Memory Palace*

One begins with a real place --
Grandmother’s house full of knickknacks,
a beloved bedroom hideaway,
the special corner of a favorite coffee shop,
the hidden stacks of Bizzell Library,
Heidelberg’s Bahnhof,
my lofty terrace overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea --
a place so real that you can float above it,
twisting and turning from top to bottom,
every angle familiar, 
placing objects in perfect settings,
framed by memories,
flooded in sounds and smells and tastes.
A place so real that you do not need it.
Keep it anyway.
For ever, for ever after.
Decide how you will travel through your memory palace.
If you want to remember in a special order,
define a route you can follow over and over,
‘til it becomes unconsciously there.
Move through your palace,
marking locations to store your memories --
landmarks, crossroads, shadows, colors,
sizes, smells, symbols.
Fill your palace with images that can store your truths for the years
when time will eat away thoughts that fill the mind now -- the yellow kitten that spits and scratches holds that first heartbreak,
the scratchy record player warns of Death’s close seductive song, 
the soft gray angora granny square quilt can be the mother lost,
the snap of a Waterman fountain pen can save every poem,
the smell of a honeycrisp apple sings of survival and joy,
the taste of Brunello will kiss a lover’s lips forever.
For ever ever after.
*Apologies to Matteo Ricci and Jonathan D. Spence (The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci).

Totally Inappropriate

Leonard Nimoy Dies 27 February 2015

I had such an inappropriate obsession with the Spock character, so here is my totally inappropriate poetic tribute --

Star Trek Again

Do you remember
lusting after the alien,
just devilish enough
for a teenage girl
to know it was so wrong
to want his hands on her,
to ache to see yearning
in his cold intellectual eyes?
How might that first forbidden desire
have encouraged
other adventures,
other dark quests,
for reluctant passions?

Leonard Nimoy Dies February 27, 2015

Anyone else remember Pon Farr? I actually got to interview Nimoy when he spoke at OU for the Oklahoma State Psychological Association in 1968. Liked him, but he was NOT Spock. Must have been a great actor...

Sienese Dreams

The Daunting Saga of the 37 Tunnels

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The GPS says I am 3 hours 54 minutes
from Siena,
but it knows nothing
of the tunnels twixt here and there,
the shock of sudden darkness
pierced by pursuing yellow eyes,
glowing red advice to "moderare la velocità,"
blinding flashes of sudden sun
as I jump through stripes
of light and dark,
13 tunnels and counting.

The car is stuffed with stuff
rattling clay pots
beating a clunky arhythmic clang
as I swerve and slide through exit curves
from each of the 19 tunnels
on the way to Siena --
some quick, some interminable trips
into heavy mountains that hang
on manmade promises of strength.
Do you doubt steel as I do?
Surely one of
22 tunnels will fail,
crash or crumble or gobble up
space it gave.

I escape briefly from the autostrada,
exit to slower curves,
through tree canopies,
and stop at a roadside shrine,
thank whatever gods may be
for a road that leads to Siena,
however convoluted and constricted
its 27 tunnels,
a fit price to pay to return
to the dream of Siena.

How did they find my grandmother 's
imperfect perfect tomatoes,
tart and sweet and juicy pale,
misshapen,
slightly green at the edges,
my reward for surviving
another tunnel on the journey,
for gripping the wheel,
turning, turning, turning,
ever so slightly
on every curve of the 32 tunnels.

A Brunello toast
to any person reborn, empowered,
tough enough to conquer
37 or 40 or 63 or all the tunnels
that ever tried to test
a traveler on the journey to Siena.

The waiter offers a firefly,
softly in his hands,
to a bambino,
giggling at captured light
that twinkles and wiggles.

Tomorrow
I will eat breakfast
with the sunrise,
stand at counters
like the Sienese,
expresso bitter on my lips,
sit in the Campo,
grateful
for all difficult journeys
that end at a homecoming.

I leave one bite
of Nonna's warm caramel cream cake
on the plate
for another time.

Grazie, grazie, grazie mille.

Heart Broke

Why is it so hard to tell someone we love that we love them? It's never a secret, because everything in what we do screams the words we are hesitant to say.

Forty years ago, I was crazy in love with a man I thought was the love of my life. In the two years we were together, he never once took me on a real date -- not to a movie or a party, never gave me a present or even a compliment, and it didn't matter. It felt so right in his arms that I ignored the truth that he did not love me. I never said it to him. He never said it to me. I was sure that he loved me, but just didn't want to say it.

At a particularly traumatic moment, I needed to ask him if he loved me. I asked. He answered.

"No."

"Will you ever love me?" I asked.

"No."

Perhaps if I HAD told him that I loved him sooner, I would have learned that he did not love me sooner, and I would have made better choices than the crazy ones made by that heartbroken, silly girl.

