~My Beloved~

Beloved partner, keeper of my heart's odd secrets,
clothed in summer blossoms so the icy hand of winter
never touches us, I thank your patience.
Our journey is like a tree to earth,
a cloud to sky, even more.
We are the reason the world can laugh
on its battlefields, and rise from
the ashes of its selfishness to hear me say,
In this time, this place, this way,
I loved you best of all.

~Nancy Wood

What we did, spring into summer. . . .

In all the productions of Hello, Dolly! I'd seen before this, my first live Matchmaker, Irene Molloy had never really come alive as a treasurable character. With Elizabeth Meadows Rouse as the hungry-for-life milliner, I was almost sad that she'd lose her Horace to Dolly. Together with Edwin C. Owens' robust portrayal of Vandergelder, the duo fairly well upstage diminutive Kirtan Coan in the title role. When Wilder's stage directions call for "minor convulsions" at the dire prospect of opening his wallet to Mrs. Levi, Owens goes so red amid his coughing and sneezing that I thought somebody would call for an ambulance. It's this sort of titanic discomfiture that tends to make Coan's Dolly seem, by comparison, more calculating and prudent than you might expect. But there is abundant resourcefulness in Coan's conniver to win our affections.

Edwin would have *loved* this!

He maintained that his tradition teaches that seven hugs a day is minimum for health, that at least 11 are needed for growth. I always tried to see that he got at *least* thirteen. . . .

Click title for video.

A message of thanks from puddle

Three weeks ago, a phone call changed my life forever. In so many ways. That night, I stepped off a cliff.

There has been fear, there has been sorrow, there has been anguish and anger, there have been moments of peace, and even, too briefly, moments of joy. And pain. And hope. And despair.

Throughout it all, you were there, in every imaginable way. Posts of encouragement (Thankful read me much of the blog during breaks), songs, hearts, love, news, planning, donations, poetry. I have been and am now buoyed up on the wings of your love, expressed in so many concrete ways: time, money, words, thoughtfulness.

Edwin loved and trusted this community, this group of amazing souls drawn together to act by Howard Dean. He was right to do so, you failed him in no way. You have risen even above his highest expectations of you. You *do* have the power, you have used the power, and will yet use it. No matter what happens this year, or next, or the one after that, you have won. And will win. Because you, in and of yourselves, have acted. In love. And with unimaginable caring and creativity. The world can never, will never, be the same.

I can't name names, there have been too many; I expect there will be more. It will take me years to process, to seek out, to discover the dimensions of this web that Howard created with a few simple internet tools. But I know the beginnings start in each of your hearts, and expands to each of those hearts acting in some way for the good of others.

Thank you is too small a phrase to even begin to express what I feel. But there is no other. Thank you for being who you are, for doing what you do, and for the hope.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
puddle*in*NYC | Homepage | 09.22.06 - 12:26 pm |

AMI = Acute Myocardial Infarction

When you are going to move or just to move the altar to another room, visualize that the Holy beings enter your heart chakra or a Dharma wheel in the form of lights before you move anything on the altar. After you have set up the Buddhist altar again at the new place, then visualize the Holy beings return to their images in the form of lights.

LET ME FLY LOW

Sad is the feeling, dreadful the grieving
When one remains and the other must go
It won't be Heaven without her beside me
Please tell the angel Lord let me fly low


Let me fly low Lord, let me fly low
Let me watch over her when she's alone
If it's your will Lord, if I must go
Please tell the angel to let me fly low

Many a loved ones gone on to glory
Now its my turn to be laid out and cold
I can't let go of the hand of my darling
She who was given to have and to hold


Let me fly low Lord, let me fly low
Let me watch over her when she's alone
If it's your will Lord, if I must go
Please tell the angel to let me fly low

Shovels of clay and a blanket of roses
Then tears will fall on my pillow of stone
That's when she'll need me, so Lord let me hover
Waiting to carry my darling on home


Precious the lifetime we spent together
Now everything but the memory's gone
She brings a handful of pretty white daisies
Oh what I'd give just to follow her home

