The Winter of Our Discontent ... and Longing for Spring

On and off over the last month, I’ve been out my window at a silent, peaceful (and sometimes not so peaceful) snowfall ... once, I absolutely had to pick up the mail, so eased my way down the ramp outside ... stepped onto the level pavement, with about 3 inches of snow on it, and completely wiped out, landing on my left knee.  Immediately rolled into a fetal position in the snow and stayed there.

Which sounds like an odd thing to do, but I had learned from experience that because the lower leg nerve damage from the bus-jeep collision of 2010 started at the knee, I might not have been able to sense right away how bad the damage was.  If I’d immediately tried to stand up, I could have made it worse if it had been broken.  So I laid there for about a minute, waiting for a belated stab of pain traveling to my upper leg – which fortunately never came.  Oh, I felt it alright, just not the “Don’t move you’ve shattered the (bleep) ing thing,” sensation, which I probably would have felt in my thigh muscle, just above the knee.  So I slowly began to move.

Funny part was a lady I’ve never met calling me from the house across the road:   “Do you want my husband to come pick you up?”  Ahhh, the many ways that question could have been interpreted; and it may be the greatest pick-up line ever:  “My wife told me to come pick you up!”  Despite the pain, I tried not to start laughing at her very kind concern.  She told me that until I moved she was terrified that I was unconscious – and here I didn’t think anyone had seen it happen.  (And in her defense, she probably would have run out the door to come help – were it not for the fact that she was still in her bathrobe and bare feet.)

Bottom line:  just bruised, it appears – thank goodness.  But the bruise is bad enough, I’m still limping around going “Ow. Oooh.  Ow.  Oooh.”  Ice pack did help.

I spent yet another snow day listening to the sounds of Juno outside the window.  Most of New England had the day off; there were no trains or busses running, so I couldn’t get to the office even if I wanted to.  It was still dark outside, so I couldn’t really see how much snow had happened overnight; I could hear the wind, though.  Nibbled on a 3-day old cream biscuit; finally got the chance to try out this Pumpkin Spice coffee I bought a while ago.  I knew I needed to get some chores done; couldn’t quite motivate myself enough to do them.

The night of Juno’s arrival was another one of those MBTA nightmares.  The MBTA bridge before Beverly had gotten stuck open by a boat crashing into it.  We caught the 4:20 to Newburyport alright, jam-packed full of people trying to get home before the big storm hit.  First we stopped and sat at every single station, starting with Lynn.  No announcements, no explanations – just lengthy idling.  An hour passes; people are getting irritated at not being told anything and the irate tweeting starts, some of which are pretty funny.  At about the two-hour mark, we creep into Salem.  Now they make an announcement:  bridge is stuck, yada yada, we’re going to bus you over the water to Beverly, where trains are waiting to take you the rest of the way.  Okay good, okay fine.  (with a respectful nod to the infamous Mouse of Ron Perlman/Linda Hamilton’s Beauty and the Beast who always said that.) 

We all get off the train and over to the Salem roundabout where the busses were supposed to be waiting in the sleet, snow and wind.  Within minutes we’re all shivering.  No busses.  Maybe 200-300 people waiting already.  People even got off of later trains behind us and joined the crowd.

Seems the busses are all stuck in traffic gridlock (welcome to Salem!  Again.)  After about 45 minutes of us standing in the sleet, snow and wind, freezing, they finally straggle in.  NO effort at crowd control.  One guy literally shoved his way past people into a bus, dragging a suitcase that took up enough room for two people behind him.  The people he’d shoved out of the way to do that are now even angrier, and they have the support of the crowd.  As ugly as that incident was, the MBTA now wakes up to the fact that crowd control might be a good idea, but it’s much too little too late.

Eventually, I get on a bus.  Recall that the last announcement they made was “trains will be waiting on the other side to take you to your destination”?  Again, they lied.  Now they tell us that the “Newburyport train wasn’t in Beverly, only the Rockport one”, so they don’t know what to do with us.  We get to Beverly, all get off the bus into the freezing sleet yada yada yada, and stand there.  10 minutes later, they tell us to get back on the bus.  Now, they’re going to bus us to our stations.

