In this issue our writers touch on many aspects of hope and its flip-side grief, sometimes head on and sometimes by a thread. In our lead features, Corina Ravenscraft urges us to act without expectation, to take life as it comes and Priscilla Galasso encourages us to do the work so that our hopes and dreams honor our true selves. In “You Just Never Know,” Naomi Baltuck gives us a fable about hope, perseverance and the unexpected.
Life, love, hope and dreams are explored from different perspectives by our poets, often from the perspective of the hopes we cling to despite wars and abuse. For the later see especially the Landays of Pashtun women in “I will die with a heart full of hope” and the poems of Imen Benyoub and Jenean Gilstrap. In “Ashen” k. writes about the quiet desire of a husband to stay connected to his wife who has died. In Hollie McNish’s poem, “Embarrassed,” she hopes – argues for – a society that gets past its nonsensical and puritanical attitudes toward breastfeeding. Renee Espriu speaks simply of hope and family in her poem “Eucalyptus Trees.” With Hélène Cardona’s “Life in Suspension” she trusts “the ripeness of the moment.” No stress. No strain. Luke Prater writes about the sacred moments and …
“When I knew mine was the life needed saving,
however seemingly insurmountable: this
is not an easy fade-to-black halfway home.”
With all our advice and encouragement, it’s never easy and we all need saving.
Jenean Gilstap and Hélène Cardona are new to our pages, and we are proud to introduce their work to you. Please be sure to check out their bios and Renee’s and Luke’s. This is not Renee’s or Luke’s first time here, but its been a while and we are delighted to welcome them back.
Terri Muuss is featured this month with her editorial, “For or Against,” wherein she clarifies the misconceptions and misunderstandings that arise from our communications in social media.
Enjoy!
In the spirit of peace, love and community,
for The Bardo Group Beguines, Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor
Access to the biographies of our core team, contributing writers and guest writers is in the blogroll where you can also find links to archived issues of The BeZine (currently in the process of updating), our Mission Statement and Submission Guidelines.
“Music is…a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy” Ludwig Van Beethoven.
Sarajevo under siege…a city in ruins that wakes up on the sound of shelling and bombing and sleeps on that of mourners. This beautiful city, so rich in history, architecture and art suffered the horrors of a four years siege considered the longest in modern history, and became Europe’s capital of hell since the war broke in 1992, to coincide with another atrocious civil war that broke in my own country and lasted almost ten years, what we Algerians know as “the dark decade”.
At 4 pm on May 27, people were queuing in front of a bakery in Sarajevo for bread; a mortar shell dropped in the middle and killed 22 people instantly. A man witnessed the massacre and was so appalled by the sight of blood and torn bodies so he decided to do something.
This man was Vedran Smailović, a widely recognized and talented cellist who went everyday for 22 days to the bombed site the exact time of the massacre and played cello, in honour of those who died in front of him and all of the victims, all those hiding from snipers’ bullets, the refugees, the hungry, the wounded, the destroyed homes and for his smouldering, exhausted city that struggled to survive.
This man sent a prayer of peace through his music, that the city of his heart might witness a brighter future, and he became the symbol of peace all over Bosnia, playing in graveyards and bombed sites, despite the shelling and fired bullets, Smailović was engulfed by light, the light of hope he was spreading all over the battered city. No crowd applauding to his performance, just Angels protecting him.
It’s been years since the dreadful siege and the civil war in my country ended, but did Sarajevo recover from its dark past? Did my people ever forget? the victims, the mass graves, and the fear they lived in all those years…
We are never entirely healed of our memory.
Al Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus Syria, another Sarajevo, another siege, people dying from a severe lack of food, water and medical supplies, massive destruction of homes and buildings, for weeks the Government forces besieged the camp and starved its people on purpose, the majority of them Palestinians who were exiled from their country in 1948, they found themselves caught against their will in a merciless war that made Damascus, a beautiful and rich city…Middle East’s capital of hell.
History repeats itself, it always strikes me how it does, and not always in the gentlest way, I believed it with all my being when I saw young men with a battered piano in the middle of rubble playing music and singing for peace and freedom, I said: if Vedran Smailović could see those proud and defiant guys whose souls are connected to his, one of them a pianist who started playing since he was six, he used to repair musical instruments with his father and studied music in the university of Homs*, the others, just ordinary people praying for the end of the war, and dreaming of a safe united country again in their own way.
They sang: “Oh displaced people, return; the journey has gone for too long. Yarmouk we are a part of you and that will never change.”
