.  Sandra and William were on their way to class.  Alison and Jeffry were demonstrating.   They were the poster children caught in the crossfire  of an insane and unjustified act of violence.  

Watch the You Tube:  67 Shots that Pierce a Nation:”  YOU HAVE THE TIME.

We remember lest we forget.