Helping Not Helping

It's taking me two days to eat the pomegranate I retreived from the trash mash of failed vegetables. It was among the dark bruised avocadoes. I found a mango, too. A small triumph of retrieval and I had hopes for the firmness i felt among the soft alligator pears.

The bread this week disappointed. This excess spread over three six-foot tables, loaf upon sorry loaf of stuff I never ate and would not now eat.

Not eating what i never ate has served me well, so I starved genteely in the nursing home after feasting at the hospital where they made gourmet vegetarian options.

Each week some intrepid citizens get or others bring-- I've seen a large black man haul in the bread--- an array of discards.
One morning this included fruit tarts, cheesecakes, cakes as welll as the standard breads. And these not day old, but day of.... a marvel that often includes the multigrain artisanal loaves, my favorite being mutligrain with currants and sourdough pecan raisin.

Ahhh it would be nice to be able to get food from the supermarket. I have a lead again on someone to hire. And yes neighbors have offered, but one was unable to find raw almonds and it required five minutes of discussion to tell her what I meant and where to find them and still she returned with a tiny bag of slivered almonds for baking. I won't bother relate other failures to get single items, because I am grateful that should my need be dire I can make a request.... but old habits die hard and I so miss being resourced and rescourcefull

Anyway scrounging among the trash sometime yileds somthing and the avocadoes were mostly a waste but five spoonfuls from them was wonderful. And in addition to the alien and delicious pomegranate was a mango.

This saves me at least a meal of two extending the time between chinese food orders. And with a Christmas invitation to a mea, it has been a week and half since my last order. So when the Chinese food man came he questioned me a bit more closely as is to discern why I was three days late on my weekly call. We chatted about the two new years and he played with Obi who let him manipulate his body into silly anthropomorhic poses.

But I'm skipping the earlier part of the day. The crochet part has now spun off to a crochet blog. My tall nieghbor was talking to a short man who she kept insisting had a communication problem. His English was fluent and articulate so I didn't know what she meant. His hearing loss left him unable to hear the higher frequencies-- mainly women's voices. This makesme laugh. He is humorous and warm.

Turns out surgery has left him disabled and out of work and his hearing loss and lack of both money and equipment compunds the problem. All these troubles and challenges since coming from Cuba. Anyway I am moved to try to assist--- seems he's fixed several computers for folks but does not have one that works and has no internet connection to boot. I call the Center for Disability Rights--- why:? given thei utter lack of doing a single useful thing for me-- I don't know. Maybe because I believe his probelm is solvable. but no. They won't help me help him. He needs to call. I could have spit I would have or kicked or punched, because I see see seee the obverse of what happens to me.
their smug insistence in not helping and the way they find to not do anything. I'm trying to help the man get the MEANS
to help hinself. An Amplified telephone a TTY. Have him call theyy say make an appointment.

I remember frantically seeking a way to get connected and help to get connected to the net. And I remember frantically searching for the apartment and calling and calling and these organizations set up to help who? did nothing for me except make ecxcuses. And these are the same folks I called to find help shopping, to find help getting an automatic door put on a building that is HUD and asupposed to be wheelchair accessible and the hlep was never forthcoming, only the wasted time.

But I had to ask. and I did, for him. The Center for Indepent Living, as for me in the past, was ever so much more pleasant and kind. They suggested he stop by. I wrote down the information and left him a note under his door.

He was out conducting his own physical therapy, walking with a walker in need of repair. I hope I can hlep myself and then maybe find a way to help Mr. J.

New Star For Friends

I woke grateful to awake, grateful to still feel grateful for the moment of peace. And had an insight into the star, an idea for another approach, because a member of FFCrochet (the freeform group) had a problem with with the adjustable ring. So
before I arose, I made two lareger stars using another method, felted them and then while on Liftline, pencil and finger shaped their hangers.

Here they are:


Felted Star Ornament 2

Ch 4 , 9 dc in 4th ch from hook,join, ch1: 10 dc
2sc, sc, around, join, ch1:15 sc
sc,dc,trc,picot:(ch2, sc), trc, dc,sc, skip two sc, repeat: 5 points
sl st to first sc, fasten off.
Using contrasting yarn, pull through center hole sl st, ch1, sl st:
You could just sl st, but adding a ch1between sl st seemed to improve the pattern

(3.5” prefelted using Grand Patons merino wool)

It was sheer pleasure to lunch with my former colleagues and what treats: dim sum of bean cake, vegetable bun, scallion pancakes, unagi sushi( my favorite and boy was it buttery sublime with my mash of wasabi and soy swirled together in the lovely porcelain demibowl. And the sublime dipping sauce. The only sour note was the horrible tasting water, but i was too busy blabbing to remember to ask for tea or something bottled.... and too soon it was time for me to go. In my nervousness I thought that 90 minutes was plenty of time... I should have made it longer, but i did not wnat to sitting there alone waiting. part of it was that everyone arrived late... oh well, rain and the weird liftline bus driver who required 4 parking spaces to pick me up because she deemed two not enough and that would be paralell parking, despite that inanity, i was grateful to get out and actually have a conversation about something other than someone's loss, or mindless chitchat.... OTOH, there was a handsome young man driver who treated me so gently and shared his concern about getting to apply his schoolwork to the work world and I told him about myself and my father--- did we ever get to apply what we learned?