Smailović would have loved what those Palestinians did, because he, of all people will understand the meaning of creating beauty amid destruction, and defying death with the language of the soul…Music
(I would secretly thank that man who set up his piano in front of armed police, a day after protesters in Kiev brought down the statue of Lenin, and played Chopin…he inspired me to write this post)
*Homs: a Syrian city
Editorial note: A partial translation of the song and apologies for any inaccuracy. “from among the ruins and under the ashes, the [Palestinian] phoenix sings for life and will rise again for the cause of freedom …”
IMEN BENYOUB ~ is a multilingual, multi-talented writer, poet, and artist living in Guelma, Algeria. She is a regular contributor to Into the Bardo and to On the Plum Tree and Plum Tree Books Facebook page.
Tonight I went to see Dr. Cornel West along with two young men that I work with. We were all inspired by the passionate energy that Dr. West brings to his presentation! Tonight, he was particularly focused on the work of Abraham Joshua Heschel. He describes the arch of Heschel’s work in a way that I totally relate to the Bardo community!
Pietic–>Poetic–>Prophetic
Meaning, personal piety not bound by religious rules but bound by reverence or seeing the sacred worth in all be-ings. For West’s interpretation of Heschel, the pietic leads to the poetic. A poetry that is not grounded in nihilism or optimism, but grounded in hope. He said, Heschel was “not a person of optimism, but a person of hope.” And that Heschel’s hope as expressed in poetry was hope for the world–not just the Hasidic Jew world–but the entire world. And lastly, but using poetic imagination, we move to the prophetic: speaking truth to power. The importance of the poetic imagination cannot be overstressed! And that is what you are already doing! And it is a sacred journey that leads to wholeness and healing just by the simple transformation of words. And make no doubt, words are action and words cause action. Words can change perceptions which can bring about changes in the world. So, today, embrace your poetic imagination. Allow it to mold you and change your vision so that you see the “faces everywhere” that are longing with thirst. And use that imagination to call the world into prophetic compassion with each other.
There is no space more sacred than that which causes compassion.
Intimate Hymn
by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
English version by Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi Original Language English, Yiddish
From word to word I roam, from dawn to dusk.
Dream in, dream out — I pass myself and towns,
A human satellite.
I wait, am hopeful, as one who waits at the rock
For the spring to well forth and ever well on.
I feel as bright as if I tented somewhere in the Milky Way.
To urge the world to feel I walk through lonesome solitudes.
All around me lightning explodes sparks from my glance
To reveal all light, unveil faces everywhere.
Godward, onward to the final weighing
overcoming heavy weight with thirst.
Constantly, the longings of all born call out, “Is anyone around?”
I know each one is HE, but in my heart there writhes a tear;
When of men and rocks and trees I hear;
All plead “Feel us”
All beg “See us”
God! Lend me your eyes!
I came to be, to sow the seed of sight in the world,
To unmask the God who disguised Himself as world–
And yes, I wait to be the first to announce “The Dawn.”
– from “Human, God’s Ineffable Name,” by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, freely rendered by Rabbi Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi. Available from the Reb Zalman Legacy Project
REV. TERRI STEWART is The Bardo Group’s Sunday chaplain, senior content editor, and site co-administrator. She comes from an eclectic background and considers herself to be grounded in contemplation and justice. She is the Director and Founder of the Youth Chaplaincy Coalition that serves youth affected by the justice system. As a graduate of Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, she earned her Master’s of Divinity and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Spiritual Direction.
Her online presence is “Cloaked Monk.” This speaks to her grounding in contemplative arts and the need to live it out in the world. The cloak is the disguise of normalcy as she advocates for justice and peace. You can find her at www.BeguineAgain.com ,www.twitter.com/cloakedmonk, and www.facebook.com/cloakedmonk.
One of the things I like about parables or fables is that they have seeds of truth and wisdom condensed into “bite-sized” amounts of reading. I enjoy looking for new ones which I haven’t read and sometimes come across old favorites. For those of you seeking “Truth” (and all that the word with a capital “T” entails) I offer the following story:
The seeker of truth
“After years of searching, the seeker was told to go to a cave, in which he would find a well. ‘Ask the well what is truth’, he was advised, ‘and the well will reveal it to you’. Having found the well, the seeker asked that most fundamental question. And from the depths came the answer, ‘Go to the village crossroad: there you shall find what you are seeking’.
Full of hope and anticipation the man ran to the crossroad to find only three rather uninteresting shops. One shop was selling pieces of metal, another sold wood, and thin wires were for sale in the third. Nothing and no one there seemed to have much to do with the revelation of truth.
Disappointed, the seeker returned to the well to demand an explanation, but he was told only, ‘You will understand in the future.’ When the man protested, all he got in return were the echoes of his own shouts. Indignant for having been made a fool of – or so he thought at the time – the seeker continued his wanderings in search of truth. As years went by, the memory of his experience at the well gradually faded until one night, while he was walking in the moonlight, the sound of sitar music caught his attention. It was wonderful music and it was played with great mastery and inspiration.