After leaving the office at 3:30, it’s now closing on 8:30 at night.  The storm – which had been tame at the time I would have originally arrived at Newburyport – was now blowing snow sideways.  The temperature has gone even further down.  I am so cold my teeth are chattering.  I get home at 9:00 pm.  On the night of what they’re claiming to be an “unprecedented” storm (although, I have to say, I’ve heard worse in terms of winds), that was the MBTA’s idea of customer service.

I can see the bridge mishap being an unexpected event, sure.  But the crossed signals, absence of information, misinformation, lack of crowd control – all of that which followed I do hold them accountable for.  Absolute dead silence for the most part.

So here comes Marcus.  Can’t remember which storms were given “K” and “L” names – I think the “L” was “Linus”?  We’re now midway through the alphabet.  Marcus.  Named after the Greek god Mars.  Marcus will be on top of us for 3 days.  This is just Day One.  I’m hearing the wind start to pick up, and we’re not even into Monday yet, when the worst of it is supposed to hit.  Another 2 feet, more or less.  I’m eyeing the snow shovel, propped up against the front door, ready to be reactivated into service for the umpteenth time.

Snow.  More snow.  Snow on top of snow.  I just bought the home last April, so had not invested in a snow blower, because I had not anticipated the record-shattering winter that would find us all breaking snow accumulation records.  We get hit with a monster snowstorm, we barely dig our way out of that one and another one hits.  And another.  And another.  I don’t recall ever seeing a winter like this.  You’ve never seen so many people praying for Spring to arrive, because they can’t endure Winter anymore.  Never-ending snow shoveling.  Useless public transportation.  Stupid drivers.  Mountains of snow so high you can’t see past them.

Spring.  I am so looking forward to Spring.  After all these years, I am finally going to see The Cowsills.  They must be trending now or something; I’ve never seen so many concerts cropping up all over the place.

A trip to New York City in April.  A trip to Rhode Island in May.  And then ... the most amazing thing:  after I was considering myself the most fortunate person in the universe to be seeing them twice in two months, an announcement:  The Cowsills were going to be performing at the Hampton Beach Casino in June.  Five minutes away from me. 

I went through the ceiling with delirium, seeing that announcement.  You have no idea how much I loved and adored this band when I was young and how excited I am to be finally seeing them live.  Unfortunately as part of the “Happy Together Tour”, so not just them.  I forget who else is packaged in with them (and with all due apologies to people who I’m sure are very nice and quite talented – I’m sorry, don’t care a whit), all I saw was:  The Cowsills were going to be literally 5 minutes away from me.  Sat there in ecstatic shock for maybe 2/10’s of a second before hitting the Ticketmaster button.  Got first row.  Could not believe my good fortune.

So because I’m an obsessive sort, I took a shopping detour and drove up to Hampton Beach, to see where the place was, what the parking situation was ... discovered it’s as bad as Salem with its one-car-width-only narrow one-way streets – no wonder the traffic is jammed for miles.  Drove past the Casino Ballroom, then drove around back to check out the parking situation.  Here’s an aerial view.  Notice the parking lot in the rear?

20-feet of snow.  Apparently, since the place is closed for the winter, they had decided to pile all of the snow they couldn’t put anywhere else in the Casino Ballroom’s unused parking lot.  At least 20-feet high, probably higher.  So high you couldn’t even see the back of the building from the street.  It occurred to me, as I gaped at that mountain of snow in front of me, that remnants of that snow are still going to be there in June, no joking.

And check out that water slide!  (Blue curlicue contraption on the right side of the photo).  Looks like fun!

No way in hell I’m getting in and out of there around show time.  Found a few small hotel/motel places with heated swimming pools that looked promising.

Remind me to never – EVER – move again.  It has taken me forever to find even the simplest of things – and I never did find the foot pedal to the sewing machine – had to buy a new one.  Next, I couldn’t find the ¼” seam presser foot; then I couldn’t find the manual to re-set the tension.  Couldn’t find the materials to make templates and had to use old file folders; couldn’t find the right color of thread ... every time I blinked there was something I had packed somewhere remote and irretrievable.

Got videoed for an e-learning course.  I’m wondering if I can get a copy of it.

Back briefly to Bob Cowsill, who I once scotch-taped all over my walls ... obviously much time has passed since those days, and he’s now older and the patriarch of the entire family.  The one thing I never really paid much attention to back then was just how talented he was.  I was (obviously) paying much more attention to the things any young girl pays attention to, when she’s drowning in her first crush of young adulthood, i.e. “He is the most beautiful, gorgeous and soul-stirring hunk who has ever existed since the dawn of recorded time ... yada yada yada,” and less on, “Wow, this guy is an awesome musician.”

