The Cowsills in Westerly, Rhode Island ... Bill Yells at Me ... and I Finally Meet Bob Cowsill

Well, THAT didn’t work.  You know, you start out on a venture, thinking you’re going to have this nice, peaceful trip to a sleepy seaside town, and assume you’ll meet (finally!) your childhood crush, discover he’s as normal as everyone else in the world, say, “Gee, what a nice guy”, and come back home, pleased but glad to be home and getting on with your life.

As I said, well THAT didn’t work.

Instead, I came back to the hotel that night – still in something of a state of shock – and wrote down my first memory of the evening: 

“Oh, (bleep).  He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire life.”

Okay, I was probably still a little dazzled maybe, but ... well, let me start over.

Once again, the concert was perfect.  Note perfect, pitch perfect, banter perfect, joke perfect, song list perfect ... those Cowsills have their act down to a science of perfection, really.  They’re that good.

But there was no official Meet & Greet after the show, so I’m now devastated for a second time.  To actually speak to Bob, I would now need to jump right in front of him or something ... and there was no way in hell I was going to do that.  Fortunately for me, other people had more courage than I did.  Stopped him to meet him, take a picture with him, chat with him.  I still am too terrified to try the same thing, so start walking away.  I’m halfway out of the tent when I hear Bill Cowsill’s voice.

No, it wasn’t Bill Cowsill himself – trust me, I’m not THAT psychically adept – but what I heard was someone who sounded just like Bill Cowsill saying in a loud, “I will brook no argument from the likes of YOU”  voice:  “Get back there!”

I’m sure whoever it was had no idea of the impact the sound of their voice and that particular command had on a complete stranger, but at the time, I jumped right out of my skin, turned around and went back to meet Bob.  Thinking back on it, dollars to doughnuts it was a Cowsill relation – so many of them were there – who no doubt would have sounded just like Bill.  But I wouldn’t question whether or not it was Bill Cowsill until later. 

At the time, I just went, “Okay,” and turned around.  Went back to meet Bob, so I wouldn’t have to explain myself to Bill in the afterlife.  (“You know I THOUGHT it sounded like you, but then I thought ...”)  And waited patiently, looking down at my feet until the huge guy in front of me moved away.  And there was Bob Cowsill, looking at me, waiting for me to say something.

And you know, I probably would have been fine if I hadn’t made the fatal mistake of looking at his face.  That was my first reaction, the first one, the one I wrote down:  “Oh, (bleep).  He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire life.”

I just froze, I think because I wasn’t expecting it.  That’s when I went ice cold and started shaking.  Oh, it would have been so much easier if he were --  there was one video where he described himself as “old and worn”, and I thought he was wrong then, but I didn’t realize just how wrong he actually was.  It would have been so much easier if he’d looked “old and worn”, but he didn’t.  He just looked beautiful.  A strange thing to say about a man’s face, but that was my first reaction.  Maybe I should say “handsome”, but my first thought, unvarnished and unedited, was just that:  “beautiful.”  He looked better at that moment than all his teenage pin-up photos from my pre-teen years.  I inhaled in surprise and went a little dizzy.

Picture it:  I'm a corporate trainer, can teach classes with 20-30 people in them all day long without even blinking.  In fact, I enjoy it!   Public speaking?  I'm fine.  People who know me would describe me as confident and outgoing.  But none of them would have recognized me, meeting Bob Cowsill for the first time and looking right into his face.

I immediately regressed to the age of 12 and started shaking like a leaf, to the point where he was now probably afraid I was going to drop at his feet like a stone.  I did manage to give him the letter, but my voice was shaking so badly, he had to lean forward to hear me.  He did take it and said he was glad I had finally delivered it.  Then he reached for my hand and discovered it was ice cold and trembling.  He looked at me, and here’s where he was probably thinking, “Uh-oh.  She is about to drop like a ...” and wondering if he remembered any of his EMT training, because he might have to use it.

Although, on a side-note, I’m not sure that would have worked all that well – imagine coming out of a dead faint and discovering Bob Cowsill giving you mouth-to-mouth.  Would have no doubt undermined all of his heroic efforts, having me take one look up at him and passing out again ...

