Nostalgia: A Bitter Brew

I woke up this morning with my tongue in cheek. It happens every now and then. 

I was thinking of those days when America was still the envy of the world. It seemed we had more of everything then, didn't it? And not just more, but life was somehow richer and shinier. Darn close to perfection actually. 

I tend to do absolutely nothing on my days off but reminisce. Like the women in Mad Men in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Spending hours at the beauty salon getting their nails polished, their hair permed, their eyebrows plucked. Then tossing down two or three slow gin fizzes with their little white pills before dinner while their dapper hubbies with their slicked back Don Draper hair chatted about golf scores.  I wish we could go back to that time, don't you?

It seemed like every household could afford a maid then too. Those lovely Negro women who quietly slipped a coaster under each cocktail glass.  I don't ever remember them complaining. They just seemed, well, so grateful and content. God, what a picture perfect time to be alive. 

People understood and accepted their place in the social structure back then as well. They knew the value of a job. Any job.  Sadly, today you hear too much griping by folks demanding a fair wage. Shouldn't it be up to the employer to determine what fair is?  Isn't that just common sense?  Refugees and immigrants are so lucky to just be here. I think it's a bit presumptuous of them to ask for health care and education. Their getting sick and being ignorant is really not my problem. 

Thinking back I have certain images that pop into my mind. Like Schwinn bikes and Pez containers and going to the drive-in with mom and dad.  The bluish glow of flashing images coming from the giant screen as we navigated into our spot. The barely discernible chatting coming from the speaker boxes. The pesky gnats and mosquitos that left me with little red marks all over my hands and legs. 

My older sister had two good friends in high school back then. Ronny Johnson and Allison Lipschitz. One night from the back seat of our Ford station wagon, I noticed Allison's head moving up and down behind the steering wheel in Ronny's car. Ronny had a big smile on his face. And then a few minutes later Ronnie was jumping up and down on Allison. My sister turned to look at me and when she noticed what I was seeing, she whacked me so hard on the back of my head, I literally saw stars. Any way Allison wasn't chosen prom queen that year like everyone thought she would. She had to take some time off from school, and when she came back, she was pale and sick looking. People in my neighborhood were all whispering about her nasty "infection" and how she almost died. I guess she'd lost a lot of weight at the "fat farm" which made it okay. 

Then, of course, there was my East Coast neighborhood where I grew up about 25 miles south of Boston. And the cast of characters that were what everyone likes to call "salt of the earth" folks. Mr. Wiley with his Confederate flag hanging from his truck.  Mom thought it was "quaint and regional". He was originally from Tennessee and she said people from the South had a rich history and it was hard for them to let it go.  

Our next door neighbors were a couple named Al and Theresa Colangelo.  At neighborhood barbecues Mr. Wiley would sneer and call them Dagos (I guess Wop was kind of insulting back then.)  Now we have to call Dagos "European Americans" because of the PC Patrol. I think that's a bit much. I was brought up to call a spade a spade and a redskin a redskin.  Everyone's just too sensitive.

Mr. Colangelo was an officer of the law by the way. And a real - what you might call - entrepreneur.  Late at night I'd see men dumping boxes of radios and TV's, toasters and stereos on his front lawn.  Mr. C.  never seemed to remember them being dropped off though. I asked him about it one day when I was ten. He smiled, pointed his big old gun at me and said, "Don't you worry about anything, missie." Just like we were in a John Wayne movie. I love those memories.

                                                                

Today people get pissed off at officers of the law when they beat the crap out of special education folks or dark skinned kids with hoodies. But the truth is they're just doing their jobs, protecting the rest of us from what could be a clear and present danger. 

I have fond memories of  Theresa too. She was a gas. (That was an expression we used back then) In Theresa's case she really was 250 pounds of the stinkiest methane you could imagine. Not sure what she was eating for breakfast every day but you always knew when Theresa was in our house. Mom warned us never to light matches when she was around. She had that terrible disease where your skin slowly turns white. She looked like a cumulonimbus cloud floating through the neighborhood.  (Theresa inspired my love of metaphor incidentally. She's why I became a poet.)  

Theresa was a very good mother too. Mom said she was "extra attentive" to her 7 year old son, Tommy. She always hollered the same thing every night before sunset. "Get in here now you little son of a bitch before I split your head open." Then we'd all laugh throughout the village - that nervous kind of laughter.  She was the Jackie Gleason of F Street. Today Theresa would probably be put in jail for "child abuse". I guess there's no more cutting anyone some slack.  Yes, Tommy had a few bruises.  What kid didn't? You can't even twist your kid's arm today without some watch group harassing you.  

