What Lies Beyond, Part Twenty Six

The Real Light

Joan Ann Lansberry

February 22, 1999

Orchids galore!

©JAL, 1999

©JAL, 1999

I'd heard in the news that due to our rather rainless winter, we would not get much flowers this year. It's not all bad. The allergens are at a lower level than usual as well. But still I craved floral delights. I read of a Fiesta de las Flores Flower and Garden Show, featuring orchids, African violets, roses, irises, cacti and other plants at a mall in northwest Tucson. I told Laura of it. She was agreeable, for then we could do other things while in town. We told Glen and Mother about the show, and he, too, powered up his camera batteries. They followed us into town.

The Foothills Mall has been rejuvenated since we saw it last. It had been a dying mall of exclusive shops too pricey for the populace. So they redecorated and brought in outlet stores. Inviting shows there has also perked their attendance as well. A fiber arts show was also going on at the same time.

Laura was thrilled to discover this mall has a Barnes and Nobles. This bookstore is two storey and also has a music section. Julia and I promised to give it a look over, once we'd seen the flowers. Laura found a comfy chair in which to peruse books while we went into the interior of the mall.

©Glen Billings 1999

We weren't the only ones clicking away. A gray haired older woman was going at it with her "point and shooter". Actually the digital cameras are as simple as the 35mm point and shooters. She probably didn't feel free to devote six rolls of film to the event, though.

©JAL, 1999

Click on the above thumbnail for a view so close you can almost smell it . I did put my nose close to one orchid and inhaled deeply. The fragrance was exquisitely delicate but definate.

February 28, 1999

Fingers tingling at anticipation of the softness, fleshly flowers beckon. I have shed all misconception for this rare truth. Yet how I guard my garden. There are some things I'll not share. JAL, 2-28-99

March 6, 1999

(The following is also in Weighty Matters. But Laura begged me to put it in ATTWT. So I added some more details, and here it is.)

In Memoriam: Billy Jack Gaither Another gay man has been tortured and murdered. Billy Jack Gaither, a thirty-nine year old Alabama textile worker, was beat to death. Afterwards they burned his body on a pile of kerosene-soaked tires. The two assassins, aged 25 and 21, said they did it because Gaither made sexual advances on them. Like that would have been an acceptable excuse??? The grandmother of the twenty-one year old, said ": . . He's just a typical boy.'' Yeah, right, sure. This is just good 'ol Alabama boy behavior. Right. But apparently his relatives are blaming the older partner, for the twenty-five year old appeared sinister, wore racist T-shirts, and was known to get his kicks taunting blacks. Gaither was a "gregarious textile factory worker who seemed comfortable enough with his homosexuality, even in this rural town of 13,000, that he could discuss it with friends at the Tavern, a straight bar where he liked to play pool." Donna McKee,a waitress and bartender at that bar recalled Gaither as a gentle, caring textile mill worker who didn't try to push himself on anyone and always was eager to help a friend. ``He was a good person. He didn't deserve this,'' said Mrs. McKee. Although thirty-nine, he lived at home because he promised his parents he would take care of them. His father had suffered a heart attack, trouble with his breathing, and had numerous medical problems, some requiring thirteen surgeries . He said his son never missed a day of work, except to care for him." Marion Gaither said of his son ``He said he would never leave me alone,'' and added ``I think he's the kind of son everybody would want.'' President Clinton made a statement, offering his prayers to Gaither's friends and family. He compared the slaying to the recent dragging death of a black man in Texas and the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming college student last October. (various news sources: Starnet, AP News Wire, CNN, Washington Post) Not AGAIN, I thought when I first read this morning's news. At least these crimes are being given national attention. If all of society expresses outrage, things may change.

March 11, 1999

? ? ? What is it when nothing you have ever heard prepares you for the inevitable closing of the tunnel? The road stops there. You know it. Brick end. Do we wake up somewhere else and find it's all been a dream? ? ? ?

March 17, 1999

The following was in an email I received today. Because this chapter is loaded with flowers, I couldn't resist quoting the quote!

