"Swirling" and "eddying" are two things that mist does rather well in vampire tales. When mist is swirling or eddying, it always seems concrete, as if you could pick it up and carry it or play with it. "That Woman" of the vampire flicks, who in the persona of my sister will be called "Mary Siss" (for the presupposed virginal state of such women), always wanders around outside the manor/castle/estate in the moonlight, eyes glazed over with desire for The Vampire and mist swirling and eddying around the hem of her night attire. Mary Siss, of course, would be wandering around in the green dress, having borrowed it from the relative who would later stake her through the heart. That would be me.
Just what would Mary Siss be doing there at all hours of the night? Trying to resist being among the living, of course. She is afraid of the living, the truly living, and prefers to retreat into a little world which she can invent as she goes along and label as "normal". This little world is ruled by The Evil Count Ragula.
In this little world, no one has to interact with a partner or sig oth on a daily basis. Each can safely retreat to his/her own coffin with the coming dawn, thus avoiding both responsibility and true intimacy. How convenient for Mary Siss and Count Ragula.
It has not always been this way for Mary Siss. Before she fell under the spell of the Evil Count Ragula, Mary Siss borrowed the green dress for happy things like dinner and dancing. Her partners may not have been permanent or even lasting, but at least they came out in the daytime! After the advent of Count Ragula, the green dress hung sadly in full view on Mary Siss' upper landing, waiting for her moment of inspiration to write about its history. Regrettably, it only got worn in the swirling mists of her mind....and that was in the dark. I rescued the green dress when I drove the stake through Mary Siss' heart (see the letter in an earlier post) and now I am the one doing the writing.
How did this happen? How did the Evil Count Ragula insinuate himself into the life of the practical and pragmatic Mary Siss the Nurse and turn her into his creature of the night? Here are some of the things I have come up with (excuse the dangling participle):
1. He is a loner, and a brooding loner at that. If Mary Siss wanted to be with him, it had to be with only him, and so he slowly excluded all others from her life. The exceptions to this would be the casual relationships that were kept around to give an appearance of normalcy ("This is my friend with whom I do a once-a-year spa weekend").
2. He is strange and not socialized. This fits right in with the exclusionary thing. Mary Siss had to keep him away from mortals like me and Sig, because too much exposure meant that we would surely see him for what he is....too late for that one!
3. He is grasping and clinging and constructs a web just like a spider. The Evil Count Ragula married Mary Siss and then cast her out, but he never did consent to a divorce. They are still "married", which means that she cannot legally be with another. This is really getting Gothic.
4. Here's the kicker. Mary Siss seems to accept this state of things and actually enjoy it! Evidence is that she has been free to go out and file for a divorce at any time and has yet to do so after more than ten years of the "arrangement". You may read this as just another excuse for her not to get on with life, and mark the page "clutching the chains that bind".
5. He is deeply involved in Orgonomy, which involvement Mary Siss can drag out at any time to prove how healthy and normal he is. Well, I, the relative with the stake, am also involved in Orgonomy, and I can tell you that I have met many very unhealthy people who are similarly involved and are attracted there for the appearance of health.
So....it looks like The Evil Count Ragula is firmly entrenched in Mary Siss' "life", and I will have to stay away from the undead for my own sanity. At least I managed to rescue the green dress. No more swirling and eddying mists. It is living in the real world once again.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Siss Gets Her Neck Bitten....But Good
So, why do I see Siss as the "Damsel in Distress" who never gets rescued (see previous post)? Well, this occurred to me even before I thought of the vampire spin on "The Green Dress Diaries". Siss is a natural damsel in distress, especially the "distress" part. Outwardly brisk and competent in her everyday persona of "Super Nurse", she is actually needy, self-serving, clinging, and quite childlike. These qualities are perfect for her to slip into the role of "that woman" in the early vampire flicks.
"That Woman" is a weak sister as far as I am concerned. She always falls prey to the Vampire's come-hither, and takes to her bed for several days of feverish muttering and declining strength. The Vampire visits her nightly to feed on both her blood and her wits, and by the end of the third night (or so), she dies, is encrypted (so to speak) and rises again as a vampire version of her former self. The downside of this is that she is always staked through the heart by well-meaning relatives who want her to "rest in peace".
Siss fell for The Wet Rag, as she fell for others before him, because she was needy of a partner. At the same time, he was needy of the look of being a normal person. Ha! I think that he always knew he was not a suitable candidate for spending life with someone else; he is too much of a brooding loner, just like a vampire. Siss was his energetic victim, and she went willingly to the slaughter, just like "That Woman". She kept coming back for more until he bled her absolutely dry and then kicked her to the curb because he "needed to be alone"...."had never loved her"...."it was not ever a marriage". Consider Siss dead and in her crypt.
Now look at what happened next. Siss rose from the crypt when he moved in next door to her, and she does his bidding, acts like his best friend, gives him the cover of normalcy, and has no other life save for The Wet Rag Vampire.
I guess this would leave me to play the well-meaning relative who stakes her through the heart so that she can rest in peace. The "stake" would be the final letter I sent (see earlier chapters). You see, just like "The Emperor's New Clothes", Siss never saw what she really looked like, didn't want to see what she really looked like, and wanted everyone else to go along with her little charade of emotional health. I forced her to look, and it was like a stake through her heart.
Will Siss rest in peace? I don't think so.
Has she seen the last of The Wet Rag Vampire? Not by a long shot.
Will she ever try to contact me again? Too late; she lives in another world now.
This is all a nice narrative, but it needs to be fleshed out with imagery, and the characters given names. Next chapter...."The Evils of Count Ragula".