So this particularly fascinating video – done quite recently for a series on songs and singers – was an in-depth interview he did on the creation of their mega-hit, “Hair.”  When he’s talking about “we” doing this or that, he’s talking about four people:  Bill, his older brother, and then Barry and John, who were considerably younger when the song was recorded.  Basically:  four teenagers let loose in a recording studio, all by themselves.  They were only supposed to cut a demo of the song “Hair” from the Broadway musical they could lip-synch to on a Carl Reiner comedy variety special.  Nothing more.  Easy enough, right?

Instead, those four teenage boys recorded, produced and delivered a song (Bill and Bob at the controls) that was a global hit and is still played even today.  Point being:  I’m now finally realizing what awesome musicians those four teenage boys were.   No wonder I adored them.  And still do.

Love Songs of the New Kingdom and Celebrating Puberty with Bob Cowsill Part II

Flee him, my heart - and hurry! -
for I know all too well this love of yours.
My antic heart won't let me walk like others
but dances off when I want it home.
It will not wait to let me catch my tunic
nor stop to let me get my party fan;
It leaves no time to shadow eyes with love lines,
no time at all to oil my unloved body.

"Don't stand there waiting! Get inside!"
so heart says as I stand there full of him.
O heart, don't make my aching thoughts turn foolish!
Why, are we mad? who gave you leave?
(It's wrong!)

Believe it or not, that glorious poem was created between 1600 – 1085 BCE ... in Ancient Egypt, the New Kingdom era.  Found in Love Songs of the New Kingdom, translated from the ancient Egyptian by John L.  Foster (1974, University of Texas Press, Austin).  Love the book, love that poem among many others ... but it made me wonder if I were reading an Egyptian poetess (in which case, she's astonishing!), or  John L. Foster - he does say he tried to remain true to the idioms, syntax, etc., of the originals, but also says he used a certain degree of freedom in translation. I would love to see the original hieroglyphics and literal translations for this particular one, to see how he did his translation - although he does do that for some of them. Summary: a marvelous collection of love poetry.

Nothing like starting a job search only to find out that COMCAST has disabled your fax line, moved your home telephone to the disabled fax line, and never bothered to look into it, despite repeated calls.  By the fourth or fifth call, they finally sent someone out and fixed it.  (Meanwhile, I’d never given out my cell phone number as a contact, and my answering machine announced that I had 41 missed calls!)  Another fun day with Comcast.  Yet another reason why they’re one of the most intensely disliked companies in the entire country.

But on the “glass half full” side – finally!  I got my SETI@home program to work.  I signed on to that in about 10 years ago, and at some point it stopped working.  SETI may be excellent at a lot of things, but Customer Service ain’t one of them – I’d continually ask for help and get no reply, so the program just sat there, idle, for the longest time.  Finally, they offered a new version of the program to download that was much more user-friendly, and I was able to re-start it.  I’m back to being mesmerized by the working graphics.  And I’m sure my computer will be the one to process the unit that proves we’re not the only intelligent life in the universe!  (Ahh, nothing like delusions of grandeur to cheer me right up.)

A topic they posted on their website basically asked, “What would the impact on society be if the discovery of life in space actually happened?”  Their analysis was a great deal more positive than my own “off-the-cuff” analysis was.  Not that I thought American society would degenerate into chaos or anything, but my own feeling was that the number of people who, like me, would react with a “Coool!” and a fascination to learn more would be relatively small compared to the number of people who would immediately toss the news onto their own political and religious accelerant bonfires ... making the news a lot more terrifying than it actually was.  All we would have discovered was that life VERY far away (and at some time in the past, when you take into account how long it would have taken for it to reach us) used radio signals, not that they were planning an immediate invasion and the annihilation of a swarm of parasitic homosapiens in a galaxy far far away from them.  But most Americans aren’t exactly logical, are they?

I’m sure I should be doing something industrious, but right now I’m just basking in the goofing off of it all.  Except for picking up the mail, there is nowhere I have to go or need to be .... and I definitely don’t want to battle pre and post-holiday shoppers anyway.  I did trek back over to North Andover and take a good look at my storage facility there ... Dana is going to clear it out. and I finally won’t have to pay them anymore, thank goodness.