If I had been broken sooner, might I have healed sooner?

Years later, I saw this amazing pen drawing by a local artist in The Blue Bean, titled "When I Was Broken." And there I am.

So what if I got hurt, got broken. Done is done. Suck it up! Say it! If you are hurting, you are alive!

Philosopher's Walk

     On the northern side of the Neckar, you can walk the Philosophers' Walk (Philosophenweg), so-called because Heidelberg's philosophers and university professors were inspired by their conversations during the walk. Ha! Only if they were younger and fitter than most.
     For normal older folks, the walk is a challenge, more than 50 stories high, much of it inside narrow high walls, covered in moss, steep step after step, eventually coming out above the castle (schloss). Along the way, there are rustic cabins and gardens, memorials, statues to writers, even a cemetery. But best of all, there are several viewing spots where a tired climber can recover and look at the most amazing views in Heidelberg. 
     Rather than give up and take the "easy" way back down, each stopping place inspired me to go on to the next.
     Each narrow passage blinded me to the insurmountable heights above me, but each stop reminded me of the heights I had reached. Bypassed by people who were actually running up the steep passages and left behind by children who saw it as a lark, I was so proud when I reached the top of the top.
     Rainy and overcast all day, the sun came out, lighting the whole hillside and bringing Heidelberg out of its shadows. An Aha! moment that looked like an Aha! moment.

Ecstatic Mortality

I never expected a recent brush with possible death to have made me feel so alive. Of course, I spent several days asking, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" before I embraced the inherent joy.

At 62, I decided to unretire for the third time and tackle a teaching job in Heidelberg, Germany, and that challenge nearly overwhelmed me. I started every day with a To Do List that never ever got completely done. I do not jest when I say I have hundreds of pages of paperwork filled in, filed, and filed away.

Everything has been more complicated than back home. In Oklahoma, if I wanted a new iPhone, I could have one in 15 minutes. In Heidelberg, I couldn't get a telephone until I had a German-accepted bank account which I couldn't get until I had an official DoDEA ID which I couldn't get until I was in the database which I could not be in until the principal's secretary filled in the proper forms.

So, complain, complain, complain...no joy here.

And then I had a pulmonary embolism (clot) in the lungs which knocked me down and could have killed me. My doctor says that 26% of all sudden deaths are pulmonary embolisms.

More, "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?"

Three days after the initial incident, I decided to try and enjoy Heidelberg -- Nothing To Do, nowhere to go, no one to account to but me. I got on a bus and just kept riding through Heidelberg, getting off when something caught my eye, downing coffee with cream here, chugging gassy water there. I wandered through the farmer's market, tasted my first ever Walnuss brot (walnut bread) and fell in love with butterbrezel mid schnittlauch from the Hauptbanhof. 

As my streetcar headed back to the Hauptbahnhof, I felt at peace for the first time in days. If, and I don't want it to be a true IF, but if I had died that Wednesday, it would have been a good time to die. Then and there.

I grab a butter pretzel with watercress at Yorma's, walk outside into the failing autumn sun and I am exhilarated by the sudden joy I feel. I am alive

Everything Matters

So I am watching an old DVR of an In Plain Sight episode and the recurring theme is "Everything matters." My first instinct is to quibble with the assertion. So, not true, does it really matter whether I have real half-and-half in my coffee, or go for the fat free half-and-half (whatever that really is)?

OK, I like cream in my coffee, but I'll settle for half-and-half -- 9 calories versus 20 calories per cup -- three cups a day -- 365 days a year = 12,000 calories. That matters.

My biggest recent indulgence is a sudden craving I have developed for the large cookies-and-cream milkshake from Chick-fil-A (700 calories) and I'm not even going to do that math.

At a recent conference I attended, the organizers handed me a stamped addressed envelope with a reimbursement form inside and reminded me to mail it as soon as I got home. So, I didn't have to locate the form online, download it, print it, find an envelope, address said envelope, stamp it, and dig all my crumpled receipts out of the bottom of my purse. Just put them in the envelope, fill out and sign the form, and voilà I get my money by the end of the month. Three steps, not ten. That matters.

I've finally committed to flossing every night, in spite of resisting and making excuses for years. I want to die with teeth in my mouth, so I hope it matters.

I recently retired from teaching for a second time, this time with some betrayal and bitterness. I wrote several exit speeches in my head, went so far as to compose the email I didn't send. And, yet when I had my moment, I smiled and accepted the goodbye present, silent. That matters.

My cowardice will eat at me for a while. I will even feel guilty that I didn't warn the teachers I left behind to be less trusting. All my anger is still pent up inside and I'm grinding my teeth. BUT there is absolutely nothing I could have said that would not sound petty, whiney, self-serving. My silence embarrasses me. It's not who I thought I was. That matters.

Everything matters.