"That Woman" is a weak sister as far as I am concerned. She always falls prey to the Vampire's come-hither, and takes to her bed for several days of feverish muttering and declining strength. The Vampire visits her nightly to feed on both her blood and her wits, and by the end of the third night (or so), she dies, is encrypted (so to speak) and rises again as a vampire version of her former self. The downside of this is that she is always staked through the heart by well-meaning relatives who want her to "rest in peace".
Siss fell for The Wet Rag, as she fell for others before him, because she was needy of a partner. At the same time, he was needy of the look of being a normal person. Ha! I think that he always knew he was not a suitable candidate for spending life with someone else; he is too much of a brooding loner, just like a vampire. Siss was his energetic victim, and she went willingly to the slaughter, just like "That Woman". She kept coming back for more until he bled her absolutely dry and then kicked her to the curb because he "needed to be alone"...."had never loved her"...."it was not ever a marriage". Consider Siss dead and in her crypt.
Now look at what happened next. Siss rose from the crypt when he moved in next door to her, and she does his bidding, acts like his best friend, gives him the cover of normalcy, and has no other life save for The Wet Rag Vampire.
I guess this would leave me to play the well-meaning relative who stakes her through the heart so that she can rest in peace. The "stake" would be the final letter I sent (see earlier chapters). You see, just like "The Emperor's New Clothes", Siss never saw what she really looked like, didn't want to see what she really looked like, and wanted everyone else to go along with her little charade of emotional health. I forced her to look, and it was like a stake through her heart.
Will Siss rest in peace? I don't think so.
Has she seen the last of The Wet Rag Vampire? Not by a long shot.
Will she ever try to contact me again? Too late; she lives in another world now.
This is all a nice narrative, but it needs to be fleshed out with imagery, and the characters given names. Next chapter...."The Evils of Count Ragula".
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Green Dress Vampires
One would have to be blind and deaf not to notice the reading and viewing public's fixation on vampires. With a short pause for breath, this has been true since Anne Rice first published Interview With The Vampire (help me out with the year here). I really enjoyed that book, and it translated quite well to the screen. I also enjoyed the second book, The Vampire Lestat, and then the series went into a downward spiral of increasingly implausible material. None of these went to the screen. However, after the pause for breath, the teens and "tweens" got on the vampire bandwagon, as did the small-screen audience, and off we went. Vampires are now once again the top draw with the "Twilight" series on the big screen, where chicken-chested adolescent boy vampires take their shirts off to the squeal of millions of young girls, and on the small screen, with programs like "True Blood", which I must confess I have never seen.
Be it known here that Count Dracula, in his many iterations, never once took his shirt off. In fact, he wore that high-collared cape so much that we rarely got to even see the shirt.
Anyway, I digress. What I am getting at is that it occurred to me that if I ever want to turn "The Green Dress Diaries" into anything that will sell, I might do well to put a vampire slant on it and call it "The Green Dress Vampires". The green dress would lend itself beautifully to a running-around-in-the-mist scene, like you always see outside the castle or the mansion or the mausoleum in vampire movies. It would even look great on one of those Fabio-type paperback covers that people read on the beach.
what really made me think of the cast of "The Green Dress Diaries" as vampires is the fact that The Wet Rag is the most perfect vampire ever. Here are several things to support this:
1. He seems to turn up out of nowhere, as if he can just dissolve into mist and flow through walls. Every single time I have visited Siss, he has materialized within minutes, ready to join the group
2. He is brooding and silent. What a creep!! I can never figure out why he joins us or whether or not he really wants to be there. Like Count Dracula, maybe he is just there to watch our necks for future reference. Whatever his purpose, he always just sits there like a stone, contributing nothing. When he does say something, everyone jumps a mile.
3. He often leaves the group and goes off by himself for long periods of "alone time". He either goes home (his coffin is probably upstairs there) or wanders off as he did at our picnic. Siss says that he goes running by himself for long distances. This is strange, because he does not look like he is in any kind of shape, and even has rounded shoulders and a sort of hunched back. Not exactly a hump, but like the beginnings of osteoporosis.
4. He is an energy leech, who descends on the group like a black hole and sucks everyone dry of energy. You know the type. Without saying a word, he brings the group to its energetic knees, and dominates the conversation with his silence.
So, The Wet Rag would be the vampire of mystery, the heavy, creepy element, the base around whom the story line(s) would be built. You see that I have left room for a sequel or sequels. They always beat these things to a pulp before they bury the series. Casting The Wet Rag is a brilliant idea. No one would initially suspect him to be a vampire. He is sort of short and puny and stringy, with a bald spot on the back of his head. He has a perpetual stoop and kind of a sunken chest. I realize that I am describing more of a Quasimodo than someone with the charisma of Dracula or Lestat, but disguise would be the beauty of his entire persona. I am really at a loss to remember how he dresses or anything I have ever seen him wearing, but the color gray seems to leap to my mind. Gray T-shirts? Gray running shoes? Maybe it's just that The Rag is so lacking in color. He has a black-and-white persona. Just as Pigpen in the "Peanuts" comic strip walked around with a cloud of dust and dirt around him, The Rag is always surrounded by a gray fog. This is a great vampire thing; colorless, joyless, devoid of life.
Now we are getting somewhere!!
Next installment....Siss as the damsel in distress who does NOT get rescued but gets her neck bitten but good by The Rag Vampire and turns into a vampire herself.
Be it known here that Count Dracula, in his many iterations, never once took his shirt off. In fact, he wore that high-collared cape so much that we rarely got to even see the shirt.