Profoundly moved, the truth seeker felt drawn towards the player. He looked at the fingers dancing over the strings. He became aware of the sitar itself. And then suddenly he exploded in a cry of joyous recognition: the sitar was made out of wires and pieces of metal and wood just like those he had once seen in the three stores and had thought it to be without any particular significance.
At last he understood the message of the well: we have already been given everything we need: our task is to assemble and use it in the appropriate way. Nothing is meaningful so long as we perceive only separate fragments. But as soon as the fragments come together into a synthesis, a new entity emerges, whose nature we could not have foreseen by considering the fragments alone.” ~ Author Unknown Source
For those of you unfamiliar with the wonderful sounds of a Sitar (the instrument mentioned in the story above), I offer the following beautiful example from one of the greatest players of our time, Ravi Shankar:
In addition to truth, one also needs moments of stillness and meditation to keep balance in life. The photo below is mine, but the quote is Lao Tzu’s:
And lastly, a poem written a while ago about something I rarely get to witness, since I’m a night-owl by nature:
~ Sunrise Sighs ~
Today, for the first time in a small while, I was awake to witness a fresh sunrise.
The purpled-pink fingers crept up like a smile,
gently waking the crisp air of still-sleepy skies.
Vaporous flames of bright orange hues, licking the velvet of dew-kissed dawn,
Sleep promised me a solid, deep, dreamless snooze,
But rapt in my awe, I stayed awake and gazed on.
I love the quiet, hushed hours of Night; they keep me content in a solitary peace,
But the rare, glimpsed glory of Morning’s soft light
Makes me ache with a sweetness that begs for release.
About dragonkatet Regarding the blog name, Dragon’s Dreams~ The name comes from my love-affairs with both Dragons and Dreams (capital Ds). It’s another extension of who I am, a facet for expression; a place and way to reach other like-minded, creative individuals. I post a lot of poetry and images that fascinate or move me, because that’s my favorite way to view the world. I post about things important to me and the world in which we live, try to champion extra important political, societal and environmental issues, etc. Sometimes I wax philosophical, because it’s also a place where I always seem to learn about myself, too, by interacting with some of the brightest minds, souls and hearts out there. It’s all about ‘connection(s)’ and I don’t mean “net-working” with people for personal gain, but rather, the expansion of the 4 L’s: Light, Love, Laughter, Learning.
When my daughter Bea was a little girl, she found a seed in a seedless Satsuma, and planted it in a tiny pot on our kitchen windowsill. She kept the soil moist and, to our delight, a tiny Satsuma tree sprouted. We nearly lost hope when the little tree was infested with insects, but it hung on. Through the years, we tried everything we could think of to bring it back to health. We washed it with dish soap to get rid of the bugs, and transplanted it to a bigger pot. We tried covering the soil with plastic wrap, to keep the bugs away from the leaves. In desperation, we trimmed it down to almost nothing, but it came back–and so did the bugs. I half hoped it would die, just to be done with it.
Last summer I set it out on the deck, like a fish thrown back into the water, to sink or swim. But the little tree liked the fresh air and sunshine, and grew greener and healthier than ever. I brought it inside before the nights turned cold, and it’s back on the windowsill, perhaps gazing out at the yard and looking forward to warm summer nights.
We live our lives in hope.
Almost everything we do is an act of hope. Big ones and little ones.
Hope is writing this post, even when I couldn’t figure out the new Photobucket last night. It’s trying a new flavor of yogurt. It’s getting out of bed each morning. It’s teaching your child to look both ways when crossing a street. It’s writing the address of a friend with cancer into your address book—in ink. Hope is page one of every new book you open.
It’s writing page one of a new manuscript before the last one has sold. It’s everything from watering a plant to having a baby, from a blind date to getting married. It’s why Jack planted his magic beans, against all odds and common sense. Hope was the last most precious thing left to us, when Pandora opened up her box. It’s more important than love, because as long as we have hope, love might yet grow.
A scientist studying nature vs. nurture put identical twins into separate rooms, one stocked with toys, candy, a real live pony. The other he put into a room filled with manure. When he went back to observe, the twin in the room of toys was sitting in the middle of it, crying. “What’s wrong,” said the scientist. The child replied, “I just know I’m going to break something and get in trouble.” The scientist found the other child up to its ears in manure, laughing, leaping about, scooping up handfuls of the stuff and tossing it to one side. “What are you doing?” asked the scientist. The child answered, “With all this shit, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
Who says Jack doesn’t know shit? Bring on the magic beans!
And with all the shit life throws at you, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.