Let me fly low Lord, let me fly low
Let me watch over her when she's alone
If it's your will Lord, if I must go
Please tell the angel to let me fly low
If its your will Lord, if I must go
Please tell the angel to let me fly low

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

A message from Joe Trippi

ChrisNYC had contacted Joe about Edwin's death. He remembered meeting us very well, and wanted to write something for the blog/memorial celebration.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"I remember meeting Edwin after the Dean campaign had ended -- I remember being really depressend and down -- completely in the darks -- and trying to hide it -- Edwin saw the pain I was in -- and reached out and bolstered my spirit -- such was this man -- who helped wake me up to not giving in and encouraged me instead to redouble the effort to bring real change in this world -- and with his passing he has awakened me to just how precious the time we have to bring that change really is -- I will miss him -- but a part of his flame is now carried in my torch as it is with anyone Edwin touched."

Joe Trippi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Below is my entry from the DFA blog at the time:


puddleriver*in*NYC wrote on June 3, 2005 12:55 PM:
Okay: will try one last time. And pray I don't lose it, LOL!

ChrisNYC either arranged, or knew Joe Trippi was going to be in town the night of Meetup. He came. Then he came to the little after Meetup dinner that Chris, Slyvie, Agatha, and The OC have been doing.

Details: only that Trippi is a true trip. Mind like a bear trap, and that's the troot. Clearly he loved Dean.

Beyond the obvious brilliance, there is a kind of spiritual depth I hadn't expected. An inner light, informing.

I came too late to the blog to have ever perceived him as The Jedi, so I never adored him nor blamed him. I did kid him a little about playing with light sabers ~~ his response, in my words: NOT. And I believe him.

The evening was fascinating from start to finish, and I feel incredibly privileged to have been a part of it. And I did make an issue of thanking him very personally and profoundly for creating the blog, and told him what a huge difference it had made in my life. He seemed moved. And I was touched that he was.

That is all. Over. Out.

p.s. ~~ the NYC bloggers, plus one WV blogger are having a reprise get-together tonight. I *love* the blog. And bloggers!!

♥s

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The torch is from jc (click title) ♥s!!

The Very Blue Bicycles of Bahia


~~ Peace, and the families come

~~Small bright girls like butterflies flutter by

~~ A small boy with withered legs,
escorted on rainbow wheels
by sisters, his sisters,
through the sunbright courtyards of Bahia.

All is green ("green is the new black, this year"),
and orange, and magenta, paths of brightness
carefully trained to drip from the flat roofs
and peek from between the folds of the modest skirts
of stone-age arborvitae.

Jewel thieves case the place in a red
convertible, kissing goodbye over and over
on behalf of any on-lookers.

From the all but one floor balcony,
the villas across the way
show their false fronts to morning sun
and sparkle.

How peaceful here at the edge of the peaceful sea.

The paper comes before the coffee and croissants.
Do not read it. The Dr.'s eye is dark. Leave it be.

There is a world at war,
and we must not know it;
here, where the houseboys
wheel by on very blue bicycles,
and laughter and squeals of joy
echo from the hidden courtyards.

This is the real world!
It is.

For now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The was written at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego, the day before DeanFest began. (The picture is from Bahia, Brazil.) The night before, we'd spent at a motel in Malibu which was suitably comfy and modern, on the coast highway, and which cost "an arm and a leg". . . . Our room at the Bahia cost less, actually. (Probably because there was some kind of staircase in the middle of it.) My guess is that we were the poorest guests they'd ever had. [ . . . . From $275 - $560 per night] And Edwin, probably the only actor/activist. And me? Nurse's aide/dollmaker?

Erat Hora

Erat Hora

“Thank You, whatever comes.” And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

~~ Ezra Pound

A name by any other rose is still a name. . . .

By the time we went public at all (in a situation where I needed introducing), we'd been working on the relationship for nine months. The first time was I was introduced as a friend. The next time was only explaining to friends who knew us both that we were "together." And that sufficed. After a few months, however, the "friend" thing began to get a little old for me. And yet, it was his burden, not mine ~~ we were in NYC, not WV. I didn't have to introduce him.