Anyway, I digress. What I am getting at is that it occurred to me that if I ever want to turn "The Green Dress Diaries" into anything that will sell, I might do well to put a vampire slant on it and call it "The Green Dress Vampires". The green dress would lend itself beautifully to a running-around-in-the-mist scene, like you always see outside the castle or the mansion or the mausoleum in vampire movies. It would even look great on one of those Fabio-type paperback covers that people read on the beach.
what really made me think of the cast of "The Green Dress Diaries" as vampires is the fact that The Wet Rag is the most perfect vampire ever. Here are several things to support this:
1. He seems to turn up out of nowhere, as if he can just dissolve into mist and flow through walls. Every single time I have visited Siss, he has materialized within minutes, ready to join the group
2. He is brooding and silent. What a creep!! I can never figure out why he joins us or whether or not he really wants to be there. Like Count Dracula, maybe he is just there to watch our necks for future reference. Whatever his purpose, he always just sits there like a stone, contributing nothing. When he does say something, everyone jumps a mile.
3. He often leaves the group and goes off by himself for long periods of "alone time". He either goes home (his coffin is probably upstairs there) or wanders off as he did at our picnic. Siss says that he goes running by himself for long distances. This is strange, because he does not look like he is in any kind of shape, and even has rounded shoulders and a sort of hunched back. Not exactly a hump, but like the beginnings of osteoporosis.
4. He is an energy leech, who descends on the group like a black hole and sucks everyone dry of energy. You know the type. Without saying a word, he brings the group to its energetic knees, and dominates the conversation with his silence.
So, The Wet Rag would be the vampire of mystery, the heavy, creepy element, the base around whom the story line(s) would be built. You see that I have left room for a sequel or sequels. They always beat these things to a pulp before they bury the series. Casting The Wet Rag is a brilliant idea. No one would initially suspect him to be a vampire. He is sort of short and puny and stringy, with a bald spot on the back of his head. He has a perpetual stoop and kind of a sunken chest. I realize that I am describing more of a Quasimodo than someone with the charisma of Dracula or Lestat, but disguise would be the beauty of his entire persona. I am really at a loss to remember how he dresses or anything I have ever seen him wearing, but the color gray seems to leap to my mind. Gray T-shirts? Gray running shoes? Maybe it's just that The Rag is so lacking in color. He has a black-and-white persona. Just as Pigpen in the "Peanuts" comic strip walked around with a cloud of dust and dirt around him, The Rag is always surrounded by a gray fog. This is a great vampire thing; colorless, joyless, devoid of life.
Now we are getting somewhere!!
Next installment....Siss as the damsel in distress who does NOT get rescued but gets her neck bitten but good by The Rag Vampire and turns into a vampire herself.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Siss, The Blue Coat, and a Near-Death Experience
Siss and I, although only three years apart in age, have often been oceans apart in experience and social skills. Just think of thirteen and sixteen. There you have it. At the time of The Episode of the Blue Coat, Siss and I were, respectively fourteen and seventeen or fifteen and eighteen. I was a freshman in high school and she was a senior, and we both changed ages in the second semester. Sue me.
I have already mentioned the "Hill Section" of Scranton, and I by no means exaggerated the incline of those hills. They were steep, man. We ( Cella, Siss, and I) lived at the very bottom of the hills, on a street called Jefferson Avenue. Almost every old town has streets named after various presidents and statesmen, and Scranton was quite creative about mixing them up. On the way up the hill, there were, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy, Clay, Webster, Taylor, Irving, Prescott, Harrison,Wheeler, Colfax, Arthur, and then Nay Aug Park, where the large man-made lake was called Lake Lincoln. Scranton never wanted you to forget about the presidents, but the city felt free to throw in other dudes like Irving, for those of a literary bent.
I can remember one Christmas Eve when Cella and I left our little apartment looking for a Christmas tree. We had almost no money, so we had to wait until Christmas Eve, when all the trees had been picked over and the remaining rejects were on sale for next-to-nothing, or free. Since we lived at the bottom of the Hill Section, there was no place to look but up, so up we climbed, in a steadily worsening snowfall. Almost at the top of the hills, and well after dark, we came upon a tree lot that was closing but still had some trees left. I think the man felt sorry for us because we were on foot, so he gave us a cute little Douglas Fir, which Cella at once named "Doug", for free.
We were happy as we began the descent, for we had saved the five dollars that we had earmarked for the tree, for extra Christmas nuts or candy. Almost as soon as we started being happy, disaster set in. The wind picked up, and the snowfall became a veritable blizzard, forcing us to crouch and slide on the ice-covered slate sidewalks. Finally, the ever-resourceful Cella pointed Doug's little stem downhill, told me to take a seat, and climbed aboard the tree behind me. We rode home in some modicum of style. This is what I remember the most; when we arrived at the warm apartment and dragged "Doug" inside, there were all the lights and ornaments and icicles and tinsel and popcorn balls and gingerbread men, laid out and waiting for us to decorate. The tree stand was in the middle of the tiny living room. All this had been there when we left, but I never stopped to think then that Cella had no money....but she always had hope and optimism. The smallest things in life were always a cause for celebration for her. This is the thing that I hope I inherited from Cella.
I have not gotten to the story of The Blue Coat yet, but I hope that the Christmas Tree schtick has given some idea of how steep and treacherous the Hill Section can be. That is important to this part of the story. On the day in question, Siss had gone up the hill to see her best friend Jill, with whom she sang in a Peter-Paul-and-Mary type folk group. They had, besides themselves, a boy who played guitar and a boy who played double bass. Siss and Jill had bought matching outfits for performance; mohair suits with straght skirts and little vests. Siss' was blue and Jill wore yellow. The group billed itself as "The Singletons".
It was cold and raw and wet that day, so Siss borrowed the only garment that I owned that I truly cared for; my slate-blue, wide-wale corduroy car-coat. It sported a hood which was trimmed with red fox fur, and had wooden beer-barrel buttons that closed on loops down the front. She was my big sister. I was proud that I owned something that she deemed worthy.