Don't get me started on animal rights. Cows have feelings? You've got to be kidding.

My tongue just switched positions incidentally.  It's hard to hold it in one place for long.  

I suppose nostalgia is like that. But I can tell you when I see those men and women in Congress working so diligently to turn back the clock and bring us back to the 1950's and 60's before all the you know what hit the fan, it makes me proud to be an American. 

A few more years like the last 20 and we won't need a time machine.

Segregation, back alley abortions, police corruption, obesity, child and animal abuse. Nuclear threat. They have fancy names now for what we just believed back then were things that should not be named.

Older Men, Older Women: The Same Page At Last?

My very first Huffington Blog almost a year ago back in May 2013 started off with: A gent of 75 is in love with a woman of 25. The article received a lot of attention with 228 comments and five times that many hits. It was my most successful yet in terms of number of readers. 

I suppose it may have elicited such an engaged response because there were a lot of older guys out there who'd been unsuccessful in their attempts at relationships with women their own age and were happier with younger and less experienced, less war-weary women. 

And second, based on the actual written responses that were posted, there were quite a few women who wanted to publicly declare their disappointment and sadness over the somewhat dismal dating scene in contemporary America and to proclaim loud and clear that there was nothing wrong with older women and men 20 or 30 years younger hooking up.

Fair enough. I wrapped myself around the latter notion over the next year, struggling with did I or did I not want to be with a younger guy. I can't speak for anyone else but for me the final answer was only under very special circumstances and certainly never more than 10 years younger. I'm not saying I was not seriously tempted with the very few opportunities that came my way.

It would have been fun no doubt. It certainly would have been an ego boost. And I would have learned some things about myself I might never have learned otherwise. But ultimately it was just not for me, mainly because the balance of power did not feel comfortable. It did not feel just (as in equitable and fair) for him or for me. There was something in the whole notion that made me think we were each taking advantage of the others' weakness rather than helping build the other's strength. At a certain point in life you really want the structure to stand by itself without any need to prop it up, rebuild the foundation or install drainage pipes around the property line.

Loneliness is a terrible thing. Loneliness, the gut wrenching kind that creeps in at 2:00 a.m. and wakes you up because there are no sounds except the prattle of mice or a raccoon wreaking havoc on your about to ripen tomatoes. That kind of loneliness, that emptiness eats away at your spirit in infinitesimal ways. It begins to destroy your self-esteem and makes you desperate for companionship, any companionship including the kind that puts you at risk. To some extent this kind of loneliness is self-imposed punishment, a kind of agoraphobia of the psyche that stops you from taking the chance of being hurt yet again. It takes a lot of deep healing to repair a broken heart and by the time you hit 50, unless you are one of those very rare spirits blessed with good genes, great upbringing and brilliant luck, you have scar tissue. And only you can begin to peel away the dead skin so some new healthy dermis will grow.

On the dating circuit now in 2014 it's evident there are a lot of single men hitting their 60s. They are either recently divorced or widowed with substantial wisdom and experience to offer a companion. There are also those who are sad and desperate and have been probably all their lives. There are men with no source of income due to America's ageism and the exporting of so many American jobs overseas. And there are folks just really freaked out over the idea they may die alone. You meet them all and you can learn something from each and every one.

I've found the best approach is to be kind and compassionate to everyone, be as honest as possible and take something positive away from every new experience. Just remember not to give away the kitchen sink because you don't like the sound of water dripping at 2:00 a.m. 

Being alone is not the same as loneliness after all. Being alone can be exhilarating for getting to know yourself and all the wounded parts you hide from others as well as the jubilant realizations that come from figuring out what you truly want in this last part of your life.

Wolfie, that gent of 75, finally gave up his desire for Lola in South America. But I don't think he learned as much as he needed to because now he's searching for young women here in Los Angeles. More power to him. It's his fantasy, not mine or yours. If I were to wager a bet, however, eternal youth which is what he really covets is a losing battle even in the City of Angels.

I see a desire to hold back the clock everywhere here. More so than I have ever seen it in any other city. It's sad actually. The simple truth is no matter how often you work out, how many hormone supplements you take, how much filler you get injected into your face and how many lifts stretching your skin into eternity, humans are meant to be mortal. It's how we learn, how we grow, how we truly love. Yes, let me repeat that truism: we learn to love by letting go, not by desperately clinging to anything. Older men and older women over 50? Give each other another chance. We've all learned a lot over the last 30 years. At least I hope so.

Regaining Vision: What Was Lost, Now Found

I had a cataract operation this week. No big deal, right? People get cataracts, they get them removed, they get a lens put in. Life goes on. It happens thousands of times every day throughout the world. My cataract was a very large one and was growing rapidly in my right eye. No one knew what was causing this sudden growth; they only knew it needed to be gotten rid of.