All words and images c2013 Naomi Baltuck
NAOMI BALTUCK ~ is a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller here at Bardo. She is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE. Naomi presents her wonderful photo-stories – always interesting and rich with meaning and humor – at Writing Between the Lines, Life from the Writer’s POV. She also conducts workshops such as Peace Porridge (multicultural stories to promote cooperation, goodwill, and peaceful coexistence), Whispers in the Graveyard (a spellbinding array of haunting and mysterious stories), Tandem Tales, Traveling Light Around the World, and others. For more on her programs visit Naomi Baltuck.com
Where is your light today? What is leading you? What is giving you hope? Joy?
“When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.
Let it be, let it be, …..
And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be, …..”
― Paul McCartney
…
…
A note about the light fixture:
I photographed this light at the Merchant’s Cafe in Seattle, Washington. It is the first cafe in Seattle and has seen several iterations of its business as it was built, burned down, and built again. The interesting thing is that it is in the oldest part of Seattle (of course!). It was built in a building near first avenue. The tidal flats used to flood in every day, twice a day, up to third avenue. This makes doing business quite difficult! Seattle then had businesses build their buildings at least two stories tall. Then they raised all the roads, surrounding the existing buildings with raised roads. For a while, they put ladders at the streets so people would go off of the road, down the ladder, into the businesses.
Finally, they built sidewalks that connected the streets to the second story level of the buildings. So today, in Pioneer Square, when you enter the buildings, you are, in fact, entering the second story of the buildings that were placed there. If you look down, you will notice odd glass squares in the sidewalk. Those were originally skylights so that the first story of the buildings were kind of like an inside shopping mall with a view to the sidewalk above. So even there, in the midst of a buried first floor of these buildings, the light was still able to shine!
REV. TERRI STEWART is Into the Bardo’s Sunday chaplain, senior content editor, and site co-administrator. She comes from an eclectic background and considers herself to be grounded in contemplation and justice. She is the Director and Founder of the Youth Chaplaincy Coalition that serves youth affected by the justice system. As a graduate of Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, she earned her Master’s of Divinity and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Spiritual Direction. She is a contributing author to the Abingdon Worship Annual. (The 2014 issue just released!)
i asked the brown bag prophet if he’d heard about the new round of demonstrations for justice he said yes and why don’t you-all go sing another verse of we shall overcome with any luck at all you’ can harmonize with the voices i’ve heard before and let your blood be washed away from these concrete streets of freedom washed away into the ocean of history like those well-intentioned folks now rotting in their graves with copper pennies as their only reward and please don’t bother me with your these things take time bull i ain’t got time i got this corner and you got nothing
. CHARLES W. MARTIN (Reading Between the Minds) — earned his Ph.D. in Speech and Language Pathology with an emphasis in statistics. Throughout Charlie’s career, he maintained a devotion to the arts (literature/poetry, the theater, music and photography). Since his retirement in 2010, he has turned his full attention to poetry and photography. He publishes a poem and a photographic art piece each day at Read Between the Minds, Poetry, Photograph and Random Thoughts of Life. He is noted as a poet of social conscience. Charlie has been blogging since January 31, 2010. He has self-published a book of poetry entitled The Hawk Chronicles and will soon publish another book called A Bea in Your Bonnet: First Sting, featuring the renown Aunt Bea. In The Hawk Chronicles, Charlie provides a personification of his resident hawk with poems and photos taken over a two-year period.
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British poet and writer. We are happy to share this poem by way of a preliminary introduction to John and his work. John is joining us as part of the core team and will post under his own name.
Meanwhile, this multi-talented gentleman is self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, Engineer and general all-round good egg.” This he tells us with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Add grace and humor to the list.
John participates in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a primary player in New World Creative Union. He’s been blogging since 2009. John is also an active member of The Poetry Society (UK). He says of his work, “Much of my writing and my poetry focuses on the future and the important part that our children, and the way we treat them, play in this. It also spans a diversity of life’s experiences, some moving war poetry and particularly observations of life for a modern generation. I am in the process of steering a collaboration of grass roots poets to publication.” John’s poetry collection is about to hit the bookstores. More on that another day. Jamie Dedes
In my faith tradition, Jesus is crucified on the cross. He cries out, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” This is a reference to Psalm 22 which explores emotions of abandonment, anger, and finding hope. I have used this methodology to express the anger and hope that I find for the youth that I work with who are affected by incarceration.
One night when I was working in detention (re: jail for kids), I heard story after story of hopelessness. It came to me that these youth were torn apart by their parents, by the education system, by poverty, by global issues beyond my understanding. One youth was going home the next day. To a crack addicted mother. Why couldn’t he go to his dad? His dad smuggles guns into the country and was a high placed gang member. He was certain he would be dead if he lived with his dad. So to his mom he goes. Where she will offer him drugs and he will become hooked. Again. He said, “I do not have the strength to say no to my mother.”