I stayed home that day. The weather made me want to read and talk on the 'phone. It was growing dark, and Siss still hadn't showed up, so Cella called Jill's house and found out that Siss had left there several hours before. Cella was frantic. She called Jack, from whom she had (thank Heaven) separated, and he got in his car and started for our place. Before he got there, the door burst open and a distraught and dripping Siss came in. Here is what happened to her, and by association, my Blue Coat:
Siss was walking home from Jill's house, being careful to avoid the large puddles that were accumulating from the heavy rain.When it rained, the water started at the top of the hills, gathering momentum and volume as it flowed down under the streets. On this particular evening, the rain had been so heavy that it rushed down and popped the manhole cover off at one of the corners where Siss had to cross. She stepped off the curb, through the water, and fell into the manhole.
The rushing water grabbed her legs and pulled them underneath the street. She thrust her arms out over the lip of the hole and struggled to kick herself free. My coat became sodden, and was so heavy that it kept her down. She could not even release an arm long enough to take the coat off.
There she stayed for a very long time. We still do not know how she finally mamaged to get out of the hole and avoid being sucked into oblivion underneath the streets of Scranton. Siss does not remember this herself. All she remembers is bursting in through the door of home and collapsing on Cella. Jack came in shortly thereafter, and took Siss out with him after she has gotten into some dry clothes. This part never made any sense to me, but Jack took Siss to one of his neighborhood Irish bars, either Joyce's or Judge's, and bought her a glass of wine. First, what kind of an Irish bar serves wine? Second, an Irish bar probably serves the kind of wine that would take the paint off your car. Third, why on earth take a traumatized teenager to a bar to have a drink? Siss got the glass of wine in her hand, and squeezed it so hard that it shattered.
I hope that I did not take after Jack in this respect.
I have already mentioned the "Hill Section" of Scranton, and I by no means exaggerated the incline of those hills. They were steep, man. We ( Cella, Siss, and I) lived at the very bottom of the hills, on a street called Jefferson Avenue. Almost every old town has streets named after various presidents and statesmen, and Scranton was quite creative about mixing them up. On the way up the hill, there were, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy, Clay, Webster, Taylor, Irving, Prescott, Harrison,Wheeler, Colfax, Arthur, and then Nay Aug Park, where the large man-made lake was called Lake Lincoln. Scranton never wanted you to forget about the presidents, but the city felt free to throw in other dudes like Irving, for those of a literary bent.
I can remember one Christmas Eve when Cella and I left our little apartment looking for a Christmas tree. We had almost no money, so we had to wait until Christmas Eve, when all the trees had been picked over and the remaining rejects were on sale for next-to-nothing, or free. Since we lived at the bottom of the Hill Section, there was no place to look but up, so up we climbed, in a steadily worsening snowfall. Almost at the top of the hills, and well after dark, we came upon a tree lot that was closing but still had some trees left. I think the man felt sorry for us because we were on foot, so he gave us a cute little Douglas Fir, which Cella at once named "Doug", for free.
We were happy as we began the descent, for we had saved the five dollars that we had earmarked for the tree, for extra Christmas nuts or candy. Almost as soon as we started being happy, disaster set in. The wind picked up, and the snowfall became a veritable blizzard, forcing us to crouch and slide on the ice-covered slate sidewalks. Finally, the ever-resourceful Cella pointed Doug's little stem downhill, told me to take a seat, and climbed aboard the tree behind me. We rode home in some modicum of style. This is what I remember the most; when we arrived at the warm apartment and dragged "Doug" inside, there were all the lights and ornaments and icicles and tinsel and popcorn balls and gingerbread men, laid out and waiting for us to decorate. The tree stand was in the middle of the tiny living room. All this had been there when we left, but I never stopped to think then that Cella had no money....but she always had hope and optimism. The smallest things in life were always a cause for celebration for her. This is the thing that I hope I inherited from Cella.
I have not gotten to the story of The Blue Coat yet, but I hope that the Christmas Tree schtick has given some idea of how steep and treacherous the Hill Section can be. That is important to this part of the story. On the day in question, Siss had gone up the hill to see her best friend Jill, with whom she sang in a Peter-Paul-and-Mary type folk group. They had, besides themselves, a boy who played guitar and a boy who played double bass. Siss and Jill had bought matching outfits for performance; mohair suits with straght skirts and little vests. Siss' was blue and Jill wore yellow. The group billed itself as "The Singletons".
It was cold and raw and wet that day, so Siss borrowed the only garment that I owned that I truly cared for; my slate-blue, wide-wale corduroy car-coat. It sported a hood which was trimmed with red fox fur, and had wooden beer-barrel buttons that closed on loops down the front. She was my big sister. I was proud that I owned something that she deemed worthy.
I stayed home that day. The weather made me want to read and talk on the 'phone. It was growing dark, and Siss still hadn't showed up, so Cella called Jill's house and found out that Siss had left there several hours before. Cella was frantic. She called Jack, from whom she had (thank Heaven) separated, and he got in his car and started for our place. Before he got there, the door burst open and a distraught and dripping Siss came in. Here is what happened to her, and by association, my Blue Coat:
Siss was walking home from Jill's house, being careful to avoid the large puddles that were accumulating from the heavy rain.When it rained, the water started at the top of the hills, gathering momentum and volume as it flowed down under the streets. On this particular evening, the rain had been so heavy that it rushed down and popped the manhole cover off at one of the corners where Siss had to cross. She stepped off the curb, through the water, and fell into the manhole.
The rushing water grabbed her legs and pulled them underneath the street. She thrust her arms out over the lip of the hole and struggled to kick herself free. My coat became sodden, and was so heavy that it kept her down. She could not even release an arm long enough to take the coat off.
