Part Fourteen

Still We Sing

Joan Lansberry

July 14, 1997

Whew! Part Thirteen is over! I am NOT a superstitious person. Really I'm not. I didn't omit the number like they do with numbering floors in a building. But I don't need to make that section any longer than it has to be!

July 17, 1997

Today is the one year anniversary of the TWA plane that exploded over Long Island. Two hundred people are gathering for a memorial of those who died in this crash. Thirty million dollars were spent to find the cause. Although 95% of the plane was recovered and those 900 mangled pieces reconstructed and analyzed, no answer was found to the mystery of why it ripped apart.

Did any of those who boarded that flight have a feeling they shouldn't go on that plane? Last Sunday, Laura's Mother told us a voice told her she should not go on a short trip she and Glen took. She ignored the voice as pure superstition. And wished she had heeded it, for the car accident that happened while on that trip was quite severe. Her body will always bear the damage of it.

Obviously, her warning was true intuition. How does one distinguish the true from the false? My eerie feelings Sunday were groundless. As I examine those feelings, I understand I had spooked myself. Me the writer of this journal became me the reader of this journal, and all the prior events seemed an elegant form of foreshadowing. I'll not be trying to guess the Author's plot!

July 18, 1997

In this world of technological feats, with all the wonders of TV and now the Web, there is something comfortable about the simple radio station. It was the first in a series of inventions that have united people from diverse areas, as well as entertaining them. Besides getting our 'fix' of tunes and the latest headlines, the disc jockeys on a radio station give a personal touch. They seem like real people we know. Never mind they are speaking to a faceless crowd, it is as though they are speaking to us personally. In a world which can be lonely, this is one of those small comforts of life. And so I salute those disc jockeys who have amused me through out the years. One disc jockey I've enjoyed for many years is Marty at Tucson's 94.9, MIX - FM. He is always so cheerful. His voice seems reassuring and soothing. On some terribly hectic days at work, his voice and manner has calmed me. Since coming to Casa Grande, I've met many new voices through the radio waves coming from Phoenix. One greatly entertaining pair is Beth and Bill of KEZ,99.9. This duo have the merriest conversations and humor to keep you from being bored while amidst the tedium of work. They act as though each day is an endless opportunity to have fun. That joy is infectious. It really makes a difference in our lives.

We watched a movie last night about a disc jockey who made a difference. In "Pump Up The Volume", Christian Slater plays a shy teenage boy who rigged up his own radio station with ham radio equipment. His parents bought him the radio gear so he could still keep in contact with his friends from his old town in New York. From his new town in Arizona, that wasn't possible. So he found other uses for it. Every night at 10 o'clock, he broadcasted as "Hard Harry". His schoolmates quickly discover the new radio station. Painfully shy in person, in the anonymity of the radio waves, he was able to speak of every outrageous and real thing he could think of. He exposes the dirty doings of the unethical school principal. She gets wind of this, and calls in the FCC to shut his little radio station down. But her plans backfire. He became a hero to his classmates, inspiring them to find their own voices of rebellion and individuality.

This movie may have been very loosely based on a true story. A friend of ours said he heard of such of a DJ when he was in high school. Whether or not the movie has any basis in fact, it is nonetheless an excellent movie, and gets my highest ratings.

July 21, 1997

The words of William Least Heat-Moon whisper themselves over and over in my mind as he describes southeast Oregon's high desert in the latest issue of National Geographic (Vol 192, No. 2):

I love this cursed and sere beauty and its illusion of being the end--or the beginning of all existence, its capacity to unnerve me as I move among the scrub and visualize my bleached skeleton with only teeth to tell who I was. Go ahead, I think, cry out for help, call until no voice is left. There'll be no answer, not now, not later. This is a common dread, and so is the one that follows it: What if someone does show up? After all, I've come for this excellent forsakeness, and now I fear somebody disrupting it. One more high-desert inversion.

I should walk here in sackcloth. Let me repent of my living too abundantly and blindly in a too easy and forgiving land and forgetting that the universe is mostly a dry, old cosmos, with wetness and life the exceptions. In this place scant rain falls sweet, but a walker must hunt out a spring where the water is still making its descent toward wicked lakes that will turn it to salt, where glaring alkali flats mock with mirages of fresh water and tops of stone turn saline white as if blessed with purity, but that blessing is also alkali.