Another youth, noticably affected with psychological and educational challenges, was from Somalia. He was living with his auntie here. In Somalia, he had seen his parents dragged from their home, his mother raped, and both parents killed in front of him. But instead of investing in mental health centers, we have invested in mental health courts. This young man, clearly with a minimum of PTSD, will be locked up where the focus is on “treatment” (in this setting that means that they admit to crime and say they are sorry) not on therapy.
This makes me so mad! So my heart cries out to all who have let down these children. Let me say it again–children. But in order to do this work, I needed to discover why. The below poem was my journey through the anger to discovering how I can possibly continue to find hope and love in a system that is hopeless and loveless. It is also my way of putting words to the stories that the youth tell. And my own story.
where were you
when the embryo
hatched and was formed
by blood-spattered hyenas
tearing hope from
limb to limb and
laughing gleefully
at the mockery
where were you
when the embryo
fell and love
offered a hit
of a crack pipe
covered in symbols
flashing through
the ghetto offering
escape from the
desolate heat
the hands that
should be reaching
out are cut off at
the wrists bleeding
sanctimonious tripe
in defiance of the call
to love the
least , lost, and lonely
while sentencing each
embryo to death
guilty rings through
the room as we
continue to bleed the
embryo out with
ignorance born of
fear and shame and
the lie of the only way
being my way standing
on the corner shouting
belligerently to
repent or die
revelation rings through
the cosmos as the
embryo marches the
guilty to sheol while
silent tears are birthed
wresting the stumbling
breath of hope into a
silent scream reaching
to the ramparts and
calling forth the final
battle fought with
easter lilies
TERRI STEWART is Into the Bardo’s Sunday chaplain, senior content editor, and site co-administrator. She comes from an eclectic background and considers herself to be grounded in contemplation and justice. She is the Director and Founder of the Youth Chaplaincy Coalition that serves youth affected by the justice system. As a graduate of Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, she earned her Master’s of Divinity and a Post-Master’s Certificate in Spiritual Direction with honors and is a rare United Methodist student in the Jesuit Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Nu. She is a contributing author to the Abingdon Worship Annual.
Hope for the best, expect the worst, and try not to be disappointed. My mother’s life philosophy was actually pretty upbeat for a kid whose family lost everything during The Great Depression, including her father, who died of Brain Fever when she was only eight. Grandma Rhea supported her children by sewing and taking in wash. My mom shared a bed with Grandma, so they could rent out her room to make ends meet. But they didn’t always quite make it. In the freezing Detroit winters, they nailed blankets over the windows because they couldn’t afford coal to heat the house.
Their only book was the family bible. But Mom found a copy of Alice in Wonderland in a box of textbooks left by a renter. She read it cover to cover. As soon as she finished, she turned back to the first page and started over. She had discovered her passion and her escape–in books.
Mom was the first in her family to attend college, working her way through by reading to blind students. A person of quiet, if impractical passions, Mom passed on normal school and secretarial school to study Classical Greek and Latin, French, German, and Russian. Italian, too, but she said that hardly counted. “After Latin,” Mom said, “Italian is a snap.”
I remember going home from college to visit one weekend. There were index cards by Mom’s reading chair, on the kitchen windowsill, on the nightstand by her bed. They had strange writing on them.
“It’s Greek,” she explained. “Passages from The Iliad, by Homer.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m memorizing it,” she said.
“But why?”
“For fun, dear. After I’ve memorized TheIliad, I’m going to memorize The Odyssey.”
As a young college grad, she had never shown any interest in men, and was still living at home while working for the War Department. Grandma planned on having a spinster daughter to keep her company in her old age, unaware that Mom had already promised herself she would move out and find a place of her own by her 25th birthday, if she hadn’t gotten married by then. Mom just hadn’t met her intellectual equal. Then Harry Baltuck came along.
He was handsome, funny, brilliant; every woman in the office had her eye on him. But he had eyes only for Mom. She was so nervous on their first date that she threw up in his car. Actually, she threw up every time they went out. “But he kept coming back,” she said, laughing.
He was intrigued, and not just because she was determined to remain a virgin until her wedding night. It was a very quick courtship.
His proposal wasn’t exactly story book. “Well, what if we made it legal?” he asked.
“Would you wear a ring?” she countered. And the rest is family history.
They traveled many peaks and valleys in their time. They had seven children and eighteen years together. She was still young when widowed, and Mom received several proposals from Daddy’s friends and army buddies; some decent and well-intended, others not so much. But Mom didn’t take anyone up on his offer. She never remarried, or even dated. Books, once again, became her passion and her escape.