But, fortunately, I somehow managed to remain conscious, and no doubt impressed him to no end with my witty repartee:

Bob:  Are you okay?
Me:  No.  Yes.  No.  Yes.  I'm sorry!
Bob:  (reassuringly, in a gentle voice)  You'll be alright.
Me:  (as though I've just been hypnotized)  Yes, I'll be alright.

Then he hugged me.

Me:  (5 minutes later)  Oh, GOD!  He probably thinks I'm an idiot!
Bystander:  (who photographed the show and witnessed the whole thing):  "Yup!  I sure would have, if I were him."

(The authorities will someday find Mr. Bystander's remains in the sand dune where I buried him.)

Finally.  After 45 years, I finally met Bob Cowsill.  Even if he does think I’m an idiot.  I’m okay with that.  And he is the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my entire life.  Still.

Before I left for Rhode Island, I heard from a friend of mine.  We were discussing plans for me to pick her up at the Kingston, Rhode Island Amtrak station and take her to Newport for a memorial service.  At the time of this memorial service, I will have been at a concert in Westerly, Rhode Island – which is why I was picking her up in Rhode Island.  I get up the next morning and find a message from this friend.

She was trying to book the train, but then she read in the Amtrak booking page that trains in the northeast corridor might experience delays due to track work in Virginia.  She panicked, wanting to know what the plan was when she went through Virginia and got held up by track work.  Keep in mind that she is traveling from Boston to Kingston, Rhode Island, a trip of maybe an hour in length.  So she hasn’t purchased the ticket yet because she’s now afraid of what will happen when she goes through Virginia.  Not the train alone.  Her IN the train.

I just stared at her message and went, “Wha ...?”  Read the message again, just to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong.  Nope.  Hadn’t read it wrong.  Sat in front of my computer with my mouth hanging open in shock.

She’s afraid she is traveling through Virginia – going from Boston to Rhode Island.  Virginia.  O ... M ... G.  Just for the record:  she went to elementary and high school in Quincy, Massachusetts, and has no idea what or where the State of Virginia is.  They must be so proud.  As I said, I was just stunned.  Spent a good ten minutes trying to compose a reply that didn’t start with, “What are you, an IDIOT??”  Way to go, Quincy, Massachusetts School Systems.

AFO Leg Braces, EZ Pass, Blowing up Balls, Jeans! and Summerfest Looms

FUN WITH LEG BRACES
While maintaining balance isn’t quite on the horizon yet, walking without tripping, falling, shuffling and general exhaustion is on the far horizon ... I finally have an appointment with an orthotics place for an  AFO brace.  I’d never heard of those before.  Apparently, their sole purpose in life is to hold my left foot up as I can’t seem to manage that on my own, and make the whole “struggling to learn to walk again” a bit easier.  The neurosurgeon is the one who is supposed to figure out why I can’t feel my lower legs anymore and struggle so hard for balance when I try to stand unsupported.  Once I get the brace cast to my left leg, it should take 2-3 weeks to receive it.

And naturally, I’m looking at yet another road trip on May 9th that may knock me for a loop if the brace doesn’t arrive before then.

FUN WITH NEW HAMPSHIRE EZ PASS.  (NOT):  I have never used EZ Pass.  Simple reason:  never needed it; used the commuter rail.  Now, looking forward to May 9th, I realized I needed one.  Simple enough, right?  Dead wrong!

No matter what variation of my address I put in the online application, it came back as a non-recognizable address.  I tried every variation I could think of, and it continued to reject it.  Tried the mailing address.  Tried the house address.  Tried “Rd” instead of “Road”.  Tried omitting “Road” altogether.  New Hampshire EZ Pass didn’t recognize any of them – and I think I should know what my own address is; I get mail at that address every day!  It’s not as though I was mis-typing the bloody thing!  By the end of this hour-long exercise in blood pressure-raising frustration, I was ready to throw heavy objects at the computer screen.  Who writes these online applications???  Fire them immediately!

As it was, when they open in the morning, they are going to get railed up one side and down the other.  Idiots.    Flagrantly ill-bred, illiterate, malformed idiots.  Nothing like wasting hours of people’s time, is there?  I could have waited in line at 2,000 “CASH ONLY” toll booths in all the time they wasted singlehandedly on their idiotic website.