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." -H.L. Mencken

He wouldn't have to look too far, for this section also has its share of death for a subject. It wasn't on purpose, it just happened that way.

March 18, 1999 Quentin Crisp The older I get, the more I appreciate my sense of humor. It often will see us through the absurbities of life, when nothing else will do. Quentin Crisp is one of my favorite authors. He has a unique sardonic wit, and being born in 1908, it was all that sustained him, especially during the earlier periods of his life. That, and a desire for attention. "As soon as I was a few days old I caught pneumonia. I was literally as well as metaphorically wrapped in cotton wool. From this ambience I still keenly feel my exile. When I was well again, I saw that my mother intended to reapportion her love and divide it equally among her four children. I flew into an ungovernable rage from which I have never fully recovered. A fair share of anything is starvation diet to an egomaniac. For the next twelve years I cried or was sick or had what my governesses politely called an "accident"-that is to say I wet myself or worse. After that time I had to think of some other way of drawing attention to myself, because I was sent to prep school where such practices might not have seemed endearing." (From The Naked Cival Servant, ©1968) The fates had in store for him a certain inescapable way of drawing attention to himself: "From the dawn of my history I was so disfigured by the characteristics of a certain kind of homosexual person that, when I grew up, I realized that I could not ignore my predicament. The way in which I chose to deal with it would now be called existentialist. Perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre would be kind enough to say that I exercised the last vestiges of my free will by swimming with the tide - but faster. In the time of which I am writing I was merely thought of as brazening it out. I became not merely a self-confessed homosexual but a self evident one. That is to say I put my case not only before the people who knew me but also before strangers. This was not difficult to do. I wore makeup at a time when even on a woman eye shadow was sinful. Many a young girl in those days had to leave home and go on the streets simply in order to wear nail varnish. (From The Naked Cival Servant, ©1968) And so it was that everywhere he went in London, eyes followed him everywhere. The title of his autobiography comes from the job he held for thirty-five years, modeling for an art school. As I remember it, all the 'real men' were away in the wars, and they were desperate for anything vaguely male. He managed to pose without collapsing, and so it became his profession. Eventually he was asked to write his autobiography, and later a movie was made of it. Once his "Wit and Wisdom" were made public, audiences wanted more of it. At 90, he still makes appearances. He's now written four books, and two of them are also on cassette. He even has his own domain name, and the site at http://www.quentincrisp.com has links to quicktime movies and audio sections, if you have all the new plug-ins. I first read The Naked Civil Servant almost twenty years ago. He has a new one out called Resident Alien: The New York Diaries. It's a compilation of diaries which had appeared in a now defunct New York magazine. Imagine that! He's a DIARY writer, as well. As that is something we have in common, I'll be sure to acquire this book, and have a read of the insights he gives into his life since 1981 in New York.

March 19, 1999

If you could go back in time and have a conversation with a younger version of yourself, at what point in your life would you pick the younger you, and what would you tell yourself? What would I tell the younger version of myself? At what point in life would I shuttle myself back to? I would choose me at nineteen. At nineteen I was so scared. At twenty I was so scared. At twenty-one I was so scared. But the beginning of fear began when I was nineteen. Any younger, yes, I had my fears, but they were enveloped in hazy wrappings and not as discernable. At nineteen, the coverings came off, and the details . . . Well, I'd never seen anything so crisply before in my life. And my eyes simply weren't ready for it. All of my earlier years seemed to be indistinct and dreamlike prior to the razor edge awareness of nineteen. People can live years, lifetimes seeking the blurring of edges. By whatever means, they numb themselves so they don't have to think about what really frightens them. But even at nineteen, I knew I didn't want the blurred life, the life half lived. And yet I felt so damn lonely. I was wrestling with things I little knew what they were. Maybe I needed to learn not to wrestle so. And so, that is what older, forty year old me would tell younger nineteen year old me. I'll softly, weightlessly lie besides sleeping younger me, and hold her. Just a quiet presence at first. Nothing that would startle already startled younger me. Nothing louder than breathing. I'd wait until younger me was deep in dreaming. But softly so, I wouldn't want to awaken her. Maybe just the lightest of touches. On the shoulder, I'd leave my older hand resting. My older hand, with its already thinning skin, its sometimes achy joints, against that new shoulder, so smooth. Only in whispers at first. The awareness of this touch alone for the first. Younger me would toss with an odd sensation of something unfamiliar. Maybe even shudder. Older me would lay still, breathless, until shudder went away. Then comfort would begin. Younger me would sense something. Would she define it, or would she be content to let it be a mystery. But she'd sense something. Perhaps it would be recognised as hope. Hope that would ride with me and not leave me. For all we know, perhaps such mysteries do exist. At any rate, I'd like to imagine it. I do know, later, when I was stumbling around, panic blinded, older people did try to tell me I would make it. They were speaking something that resembled English. The words registered on the surface. And perhaps they did permeate slowly to the thick membrane below. For eventually I did learn not to wrestle with the fear. It came a long time in learning. At least it seemed so to me at the time. Of course, to an older person, time travels a bit more rapidly, and what takes a few years goes faster. But the older ones knew that back when I didn't. Things must take the time they must.