Nope not to work, but to ourselves, to our friends and loved ones, in service to our community only a lucky few get to do what they are trained to do--- truly... I was reviled when I tried to apply any of my newly minted MBA skills at the ad agency in the 70s... maybe they are smarter now, but I told him that work was hell but he seemed old enough to know the truth and he was to get his degree anyway and perhaps design a way for us to be free... howw I knew my faher's job was far far less than his intellect ranged until the end of his career when he traveled around the country advising on computerization and mechanization

Thank you dears for calling me out to play.... makes me remember the girls who cme to get me when I first moved to queens and would have just stayed inside and read, Lord bless them for coming to get me, in that way that kids know there is a kid in need, not the mean kid paradigm, but the other where somehow, the group of souls connect and bond and Leslie Walker, Sharon Brown, and Cynthia Atkinson came and got me and rescued me and helped me grow. Thank you dear ones.

Like meeting Marilyn Beverly as a prefreshman at Williams College that was some magic i grokked her we were both music majors she a violinist-- that was my first instrument and I was a cellist , basoonist and singer and here we were two young black women going offf to this formerly all male cold hostile New England Berkshire barren psycholgical gulag,leaving the Emerald City behind--- what were we thinking? We should've gone off to the Sorbonne or Oxford-- we would've been treated better and come back with exotic connections and had a hell of a lot more fun. oh well....and going to discos in Manhattan wearing those six inch platforms I bought on 8th street and loved so much-- trying to walk with them up that steep Harlem hill on/by Edgecombe Avenue.

My my my . Rescue me rescue me.... Andrea rescued me this year and all praises as did Karen and Jim and Jacqui
and all those who worked on the benefit for me thank you dears and all those poets who sent money that kept me from starving and living in the street. Thank you thank you thank you. Connie and Louise cutting my lawn o! thank you thank you I've never neede so much help ever before... how is my catalpa that i palnted? My new maple? my emotional rescue. my material rescue. Keep those cards and letters coming folks. Keep me in your prayers I want to rise up and walk again and make my way.

I no longer ask to be without pain, I would take the pain to walk again, because it hurts anyway, everyday. Be clear, i say, what do i need? To walk again and then I can get all I need, myself. sigh.

Designing, Discovering

Felting did not yield quite what I wanted…
For some flowers the densification was a muddying

For the bud and sepals, a caressable object that suggests an organism was formed.



I’ve tormented myself searching for a solution to my flower scarf. I wanted it to be flowers and leaves. Then I thought of oversizing the leaves, then the ever challenging for me question of color.





Especially now when I do not have my stash, my “fiber office” as my second niece, when a baby, so aptly named the room that was the library and yes was filled with books, but whose closet and diaper station turned into yarn shelves, and floor spoke of fiber use.

I see my table top loom there on the floor by the fronT facing window. O lord let me walk again..please!

Back to today’s narrative which is about design and my limitations. I feel it like a craving like a hunger that can’t be sated until it is enumerated, articulated, clearly defined, spelled out.

My next flower pattern set was to be Akua’s Fabulous Furled and Fluffy Flowers which I so thouigth that the wool felting would improve but no… To be fulfilled in felt the design owould have to be amended as the furled petals hardened and were wayward and the fluffy petal, so dependent on stitch construction for their loft, deflated.

I saw two commercial flowers that I dug.


http://www.cardsandcraft.co.uk/embellishments/405-big-crochet-flowers.html/1418.jpg



http://www.meimeicrafts.com/images/flowers



One took more work than my nature-mimic multilayer rose and it is flat, but the spoke rays of it are energetic and while my color pallet is more winter than n summer, the stretch and size of it gave me some new thoughts about the flower scarf.









Then I found this flower and loved loved loved the spiral and was reminded that a simple embelishment of the crochet hook and yarn itself could be used to enhance the flower.
At Gourmet Crochet













This Bolivian scarf showed an oversized direction but it's not integrated....
http://thestripeysheep.co.uk/index.php?itemID=161&jump=navbar#navbar
http://www.rosylittlethings.com/scallop.html-- $68 ?!
http://www.imaybeknittingaranchhouse.com/archives/2006/10/a_free_scarf_mo.html
between this and this

I knew there was an easier way:
http://heidisknittingroom.com/BoleroCrochetMotifs.htm

this suggests joining as you go:

(http://www.oaktrees.org/blog/?page_id=119)

and that's just what I've developed for this very greengold or browngreen--everything else made it look heavy. and the makeflowers sew two together was too much sewing and I did not to be another mere.near doily flower maker. I remember thinking about interlocking rings, so that's what I've designed: interlocking flowers, one open and the sme motif with a densified center, making it slightly larger.... I wonder if I want a their flower, but it's so wonderful that as I complete a flower, it's complete!