...later in the day...

I have this dream of wealth.
But my hands are so full, how can they hold more?
Can I pull the heavens any closer to me?

JAL, 7-21-97

July 24, 1997

... I wasn't there the morning
when my Father passed away.
Didn't get to tell him
all the things I had to say.
I think I caught his spirit,
sure I heard his echo...

"The Living Years", by Mike and the Mechanics

This song came on the radio this morning. The first time I heard it after my Dad died, it brought tears to my eyes. It's significant that I heard it this morning, for Tuesday evening I did feel his spirit. Laura, Julia and I went to the archery ranch at the college grounds near here. I am starting an exercise plan. The arthritis which initially affected my knees has spread to all my joints. The medical self-help books recommend three major things for it: lose weight, exercise and move to a warm, dry climate. By serendipity, I'm in a warm, dry climate, but I've allowed myself to become a gelatinous blob. I could even feel my muscles wasting away. And each morning, I woke to such stiff, painful joints.

So I've decided I must do something about it. It is no longer the choice of the vain person hoping to fit the fashion of the day. Simply put, each excess pound is a burden on weak joints that can no longer take it. Laura has a theory that exercise will keep the bone spurs in the knees from forming. Suffice to say, that this morning, after two nights of archery and walking, when I woke up, I didn't hurt so much. The exercise is helping.

Tuesday night, after shooting a quiver full of arrows, I walked up to the target to retrieve them. I felt my Father there, checking up on me. It was him alright, his shy manner and all. As I bent over to pick up all the arrows which had bounced off the target, I heard his voice struggle to get these words out: "I'm real proud of you, Joan. Archery is good exercise for you. Keep up the good work." I was surprised, for this was the first time I've felt his Spirit since he died back in 1993. But it would be an appropriate time. After the divorce, when he and I were living at Gramma's, he did all sorts of things with me to get me exercising. We played badminton. I'd return the birdie with ease, moving lightly around the improvised court. We'd walk downtown every Friday night or Saturday morning. The three mile walk was vigorous, and strengthened us both. He wasn't able to teach me how to ride a bike, but he did buy a tandem bicycle, so that I could have that type of exercise. We went canoeing down beautiful tree-lined lakes and streams. I didn't really appreciate all of it at the time. But now, his caring efforts and those times together are lovingly remembered with fondness.

July 25, 1997

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Had my Father lived, he would have been 66 today! But his Spirit lives on!

late in the evening...

A new article in the transgender forum section of our website has been formed from the e-mail conversations of Laura and a colleague in Canada. "Teresa" is mainly concerned with the legal rights of the transgendered, and has worked towards advancing that cause. Teresa says:

Put the blame where it belongs... on the power structure, and on those who accept (or deny) their own oppression. In plain point of fact, most transies have accepted the limitations upon their lives, and have so acclimated themselves to the notion that there is nothing they can do, that their lots have been accepted as normal. They are no different than black people who would not come forward to vote in the 1960s. The idea of living without all those extra limits was just so foreign to them that they just can't grasp it.

Laura countered with denying there is any oppression:

My equality isn't dependent on how others perceive me. There are too many laws, too many assholes, and I have no intention of waiting around for fairness or equality to be dealt out by others. I take it as my own to the best of my ability and, trust me, I feel no sense of oppression. I don't identify with those who perceive themselves as oppressed and if they do feel that way, my advice is to find a way out of it or around it.

So who is right? Or are both right to some extent? There is no denying that injustice exists, but perhaps too much of a "victim" attitude persists in today's society. When people perceive themselves as "victims", this belief can make that a reality. I remember the black wrought iron plaque my Mother had on the wall in the kitchen. Its words proclaimed "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The defeatist attitude can cause people to turn to drugs, and other self destructive behaviour. Every human being has problems in their life. They don't have to be member of a particular minority group to have this privilege. It is how we deal with the limitations in our lives that ultimately determines what kind of person we are. What I have found limiting in my life, far more than being a lesbian, is being shy. But I use this frustration to motivate me to communicate in the ways I can. Perhaps without this irritating grain of sand, my oyster self would never have written a single poem. So in this, the shyness becomes a blessing. We must look at the hard lessons in life as opportunities for growth.