But I did find my mother’s teapot!  Once I can find my iPhone cord, I’ll upload the photo.  I thought I had lost it; apparently, I had packed and stored it.  It’s one of those plain, much used variety of utilitarian teapots that bring back warm fuzzy  memories of my mother.  I’m in the middle of cleaning it out, using denture cleaner tablets – which have so many great uses, I’m almost sorry I don’t wear dentures.  This was not the teapot she used for Sunday dinners or company – this was her own personal daily teapot.  Dad did drink tea occasionally, but mostly drank coffee, so I always associate it with Mom.

And now for the amazing news.  Apparently, I will be “celebrating puberty with Bob Cowsill” after all.  They are having a 50th Anniversary concert on April 11th at The Cutting Room, celebrating their first record deal with Joda Records.  You never saw anyone hit the “Buy Tickets” button so fast in your life.  Then I had one of those, “I can’t believe it ... after all these years, I’m finally going to see ...” moments that almost felt like I’d reverted back to those days of hopeless idiocy I remembered.  I still can’t believe it.  Hotel booked, train tickets purchased, concert ticket bought ... methinks I’m off to see The Cowsills.

http://tickets.thecuttingroomnyc.com/event/754693-cowsills-new-york/

Lust, Libido, Crones and Cowsills

The homework assignment for this month included making a presentation on the Triple Goddess concept, to which, I’ll admit, I’ve never paid that much attention. 

The aspect to the concept which bothered me somewhat – okay, bothered me a lot – was what seemed to me the greater emphasis placed on the maiden (virginity) and the mother (childbirth), and less on the Crone which was described in many sources as “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon.”  Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Goddess_%28Neopaganism%29

In fact, I objected to this rather vociferously in the last class.  Reason:  my reproductive plumbing was surgically removed from me a long time ago – in my 30’s – and trust me when I tell you I have never regretted it, given the monthly agony I went through at the time.  Did it affect my biological urges?  Not in the slightest, as you can tell from various posts on this blog.  But my point is, based on this overall concept, I was surgically made into a “crone” in my thirties.  I still went “over the moon” during sexual encounters just as readily as I did before the surgery.  I never lost my creativity, my lust for life, my energy.

I will say that immediately after the surgery, there were several months when I did think I had lost my libido.  The most handsome hunk in the universe could have laid (lain?) down naked at my feet and I would have yawned and stepped right over him.  Naturally, I found this disquieting and went to see the doctor.  She prescribed a short-term prescription of a hormone (estrogen I assume) with a “testosterone kicker”, which, she predicted, would “restart” my libido.  It would take a few weeks to build up in my system, so she warned me not to expect any changes overnight.

Okaaaay.

So a few weeks pass.  Nothing.  I’m starting to get worried, because I’m envisioning a really pleasurable part of my life fading away entirely.  I made plans to see her again.

And I’m sitting on the commuter bus to Manhattan from my home in Orange County, New York.  I’m reading something.  All of a sudden ... without any warning whatsoever ... an intense sensation of heat floods my entire body, as though someone had taken a bucket of warm water and poured it over my head.  And with THAT sensation came an intense rush of lust so overpowering I was stunned.  I swore later that I would never make fun of teenage boys going through puberty ever again – they always say they thought of sex every :30 seconds and were basically consumed by the need for it.  Yup!  That was me – on a bus!

It was bizarre.  I’d be walking down the street thinking, “Oooh, HE’S attractive ... yes, he’s 80 years old and has no teeth but I can live with that ...” – it was bad, folks.  But whatever she had prescribed had worked.  Luckily, my body eventually absorbed and adjusted the hormonal balance after that first all powerful rush, but until it did ... hoo, boy, was it weird.

My point remains:  I may have been surgically made into a crone in my thirties, but the ONLY thing missing was my ability to reproduce.  Does that make me into someone who embodied “wisdom, repose, death, and endings represented by the waning moon”?  I don’t think so!!!  I was still as vital as I ever was.

I’ve spent today importing cd’s into i-Tunes ... and listening to “Il Divo Live in Japan” at the moment ... wow, those guys can sing!  Am reminded again of how glad I am for the whole “classical crossover” genre – guys like this got me through the last decade or so of appalling American home-grown awfulness – which is, actually, still going on, judging by the ridiculous appearances on the Grammy’s and the American Music Awards.  Makes you wonder if the American music industry has any idea that they’ve alienated millions of people with their ideas of  the cacophonous misery that constitutes “American music”.  Nah ... they’re way too stupid.

So, “Winter Storm Damon” blew through here last week – it was the first time driving home from the commuter rail station in Newburyport that I honestly wasn’t sure I’d make it:  the rain and wind were so heavy there were times when I couldn’t see the road, the center line in the road or the car ahead of me.  I couldn’t even see a place on the side of the road I could pull off and wait it out.  I have never driven as blinded as I was – thank goodness that ALL of the drivers on the road with me were of the same cautious mind and slowed down to a crawl.  No crazy idiots in SUV’s trying to blow past everyone else, we were all of us driving extremely slowly it was such a horrendous hurricane-force wind driven downpour.

There was also a lot of roadway flooding, so I hit some puddles (translation:  small lakes) so deep that I wasn’t sure I’d come out on the other side.  Did I ever mention how much I love my gutsy little Saturn?  She just plows through everything without even a hint of a sputter or a slide.

Moving on with the daybook project – courtesy of China Bayles Book of Days –  I’m supposed to bake gingerbread men for my holiday tree.  Long term readers are no doubt familiar with my annual misery with christmas tree lots, so here’s a definite no – I won’t be doing that.  I actually looked at fake trees in Lowes the other day out of curiosity and immediately said, “Nope!”  Have no issues with fake trees, just the price tags of fake trees.

The squirrels and birds are scarfing up seeds and suet as though winter were coming and they’re afraid they’ll run out of food.  OK, winter IS coming, but as I seem to have taken on the responsibility of keeping them all well fed, I doubt they’ll be at a loss for food.  A few squirrels who have happily discovered the birdfeeder look like they’ve ingested tennis balls they’re so round in the middle.

Back to the sonnet cycle – somehow, I experienced a glimpse, or a sensation, of the first opening of the Big Door ... which sounds like an odd way to describe what we know as the Big Bang.  I’m back with the Universal Mind, and how everyone says we have no ability, with our limited comprehension, to make sense of it.  Still, I almost did get a sense of the first thought, and the overwhelming joy of it was mind-blowing, that first sense of self-awareness.  If it was powerful enough to fill what we know as the known universe, can you imagine the power of the joy of it?

The sonnet structure for this one (blocks of 7 verses of four 10-count lines each and then repeat!) is wonderful to play with – the first sonnet cycle was a 12-count; I’m up to my fourth block, and how long has it taken me to get that far?!?  But I haven’t felt this creative in a long while. 

Next study of Ancient Egypt:  Thoth:  Architect of the Universe (Ralph Ellis, 1997) – this is an interesting comparison between the “divine dimensions” of the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau in Egypt and sites in Great Britain – Stonehenge, etc.  I haven’t gotten to the part yet where he theorizes on the connection between all of these sites – i.e., how DID the builders wind up with the same dimensions of things?  He also touches on Atlantis a bit, but he has still another perspective on it; he doesn’t mention the stories of the Atlantic being as thick as mud for a long time afterwards, so it makes me wonder if he ever heard those stories.  He seems to fall into the category of people expecting to see ruins, but are you really going to see those after massive volcanic explosions?  I keep thinking that things would have been pulverized, so you probably wouldn’t see them afterwards.  Edgar Cayce did get it right, though – they found the Bimini Road right about the time he predicted they would.  Even though there are some who believe they are natural formations (and others just as vehemently don’t), the coincidence is pretty startling.  And it was Cayce who said they would find a “remnant” of Atlantis.  Back to:  the jury is still out.

Oooh, I think, for the first time ever, I may have won something in the most recent Megamillions lottery.  No, not the big payola, but $2!  (I think – in which case, I recovered the $2 I put into it!)  I’m not a regular lottery player – in fact, I pretty much fall into the “rarely” category - so I’m not even sure I did win anything, I need to have the clerk at the store where I bought it look at it.  If so, this will have been the first time – EVER – I won anything in a lottery!  I know, my enthusiasm over the prospect of having won $2 is truly pitiful, but there you have it.

So, I’m back to planning a trip to Manhattan to see a concert – I think.  Maybe.  The Cutting Room on April 11th, to see the Cowsills Anniversary Concert.  44 East 32nd Street, between Madison and Park.  Trying to find hotels; so far I see the Avalon and the Chandler.   This is going to be awesome.