Little Spiral Star Tree Ornament

I need some gift-ettes and thought-- I've got some wool-- I can felt some stars for trees!
This whole process took about 20 minutes--- from crocheting through felting. It's adorable and
feels affectionate.

Little Star Tree Ornament

Make loop( aka magic ring), 5 sc in center, sl st to first sc,
2 sc in each sc, join to first :10 sc
Change yarn, in any sc : *sc, dc, trc, sc, skip sc* repeat: 5 points/petals. sl st to first sc, fasten off.
With contrasting thread up through center hole, sl st in spiral, grabbing vertical threads of sc.
(I'm going to use a spiral sl st in a lot of plain centers --- inspired by this at Gourmet Crochet



After crocheting, I did some tugging to pull the points...if i could, I would have steamed this flat first.
I then "finger felted" it --- ( place Little Star under hot water in sink, a dab of dish washing liquid and rubbing between palms and on scrubby. I then tugged on the points, reshaping it rinsed in cold water and pressed to damp dry.... again if i could, I would speed this drying with an iron).

I don't have any ornament hangers, but I will make one using some brass wire that it have: I'll make a spiral and then a 90 angle,poke it through a point and then make another spiral/curve at the top.
I'll put up a picture as soon as it dries a bit.

By the way-- it works unfelted, too.

Joy in the making,
Akua

Leaves

For that they shelter yet fall
fall and cover
save from rain
rain they sift down
dry water
becasue they effloresce
as dying flame some
their last days
because their name is
stands for single thing
a page or many and
departure because
so much has left

i miss my catalpa. She leapt large and survived that first year's attacks to produce leaves bigger than my head.
What is she like now i send her my love and my apple tree too....

I've been designing leaves and now have some woold to evolve Aku's furled and fluuffy fflower patterns with to make the
multiflower and leaved scarf....

Gifts for the Givers

Here by the Grace of God, I am. The flying fickle finger of fate pointed and I am hobbled, cracked in half, rolling rolling rolling along. I am busy busy busy making making gifts for those who kept me alive this year, whose efforts on my behalf kept me alive. and ooooo i ache so again i pray this burning twiching numness means awakening, but I don't know.

I've been making bracelets and flowers and designed an eyeglass case/ Cellphone case for the step mum who reveled that she is a gree person.

How did i miss all these calls to make things to give to the needy babies. My head is so sensitive to heat loss, I have designated one of my hats as my sleep hat. The Save the Children organization is sponsoring a charity knit/crochet project entitled Caps to the Capital. Warm caps to keep babies' heads warm and needed medical supplies and interventions can help lower the death rate among newborns. The caps will be mailed by January 2, 2007 to Save the Children. "In January, Save the Children will deliver caps, along with the notes, to the President in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate that Americans want to do more to save the lives of newborns around the world. All the caps that have been donated will then be delivered to newborns and families in countries where Save the Children works."

Now the All Crafts for Charity folks got me started and It took SEVEN phone calls before I got through to the Golisano Children's Hospital... sure reminds me of why people don't volunteer this was an incredible round of phone tag for the person to tell me to just drop by--- which i cannot do.So finally she gave me the adddress to mail things to: Neo NatalIntensive Care Unit Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box 619-334 Rochester, NY 14692 She said they need everything: botties, hats, blankets...

Looking, Learning, Designing

I've been thinking about leaves and scarves and developing a (new for me ) leaf pattern.
It's a maple leaf. I've got a new flower in process, too. I'm working on a leafy, viney scarf
pattern, but I'm tugged toward freeform.


Amazing as I completed objects to be given away, I got a gift... a wonderful box of yarns, hooks, candies and needles and angels from CA in Montreal. Merci mille fois, ma chere! I've been dining on these felt creations
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/hats.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=74

Elina Saari is so compelling--- I want everything I see and the pictures from her workshops are
so exciting. You can tell they worked with souls alighted there, the energy leaps out of the pictures
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/process.php

I've been working on a reindeer and then saw this and was annoyed at my own literality
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/other.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=6
http://www.feltfaction.fi/ENG/other.php?page_num=1&showimage=yes&img=19

Re/Purposing

I was given a huge white Granny square and its accompanying white yarn. A neighbor's mother saw my sign asking for stuff and brought in her mother's? sister's? hooks and this one square and white yarn. She looked to young to be his mother and I was so touched when he asked if it was me who had posted the sign and introduced me and she explained how this person was no longer able to think/pay attention enough to make anything. So this repuposing is a wonderful arc of giving.

I made the square an envelope/pouch and picoted all around it.

I liked the efficiency of this pattern the best. Seamless:
http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/quick-bootie.html

I read several patterns that suggested using worsted and G hooks even this said I or J!
I think I ended up with the right size using worsted weight and an E. I did all the sc in the back loop because I think someone on the All Crafts for Charity list said that gave the bootie some elasticity.