FUN WITH BLOWING UP BALLS:  So I had two exercises I was supposed to also do at home ... exercises with leg weights (5 lb. each) and the balance exercise ball (56 cm diameter).  The ball exercises were actually beneficial during physical therapy ... for one, they loosened and elongated the spine area, and two, they helped me learn how to balance my lower legs on top of the ball, which required a certain amount of abdominal control.  Went to a local department store sporting goods area and bought them both.  What I hadn’t realized is that I would need to use a hand pump to blow up this rather large ball.  (I’ve never blown up balls before – what did I know?  I must have thought it self-inflated or something.)  Started around noon ... and was still pumping air into that thing when I went to bed that night ...!  Woke up the next morning and went, “Ow!” – apparently, my elbow joint was a little cranky from the workout. I fully expect to do major damage to myself with this ball, so stay tuned for future emergency room visit details ...

FUN WITH JEANS:  So once I started getting the blood sugar under control ... I was going from normal to hypoglycemic in mere seconds; it was frightening ... I stopped needing to use as much insulin as I was taking ... and the weight started dropping off of me.  Part of me was thrilled with that ... the other part was looking at the doctor’s weight loss records in some concern and suspecting that the weight was coming off faster than it should have, because at some point, it is definitely NOT a healthy development.  Meanwhile, the level of exercising I was doing increased, in an effort to get my legs working again.  Combination of the two:  I started running out of clothes!  I’d really had no idea how fast inches and pounds were dropping – I don’t have a scale at home since I learned that you come to depend way too much on a scale, and even the slightest variation can drive you nuts.  I did know that nothing I had in my clothes closet fit me anymore.  I had been thrilled a month or so earlier when I’d unpacked my skinnier clothes from the storage shed and they fit perfectly again, but even they were looking baggy now.

Fortunately, the weight loss slowed down to more reasonable levels, and I now had to find some clothes that fit.  I had thought at one point of sewing my own clothes, and even that wasn’t working.  I started a test sundress in the size I thought I would need ("test dress" meaning a dress made of muslin, so I wouldn’t waste good fabric on it if it didn’t work out) – and when it came time to try on the thing before finishing it, it was too big!  Stared at it.  Said, “You have GOT to be kidding me.”  Am now going to have to take it in, before I can even think of making it for real.  Was thoroughly annoyed at the time spent with nothing to show for it, and went about measuring myself again, mumbling under my breath.

Unfortunately, the loss in inches was not consistent ... as always, I tend to lose inches from the extremities first and the core last.  And that meant:  I was two different sizes, depending on which part of me I was buying clothes for.  Jeans that fit perfectly in the legs and hips didn’t close at the waist; jeans that closed at the waist were too loose and baggy in the legs and hips.  Drove me nuts, trying to find anything that fit.  Was all over the place trying to find some decent jeans.  And finally found them – at Walmart of all places.  Was shuffling back to the register on my rollater with my exercise ball and ankle weights and passed right by the jeans area.  Stopped.  Said, “Hmmm.”

Came home with a pair of Levi Strauss Signature “Modern Skinny” jeans – and discovered they fit!!  No way I was trying to fit into a dressing room with the rollater – had to wing it.  Finally – a pair of jeans that fit.  Don’t know how long that will last ... like I said, I’m still losing weight and inches ... but for now, you’d be amazed how happy a good pair of jeans can make a person feel, after they’ve been shuffling around in loose, baggy and unflattering ones for so long.

As I said, being taken on a road trip on the 9th to Summerfest, which is on the beach ... I truly needed a good pair of jeans for that.  Ahhh, life’s simpler pleasures.

NOTE:  No, the photo is most decidedly NOT me ... you couldn’t put me in heels like that and expect me to last longer than two-tenths of a second with my balance issues, trust me  (can we say ‘Wobble, wobble, wobble, CRASH!’, boys and girls?)  Those are the jeans, though.  Now ... if I could only find them in a boot cut, I’d be in ecstasy:  reason, I’m worried that the lower leg brace won’t fit under those.  Argh!  Wouldn't that just be my luck?