On my own, I went down the possible list: friend, lover, mate, significant other, POSSLQ (person of opposite sex sharing living quarters): none felt very natural. In January, in the surgery waiting room, his doctor (who'd last seen me in the pre-surgical prep room) called me Mrs. Owens, and I thought that was no time to correct him. At the opening night party for The Right Kind of People, he introduced me thusly: This is Julie, my (gulp) partner. I chuckled. A little.

We talked about the possibility of marriage, and he felt strongly that he wasn't "good" at marriage, and did NOT want us to end the way his marriages had. I accepted that (deciding that marriage was a custom I'd ascribed to, but was not necessarily necessary. . . .). So it wasn't ever going to be "my wife" ~~ Nevertheless, it continued to nag a little. . . .

I toyed with "my old lady" and "my old man" -- but at our ages, lol!, that didn't exactly mean what it meant in the sixties and seventies. . . . One night I'd told him I thought I was his biggest fan. He'd said: "You are my biggest fan, my best friend, my partner, my lover, you are my everything." Who was I to be unhappy I had no "official" title?

After the horror show we went through with HIPAA at the hospital in Fort Worth, I didn't care about the name. I was just glad to be able to call and find out what kind of night he'd had, and to be able to sit and hold his hand.

A couple of days ago, I talked to the company manager from On Golden Pond who went with him to emergency. He'd had an initial dose of morphine for the pain, and was in the process of being admitted. She said she was listening intently to the description of what each form did/meant. Nothing about who can be told, who can be here. Later that night with the doctor, before surgery, she was wanting to know if she as well as I could be told until I arrived (since there was no one else locally), and Edwin who was awake and alert if a little drugged said: "My lady lives in my apartment."

That one had not, ever, occurred to me.

Bless him.

I've wondered, from time to time, how somebody so aural hooked up with somebody so visual.

As a child, his grandmother (who had been an actress in Norway) had sent him to the Episcopalian church near or on the University of Chicago campus. The really salient factor was they had a fine boy's choir and an excellent Choirmaster. By the time he was 14 and "borrowing" his father's Pontiac to sneak to the South Side jazz clubs with his friends, he was already applying what he knew of liturgical music to the jazz he found there.

That love of jazz stayed with him the whole of his life. But church music, too. And we shared an adoration of Bob Dylan through all his musical incarnations. Nevertheless, as I sort through his CDs, I am astonished at the breadth and depth of his collection.

But sound, too, was his own instrument. His voice. He viewed with real dismay the micing of actors on the stage. Felt deeply it was a result of so many tv and movie actors migrating to the stage. Those without breath or training. For him it had become simply natural. . . . I am just at the beginning of going deaf, and there is much I miss. When his voice would drop a little too low for me to hear, I'd say: Honey, I need your theatre voice, and he'd switch, without effort, or actually raising his voice at all, to a voice I could easily hear.

I'd figured this was a special gift to me.

Alas.

As I write, I am watching workmen build scaffolding down the main walk of the view from Avenue C. They'd put some up, close to the buildings in May as I was getting ready to leave for North Carolina, but it's not "in" the view.

I've been meaning to get pictures of the view for a year and a half, and had made arrangements, last week, for a friend to bring her camera and get shots from afternoon into evening, since in a month I'll never see it again.

This borders on cruelty by the universe. . . .

Sonnet 17
Pablo Neruda


I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

from Ash-Wednesday

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth This is the time of tension between dying and birth The place of solitude where three dreams cross Between blue rocks But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

~~ T. S. Eliot

Edwin came home this morning.


It was better than I'd expected.

I had expected to get a slip in the mailbox, to trek three blocks, stand in line, show ID, negotiate the plexiglass box exchange system, and to carry him home in my granny cart.

Instead, the postman rang (more than twice), said he was on the way up.

I waited in the hall.

Signed twice.


He is now on his altar.

It's Only A Paper Moon

I never feel a thing is real
When I'm away from you
Out of your embrace
The world's a temporary parking place

Mmm, mm, mm, mm
A bubble for a minute
Mmm, mm, mm, mm
You smile, the bubble has a rainbow in it

Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Anonymous said...
When You Are Old and Grey

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- W.B. Yeats

11:43 PM, September 30, 2006