March 27, 1999

The first association I think of next when thinking about one's 'inner parent' consoling one's 'inner child' is what it would have been like to have had a child. Having a child is not where my life's circumstances have led me, for various reasons. It's not been for stern denial of desire, as spoke one young woman who wrote an article recently for the online Salon magazine. (http://www.salonmagazine.com/mwt/). I can't agree with John Scalzi, who says in his "Whatever" of March 19th (http://scalzi.com/whatever/w990315.html) that ". . . there is something abnormal about not wanting to have kids, ever --". Maybe the Salon writer has reason to feel a little sensitive regarding society's attitude towards her decision not to have children. It is certainly not 'the norm', but there's nothing wrong with such a position. I don't think she and others like her are necessarily more 'self absorbed' than those who do desire children. Yet I do question their youthful insistence that when they are older and the opportunity has vanished, that they won't ever wonder what it would have been like. For as my forty year old eggs march to oblivion, I sometimes wax sentimental over the unborn daughter who will never know existance. There will always be an ache there, but it is not unpleasant. It is of the things that make me rooted to this earth, and I cherish that. I have given it to other women to bear children. And they will. And the cycle of life will go on. Meanwhile, I, along with Laura and Julia, await every word of Anton and Cynthia's twins and how they are progressing in the womb.

April 7, 1999

" For As Long As It Needs"

PRELUDE This is the opening, the threshold of learning, the giving back and the receiving All in one grateful ear. Let it begin now, the opening of words. This is here. This is now. Let this space be. I have given it so. Now. JAL, 4-7-99

 
(Visit with "the space within", after learning Cynthia's twins won't make it)  
 

What to do with this? Isn't this the beginning of every hurt? The dead, dull realizing? Ever, always, loss pulling at one like an undertow. There is no placing this pain. It will sit where it wants. And so it does. And I do. I sit here of my choosing and have let the black thing fly. It lands here, in my heart, like a setting weight that must be recognized. It is not the first time, won't be the last time this presence makes itself known. I can't push it away. It must gradually dissolve in the rain of so many tears. I give it space for that. Space it will take, with or without the giving. But I'll not kick at it, the foreign thing sitting there, angry at its existence. I didn't ask it to come. It didn't ask to come. It's just here, arisen of fate beyond touching. Ai-i-i-i-i-i-h! I'll not add to the weight by hating it. I'll say this thing here, for as long as it needs. And it needs. And I need. And sometimes that's just the way of the world.

 
If you think things could be different, well, these things aren't ruled by thinking.  

April 9, 1999

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

                         Stanley Kubrick

However vast the darkness, and we stumble about blindly, sense comes to us slow. Brain interprets each touch, each feel, slowly. Each sound, like a pebble to the ground, how far down, meters our space. It is thus we wade through the darkness.

And yet we are not alone. We hear the sounds of others whoosh whooshing through the dark air. We tap out our rhythms and come to find a language. We meet in the dark spaces and interpret our sounds and learn meaning. Thereby gradually, we meet and touch the mind-touch.

Therein is the real light.