Color Me a Jewish Adult

The B'nai Mitzvah ceremony went smoothly for me and my three classmates. Our nerves seemed to be fairly quiet, most everyone was where they needed to be when they needed to be there, my Torah chanting was flawless (I was the only one who didn't need to be prompted), etc. I did puddle up as expected when the rabbi and our teacher laid hands upon us and chanted the priestly benediction, but the mood was swiftly broken when the rabbi accidentally removed one of my earrings along with her hands after the blessing. I found the backing afterwards, but not the earring itself. Oh well.

My friends took me out to a tapas bar for dinner afterwards -- I was too wired and busy to even look at the lavish oneg foods that I had helped sponsor -- and, even though it was very late for me to be eating, I very much enjoyed a full meal.

I kept flying for the next two days, and then came crashing down with post-performance depression, and the return of focus on my challenging real estate situation. Meanwhile, at least my writing classes continue to provide their own challenges and gratifications. Here are a humorous piece I wrote for my Thursday class and a couple of things I wrote at a daylong workshop yesterday:

Just My Luck

Some lesbians get a little action when they go out of town for a gay gathering. Not me. The closest I came was at a conference in Minnesota for a gay Lutheran group. I somehow caught the attention of a nice lesbian doctor. Unfortunately, she insisted on remaining true to her absent lover, and my best efforts got me only some very nice necking, a canoe ride, and sunburn.

A few years later, I went to a women's retreat house for a weekend of instruction in meditation and massage. One woman used techniques on my inner thighs that would have caused me great embarrassment were I a man. Although straight, she seemed to enjoy exerting that power over another woman. When I happened to mention that I belonged to a gay synagogue, she perked up, and asked me to spend some time alone with her. I asked my roommate to stay outside the room for a while, and enjoyed giving her a demonstration of lesbian kissing and cuddling, but she drew the line there.

Then I went to the West Coast Women's Music and Cultural Festival. Hundreds of dykes camping in the woods, Holly Near, bare breasts. Women hooking up to the left of me, kissing and caressing to the right of me. Into the valley of dykes I marched. But me, my gaydar was so bad that I wound up hanging out with one of the ten straight women at the festival.

Which brings me to the Transcendental Meditation retreat that was conducted by a fellow member of the Pacific Lesbian and Gay Singers. He talked lyrically of the beauty of the retreat center in the redwoods. He know that I was a lesbian, so I got my hopes up. But no. The retreat involved 47 gay men, two straight women, and me.



Writing Workshop pieces:

My sound and texture

I am the end of the Shostakovich Fugue in C Major on recorders, a cacophony of shrill, squawking, honking recorders being overblown. Then the players calm down, soften up, see the end approaching and they're not lost, and then it's here and they're right where they belong, on a beautifully in tune C major chord that shimmers with the victory of the conductor, who is making beautiful music to spite his AIDS.

I am corduroy, chamois, tender leaves of lamb's ears, cashmere and acrylic, velvet and velour, shag carpeting, and suede. I am all that is soft, fuzzy, warm, and inviting. But, there's a leftover pin in the new shirt, there's a burr in the sheepskin wheel cover. There's a stain in the cloth, or its nap is being worn off. All is not perfect.

Santa Monica Scenes

I was riding my new skateboard down the street, and slipped and skinned my knee, and ran home to Mother, and cried in her arms. Only when I was done did she look to see where my boo-boo was and deal with it.

The chaise longue in the sun room is a great place to hide out with a book, looking through the French doors at the greenery in the back yard. Looking words up in the Webster's Unabridged that lives on its own lectern, left open because it's too big to keep shut.

For some time I slept in the small room off Mother's upstairs bedroom. The only way in or out was through that bedroom I felt safe there. The windows looked West, and may have held some light when I was trying to sleep there on a summer evening.

There was a clawfoot tub in the upstairs bathroom, with water that came fitfully and weakly. I don't remember why I once or twice had to use a chamber pot at night or adventure down to the bathroom downstairs by the back door to pee -- maybe I was sleeping in the cabin or the pavilion (two converted chicken coops) in the back yard. The privilege of sleeping in one of them was rarely bestowed.

My brother and I were given a different toy each summer. One year it was Whammo tanks -- huge cardboard loops that you crawled into and propelled by crawling forward inside them. Other years it was hula hoops, pogo sticks, homemade stilts. I seem to remember jars of colored water, but not what we did with them.

I'd be reading away in one of my little rooms, and Grandma Mil would yell my name up the stairs. And it could be anything, a cream puff for me to eat, or time to practice piano, or time to polish the piano, or maybe she'd read to us kids from a book in the language she was studying that year.

We'd have big Christmas dinners with most of the aunts and uncles and cousins. Colored goblets on the huge, dark wooden table with all its leaves in. Huge leg of lamb, which I somehow came to enjoy eating with mayonnaise. Washing the dishes afterwards in the kitchen with the aunts and the other girl cousin, with the knitted washcloths and the fading food smells, and the dampness on the hands, and the fear of breaking something.

And then we'd all have to perform our set pieces -- I'd sing the Titanic duet with my brother or play Bach on the piano. And some cousin would play flute or recite a poem. And finally one of the adults, usually Uncle Malcolm, would read from Dickens, the Christmas at Dingley Dell.


Finally, a poem created by taking randomly chosen lines from other poems and writing freely after each line until the next one was read. Then we 'panned for gold' in the resulting melange and reassembled the best bits into a title and poem. I'll italicize the lines that were given to us. In retrospect, I think my bits make three poems:

Cool Feet

I throw the river my shoes.
My feet are hot
and
the water is cool.
And the river may
carry them off.
I don't care.
My soles are tough,
my feet are tan,
and I will happily
walk home barefoot.

The Pen and the Song

I write your name
with a pen made of wood,
and it cries your name silently.
I miss you.
We were close once,
but are now far apart.
What happened?
We sang in beautiful harmony then,
but the song died.
The unity failed.
What did it need
to survive in the holy quiet
of the space between two people
where the divine spirit rests?
Something it needed
that we failed to give it.
I'm so sorry.

I was Still to be Born, but the World had Died, and There was no Room for Me

Clothed in leaves and wind,
comes the fall,
when seasons change
and masses of air move
from one home to another.

And in hundreds of seaports,
the rising oceans
cover the fading works of man.
Without flowers,
the death of the world will occur.
Without mourners,
for all will have gone before.