I hesitated month after month. I had the money, the insurance covered a lot of the operation, it was not an issue like it is for so many folks in the world who end up going blind. I am a white (sort of) middle class college over educated woman who at this moment in time has a roof over her head and opportunities and time afforded to few. I am privileged.  So why the hesitation to do what everyone in my social class does without, um, blinking an eye? 

Back in the late 60's when I was a kid, I can remember the precise moment I lost my clear vision. I experienced a sharp pain on the right side of my head, looked up at the elementary school stage and wham, everything was a blur. I knew something awful had just happened to me but like so much about my gut wrenching childhood, I went into denial. For a year I pretended I could see perfectly well until a sharp math teacher who'd been watching me for months squinting at the chalkboard called my mother and demanded she get me glasses. My mother was perplexed. "Why hadn't you told me?" she kept asking. "Your sister has glasses. It's nothing to be afraid of."

From that point on my geekiness was a done deal. Unlike my older sister who looked beautiful even if she were wearing a gorilla mask, I looked like the person wearing the coke bottle glasses, the big nose and the mustache mask - I now had all three for real and I was heading into adolescence. Life was going to be horrendous, I assumed. And indeed it was.

But I adjusted, learned to live with and at times revel in my misery and make out of it something unique. I wrote stories, made paintings, created a newspaper and put on plays. I became an artist of sorts. And thus I survived. Until two years ago when a lot of stuff hit the fan and I found out that if I had the cataract removed, I would be able to see once again and most likely pretty well.

On Tuesday this past week everything changed. The cataract was removed quickly and relatively painlessly and I didn't die. Except in a sense I did. Yesterday my eyesight was measured, my brilliant eye surgeon Dr. World Famous Maloney looked at me, said , "You have 20-20 vision. You look great." Huh? And then it occurred to me that maybe I should be paying attention to what he had just said. I looked up from where I was sitting, glanced around the room, stopped squinting, and everything was the sharpest and clearest it had been in 40 something years. No, it was actually sharper and clearer than the world has ever looked. Ever.

Wow.  Now I was looking at everything very closely. The tweedy colors in the jacket I was wearing. The streetlight at the corner of Wilshire and Westwood. The elderly woman crossing the street with her blue white hair and her soft brown leather jacket. The individual emerald green leaves of the tree at the corner of the street I turned down. My bright red Prius. The day old beard of the parking lot attendant with his harried and worried eyes motioning me to back out ever so slowly. All was a sudden LSD high of mind-shattering explosive color and light spontaneously spackled across a landscape that was only two days before a dull, grey, blurred image.

I could see.

And what that meant to someone whose filter has been muted, blurred and stifled for decades is life changing on some psychic level I can not yet comprehend. Everything that was old is new again. 

Maybe this is religion after all. Maybe this is god.

Men of Conviction, Compassion, Courage and Creativity

In my ongoing journey exploring "The Dating Life Over Fifty", I cover a lot of territory. At first I looked outward at what men want in women and often came up with the dismal answer (dismal for me any way): someone younger than me. Not always true but certainly far too often it is. In my more introspective moments, I explore loneliness and despair, subjects I am certain I'll return to as I meet the never ending challenges of growing old. At times I discuss gardening and growing things from nothing, tending to small creatures, creating community, supporting friends however I can and the boundless joy all that brings me. And then of course there is my love of dogs, one in particular at the moment who fills a void rarely filled by humans. (Yes, I am odd that way.) 

Throughout this process of uncovering what it really takes to have a deeply satisfying life, I try to maintain a critical acumen about men in order to understand the ones I admire and the ones I reject. What's the difference between the few and the rest of the pack? Why do some men rise above and others swim in the shallows? It's certainly not about material things. While I don't like hanging out with men  (or women for that matter) who are always sucking from the tit of another because they are not capable of standing on their own two feet, I also am unimpressed by what car you drive, what designer clothes you wear, where you live or what celebrities you hang with. I just don't care. 

So what does float my boat? What rocks my world?  Let me put it this way. A man without passion for something (besides me or his narcissistic tendencies)  is like a rudderless dingy. A sailboat sans sails. An engine with no fuel. He's a man of no interest to me or probably anyone else. 

It is passion, commitment, involvement in something larger than oneself that shouts, "Life is a gift, babe. So let's ride this wave together for as long as there is a wave to ride." Wow.