In 1989, I sat at her bedside as she lay dying of cancer. It had been a long hard battle. Mom looked up and caught her breath. “Harry,” she whispered.
“What did you say, Mom?” I asked.
“Harry!” She pointed toward the door, but I saw nothing there.
“Mom, do you see someone?”
“It’s Harry,” she said, nodding. “He’s standing right there.”
Was it the delusion of a dying woman? Or the love of her life, who had been patiently waiting for twenty-five years to take her home?
Let’s hope for the best. Just like Mom always said, you have to hope for the best.
All images and words c2012 Naomi Baltuck
NAOMI BALTUCK ~ is a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller here at Bardo. She is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE. Naomi presents her wonderful photo-stories – always interesting and rich with meaning and humor – at Writing Between the Lines, Life from the Writer’s POV.
Naomi also conducts workshops such as Peace Porridge (multicultural stories to promote cooperation, goodwill, and peaceful coexistence), Whispers in the Graveyard (a spellbinding array of haunting and mysterious stories), Tandem Tales, Traveling Light Around the World, and others. For more on her programs visit Naomi Baltuck.com
A black and white photo is light and dark, its sharp contrasts easy on the eye.
Perhaps black and white is easier on the mind as well. No difficult decisions, no wavering, no questioning right from wrong. But real life is in color, with many subtle hues and shades. Condemned prisoners who crossed over The Bridge of Sighs in Venice got one last peek at their beloved city. Did they see their world in terms of black and white, or in color? Perhaps one’s perception depended upon whether one was looking in or out, whether one was coming or going.
It is easy to cast judgements, until you have walked a mile in another person’s shoes, looked into her eyes, heard his story. The world is not black and white. It is the color of flesh and blood, with many gray areas. What is the color of a human tear?
All images and words by Naomi Baltuck, copyright 2012
NAOMI BALTUCK ~ is a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller here at Bardo. She is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE. Naomi presents her wonderful photo-stories – always interesting and rich with meaning and humor – at Writing Between the Lines, Life from the Writer’s POV. She also conducts workshops such as Peace Porridge (multicultural stories to promote cooperation, goodwill, and peaceful coexistence), Whispers in the Graveyard (a spellbinding array of haunting and mysterious stories), Tandem Tales, Traveling Light Around the World, and others. For more on her programs visit Naomi Baltuck.com
I am the keeper of the dreams and the memories, the matrix where the generations converge, the record-book held between familial bookends. I am responsible for passing her life on to him that she may continue to live and that he may understand the consequences of history and culture as common people do.
He is the vindication of hope, his and ours. Her heart is the place were hope started. I can hardly think of my son without also thinking of my mother. They are the two people I love most in this world, though one of them – Mom – is no longer here. So for the record, I’m not sure why, but the occasional pancake breakfasts I had with her at Oscar’s of the Waldorf are on my mind. We had rituals we honored until life had its way with her.
______
We spent time savoring the hotel before going into Oscar’s for breakfast. The Waldorf was decorated with so much gold color that despite the muted lighting we felt we were having our moment in the sun. The jewel-colored furnishings and plush carpeting invited us to find a place to sit. We indulged in wide-eyed rounds of people watching. The businessmen seemed busy with self-importance. The women fussed with their manifest charm. We always stopped in the ladies’ room with its uniformed attendants continually present. They provided each guest with a freshly laundered terry-cloth towel and double-wrapped soaps, lavender-scented. Mom would tip the attendant a quarter and give me a quarter to tip her too.
Waldorf Lobby & Clock
An important ritual was a visit to the Waldorf Astoria Clock in the main lobby. I’ve read that it’s there still, all two tons of it. It’s a place where people find one another. I’ll meet you at the clock. Everyone knows that means the clock inside the Waldorf-Astoria at Park Avenue. It’s a towering thing, the actual clock sitting below a replica of the Lady Liberty, hope of immigrants, and above some bronze carvings and an octagonal base of marble and mahogany. Standing near the clock gave us the sense of a history of which we were not a part. It offered the illusion of privilege, the true secret spice that made the blueberry pancakes at Oscar’s so delicious. The famed maître d’hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, Oscar of the Waldorf, was no longer there. He died in 1950, the year I was born.
_______
My mom loved the Waldorf and Oscar’s blueberry pancakes as she did everything she felt characteristic of culture and good breeding. Being well bred meant you recognized quality in a person or product: women who wore pearls, men who always tipped their hats in greeting, and dresses with wide hems. Well-bred meant you didn’t swear or use colloquialisms. It meant that if you were a boy you never cried. If you were a girl you didn’t display your intelligence. You didn’t run. You didn’t shout. You never went out without wearing hat, gloves, and girdle. You sacrificed sports and ballet at nine. You didn’t risk turning any tidbit of excess fat into unseemly muscle.