There she stayed for a very long time. We still do not know how she finally mamaged to get out of the hole and avoid being sucked into oblivion underneath the streets of Scranton. Siss does not remember this herself. All she remembers is bursting in through the door of home and collapsing on Cella. Jack came in shortly thereafter, and took Siss out with him after she has gotten into some dry clothes. This part never made any sense to me, but Jack took Siss to one of his neighborhood Irish bars, either Joyce's or Judge's, and bought her a glass of wine. First, what kind of an Irish bar serves wine? Second, an Irish bar probably serves the kind of wine that would take the paint off your car. Third, why on earth take a traumatized teenager to a bar to have a drink? Siss got the glass of wine in her hand, and squeezed it so hard that it shattered.
I hope that I did not take after Jack in this respect.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
More About The Green Dress
I am still trying to figure out exactly when Siss wheedled the green dress out of me, and I just know that I have gotten it all wrong. Time has seemed to compress in the almost-ten-years that I have lived in Houston, and I have molded it into a little ball that I can throw out in conversation as a neat package. Actually, it hasn't been like that at all.
When I think about all this time in a non-anecdotal way, there are events that stand out like blazes on trees to mark my way in time. Cella died in June and I came here in August, leaving Scranton directly from her memorial service. That first academic year, August-May, Siss came along with me and ten of my students to the American College Dance Festival, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin. Siss came as our "nurse", so she got a free ride. She watched me teach some master classes, and we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden. This was in March.
I saw Siss again the next November, which would have been my second academic year here. She came for Thanksgiving, which I had prepared to cook for us both. Naturally, Mr. Stupid-and-Cheap had provided me with a wreck of a refrigerator, which died just in time to spoil all the food for my big dinner. This is why Siss and I ended up at Kim Son, my neighborhood Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant, for dinner. I had house soup, a duck salad, and several glasses of appalling red wine. Who cared? We had the good stuff back at my place, a mere two blocks away. It was a good Thanksgiving Day.
Also on that weekend, Siss and I went to the Butterfly Garden at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We took photographs there, among the fluttering wings, and I have not thought of those photographs until now. Perhaps I should dig around for them and post one....if they really do exist.
Here is the other thing I remember about that weekend....or was it the Spring Break weekend? Siss was shocked that I did not own a television, so she took me out and bought me this little, 13-inch TV/VCR combo that I subsequently used only too look at movies and dance videos from performances. I had this little TV/VCR until just two Christmases ago when Sig bought me a large-screen TV and a satellite subscription. I still use it mainly to watch movies. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
That was also the year that Jack, my father, died at Christmas and I missed the funeral because I was snowed in by a blizzard in Flagstaff, Arizona....another story entirely.
In the middle of the third year, Siss suggested that we get together and visit Scranton in order to look at our parents' grave. Yes, they were buried in the same grave, although they had been divorced since I was fourteen. And, how do you get two people into the same grave, you ask? Cella was a Lutheran and Jack was a Catholic. Cella wanted cremation and Jack wanted a big Irish wake. Cella and Jack wanted to be buried together. Therefore, when Cella died, her ashes were stored at the mortuary in their little cherry wood box until Jack died. Then, the box was slipped into his coffin with his hand resting on it, probably in an effort to keep her quiet for eternity. No one said a word about this arrangement, because the church charged an "extra body fee" for more than one person in a grave. Ghoulish.
So, during the third academic year, Siss and I went to Scranton, visited the grave, and....I got my navel pierced. These things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is just a dearth of things to do in Scranton. We probably went to Brenda's, too, because we never go to Scranton without sampling the Italian fare and potent Manhattans at Bistocchi's.
A year later, at the end of my fourth academic year, I met Sig. Sig never even knew about the green dress until I asked for it back. I asked for it back when I was going on sabbatical. You can't get a sabbatical until you have been at the college for seven years.
What does this all mean? I mean, what is the point? The point is that Siss had possession of my green dress without writing a word for much longer than I had thought. It was on the grave-visiting, navel-piercing trip that she asked to borrow the dress; and it was after my seventh academic year that I finally asked for it back.
Having thought in terms of "academic years" for far too long, I have decided that I am finished with higher education forever. Dancing for grades never made a whole lot of sense anyway.
I did get the time line settled.
When I think about all this time in a non-anecdotal way, there are events that stand out like blazes on trees to mark my way in time. Cella died in June and I came here in August, leaving Scranton directly from her memorial service. That first academic year, August-May, Siss came along with me and ten of my students to the American College Dance Festival, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin. Siss came as our "nurse", so she got a free ride. She watched me teach some master classes, and we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden. This was in March.
I saw Siss again the next November, which would have been my second academic year here. She came for Thanksgiving, which I had prepared to cook for us both. Naturally, Mr. Stupid-and-Cheap had provided me with a wreck of a refrigerator, which died just in time to spoil all the food for my big dinner. This is why Siss and I ended up at Kim Son, my neighborhood Vietnamese/Chinese restaurant, for dinner. I had house soup, a duck salad, and several glasses of appalling red wine. Who cared? We had the good stuff back at my place, a mere two blocks away. It was a good Thanksgiving Day.
Also on that weekend, Siss and I went to the Butterfly Garden at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We took photographs there, among the fluttering wings, and I have not thought of those photographs until now. Perhaps I should dig around for them and post one....if they really do exist.
Here is the other thing I remember about that weekend....or was it the Spring Break weekend? Siss was shocked that I did not own a television, so she took me out and bought me this little, 13-inch TV/VCR combo that I subsequently used only too look at movies and dance videos from performances. I had this little TV/VCR until just two Christmases ago when Sig bought me a large-screen TV and a satellite subscription. I still use it mainly to watch movies. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
That was also the year that Jack, my father, died at Christmas and I missed the funeral because I was snowed in by a blizzard in Flagstaff, Arizona....another story entirely.