New York Tales from the Cutting Room Adventure

At one point, a young, random New York guy on the other side of 32nd Street passed by the long line of people standing outside the Cutting Room.  He thought it would be funny if he hauled out a lighter from his jeans pocket, flicked his Bic, waved it back and forth and yelled, “Free Bird!”  That actually was pretty funny, and we all burst out laughing, but what was even funnier:  he then proceeded to burn his thumb on the lighter and threw it into the street with a yelp and a few words that shall not be repeated here.    (And that we found truly hilarious!)  Only in New York ...!

I had lunch at a place down the street, Sarabeth’s.  The waitress came up to my table and I looked up.  Then she gasped.  “Ohmigod, I LOVE your poetry!  I read it all the time – can I please have your autograph?”  I almost hated to break it to her that she had mistaken me for someone else, but apparently, I look just like a famous poet.  She did tell me who she mistook me for, but the name has gone right out of my head.  But now I know what it feels like to be a celebrity and have someone in awe of meeting you – even if they’re meeting the wrong (and considerably less awesome) person.  So she did get my autograph - when I paid the bill - but I suspect she wasn’t all that thrilled with it.

Just went through my annual spring ritual of finding my fragrance for the year.  If these were the olden days, I would have skipped merrily through the meadow, picking flowers and placing them oh so delicately in my little wicker basket to brew a cologne worthy of my irresistible self.  Since these AREN’T the olden days I was reduced to reading online descriptions and throwing darts at a dartboard, hoping I would inadvertently hit on something worthy of my ... considerably lazier self.  And the winners for this year are:

Mystic by Marilyn Miglin is a chypre (which, as you all know, is “the name of a family (or concept) of perfumes that are characterized by an accord composed of citrus top-notes, a middle centered on cistus labdanum, and a mossy-animalic base-note derived from oak moss and musk, and fall into numerous classes according to their modifier notes, which include but are not limited to leather, florals, fruits, and amber”) (thank you, Wikipedia) Floral fragrance for women. Mystic was launched in 1998. The fragrance features apricot, iris, sandalwood, lily, patchouli, jasmine, marigold, lily-of-the-valley, narcissus and vanilla.

And actually ... once I had it on, it immediately brought me back to the days of walking into the “Enchantments” shop in lower Manhattan – an experience everyone who has ever been in there can relate to ... it is probably the best-smelling place on the planet.  So, with the name of Mystic on the bottle, how could it help being an “Enchantments”- reminiscent fragrance?

The other one was Ed Hardy Skulls & Roses for Her, “a warm, sugary fragrance made of strawberry, violet leaf, honeysuckle and caramel.”  This one everybody buys for the wonderful packaging and then probably sticks with for the scent:  absolutely lovely, and you wouldn’t have thought those four scents together would be so nice, but they are.  (And I love the skull!)

So there you have them:  the 2015 “Let me capture and tie you into unbreakable love knots with my irresistible scent” winners for the year.  Believe me, you’ll be the first to know if either one of them works.

Physical therapy:  lied through my teeth ... well, no, I didn’t lie (EXACTLY) – I just left out pertinent information.  Just said I had tried standing without support for a long period of time.  Which was true – I had – I just didn’t provide any details on exactly WHY I had been doing that, or how.  I still got the hairy eyeball, but didn’t get thrown out of physical therapy as “uncooperative”, which is what would have happened if I confessed that I had gone against every single instruction they gave me.  Turns out I had seriously strained the muscles around my foot, ankle, back and shin bones, which directly contribute to one’s ability to maintain balance.  He could physically feel how strained they were.  His only crabby comment?  “Well, at least you can’t blame ME for that.”  I looked properly ashamed of myself – which I sorta was, but not entirely.  I had just REALLY wanted to see the ... yeah, I know, go ahead and shoot me, I just REALLY wanted to see The Cowsills.