Now that's an irresistible man. And that leads me to my discovering within myself a need to set forth a series of Huffington articles about men of conviction, compassion, courage and creativity. These characteristics to varying degrees are in all the men I have chosen to write about. This does not mean I agree with everything they say, everything they espouse, everything they themselves feel passionate about. It means, however, that within each of these men exists a seed of integrity they have chosen to nurture in everyday choices they make. Are they always successful? Probably not. Who is? But their moral compass is clearly lodged inside of them. When confronted with whether or not to take the high road or the self serving road, they tend to choose the high road more times than not. 

I wondered for a long time why I felt such a strong passion for men like this. I think it is perhaps because I see the potential inside them more clearly than a lot of other folks can. The vision I have was honed inside of me during a 30 year observation of my poor, dear and now deceased father. He tried his entire life to walk a higher path than he was capable of after becoming tragically and seriously brain damaged during a vicious attack by an angry and petty co worker over nothing more than a pile of dirt. 

So there you have my Achilles heel, one that has been taken advantage of more times than I care to admit. But one that at this stage in life can spot the diamond in the rough, the good and decent man, the person who is not a player but merely is human in the best sense of what that means. And what does that mean?

My Huffington Posts.  These are guys with a clear moral compass that gets them up in the morning, pushes them out in the world, forces them to make a difference regardless if they are 40, 50, 60 or 70. They are men who do not give up no matter what life throws at them. Repeat. They do not give up. And that means they don't give up on their significant others either. They stick around emotionally, psychically and physically. They are present and available as much as they can be. They are men of conviction, compassion, courage and creativity. Enough said.

Here they are thus far...many more on the horizon...
Jim Beaver, actor and writer
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/interview-with-jim-beaver_b_4751476.html

John Steppling, playwright and screenwriter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/man-of-conviction_b_4886456.html

Silvester Henderson, Professor and Gospel Impresario
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-perryfolino/love-and-equity-the-geniu_b_6155334.html



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The Relentless Sun and The Need for Clouds

People who grow up in Southern California and those who migrate here tout the sunshine as its greatest enticement. Okay. I understand that the sun is god. And I honestly believe that it may be the only true god that exists for humans - all the others simply concoctions and projections of our own egos and desire for immortality. 

The sun is ever present, it nurtures life and if it should ever disappear, so would we. That defines god for me. But like any decent god it is unrelenting. It beats down upon our existence and when it is present day after day with no clouds to cover it, no rain to shield us from it, no eclipses to make us think for a moment that it may have gone forever, it becomes, well, just too much. It becomes oppressive.

The sun is unrelenting in Southern California. And other places as well. Places like Florida. And parts of Arizona. You know the states we often read about for abusing immigrants or Blacks. So I wonder if an unrelenting sun, like an unrelenting god, does not contribute to isolationism, solipsism, narcissism and selfishness masked by cheery platitudes handed out like free samples at Costco. 

Something about Southern California in particular troubles me. It always has. I've lived here off and on for years. And I almost always end up escaping back to Northern California and occasional side trips to Massachusetts where I grew up and where there is snow and clouds and rain.  

I think a lot about rain now, its purifying life enhancing qualities and how lacking in rain Southern California is and how that fact, made worse by current trends in climate change, will eventually do this part of the world in. The fires are coming. I sense that. All this will one day be dust and grime. Perhaps it already is when you scrape off the surface.

I like cool weather, warm weather, sunshine. Clouds. But what I love the most, what brings hope into my heart, is waking up before dawn and wondering what today will be like. What darkness will I be dealing with. What cloud cover will protect me from skin cancer. What rain will wash away the world for a day or two while I nestle down into my bed and type away on my computer or scratch away on my yellow legal pads. What novel will I tackle. What meal will I concoct on the stove to sit and simmer all day long. What red wine will I crack open tonight. If I know with almost 100 percent certainty that it will be sunny, that there will be no clouds, no hint of ozone, no wind, no movement...then I feel somehow out of synch with life itself. Because there is limited life in such an environment, isn't there? At least not life conducive to the purported Southern California "lifestyle" touted in all the advertisements.

And that is why Southern California, particularly Hollywood, exists at all. To create the facsimile of life on sound stages. In studios. In coffee shops where thousands of screenwriters sit and sip, as they type away their notions of what life looks like. Somewhere. Out there. In a real world. 

I can think of no other reason a desert that receives water pumped into it has such an other worldly feeling all the time.  And why so many people, basically decent people, native Southern Californians in particular, have this same unreal, other worldly quality about them. So many Stepford people smiling, asking you how you are as they look over your shoulder to that other person, the one who may be a celebrity, who can maybe help them get a break. So they too will have that perceived life that never quite exists except on a sound stage. 