In the middle of the third year, Siss suggested that we get together and visit Scranton in order to look at our parents' grave. Yes, they were buried in the same grave, although they had been divorced since I was fourteen. And, how do you get two people into the same grave, you ask? Cella was a Lutheran and Jack was a Catholic. Cella wanted cremation and Jack wanted a big Irish wake. Cella and Jack wanted to be buried together. Therefore, when Cella died, her ashes were stored at the mortuary in their little cherry wood box until Jack died. Then, the box was slipped into his coffin with his hand resting on it, probably in an effort to keep her quiet for eternity. No one said a word about this arrangement, because the church charged an "extra body fee" for more than one person in a grave. Ghoulish.
So, during the third academic year, Siss and I went to Scranton, visited the grave, and....I got my navel pierced. These things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is just a dearth of things to do in Scranton. We probably went to Brenda's, too, because we never go to Scranton without sampling the Italian fare and potent Manhattans at Bistocchi's.
A year later, at the end of my fourth academic year, I met Sig. Sig never even knew about the green dress until I asked for it back. I asked for it back when I was going on sabbatical. You can't get a sabbatical until you have been at the college for seven years.
What does this all mean? I mean, what is the point? The point is that Siss had possession of my green dress without writing a word for much longer than I had thought. It was on the grave-visiting, navel-piercing trip that she asked to borrow the dress; and it was after my seventh academic year that I finally asked for it back.
Having thought in terms of "academic years" for far too long, I have decided that I am finished with higher education forever. Dancing for grades never made a whole lot of sense anyway.
I did get the time line settled.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
"It Wouldn't Be Me"
Okay...that was the big line emanating from my sister's electronic lips (she always does both her dirty work and her making up over the 'phone or the e-mail) on the night that I finally had had enough of her BS and hung up on her. What a feeling!
This was before the big birthday blowup and final parting. In fact, this was the incident that gave me the two-plus years of peace and quiet before her "you're the only sister I have" speech. I really enjoyed those two-plus years. Why don't I ever remember these things in a timely fashion when she wants to reconnect and "bond"??
At this point in time, I was still in possession of the green dress. It was wadded up and shoved in a trunk, having been last used as a costume for a solo that I set on a particularly gifted student. This girl could really dance, and she was intellectually interesting as well, and a thoughtful choreographer. I set this short work, an introspective solo to Philip Glass' "Freezing", for an annual college event called "Rising Stars". We, as faculty, nominated these students and showcased their talents at a really decent dinner held at a hotel ballroom every May. I went for the food, and I was always sure that the nominated student or students would show up for the same reason. I remember that the dinner was one of those clever, molded turkey breast slices that was formed around a mound of stuffing and framed in festoons of french-cut green beans. Okay, it was predictable, but the dessert was frosted with real ganache and had chocolate-covered strawberries on the side. This was the lure. The student, who will remain nameless for her own sake and my legal safety, showed up, danced, and chowed down on the dinner. This is the selfsame student that I once saw devour five slices of a very dense pizza and then go out and perform. All this to say that I did, indeed, have the green dress.
On to the hang-up incident. I have already mentioned that I live in a warehouse space. What I have not yet mentioned is that the entire warehouse is owned by probably the "stupidest" and cheapest man in the world....at least, in my world. After I had lived in the space for a year, I came home one day to find a notice to vacate posted on my door by the City of Houston. The notice gave me one week to get out. You see, Mr. stupid-and-cheap didn't feel that he had to be up to code because he rented us the spaces on fake rental agreements. This is the same man who once admonished me to "talk to me in words I can understand". You get the drift.
What I am trying to say is that the warehouse leaked like a sieve and had PVC pipes that were totally inadequate for the amount of water that flowed through them. Recipe for disaster, and disaster came more often than I would like to remember. On this occasion, a particularly heavy rain came in a matter of minutes, and fell on ground that was very dry and not ready to absorb. I ended up with more than three feet of water in my place. I lost almost everything, including art, clothing, furniture, books papers....the list goes on and on. It was so bad that one of my friends at work gave me a few items of clothing so that I could go to school and teach my classes. Naturally, Mr. stupid-and-cheap never paid a cent to any of us poor slobs who were his tenants.
As I was still digging out from the three feet of silt, water, and happy frogs, Siss called me, wanting to chat. For whatever reason, she wanted the conversation to be all about her, and I wasn't in the mood for her petty bitching. I told her nicely that I was having a difficult time, just having lost everything. I hadn't asked her for a thing, and didn't intend to. I just didn't need to be an ear for her just then.
She turned on me, not in anger, but in cold moralistic tones, which I find much worse. She delivered her line, "It wouldn't be me living that way"....this, just after she was braying on about how she always wanted to live in a warehouse.
In a moment of weakness (or strength),I said "get out of my life, and stay out", and hung up.
There. Now I have connected the dots to the "you're the only sister I have" speech. Siss let more than two years go by after I hung up in her ear, probably hoping that I would forget all about her bad timing and moralistic attitude, and then she contacted me by e-mail. I took her back in without a word about the past. What an idiot. Somewhere between that 'phone call, that e-mail, and the birthday debacle, I let the green dress out of my grasp...I think. It's all really cloudy these days.
Suffice it to say that I had the green dress, then I didn't, and now I have it again.
More later.
This was before the big birthday blowup and final parting. In fact, this was the incident that gave me the two-plus years of peace and quiet before her "you're the only sister I have" speech. I really enjoyed those two-plus years. Why don't I ever remember these things in a timely fashion when she wants to reconnect and "bond"??