Bad Hair, Bad Products, Bad Blood and Paradise Lost

WHEN WILL I EVER LEARN?  I just don’t learn, do I?  Again – the hair styling was a complete and utter disaster.  Complete.  Total. Absolute.  I’d jump out the window were it not for the fact that (again) I live in a one-story and it wouldn’t accomplish much beyond giving me a scraped knee.  Went to a clothing store, bought stuff that was too big for me and had to return to the seamstress and have it fixed.  Went to Tallman’s for new glasses only to discover that they were closed.  That closed the window on my getting new glasses in time.  On my way back, stopped at Sylvan Grille and drank myself into a stupor.  Came home.  Cried a lot.

The disaster now required me to find something that will shape the straight-hanging mess into something less awful.  Tried a hair oil that is supposed to help hair keep a curl, thinking I could get the hair to turn under a little.  Instead, I was allergic to the oil itself and spent the next few hours with tears running down my face, sneezing repeatedly and with my nose running like a faucet.  Bought a curling iron.  Haven’t figured out how to do it right, and only ended up looking even more goofy than I already did.

Whatever self-confidence I once had (and it wasn’t much) disappeared in the blink of an eye.  And I will be seeing my childhood crush in exactly 9 days.  Of course I will.  Why strut out of an expensive hair salon looking like a quadrillion bucks when it’s so much more typical to slink out of it looking you were just run over by a leaf mulcher?  I just never learn, do I?

Well, while I battle the utter horror that is my hair, I’m also battling a never-ending round of doctors, appointments, physical therapy, more doctors, more appointments, more physical therapy - and my life shrinks to the dimensions of my appointment calendar – I started reading an annotated version of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I’m finding inspirational, and I’m only in the Introduction.

I cannot get my head around Milton’s point of view ... by the time he started writing his Paradise Lost, ships were already sailing their way across the Atlantic, depositing colonists on the North and South American east coasts, so he is already aware that there is an entire continent over here, chock full of people who had no knowledge of the supposed “truth” he was espousing, which had originated within a very small tribe of nomads based in a very tiny region of the Middle East – of which, needless to say – none of these North and South and Central American continental natives had any knowledge.  So why – at some point – didn’t that “a priori” truth he was basing his entire epic poem upon stop making logical sense?  The Far East was already well known.  The beliefs of China, India ... they were well known.  Where is his logic?  His “lost paradise” was intelligence?  That isn’t saying much for him and his ilk is it?

From his first book, he is only making reference to Greek and Roman mythology, as though they were the only civilizations with which he had to parry and thrust.  It may be that he looks at Egyptian later in the work, but at least in his first book his entire glance towards Egypt consisted of Moses.  That’s it.  Just Moses.

True, the fact that most historians are seriously questioning the Biblical story of Moses altogether may be a more recent development, and ancient Egypt wasn’t really discovered by western culture until the time of Napoleon, so perhaps I can’t fault him for that as much.  But the other regions?  Makes no sense to me, none of it does.  So much of his initial argument makes no sense I can’t even find a place to start, as far as making a counterpoint is concerned.  Maybe with the original Lilith or something, to squash his Eve?  But he doesn’t focus on Eve so much anyway – Adam is his guy, which, for a man steeped in the toxicity of an extremely conservative, religiously fundamentalist patriarchy – much like the Republican Party of the U.S.! - isn’t surprising.

I have just discovered today that I really love tea made from roasted dandelion roots.  Why stupid suburbanites (the evil “Manifest Destiny” lunatics)  have this passionate need to destroy, slaughter, poison or trample everything worthwhile, I have no idea, but it seems they do.

One thing you should try not to do is allow your blood sugar to drop so far you nearly black out from it – which happened to me when I started feeling gawdawful and discovered my blood sugar was 37.  That isn’t a typo.  Thirty-bleeping-seven.  Drank two glasses of fruit juice pronto and had some toast ... and that was before I could make my way back to the bedroom where I had the glucose tablets.  I was hanging on to the countertop, trying not to let my knees buckle.  37.  Who gets readings like that?  And it wasn’t as though I was doing anything unusual when it happened; my sugars just plummeted for no good reason that I could determine.

Grande Amore - Lyrics and Bob's Amazing Erotic Lilies in Golden Cups

Update:  I finally found the name of the songwriters who came up with the amazing song Grande Amore – Francesco Boccia and Ciro Esposito. 