Given my illegitimate birth – which occurred when my mother was thirty-six – combined with our roots, peasant not patrician, and our working-class status in this country, it seemed Mom was forever posturing. Nonetheless, over time I convinced myself that my mother was indeed a most cultivated person. Hence my birth had to be a virgin birth. That would explain my father’s absence, though there was no kindly Joseph to lend an aura of respectability. Mom advised me never to kiss a boy. Kissing could cause pregnancy. Well, yes, if one thing leads to another, but how would my mom know?
’50s Style Theater seating
Mom’s interest in culture was insatiable. What she viewed as high culture most people would see as popular culture. We consumed it regularly and with religious fervor. We were fickle about our temples of worship. We opened our hearts at the Harbor Theater on Wednesday night, the RKO on Saturday afternoon, the Loew’s Alpine on Sunday, and for whatever reruns were on television at any given time. Because of movies we knew what to dream. They were our world; their luminaries our goddesses and gods. Audrey Hepburn, goddess of fashion. Cyd Charisse, goddess of posture. Katherine Hepburn, the great goddess of elocution. Grace Kelly inspired us to wear pearls, however faux our own five-and-dime pearls were. We did our best to meet the standard. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Jimmy Stewart were the gentlemen gods who shaped our expectations of men.
Our home back then was a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment on the top floor of a six-story four-section complex that was built in the 1920s before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Each of the four sections had an elevator, often in disrepair. Our apartment had French windows, which we found romantic and from which we could see the lights of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at night. The bridge didn’t open until 1964 and so it came to our landscape late. The requisite fire escape was outside the kitchen window, the only window without a radiator below its sill. It made a fine place to sit and read, write stories, and watch the cars below and the clouds above.
Our apartment, D61, was often blessed with rain in the form of leaks. Manna dropped from the ceiling in the guise of paint chips. If the people downstairs were too noisy, we tapped on the wood floor with the end of a broomstick. When there was no heat or hot water we consulted with the landlord’s wife, a common woman whose carelessly open closet displayed a frowzy collection of cotton house-dresses and limp lifeless sweaters. Mom always sniffed as we walked away, her sensibility offended. She said the woman’s hair was entirely too long and youthfully styled for someone of her station and maturity.
I remember my mother as so refined that when conflict arose between us she never fought or yelled or slammed a fist on the table. After a quiet well-barbed soliloquy, she went silent. If Mom’s anger was white-hot, she might not talk to me for years. The last episode of protracted silence extended from my fifteenth birthday until after my marriage. I no longer remember my original offense but a rebellious marriage to someone of a different ethnicity did nothing to serve the cause of reconciliation.
________
There’s my mother, the little girl on your left. She’s about seven in that sepia photograph – circa 1921 – where she stands alongside her mother and three of her six siblings. My mother’s mother is pregnant and in her mid-twenties. There would be four more children that survived out of eighteen pregnancies. Mom told me my grandmother was married off at twelve to a seventeen-year-old boy-man with something of a temper. They immigrated to this United States of America after the first two children were born, one boy (thank God!) and one girl.
I often look at that photograph of my mother and wonder what she was thinking. What did she long for? As she made her way around the old neighborhood and tried to grow beets in a wooden box on the tenement fire escape, certainly she dreamed of dressing in the latest rage. When, through the aegis of the New York Times Fresh Air Fund, she spent a month each summer at the Muzzi’s farm upstate, no doubt she fantasized about living where the air is clear and the spaces packed tight with solitude and well-occupied with growing green things. She often talked with longing of the fresh vegetables at the Muzzi’s and of a large accommodating farm kitchen.
Mom once landed a part in an elementary-school version of Aïda and got to wear a costume and make-up. Her father had her remove the red lipstick that was provided by a teacher. As an adult, Mom collected lipsticks. You wouldn’t believe how many different shades of red there are and how poetic the names: autumn rose, wild ruby, crimson dew …
Over time, the hope of being valued by a good man, of living in a garden apartment with something more than an efficiency kitchen, moved slowly out of reach. As Mom grew older, less nubile, and more invisible, she became more artful with her war paint and her dress. She no longer wore what jewelry she had as decoration, but as amulets.
Her decline must have started when she was pregnant with me. Coincident with that, she was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. Through the years and bit by excruciating bit, she lost organs: a breast now, then her thyroid, then her womb, a kidney and finally the second breast and lymph glands. I’m just a shell, she’d tell me before warming her soul by the cold fire of a movie screen. She would fight cancer on-and-off all her life. When the end came, she died in my arms of breast and colon cancer. She was seventy-six.