At this point in time, I was still in possession of the green dress. It was wadded up and shoved in a trunk, having been last used as a costume for a solo that I set on a particularly gifted student. This girl could really dance, and she was intellectually interesting as well, and a thoughtful choreographer. I set this short work, an introspective solo to Philip Glass' "Freezing", for an annual college event called "Rising Stars". We, as faculty, nominated these students and showcased their talents at a really decent dinner held at a hotel ballroom every May. I went for the food, and I was always sure that the nominated student or students would show up for the same reason. I remember that the dinner was one of those clever, molded turkey breast slices that was formed around a mound of stuffing and framed in festoons of french-cut green beans. Okay, it was predictable, but the dessert was frosted with real ganache and had chocolate-covered strawberries on the side. This was the lure. The student, who will remain nameless for her own sake and my legal safety, showed up, danced, and chowed down on the dinner. This is the selfsame student that I once saw devour five slices of a very dense pizza and then go out and perform. All this to say that I did, indeed, have the green dress.
On to the hang-up incident. I have already mentioned that I live in a warehouse space. What I have not yet mentioned is that the entire warehouse is owned by probably the "stupidest" and cheapest man in the world....at least, in my world. After I had lived in the space for a year, I came home one day to find a notice to vacate posted on my door by the City of Houston. The notice gave me one week to get out. You see, Mr. stupid-and-cheap didn't feel that he had to be up to code because he rented us the spaces on fake rental agreements. This is the same man who once admonished me to "talk to me in words I can understand". You get the drift.
What I am trying to say is that the warehouse leaked like a sieve and had PVC pipes that were totally inadequate for the amount of water that flowed through them. Recipe for disaster, and disaster came more often than I would like to remember. On this occasion, a particularly heavy rain came in a matter of minutes, and fell on ground that was very dry and not ready to absorb. I ended up with more than three feet of water in my place. I lost almost everything, including art, clothing, furniture, books papers....the list goes on and on. It was so bad that one of my friends at work gave me a few items of clothing so that I could go to school and teach my classes. Naturally, Mr. stupid-and-cheap never paid a cent to any of us poor slobs who were his tenants.
As I was still digging out from the three feet of silt, water, and happy frogs, Siss called me, wanting to chat. For whatever reason, she wanted the conversation to be all about her, and I wasn't in the mood for her petty bitching. I told her nicely that I was having a difficult time, just having lost everything. I hadn't asked her for a thing, and didn't intend to. I just didn't need to be an ear for her just then.
She turned on me, not in anger, but in cold moralistic tones, which I find much worse. She delivered her line, "It wouldn't be me living that way"....this, just after she was braying on about how she always wanted to live in a warehouse.
In a moment of weakness (or strength),I said "get out of my life, and stay out", and hung up.
There. Now I have connected the dots to the "you're the only sister I have" speech. Siss let more than two years go by after I hung up in her ear, probably hoping that I would forget all about her bad timing and moralistic attitude, and then she contacted me by e-mail. I took her back in without a word about the past. What an idiot. Somewhere between that 'phone call, that e-mail, and the birthday debacle, I let the green dress out of my grasp...I think. It's all really cloudy these days.
Suffice it to say that I had the green dress, then I didn't, and now I have it again.
More later.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Sorting Out A Few Things
I have always been a live-and-let live person, especially where it concerns my sister, whom I have seen rarely once we were out of college. I have never thought about how she might be living her life. My own has always been plenty for me to handle.
I have always liked and admired the homes that Siss has created for herself, except for the smoky dungeon she shared with The Rag before the breakup. That was horrible, but I love the little house she has in New Providence, with its jewel-toned furniture, comfy back porch, and procession of clopping horses going by. She also had a cute place in Easton, PA. It was a large apartment that covered the second story of an older house, and I remember visiting her there when I was still in undergraduate school and she was newly married (for the first time). My boyfriend (who later became my first husband) and I stopped at a roadside stand and bought a gift to take along to Siss' place; an enormous milk-fed pumpkin that easily measured three feet in diameter. We suggested that they coat it with polyurethane and use it as a cute chair or footstool. None of the four of us knew anything about milk-fed pumpkins, what was inside them, or how all that milk might affect the process of decay. About two weeks later, Siss called me at school to inform me that she had sat down on the pumpkin, only to have it turn to mush and implode beneath her, at the same time releasing a noxious liquid in great quantity. This liquid saturated her new wool area rug, made its way across the kitchen, and flowed out the back door and down the stairs to visit the neighbors, who were also her landlords. Oops!
Siss and this same husband, who was an urban planner, later bought a cute little house in Moorestown, New Jersey, right across the bridge from Philadelphia. Siss fixed this one up beautifully, too. I always envied her ability to "nest". She did it well.
At this time I was living in New York City and had married the boyfriend from the pumpkin disaster. He and I both had begun Orgone therapy with the wonderful Dr. Schwartzman, whose office was in Philadelphia. Each week, we would get home to Brooklyn from working/dancing in Manhattan, change clothes, and leave for Philly. We ate convenient-store ham sandwiches while we gassed up on the way, and got to Philly for our back-to-back 8PM and 9PM therapy appointments. After therapy, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a "bucket of munchkins" and headed for Moorestown and that cute little house where my sister and her husband lived. We shared the munchkins, which were doughnut holes in several flavors, among the four of us before we headed back to Brooklyn at 2 or 3 in the morning. This went on for years, until Siss got divorced and the house was sold.
Back to the point. I am very live-and-let-live. I never loved and then hated Siss. I never admired and then vilified her way of life. I never even noticed the way she dressed or styled her hair. I never commented on her life-choices.