I amended it a bit more by adding two rows of my favorites picot:( sc,ch2,sc in the same stitch)
http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/tinybooties1.html

I also thought this was a great pattern, too!
Also seamless,it just seemed to work up a bit too big for preemies....


I made a simple white hat that also has this picot edging.
So gee, a set is made!

It occurs tome that this is something that this troubled city might do more of-- maybe there's a way to organize people to make things locally--- and the Red Scarf campaign in January--- red scarves for orphans at college --across the U.S,
sounds wonderful... but it would be cool to teach some young folks to crochet and make things for themselves and make things to give to needful others, the poor preemies, the homeless---but I'm still struggling to find a niche for my work, and a way to again create a way to make money. but oh, I'm not going to let go of this glow just yet,

Meditation and Prayer

Meditation helps but I can't say how. I've been praying with my crochet. I miss the fire of flameworking and the sweat of mold making in kilncasting, the things that totally absorb and let me be in the lfow. Poetry is so hard for me when life is so hard, because I just write write write about my grief and anger. And my anger is not so much about my predicament but about how people treat me: the doors that are so hard hard hard to open even with uppre body strength I never dreamed to have. Being left to bang my way in the the morning and out in the afternoon.

If I say the right prayer will it all be open sesame and click click clikc like the clicks that i felt as i could not move and tumbled to the floor, will it all click click back in operation? I've got to walk again, so I can see my father before his forgetting erases me from his memory. He was such a wonderful raconteur, the dad other kids wished they had and they were so right to desire him, because i was grateful he was and is my father. I've got to walk again so I can see my nivlings. My aunt and uncles were such a part of me showing me who to be and not to be, how I miss the beautiful young people! I dreamt of Paris and this time there was a neighborhood that tunrd into queens--- new paris with single fmaily homes and down that block was beach and the sea and again golden sand. British columbia was discussed at Thanksgiving and Vancouver with islands and city and sea and green
all put together, a paradise.

Flying Hooks, Healing Heart

My crochet hooks and yarn are my glass of wine. And they are what they are and they are also stand ins for the many things I got to make so easily, now out of reach. Though today, 65 degreees in November, the apartment just aglow with painterly light, Garrison Keillor's skewed crooning like a familiar friend, like my father and family just singing around the house and not caring how good it sounds, ahhh Garrison, thanks for telling the world to sing just because it makes peace more possible....

I digress, becuase I wanted to write about creating, such as it remains for me. After a long wait, the inexpensive wire cutter arrived... a three-week wait for tools I already own, (bad E-Bay seller!) but no longer can bound up stairs to get,,, my heart calls out to my tools, stay ready for me, wait for me, I want to use you again.

I am vetting my flower pattern. I second guessed myself and realized I had it right the first time, but then created a variation on the flower: 10 petals. this crowds it a bit, but it increases the twirl.

And now I have at last 3 hats to keep my head warm and attractive and it's up to 60 something! No complaints, it's easiest to wheel through sunshine and warmth than it is snow and rain.


All praises for winter not arriving until December 22,





for light filling the shortened day. For the kindness of strangers who included me in their vegan Thanksgiving family gathering which was so so so exquisite and heartful and warm and fun and delicious and o! what joy to be able to and desirous of eating every good and dleicious thing offered!!!It's been over a deccade since I've had ice cream and the soy turtle and vanilla bean with pumpkin pie almst made me sob with gratitude. How I misss being able to cook, I was so good at
plaeasing mine and others' palates and since being stricken, I've starved for decent food, having lost over 50 pounds at last reckoning, because I refused to eat drek in the nursing home. This was food to give thanks for.

My gratitude to those who wrote me about the blue flower, after so much tapdancing on my head, I cherish every kind word and the affrimation that I can add value to the world, despite my limited circumstances. I am amamzed at how limitless I once felt "bigger than my body gives me credit for" (that yummy song by John Mayer) and I guess I still am. Thank you!

Another Blow Another Blessing

So wham bam I've been fired. Though the terminlogy was "the position will be terminated, blah blah blah" I was struck as to how I've been working for a fraction of what I earned in my past incarnation as a corporate citizen, with resources a fraction of what I had as a corporate maiden, with multiples of the effort as I was always putting out fires or trying to find a match. Yeah wildly mixed metaphors as I know now the extent to which I have been used abused and then er dismissed, my decency and committtment counted on --- or worse yet not even counted on, as this outrageous turn of events occured even as the
invitations to a major event had just arrived and sat at hand.

I was advised kindly to just leave the last lap to be run by those who remain: 2 other part timers and the big guy. And there is that about me that just wanted to wash my hands of it, and my energy has been very low, I'm tired and have to continually
relinquish the thoughts of the future--- next year is today in my endeavor, but I have to curtail the mental self talk about the
stuff I need to respond to and put in palce for the future now--- ad and publication closings are now for the spring in some instances and let it go let it go let it go.

I haven't had a vacation this year, and the only days off have been our holidays-- labor day and independence day so December
I get to catch up? not. I'll have to hustle.

Toward the gentle hustle, I've created more dolls and designed a flower whos pattern i hope to sell er, that i hope someone will buy, as I researched online and couldn't see any that did quite what i wanted with the dimensional rose form.

When i came in to the building and ran into Jim delivering my mail from home, hours away, saw Dorr the flower arranger, who creates beauty in the lobby; and went to visit Donna, the older lady with a beautiful wise faced tabby girl cat who gave me gorgeous cotton yarns, a book with several ideas, big handsome buttons and who liked the flowers i had made for her, by way of thanks for her other gifts...

she offered to a solid soleplate iron, which i craved so much last year, to iron paper.

The next day I got gifts from my wonderful angel friend and dry humor woman, Andrea in Chi-town and a bag of books
I'm saving to open from writer friend Robert and I see this as the universe saying don't cry,dear, here is some beauty and love.

And so yes, yes, thank you thank you o love o love that plays wondrous jazz on the radio and there's Ornette Coleman still creaing and sonny Rollins still creating and yikes! I tol myself I would be playing my tenor with ease by 50 and can I learn to blow sitting down?


Just need to walk again.

Don't metaphor me

Don’t metaphor me. My condition is not a metaphor, it is . It is dependence, denial, fatigue, extra effort, discomfort. It is insight, determination, overcoming deterrence….yeah all of that. Constraint constraint
pain

How I want to smack the able who want to compare their mental ills and woes to my Situation.. look if I’m depressed up up the proverbial creek without a paddle
If you’re depressed you can at least wlak it off, or get yourself to a phramacy

The day they take their minds in hand, they can jump up off their butts and do whatever they want. I cannopt jump up, I can not run away, /I can’t even rest in this purgatory of perpetual tween ness…. There is no down other than prone. I’mm sitting up until I lie down and the only place I have to be other than my chair is my bed.


I heard a story on NPR about a young man who can’t walk or see…. He said he would prefer to be able to walk to being able to see. He didn’t want to be dependent.

I don’t want to choose or swap, but it underscored for me how dire my situation is and how little people get it…

Okay maybe not people, just a friend who knows she’s bugging me but hasn’t quite figured out how to reign herself in, contain her mess and stop spritzing me with errant psychic mouth spit.

Though I don’t want to make a target of a friend, don’t want to mimic that stupid human habit of knocking those closest, just because they are within arm’s reach.
She thinks she invokes understanding by comparing her
Inability to move on, change, get things done to my inability to move.

I had a fight last week. Some recessive chinned, slack bodied, round spectacled dufus put his clothes in the dryer where my clothes were washed. I caught him on the elevator, departing just as I arrived and yelled did you put clothes in this dryer—as I heard it whirring and saw a cart on the departing elevator.

And it became physical, I threatened to remove his clothes form the dryer and he draped himself over the dryer!!!!! And there was even a sign that says DO NOT use the room if the room is in use….

He hadn’t looked, the washing machine was full of MY black clothes… and long story short, he removed the clothes and called me a b… and I started yelling
Louder and louder, insulting him and not cursing, berating him til he fled…..

Not wise, but satisfying.

When I was a kid we used to philosophize, if we had to lose something, what would it be?

I love music and art so I couldn’t choose between sight and hearing. I never thought about mobility.

I desperately need to find a nondemeaning endeavor a resourced and supported position where the phone works, e-mail works, I can use the bathroom and get something to drink when I need it--- where is this paradise--- ahhh, right here, relatively.

I have reconnected with my fiber muse. I long for my stash of yarns--- I have at home a closet full. And I miss my looms and wools and bags of color sorted yarns, but despite this lack the hooks that I brought here have helped me.

And my small handwriitten sign requesting buttons, fabrics, an L hook and yarn has yielded all.

I made thank you gifts for my first donors. The cleaning lady, responded with yarn and yarn and lovely fabrics for which I made her a snow man. But she wanted a Snow Man and I followed the chubby doll in Creative Crocheted Dolls by Noreen Crone Findlay and he is a hit. She hugged him to her. I felt wonderful to be able to again, make something and see a bit of joy in the world.



A colleague brought me a bag of stuffing so I could stuff the big red doll ( About a foot long) which began as an amigurumi doll and her head said keep going.

Now I am wild about amigurumi, well not wild but it has lead me to make goddesses and I again long for all the things I had at hand for their adornment….

For that colleague I made a mouse, somehow that pattern came and I love how I just dug the hook in the fabric of the body and crocheted the ears in tho the body vs making ears and sewing them on.

Music heard seomthing healing in the singing of bariton Jesse __ wish I knew exactly which pieces move me—one was a poem and then to hear the story of Tscaninin whose death was called for and how he played Barber whose music I bagn to appreciate in 1997, after my mother died and I was at Chautuaqua, and now Thistle and Shamrock where Fionna Ritchie speaks form such a place of clarity and passion and culture and her narrative last week the story od Dierdre
Wjust touched me so… o not the fatedness of it but the love and the man not listening and it reminded me of Firethorn where life is full of knights and blodd and women who do not get to choose, but do anyway.

I am miss Paul Mazursky who is in town with Next Stop Greenwich Village a movie that I adore adore
And it speaks to the life I thought I would have when I came home to New York City after college, but the Village already cost waaay too much. What was still affordable were the brownstones in Brooklyn , but the
Commune of folks fell apart--- and to think we could have had those 4 incredible floors of handsome expansive house for a mere $80,000.

There are so many pasts to remember and I want more of them. The fall light took me back to my apartment on 5th avenue, that ran from fron to back of the building
So I had street and back yard and Russell the photographer reappearing….. ahhhh I want the sweetness of life again

Technology Connects, Creating Heals

I saw pictures of Anthony, many pictures of this new person, so far from his parents who work here, 6 hours north of New
York City. His father showed me his beautiful big cheeked bouncing baby boy on his phone. The phone's letters were in Chinese.
Amazing, no more wallet photos, but digital, portable and always with him.
Anthony is tended by his father's mother and father. His mother is back, taking my credit card number, transcribing my order.

I weep for them and envy them. So young and with dreams and a plan and working so hard. I celebrate them. I think of how my mother told me she had to bring me to her mother, that I spent the first six weeks of my life in my grandmothers top dresser drawer on 160 West 144th street between Seventh in Lenox in Harlem USA, a few doors down and across the streeet from my grandparents' store that my grandmother ran.

I will never forget their hard work.

My unmet friend--- someone I've yet to meet and yet have spent much time and life changes with over the years--- he too has a brand new son, named Che. Che is in Tanzania while his father is in Tunisia, well London at the moment.

I exalt in the wondeful images of Tunisia, Tanzania and the beautiful brown babay boy and again--- soon lapse into
yearning to be able to move at will.

i pray to craft a way out of this inability, this frailty. I am demeened and exploited, betrayed by the very endeavor I fought so hard to sustain and maintain. I had my acute therapy occur here, so I could be near my work, work now denied me because I cannot walk. Old News, I know but I return to the red faced fury unloaded on me, the exploitative inequity and yearn to
be able to walk away. "I been 'buked and I been scorned. I been talked about, sure as you're born"

I've eased my hunger to create in the way I did last yea, and now cannot, by crocheting. I've completed a snow man for the cleaning lady who
so graciously gave me a jar of buttons, a crochet hook, two yards of fabric and yarn, He follows the snow man in Crocheted Dolls by Noreen Crone Findlay,

( a wonderful woman, because she led me and others to create dolls to raise money for victims of the Tsunami ( among the many other ways in which she gives and shares and heals). That effort demonstrated for me a way in which to give, when I thought I had nothing to give. I created in the face of destruction and yes, sold a doll, made money and was able to send money..)



I had free formed a 3 globe pile of snow kind of object for her, but then I realized she wanted this bi bellied humanoid, She digs him--- I just want to record him before I gift her.

I made a big red buxom female-- my first art doll in a long time, and I've made a small goddess figure that I wanted to
wing,but the gilded and sparked black of her body and her 4 yarns or red hair suggest gold wings vs the pastel yellow acrylic
I had thought at first to apply.

I've made several mice--- my own pattern-- and gave two of them away-- again to people who gave me materials. I've desigend a leaf bracelet, a small heart pin and acquired mother of pearl buttons to create some button necklaces.
I've begun to work on gifts for the holidays for the women who have so generously helped me this terrible. terrible year.

This has done something comforting and healing for me. This and seeing the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit in an accesssbile
and easily maneuvered space, and then writing a poem about the piece I chose-- On the Patio VIII (1950).

There is joy in the making.

Egg Foo Young

It's a chinese omelette--- I tell my brother---
Remember when Mommy had an epiphany and began to make scrambled eggs with stuff in it and then began to whisk in soy sauce? smacking forehead--- must be where we got it from-- we'd been ordering it for years!

Anyway my favorite egg foo young is now shrimp egg foo young because the folks upstate don't use the any of vegetables that came in my downstate egg foo young-- snow peas, etc. but the Chinese always had fried onions and and peas in their egg foo young.... i don't like the baby corn but love the sprouts and water chestnuts...

i too say hold the gravy, as our father did--- soy sauce or hot sauce is enough for me.

When I was in the hospital one of their vegetarian offerings (the food was unbelievably good and they
called it "room service") anyway there i got into salsa with my omelettes, yum!

My 50 plus pound weight loss was doubtless aided by the dagger-in-my-gut contrast between the incredible menu at the hospital and the worst of cardboard and frozen fakery at the nursing home.....

My friend took me to task about eating-- are you getting fresh food? The only reasonalbe food option for me is Chinese food. No grocery store in this part of the world delivers. And way cheaper than the delivered meals-- I live on $30 plus tip a week of food wheareas the old person frozen meal is $8 a meal.

And yes, one or two neighbors have offered to shop for me. But each failed my test. I asked for things not critical to life and limb--- extra shopping bags, laundry detergent--- and each time it was such an enormous difficult deal, dear readers, when what you ask for does not arrive, unless, alas, you are ordering Chinese food from the menu.

So I continue to pray to find my way out of this sad sad mess. A neighbor has called me 4 times today and knocked on my door twice, but this 3 days after *not* delivering what she both offered and promised, when she said she would.

And the drag is to be ready to recieve, I have to be ready, I must be out of bed and in the wheel chair and dressed and not in the midst of any of the tasks of living that take me an inordinate amount of time to do....

Yes,, yes, people were always flakey. I have to remind myself that though all discomfort is magnifieed by the lack of my previous coping mechanisms: snatch up the task and do it myself, go for a looong walk and walk off the stress, run down to my studio and make something, ... that though it feels worse, it is not necesarily so.

I always have to translate to myself, weigh.... how much time do I have? How much energy do I have? less than before
less than before, less and yes yearning, praying, crying for more

Snips

“ Stand.
In the end you’ll still be you, on that’s done all the things you set out to do”
----Sly Stone

Thank you my brother for sending this. Stand was part of the liturgy when I preached in the youth service at the Presbyterian Church. How wonderful our youth was!

“ you’re still the same person. You are still you”
----ex exec, hospital tray server and spirit tender



Why does the Medical supply company, sending me an adaptive e device pack it in an oversize box full of Styrofoam bits that require enormous work to corral, contain and dispose?

Why are the lift doors at work nearly impossible to open, causing me to almost yank myself out of my wheelchair to open?

Same for the doors at my aprtment building?
Why do people think it’s okay to touch my wheelchair?
Why have people begun to pat me on the head?
Why would I be invited to a reading where I could not be dropped off at the door to building at which I would enter?

Why do people call and expect me to answer the phone--- this might not be true even if I
Was walking it is less true not that I’m not--- if I’m not sitting right by the land line, it will take at least 30 seconds for me to reach it….

Even as Bonnie Raitt Sings I will not be Broken

I've written Oprah:

Dear Oprah Winfrey Grand Dame of Dreams and President of Promising Possibilities,

I want to walk again
On November 14, 2005 at 302 am I fell down and could not get up. After many painful tests, I was diagnosed with idiopathic transverse myelitis which means that something they can’t pinpoint has disrupted my spinal cord, nerve function and the signals from my brain don’t reach my legs.

I am single, African American and 53. I had just returned to work after having retired because my investments lost their value; the man I loved and planned to live with, left, and the small town I lived in shrank as the company closed factories and laid off workers. I lost the possible audiences for my workshops and buyers for my art and jewelry.
The three galleries I had work in, closed. My new job as director of marketing and development for a small nonprofit was just two months old when I was stricken. My prognosis is: they don’t know. I am determined to recover. Until then I need help.

I would like to make my house accessible. I reside in a concrete box in Rochester, a barely wheelchair accessible apartment nearly two hours away from my house in Corning, NY. My age makes me ineligible for the senior benefits and supports but I am no longer young and have no familial resources. I emptied my savings and cashed in investments to pay my mortgage and bills while I was in the hospital and then in the nursing home…. I thought I had planned well—I have 3 degrees and acquired some skill in creating things—my first solo show was in Chicago in 2001. I’ve won the National Endowment for the Arts and other awards for my poetry. But I’ve had a series of bad breaks. Nearly everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. Can you help connect me with those who could retrofit my home, so I could return to it?

Thanks for listening.

Akua Lezli Hope

Mobilization 1

I'm not immobile. I can't walk.
I do wheelchaior pushups
and thank myself for maintaining
an above average flexibility
making it easy fro me to touch my toes
massage my feet and manipulate my legs.
***********
I read about a quadiplegic in NYC leaving home
buying his $625,000 apartment and renovating it so he can
ride his wheelchair into the shower....

Even with more than 600 hundred grand to spend, he had trouble finding an apartment.

He works from 7:25 a.m. til midnight and has a full day attendant
who sponge bathes him each a.m.......

and guess where he's from? Rochester!
where i dwell in double exile-- not home in my houseand not home in New York City
*******************


Donald Trump wants you please respond
Black Incomes Surpass Whites in Queens
Are your emoticons boring?
Millions of people are doing this
A years worth of diapers

(email subject lines)

Held Hostage

I was held hostage to incompetence -- then again aren't we all? My particular ride in terror is reported in this letter to the person in charge of LiftLine

***************************************
September 4, 2006

Dear Mr. LeChase,

I find your response woefully inadequate.

Had any other citizens been TRAPPED on a bus for TWO HOURS after an expected 7 Minute ride,
there would have been a great hue and cry
.
Why did it take over a week of repeated communication to get a letter that in essence, EXCUSES
your inadequate procedures and contains 4 one way ride tickets?

This is more than a day late and a dollar short.

I called you while on the bus and in the midst of this horror. I lost my peace of mind, and two hours
of my life not knowing what would happen next, when the expected help continued to not arrive!!!
I expected to have a prompt reply and *at least* a month's worth of tickets.

Why is there such a profound failure of empathy here? I need LiftLine because I am paralyzed -- that your system has no back up plan when it fails, when I, the CUSTOMER am in essence told to take it on the chin --- for two hours-- I find it WRONG WRONG WRONG.

The whole process is out of whack--- why did I need to bring this to your attention through follow up letter when I called you While I was trapped on the bus?!
*******************************************

yeah... the lift didn't work and they sent no mechanic for 2 hours i just rode around while the bus made deliveries.


Bus # 554 and the driver -- i won't mention herSeeing her brought all the trauma back.

Delivery

The fifth time I repeated my credit card number to the Chinese food guy, I was annoyed. I rifled through the papers on my desk and considered other take out places. It took three tries for him to get the number right and he then put it in twice, getting some message.
“Another card my friend,” he said “try another card.”
“No” I said.
So he did it again, saying it out loud and on the sixth try, inverting the numbers of the expiration date. So then there was the seventh try. I was about to say never mind.
"What does -- he spelled some letters unintelligibly to me.
"I don't know," I said. "It sounds like it's something to do with you."
He calls somewhere. His wife, who makes all this smooth as ice, is not there.
I presume he calls her. I hear him shouting right in my ear in Chinese, clipped and plucked a, language of pizzicato strings.
"Okay okay" he says.
Eight try, ninth try, He spells the letters to me.
"S-e-t -G-l-o-b-e "
"Set Globe. That's definitely something to do with you."
"What is Globe? What is Globe?"
I try to think of other words, earth, round, something you have to fix, a button you have to push.
Then "AH Ah AH" whatever it is, he remembers, finally. He does it. My credit card goes through....
"I'm sorry, " he apologizes, "My wife knows how to do it and she is not here.
She had to go to the hospital."

"What?"
" O she okay" he says, "she is having a baby."

I remember how he was looking for an apartment and how months ago we had talked about my first apartment. He said he went to see it and they said they only wanted someone that was 50. I envision now how lovely it would have been for them-- all those built-ins and the huge kitchen, access to the yard and the clothesline.

When he arrives, he chides me. Where was I Saturday? He had called me, because I did not place my order on Friday or Saturday as I usually do.
"I was worried about you, my friend," he says.
I remind him hot, hot it was.
"I didn't eat everything, I ate very little," and still had most of last week's broccoli in garlic sauce, my favorite hot or cold, in the refrigerator.

I change the topic and ask him the baby's name. He says he doesn't speak English very well and maybe I can help him with a name.
“Well what is he like... “ but then i learn, he isn't here yet.
“She is in New York. She is going to the East side”
“ What you're not with her? She's in New York City? OOO!”
“Well, I had to open the restaurant” he says. This is his second child. He couldn't let the restaurant be closed.
“O the baby isn't here yet! And she is in New York City to have the baby” tears well up in my eyes.

And i am so glad that i didn't blow up or curse him out or say never mind as he fumbled through the part of he business that his wife did. Tears blurr my vision, I start mumbling blessings... I am so overwhelmed with the what's and the why's. I was glad i had said the baby should have a Chinese name not just an English name, and he says “Thank you my friend for caring.” as he backs out the door, waving at the cats.

I feel so overcome by all that i didn't and don’t understand, why i'm in a wheelchair and female and black and feeling the huge lack of what all i once was and had, and here he entrusted me with something precious, this American newer than me.

And i weep and weep when he leaves and i don't quire know why.

It's the worst egg foo young ever and the best broccoli and shrimp fried rice.
I say a prayer for him and his new baby and wife.

Quiet Magic

An old lady neighbor who talks to me, tall i think, thin, white, bent but not quite broken over her walker short white hair long face slim in summer colors blue pants white striped top chats, about the heat.

She resembles someone. She ha a slight accent to her speech, as in been here a long time but from some other country. Her mouth moves when she speaks, her teeth white, visible, attractive.

i missed it i said, i've been inside the cool

She felt it outside feeding the birds but

"i don't have an air conditioner" she said, and i thought, that she didn't couldn't afford it,
had to economize on everything: her stockings, not buying clothes to afford it, or was it unaffordable...

i know, i agree about economizing"
She exits before me and chats gently gently
on the other side of the long-open, slow-to-close, elevator door

and i chat back gently and as it at last starts to creak close
i wish her a good evening and she says

i love you

and it is as if she is a medium because it is said without confusion or apology
it is said where i expect only goodnight or goodbye or see you soon
it is offered where i expect nothing of understanding no inkling of the
fizzling sparks that shoot through the legs, my unmet desire to leap up from the
chair that is both vessel and vehicle.

and i think it is a message and i am so startled and so touched and so grateful

and it is so ..strange but really because it didn't feel strange at all

Thank you