Monthly Archives: May 2009

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom

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While my father was and is the person I am heart and soul closest to in life, and Michael Sulsona long ago stopped being my friend because he is now my brother, it is my mother, born Leona Patricia Clark, who was my emotional and spiritual twin.

Inklings of this truth could be found like flecks of diamonds in the air,soon after we were reunited on January 8, 1987. My mother had to surrender me for adoption seven days after my birth on October 2, 1953. However, the first headline of this truth was brought to my attention by Paula, an extraordinary woman I was once married too.

It was days after our wedding in September 1991 and, unbeknownst to me, Paula was in the living room watching a video of our wedding. I was likely in another room writing or growling at a coffee maker to hurry up and make the damned coffee. Suddenly Paula called out, “Peter! Look at this!”

I went into the living room. Paula was rewinding the tape. “Watch this,” she said, pressing play on the remote. It was an over-the-shoulder shot of the minister, my first childhood friend, William Damrow. Paula and I were in the frame and behind us you could see our 30 or so guests. My mother, Virginia, was sitting in a chair on the far left and my mother, Leona, was standing on the far right of the gathering. It was the moment of our final vows and Pastor Damrow said, “Paula and Peter have asked that you hold hands with the person next to you during the next portion of their vows.”

And then it happened. Leona moved her way through the gathering until she reached my Virginia and took her hand in hers. My mothers held hands during our final vows.

“That’s you!” Paula said. “That’s where you get it from. How you see those moments in life, you get it from her.”

I got that and more from my mother, Leona, my spiritual and emotional twin, my familiar. Much more. From my mother, I got life. I can think of no greater gift.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

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It Is Always

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In the soft-sweet chambers of the dreaming human heart, hope draws its finest breath. There, in the rhythmic blood-flow butterfly-filled moment, the bond begins. There the ineffable connection between two people, exquisite as the diamond-lacing of morning dew on a blade of grass, all the fathoms of the soul strong, is born. There ,love begins, and, if we stay out of its way, grows. It is life and death’s finest gift. It is always.
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Corner Boys

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Hanging with my corner boys, staying back from yesterday’s noise, remembering the sad damp taste of the flesh on flesh of broken souls, fractured hearts, all scattered dust across pavement and garbage pail dreams.

Hanging with my corner boys, saying Rabbit, brother, get the fire stoked, the colds working our bones. The Kingdom of Willie and Joe moves on waves of ripple and wine, sad songs of broken times.

Hanging with my corner boys, waking this day to that dream just gone. In this day now, new dreams on the table. But the light cast by the Kingdom of Willie and Joe, warms me still and helps light the way.

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On Writing: Some Words from Dickens

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In a March 1836 letter to Catherine Hogarth, the woman who would later become his wife, Charles Dickens wrote, “I like the matter of what I’ve done to-day, very much, but the quantity is not sufficient to justify my coming out to-night.” Dickens was referring to his work on Pickwick Papers.

Among other books, I am reading The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Frederick W. Dupee, published in 1960. Like the glorious collection of John Steinbeck letters, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, this collection of Dickens’ letters brings me deliciously close to the writer himself. And oh my, what I would give to be in a conversation with Dickens and Steinbeck, Tolstoy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and believe me, many more.

But this sentence by Dickens, “I like the matter of what I’ve done to-day, very much, but the quantity is not sufficient to justify my coming out to-night” deeply resonated with me. As a writer I know I am not alone when I say that some who knows us react with a kind of deer-in-the-headlights look when I explain that I didn’t answer the phone because I was writing, or I need to get home or can’t come out because I am writing.

My closest friend in the world, Michael Sulsona, is, without question, one of the best playwrights and screenwriters in the country. And when I say one of the best, I really mean, one of the very best. He’s received many awards yet no producers (yet) have cleared their dust-filled heads long enough to realize they have a great American writer on their hands.

Michael wrote a play many years ago called, The Greatest Play Ever Written. It was performed on off-off Broadway. It is a comedy and is so damned funny when you would leave the theater you know you can forgo sit-ups for several months because you’re now the proud owner of six-pack abs.

 
Anyway, the play involves a struggling playwright who finds himself confronted by a brother-in-law who is entirely incapable of understanding that writing is hard work. In a moment of exasperation the playwright says, “I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders and my knees are buckling.” I know the feeling.

What is this essay all about? Not sure. Other than to say to anyone who is a writer or wants to be a writer, write. And if people don’t get it or don’t understand, the hell with them. Write anyway.

I’d like to talk to you some more but I’ve got to get back to my – wait for it – writing.

Condoleezza Rice Insults Mammals: Mammal Status Now in Jeopardy

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Condoleezza Rice insulted all mammals Monday when she told Stanford students that al Qaeda is a greater threat to the United States than the Nazis were. A mammal herself, though no longer a mammal in good standing, Rice’s bizarre and bogus claim has resulted in a furious uproar throughout the entire mammal community.

The lead council of the WMA (World Mammal Association) will go into emergency session in Brussels later today to consider revoking Rice’s mammal status. One person close to the council, who asked that her name not be revealed, said some council members question whether Rice was ever a mammal in the first place. “After all, there is something rather reptilian about her appearance, look at that face!” the source said.

Seaworld in Orlando Florida this morning reported that Shamu, the killer whale, held a closed door midnight meeting with several dolphins and they unanimously agreed to go on strike until Rice recants.

“She is a disgrace to all mammals past and present,” a visibly angry Shamu told members of the media after the meeting. Shamu and the dolphins refused to take questions.

Roa the Kiwi said Rice was, “a whack job.”

Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan released a statement late yesterday saying Rice’s statement reveals “she may be assertive but she is anything but calm. As a result of her disgusting assertion, all my dogs met and have chosen to go on a hunger strike. My family and I are considering joining them. After all, we are all mammals; Rice has disgraced us all.”

On the local level, this writer met this morning with his three dogs, two squirrels, three chipmunks, one deer (a doe), and a rabbit named Murphy with abnormally large buck teeth. All of us agreed that Rice may well be taking steroids because that would explain her behavior, not to mention her reptilian appearance.

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