Ahhh, and then life interferes with life sometimes …

After the EMG, my legs were twitching and jerking uncontrollably.  Went on for about five days.  All of a sudden, without warning:  [*JERK*!]  … the legs would go flying out in a weird direction.  I just stared at them, trying to make sense of it.  I thought perhaps my lower legs and feet were coming back to life.

Then the leg jerking stopped and they’re back to being dead again.  The regular muscle and tendon spasms have returned.  The physical therapist thinks less than one month before being back at work at full capacity is being too optimistic.  Next, my right foot inexplicably started turning in towards the left foot whenever I lifted it ... and the shuffling I had been able to do turned into a stumbling gait that scared the crap out of me.

Time to perhaps plan the rest of my life as a not too mobile disabled person?  Not quite sure how to do that.  I have always walked – have never been able NOT to walk.  Which is not to say I can’t stand on my feet and perambulate – I can – but I need a rolling walker in front of me and I shuffle at the pace of a snail – and now, I should say, stumble at the pace of a snail.  Not quite what I would call “walking.”

I worked on We Can Fly to keep myself distracted ... had fun with it actually.  First real bout of creativity I’ve had in a while.  Created as inspiration to get us  to New York City and the Cutting Room, despite mutual mobility issues – which now seems horrifyingly dubious given my recent stumbling issues.

Symbolism:  the four center “Wings of an Eagle” block.   Peacock:  Transforming the physical body into its potentiality.  Eagle: "Fly Higher."  Number 4:   endurance, mastery, building solid foundations, determination, hard work.  Grey fabric, black print fabric: nerve electrical impulses.  Red fabric:  intensity, passion, will power.  Green fabric:  spring, new growth, April.  Black/grey/white versus color:  “They clipped my wings, and I can't fly”, Gotta Get Away From It All , (Bob Cowsill, Bill Cowsill, Mary Dean); change in attitude from defeated to hopeful, awakening.  Asymmetrical borders:  partial disabilities.  Bluebirds:  cheerfulness, happiness, prosperity, good health, and the renewal of springtime.  “Bluebirds come up to guide us”, The Cowsills, We Can Fly, “Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly”, The Wizard of Oz. 

This is the center of it, minus the borders, batting, backing and quilting.  Right now it’s pinned to the wall, providing inspiration ... and waiting for some ... haven’t really decided what to do for borders yet.  Quotes are: 

Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly? (Frida Kahlo)
Birds have wings; they're free; they can fly where they want, when they want. (Roger Tory Peterson)
Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. (Gustave Flaubert)
There is nothing holier in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings.  (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
They clipped my wings, and I can't fly.  (“Gotta Get Away From It All” , Bob Cowsill, Bill Cowsill, Mary Dean)
Nothing to tie us, bluebirds come up to guide us, When you're beside me, we can fly. (The Cowsills, We Can Fly)
Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly… (The Wizard of Oz)
Poor baby, try to feel better, Nothing's bad as it may seem, Poor baby under the weather, Try to close your eyes and dream (The Cowsills, Poor Baby)
I have been one acquainted with the night.  I have walked out in rain — and back in rain.  I have outwalked the furthest city light.... (Robert Frost)

Next project:  Let Beautiful Beige Come Into Your Mind.  Now THIS one ... the original idle thought was to just use the title and create a soothing monochrome art quilt ... even had a sketch of what I wanted drawn up.  And then I read the lyrics.  I mean, really read the lyrics.  Said, “Holy (bleep)!”  And all these years I had thought the song was about something else entirely.

A violet in the field is growing,
You're afraid to touch not knowing
That its petals cannot burn you,
Don't you think it's time you learn to love?
Your window sill is lined with lilies
And other white assorted sillies,
Planted within golden cups,
But is there any diff'rence up above?

Nice, sunshiny Cowsill-esque song, no?  Not hardly.  You have a young woman, afraid of the realities of love.  She’s out in a field, out in the wilds of nature, afraid of touching a violet (the color violet relates to the fantasy world, and a need to escape from the practicalities of life, the daydreamer escaping from reality) out of fear she’ll be “burned” by it.  At home, she has lilies lined up in “golden cups” on her windowsill.  Has anyone looked at a lily lately?