Mom was a good numbers person, always able to find work as a full-charge bookkeeper. When I was twelve, a particularly exciting opportunity came her way. A prospective employer flew her – a Kelly Girl ®, forty-eight years old – to D.C. for a trial assignment and a job interview. When she arrived, she found the possibility of permanent employment required a full medical exam. The exam, along with work history and evaluation, would be submitted to the board for review. All those men would see it. They might even discuss her lack of womanly organs at the board meeting, complete with board notes for the record. Embarrassed, Mom declined the interview, packed her bag, and found her way to the airport. That afternoon, she arrived back in New York at Idlewild.
Our Subway Station
The next morning, without even a nod to the well-bred goddesses and gods of mortal fancy, Mom threw on some clothes and grabbed my hand. An hour or so later we were in Manhattan. We went straight into Oscar’s. We didn’t stop in the hotel lobby for people-watching or give quarters to the ladies’ room attendant. We didn’t pay our respects to the Waldorf Astoria Clock. We just ate. Rather, I should say I watched. Mom ate. She cut her pancakes at punitive angles and made doleful jabs at the pieces with her fork. When she finished her serving, she moved on to mine. By the time Mom gulped her third coffee, paid the bill, and left a grudging tip, even my child-mind understood that our visits to Oscar’s for blueberry pancakes would no longer be part of a wistful dream. Lacking sacred ritual, they would devolve into compulsion. This was the beginning of Mom eating much too much and of me not eating quite enough. While Mom endeavored to bury her dreams, I sought to scrap their bones bare and set them free.
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. I’m in my fifth year of blogging at The Poet by Day, the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
April 7th marked Yom Hashoah, the Holocaust Remembrance of Judaism (and thank you to Dr. Erica Martin for bringing this to my attention). I have participated in several Yom Hashoah services over the years during my time as Ecumenical Liturgy Graduate Assistant at Seattle University. You will be brought to your knees acknowledging the atrocities that can be (and continue to be) committed in the name of humanity. And then further humbled by the acknowledgment of hope and transcendence that exists in the human spirit. A particular phrase that marks the worship service is, “We will never forget.” Let it be so.
Let us never forget that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to be silent.
Let us never forget that we are capable of unspeakable atrocities in the name of nationalism and in patriotism.
Let us never forget that by having a desire to punish at all costs, we create the monsters that haunt us.
Let us never forget that innocents pay the price of our decisions to turn away from caring for one another.
Let us never forget that holocausts continue and that genocide is still experienced.
Let us never forget the evil that haunts humanity.
But,
Let us never forget that a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly.
Let us never forget that caring for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger among us is a call to compassion at all costs.
Let us never forget that when we offer our neighbor care, we offer our care to the entire world.
Let us never forget that the peacemakers are blessed.
Let us never forget that those who are last among us, will be first.
Let us never forget that love overcomes evil.
And,
Let us never forget that no matter how small the light, it cannot and will not be overcome.
Blue-black hair, curls bursting and tied with string
Hands folded neatly, one little foot turned in
·
With dark doe eyes staring at the waiting world
Long lashed and bright with hope and longing
What future did those clear sparkling eyes behold
·
What music played the strings of that young heart
She must have dreamt of men and marriage,
Well, she would assume love as young people do
·
Some standard dreams maybe, the house with
A white porch and rocker, a picket fence and
A back yard of rich dark earth, flowers and fruit
·
Sweet children would be a part of this fairy-dream
Roses for birthdays, lilies at Easter, and garland in May
Christmas trees and mistletoe and other such …
·
As she watered rubby beets and greens on the fire escape
And helped her mother with chores and siblings
No doubt she dreamed dreams gifted by movies, magazines
·
As she tied her worn boots, getting ready for school,
Smoothing her hand-me-down dress, then running
Down the steps and on through the slums …
·
She must have dreamed then of ocean mists and
Fresh air, streets with trees and well-groomed homes
And well-polished horseless-carriages for transit
·
When she grew old enough did she wait hopeful
On well-worn curbs under jaundiced street lights
A ghetto-bound Diana waiting for her handsome Sheik
·
And he, the Sheik looking for his Sheba, did he find her
Did he take her hand as she stood lovely, innocent
And did he soon leave her only to be followed by another
·
Did each Sheik stay long enough to steal her heart
And riding off take another piece of her, a souvenir
Of yearning and promise, love and gullibility …
·
Is that why she lies here now, eyes grown pale, heart empty
And a silent wail rising from the sacred depths of her being
“The movies and the magazines”, she says, “they lied …”
Then whispered softly: “When Valentino died, women
lined the streets for his funeral cortége and cried … “
·
Rudolf Valentino as the Sheik and Agnes Ayers as Lady Diana.
“Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams. ”
—Rudolph Valentino – 1923
The BeZine 