Was it Will Rogers that said: "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be,"? Who ever said it had some insight.

July 30, 1997

HOPE

Is it the doorway to dreams,
beyond the beautiful sadness?
You wear your tears like jewels.

JAL,7-30-97

July 31, 1997

I am at most times cheerful and optimistic. Yet there are times when I give in to a melancholy. I play the music of wailing sopranos, as if they can cry out with me against all that is wrong in the world. For it is an illusion, too, to think all is rosy everywhere. Reason knows better. The news of all the wars in the world reaches everyone. All the senseless wars: In Bosnia, in Northern Ireland with the Protestants vs. the Catholics, the Middle East wars... All the wars through the ages, the Inquisition, the nine million souls accused of witchcraft and hanged, burned or drowned for it, the Holocaust... Only an insane person can not grieve in the face of all this. And so, my heart is seared by this Destroying Flame. Awed at humanity's power to destroy, the only healing balm is knowledge of humanity's power to heal, to create and to nurture. And this, then, our only salvation, to avenge the Destroyer: Do all in our power to fight that Evil.

Early this morning we watched the movie based on Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials, in which nineteen people were accused of witchcraft and hung. As I sat there crying, Laura, inflamed, implored, "You cry for these nineteen! What about the nine million who were killed in Europe for witchcraft?" The monumentality of Evil in all its forms can overwhelm our spirit if we let it. Oh, do not let Evil win, I pray. May we all steel ourselves with courage, and not let Evil vanquish our spirits with the poison of hopelessness. Feel the strength within us, the strength of Good, grow. We will not be victims, our spirits will not be slain on the sacrificial altar to this Demon. No! Not now! Not ever! Our voices will give testimony to the Truth.

later in the day...

Seeking inspiration, I turn to music. Two women's voices, not in sadness, but triumphant, sing this empowering song by Victor Heredia:

TODAVIA CANTAMOS

chorus:
Todavia cantamos
Tadavia pedimos
Todavia sonamos
Todavia esperamos

A pesar de los golpes
Que hace estar nuestra vida...

(translation:)

STILL WE SING

chorus:
Still we sing
Still we ask
Still we dream
Still we hope

In spite of the blows
That life gives us...

August 2, 1997

Oh, so many hours I have enjoyed women's voices in song. When Aoife Clancy of Cherish The Ladies sings, it puts me into finest reverie. Her rich voice illumines Green Grows the Rushes Oh by Scottish poet Robert Burns:

(chorus:) Green grow the rushes oh
Green grow the rushes oh oh oh
The sweet'st hours that e're I spent
Were spent among the lassies oh...

Another awe-inspiring Celtic woman's voice is that of Mary McLaughlin. Oh, the magic she conjures on SEALWOMAN / YUNDAH, which she wrote. The Yundah chant sets the mood for these lyrics:

Over the waves, you call to me
Shadow of dream, ancient mystery
Oh how I long for your sweet caress
Oh how I long for your gentleness...

When Mary sings The Flower of Magherally, a traditional Irish song, she brings such a personal earnestness to the lyrics, that I can't help but wonder what she knows:

(last verse)...I hope the day will surely come
When we'll join hands together O
It's then I'll bring my darling home
In spite of wind and weather O
And let them all say what they will
And let them reel and rally O
For I shall wed the girl I love
The Flower Of Magherally O

Oh, I could be reading things into the emotional shadings of this fine artist. It's possible. But while I listen, intoxicated, I don't care. I count myself lucky to be so susceptible to these charms.

August 3, 1997

SUMMER RAIN

Gravity brings the rain down.
Heavy clouds let loose
of their liquid.
How does the rain get into the cloud?
Cloud gathers gray.
These things happen.
Sky of my mind gathers gray,
Gravity brings the rain down.
These things happen.

JAL, 8-3-97