Generally speaking, a lily is “sex on a stem”, and always has symbolized just that:  artists have always used the lily to capture the erotic shape of male and female genitalia found within the one shape.  And these lilies are planted in “golden cups” – something of real value, coveted.  Not a vase, or a planter.  A cup.  Not just any cup – which is another word for the item men use to protect those same certain valuables they carry around with them – but a “golden cup” ... in other worse of the same color as the flower’s representation of the same item, and also valuable and coveted.  The singer is asking, “What is the real difference between the love you seek in the daydreams of your imagination or in the symbols of love on your windowsill (i.e. your view of the world), and the real thing?”  You may see things as either good or bad:

Black is black and white is white,
You're so hung up on day and night,
Is it that important to you?
Can't you let the dark come shinin' through?
A searchin' hand says come and greet me,
Be a friend and don't defeat me,
You say that the day is lighter,
I say that the stars can be bright too.

Actually I did those verses in reverse, but “I say that the stars can be bright too.” – what you see as something dark and fearful, can actually bring you as much pleasure as sunlight.  Or something along those lines.

Anyway, I looked at the primary lyricist and thought, “Wow, no wonder I thought he was so (bleeping) hot!”  Have no idea when Bob Cowsill came up with those lyrics, but I just sat here with my mouth open.  The song first appeared on their We Can Fly album (MGM Records – 1968), so he had to be – what?  Had to be 18? 19? And somehow that kid came up with an astoundingly erotic and adult love song.  How did he do that?  He was just out of high school!  Inspirational, too – I’m re-thinking the entire Beautiful Beige art concept into something far more Georgia O’Keefe-ish than monochromatic.

My PC also came down with a huge virus.  Not quite sure how it happened – I’m always extremely careful about clicking on unknown links without checking and vetting sources first.  But the weirdest thing happened:  all of a sudden, without having clicked on anything,  I get an IM message from the Kinks Official Fan Club:  “We have accepted your request to join us.”  I said, “Huh?  I never requested to join any Kinks Official Fan Club …”

… and then my mouse cursor went wonky on me, as though someone else had ahold of it and was trying to click elsewhere … I disconnected the cable, shut down immediately and took the PC to Staples – it was still under a service contract … being without my PC for 3 days was a major pain in the … well, I’m sure everyone has been there at one time or another. Then it turns out whatever scrubbing they did had disabled my online access, so I had to drag it back in ... such fun.  It also disabled my video converter, but when I re-downloaded THAT, I ended up with a Bing search page, which I can’t get rid of to save my life, no matter how many times I change the Home Page in the control panel.

There are days when I just hate computers in general.

Hair.  After the last nightmare with a haircut, when I ended up looking like the butch-est looking creature since Gertrude Stein and completely devastated, I haven’t had it cut since – and it strikes me as amazing that I haven’t had it cut in almost three years and it isn’t down to my waist yet.  It’s about halfway down my back.  I do need it cut, but ... what to do.  Shag, layered?  I have no idea what my hair will tolerate at this point – I know it definitely doesn’t hold a curl.  I was even thinking of a French braid or twist if I could figure out how to pull that off.

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/

The Awesome Bob Cowsill Belts out "Rescue" ... and I'm Not Required to Levitate Tables

Stayed home a week or so ago for an appointment, and enjoyed a glorious nor’easter.  Was thinking I would drop by the beach and revel in the gale force wind and rain – during the night the wind was so fierce I was praying to Boreas not to uproot my trees.  Which he didn’t.

But changed my mind about the beach:  the news wasn’t bad exactly, but wasn’t good either – going into the hospital for a procedure on a Friday morning at the end of November.  Here’s hoping Anna Jaques is a great hospital; this time I don’t have Jim, so had to barter my way out of having a relative pick me up.  Car service it is.

So instead of the beach, I spent the last day or so trying to put my dining room table back together.  Another one of those assembly disasters I’m no longer strong enough to easily do single handedly.  By 6:00 at night, I had ONE of the table pedestal legs re-attached; today I successfully attached the second one before picking up my suits from the seamstress.  Then I discovered there was no way in hell I was going to get the table turned over and standing upright; it was way too heavy.  Time to call Dana for help.