Maybe all this going with the flow left me open to be loved/hated and admired/vilified by her. I learned some very valuable things about the human condition while I was in therapy. One of those things is that people often lash out at others who have what they themselves want but are too afraid to reach for. This is an emotional plague reaction. It is a hatred of the life and happiness in someone else because of a fear of reaching for that life and happiness.
What does this have to do with all those cute little houses and all that nesting? Well, Siss always wanted a more adventurous and "artistic" way of life. She wanted to be a writer, and actually got a degree in English, but later gave up an editorial position to go back to nursing school. I am living in a converted warehouse on an organic farm in the middle of a big city, surrounded by museums and galleries and theatres. I achieved my dream of becoming a dancer, and that is how I make my living. She reveled in this way of life, loved visiting the warehouse, having Thanksgiving dinner at the local Vietnamese restaurant, going to the butterfly garden at the Natural Science Museum. Then, when I got flooded, she turned all moralistic and said, "it wouldn't be ME living that way"! And....when Hurricane Ike hit Houston and made national news, she never even called me. All part of the old "I told you so". You know, I would never have lived in the cozy little places she has inhabited, but the important thing is that I would never have thought of saying this to her. We all have the right to live the way we want to live, and the way that makes us comfortable.
What did I want to sort out here? Just one very basic thing that separates me and Siss. I believe in living my life exactly as I please as long as I hurt no one else. I also believe that I do not have the right to comment on how anyone else lives his/her life unless I am asked. Siss, on the other hand, feels free to sling off at me about my life, and it is always disguised as "what is best for me". This disguise is another dead giveaway that the emotional plague is at work. Siss has become very moralistic and self-righteous where I am concerned ("it wouldn't be ME living that way"). I should really say "had become", because there is no present tense for us any more.
I have always liked and admired the homes that Siss has created for herself, except for the smoky dungeon she shared with The Rag before the breakup. That was horrible, but I love the little house she has in New Providence, with its jewel-toned furniture, comfy back porch, and procession of clopping horses going by. She also had a cute place in Easton, PA. It was a large apartment that covered the second story of an older house, and I remember visiting her there when I was still in undergraduate school and she was newly married (for the first time). My boyfriend (who later became my first husband) and I stopped at a roadside stand and bought a gift to take along to Siss' place; an enormous milk-fed pumpkin that easily measured three feet in diameter. We suggested that they coat it with polyurethane and use it as a cute chair or footstool. None of the four of us knew anything about milk-fed pumpkins, what was inside them, or how all that milk might affect the process of decay. About two weeks later, Siss called me at school to inform me that she had sat down on the pumpkin, only to have it turn to mush and implode beneath her, at the same time releasing a noxious liquid in great quantity. This liquid saturated her new wool area rug, made its way across the kitchen, and flowed out the back door and down the stairs to visit the neighbors, who were also her landlords. Oops!
Siss and this same husband, who was an urban planner, later bought a cute little house in Moorestown, New Jersey, right across the bridge from Philadelphia. Siss fixed this one up beautifully, too. I always envied her ability to "nest". She did it well.
At this time I was living in New York City and had married the boyfriend from the pumpkin disaster. He and I both had begun Orgone therapy with the wonderful Dr. Schwartzman, whose office was in Philadelphia. Each week, we would get home to Brooklyn from working/dancing in Manhattan, change clothes, and leave for Philly. We ate convenient-store ham sandwiches while we gassed up on the way, and got to Philly for our back-to-back 8PM and 9PM therapy appointments. After therapy, we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for a "bucket of munchkins" and headed for Moorestown and that cute little house where my sister and her husband lived. We shared the munchkins, which were doughnut holes in several flavors, among the four of us before we headed back to Brooklyn at 2 or 3 in the morning. This went on for years, until Siss got divorced and the house was sold.
Back to the point. I am very live-and-let-live. I never loved and then hated Siss. I never admired and then vilified her way of life. I never even noticed the way she dressed or styled her hair. I never commented on her life-choices.
Maybe all this going with the flow left me open to be loved/hated and admired/vilified by her. I learned some very valuable things about the human condition while I was in therapy. One of those things is that people often lash out at others who have what they themselves want but are too afraid to reach for. This is an emotional plague reaction. It is a hatred of the life and happiness in someone else because of a fear of reaching for that life and happiness.
What does this have to do with all those cute little houses and all that nesting? Well, Siss always wanted a more adventurous and "artistic" way of life. She wanted to be a writer, and actually got a degree in English, but later gave up an editorial position to go back to nursing school. I am living in a converted warehouse on an organic farm in the middle of a big city, surrounded by museums and galleries and theatres. I achieved my dream of becoming a dancer, and that is how I make my living. She reveled in this way of life, loved visiting the warehouse, having Thanksgiving dinner at the local Vietnamese restaurant, going to the butterfly garden at the Natural Science Museum. Then, when I got flooded, she turned all moralistic and said, "it wouldn't be ME living that way"! And....when Hurricane Ike hit Houston and made national news, she never even called me. All part of the old "I told you so". You know, I would never have lived in the cozy little places she has inhabited, but the important thing is that I would never have thought of saying this to her. We all have the right to live the way we want to live, and the way that makes us comfortable.
What did I want to sort out here? Just one very basic thing that separates me and Siss. I believe in living my life exactly as I please as long as I hurt no one else. I also believe that I do not have the right to comment on how anyone else lives his/her life unless I am asked. Siss, on the other hand, feels free to sling off at me about my life, and it is always disguised as "what is best for me". This disguise is another dead giveaway that the emotional plague is at work. Siss has become very moralistic and self-righteous where I am concerned ("it wouldn't be ME living that way"). I should really say "had become", because there is no present tense for us any more.
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