It is no surprise that a cult like Scientology would be so powerful in Southern California. It feeds the need for meaning in life in a place where there is essentially no life at all without water being pumped in 24/7 from someplace else.  Scientology feeds the illusion that you are in control and if you can just climb those steps up to that next level, you will be safe. The rain will never reach you, will it? It is the perfect religion for a place with a relentless sun that demands of its people a relentless pursuit. 

No surprise the man who concocted it was a cynical genius. He may as well have been Louis B. Mayer. In The Master, a thinly veiled treatise on Hubbard, Philip Seymour Hoffman, nails the ego, the will, the narcissism. Hoffman and Hubbard, now both dead and buried and eventually forgotten. Don't kid yourself. We will ALL be forgotten. That's the price of standing too long in the sun.

Such is god that it devours everything exactly at the same moment it is feeding you. It is an unrelenting entity that breeds and then kills. There is in humans a need for cold, rain, snow, clouds. Wind. There is a need to feel discomfort in the bones, chilling us, causing us struggle. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something.

I am reminded of a scene in a Woody Allen film when a character dons an  elaborate helmet and goggles, climbs into his car and says to Allen's character with total certainty when asked why...

"Keeps out the alpha rays, Max. You don't get old."

But you do get old. In fact, without cloud cover, the sun is speeding up your demise. I can't help but feel a lot more human, sometimes more alive, when I'm in my other home in Northern California. 

It must be the rain. Right?

Insomnia and The State of Oblivion

It is 2:54 AM and I awake from a sound sleep, listening to...nothing. There is no sound of dark creatures prowling in the night around and under this small cottage. It's odd because for the last year and a half I had grown used to if not particularly happy about the foragers out there in the garden: the mice, the squirrels, the possums and yes, the rats.  Eating, munching, ripping apart, staying alive. The rats ate the most vociferously and shamelessly, destroying the kale, the chard and the budding tomato plants each night, long past midnight and into the early morning hours. 

I'd grown used to the sunrise ritual of rushing out each daybreak to see their destruction, swearing that they'd cost me far too much in time, energy, money and woe is me, hope. Hope that this time I had defeated them when in fact, I hadn't. There over by the air conditioning unit and near the water heater were their rat droppings. Their poop, their dark streaks against the concrete, their invisible rat prints, marking territory, making their nests in the palm tree in the house next door and burrowing underground to the tunnel system, intricate and complex as the intelligence that had created it. Their efforts in the backyard each night to simply survive had, in fact, astounded me to the point of respect. I had not only grown used to them but I had learned to honor their lives. It was the uncomfortable relationship between human and non human energy surviving in a shared space. In some odd way, after months of their nightly visitations, they had brought me comfort and unease in the same breath. They reminded me of all the relationships I have had. Comfort and unease in the same breath.

Now it is 3:09 AM and I am no more on the verge of sleep, (despite sipping my sleepy time Celestial Seasons herbal concoction) than I was at 2:54 AM. I am in fact heartbroken once again over all the failures of the last year. Friendships that went bust. Poor financial investments. Failed expectations of success on some interpersonal planet I have never inhabited and most likely never will. I tell myself each day when the sun comes up that this year will be different, that this year will see the culmination, the personal fulfillment of, the connection to another human being in a way that is filled with passion and joy and the heart-spinning breathtaking moment of the fall into bliss. I have to keep telling myself this or I will die of despair as so many do who have no shelter, no family, no food on the plate, no will any longer to live. I don't want to fall into that but I know I can. I know we all can. Conjure up the right mixture of ingredients and despair is a dish served on porcelain so thin we can see right through it to what lies beneath.

Now the rats have left this yard. The landlord took care of that. He came here one day with a whole team, ripped out my garden, told me I could no longer keep vegetables any where near the house because my garden, my beautiful tenderly cared for garden of healthy green things attracted vermin, is how he put it. The pest control people set traps under the house, poured buckets of water and bleach everywhere to get rid of rat scent and either killed them or drove them away. They are no longer wanted here, this home I had unknowingly created for them in my zeal to create a home for myself. I miss hearing them running, climbing, scratching in the walls and under the house. That unease they caused in me, that sense of connectedness to things that are homeless, hungry, determined, alone...all gone now. And I am left with sleeplessness. I am safe from the rats, the landlord said triumphantly. For now. As long as I don't plant any more green things. 

It's now 3:25 AM.  I take another sip of tea. I listen for even the tiniest scratching somewhere, the breath of something besides me and the dog. There is nothing. My heart breaks on some infinitesimal level to know how easily the intricate pattern of lives can be so unceremoniously swept away with traps and a bucket of water and bleach.