Had our first Year II class ... instructor was describing what we would be needing to master in order to pass the course at year’s end and calmly added, “And you’ll be required to levitate this table.”  That seemed a bit beyond my immediate skill set – (a bit?) – and because I didn’t want to protest, “Are you f**king KIDDING me?!?” right in the middle of class, I gloomily anticipated a quick and pitiful end to my studies ... until someone later – much later - told me, “She was joking!”  So – news flash:  I will not be required to levitate a table.  Which is too bad – I could have really used that ability to get the dining room table turned over.

Assignment:  another 40-day ritual of discipline.  The last ROD was a bust, mainly because the one I assigned to myself was something I had to memorize, or read off of a piece of paper, right before sleeping, and I was unfortunately right in the middle of moving here when I was trying to remember to do it every night.  After that move I was lucky I could remember how to tie my own shoes, much less that tiny piece of paper, so the ROD turned into a morning ritual of “Oh, SH*T, I forgot to do it again!”  Hey, at least I did that consistently!

So we try again.  This time the Ritual of Discipline is to learn or memorize a correspondence or ritual or related item of information I didn’t know before, every day.  So far, I’ve learned about Ahura Mazda, learned the pronunciations and meaning of neter (“neecher”) and neteru (“neecheroo”); learned what the ankh meant, and tried to make sense of the “Opening of the Mouth” ritual.  My favorite – actually, I’m not sure what I’d call her – author?  Energy vampire? Source of information on entities who need to have the christian slur “demonic” removed from them? – Michelle Belanger had created a magnificent deck of “Watcher Angels”, so I’m systematically comparing her deck with Crowley’s and getting to know the cards themselves and keeping track of readings – not as easy a task as you might think.

Back to the Cowsills.  I do agree with John Cowsill’s summary of the band – an awesomely talented group of kids who got taken down a bad path”, or something like that.  You watch the documentary done on them – Family Band:  The Cowsill Story – and you learn that the image forced onto four brothers who wanted nothing more than to be the world’s greatest rock band was just that:  a false bubble-gum pop image that sold records, so what else are four talented kids going to do but go along with it?  They’d get beaten up by a sadistic father if they didn’t.

The driving musical force behind the Cowsills was really the two oldest brothers:  Billy Cowsill and Bob Cowsill.  The start of their downward spiral was the moment when Bill, the musical genius and group’s mentor, was kicked out of both the band and the family for the crime of standing up to their abusive, violent father.  Bob, who called it “the worst day of my life”, had to fill Bill’s unfillable shoes – overnight.  You can see the shock on his face in videos of the group taken right after Bill’s “firing” – unless the camera was right on his face, he wasn’t smiling.  Paul commented on the “enormous pressure” Bob was under in those bleak days:  he had to rearrange songs, take over Bill’s lead while covering his own, he had to take on a musical direction, he had to lead the others.  And he did, and it changed him.  I think I said earlier, when the group performs today, he sounds exactly like Bill used to sound, so you sometimes forget that Bill was the original lead singer on songs like “The Rain, The Park and Other Things”, and “Hair”.

So, as I get to know the Cowsills again through a lot of You Tube videos out there, I am more and more impressed and astonished by their musical talent – all of them. 

Still – one video I discovered has become one of my favorites.  The group was performing at “A Taste of Rhode Island” in 2000.  You may not recognize the song, “Rescue”; it wasn’t one of their huge hits.  But what this is:  Bob belting out a blistering rock song ... and here’s the gloriously shocking part:  that’s Bill, to Bob’s left in the white long sleeved shirt and black pants.  Susan, John on drums and Paul and Barry are also there.  Richard Cowsill - Bob's twin brother who had pissed off their father so much he was sent off to Viet Nam and never performed with his family is also there - that's him on the tambourine next to Bob.  The Cowsills family was fully intact in this performance.  That Bob and Bill were back on stage together choked me up completely – this song might have even been more awesome if Billy’s guitar hadn’t broken in the middle of the song.  And you realize, listening to this wonderful performance, what they COULD have become, if shockingly abusive parents and moronic MGM executives hadn’t destroyed a group of awesomely talented kids out of their own greed.

Thought I’d share it with you.  Here is who the Cowsills REALLY were, all along: