Valentine Postmortem

 My odd little marriage began strangely - on Halloween. So, why I did I marry my future "ex" on Halloween? You may be wondering, or not in a million years wondering...

"Hey -- do you want to get married on Halloween?" my ex said blandly as we were driving down Route Seven in the fall of 1974. Notice he didn't say "Want to get Married?" What he said was "Want to get married on Halloween?" The date was not negotiable.

It wasn't one of your more romantic proposals. Especially followed by the pathetic statement "I'd get $180 more //OR SOME NUMBER I AM NOT RECALLING WHAT NUMBER// a month from the Veterans Administration if we were married instead of just living together." Now where's the romance in that? No mention of love anywhere, only money. But then we had been living together for two years which is quite enough familiarity to beat the crap out of your average romance. But heck, it was the mid 70's and we were idiots.

I had a lot of things to consider. My mother had developed a physiological response to our living in sin arrangement. She had mysterious gall bladder attacks following each of our visits. There could only be one answer to his wretched proposal. "Okay," I said flatly with a tightening knot in my stomach. I was 23 and didn't know any better. He might never ask again, and I loved him, I thought.

On the day of our ill-fated union, we both went to work as usual. We came home and had a terrible fight. He wouldn't allow my parents to come to the ceremony because that would mean his parents would have to come too. Now, I am an only daughter and this faux paux of exclusion cast him in a bad light with an entire array of aunts, uncles and cousins for years to come. Some still haven't forgiven him though we have been happily divorced for two decades .

"I'm not marrying your parents. I am marrying you," he said bluntly. He wouldn't even allow mom and dad to take us to dinner afterwards. So we went to Val's Pizza and each ate a slice in icy silence. Then we went shopping at a discount store, like it was just another day. Finally we visited married friends whose babies screamed in the background while they fought and needled each other. Inside my head the regrets had already begun: I've promised to spend my life with this man - I thought to myself in horror. What have I done?
Perhaps those who wield hearts, flowers and hand-trucks full of valentines know something we didn't know then, something we failed to learn during our five-year marriage. "Oh to be young and in love," people say. Well at this point in my journey, I wouldn't go back for all the chocolate in a mall Godiva store! I'll leave that to all the rest of you. So get busy young lovers, in only a few short decades you'll be fully vested old fools like me, trying to recall the debacles of your youth.



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The Blush, a drawing with pastel

This is very early drawing of mine in ink and pastel. I think the degree of embarrassment is quite evident. I was thinking of the look of John Lennon with the granny glasses and sixties haircut -check out that hair!

Unfortunately I never matted nor dry-mounted this piece and now there are two creases in the paper that run all the way across it horizontally. It's not enough to create a work - you have figure out how to put it use and preserve it too.

When I was web mistress for the Wed Night Poetry Series I used this for several years on the web listings and emails for their Erotic Exotic Neurotic Valentines event.

Poetic license

As a medium, oil pastel offers a lot of possibility. This is a none-too-flattering, not particularly accurate self-portrait of the puzzled dragon at the easel. This was just after I came back from Maine when I lived in the attic of the house where I grew up. I like the crazy colors. The curtains were really white but that wasn't that interesting somehow. My hair is not really green either. haha.

WRITING NOTE: Writing fiction or poetry is a lot like that - the details can be altered to good effect on the bottomline of the story. Non-fiction has another standard - but the filter is still the writer's, reflected in what comes first, what details are included, what items had follow up research, etc etc.
 

Valentine's Post Script

Valentine's Day. Whew. So many flower ads, and ads for diamonds and chocolate -- I might have to sue Hallmark for demensia sentamentalis!

After watching all the heart-warming Valentines Day TV specials, I've been reminiscing. And it seem to me that Lover's Lane was always full of potholes and paved with self-deceit. Maybe I only feel that way because I had a brief, odd marriage that began on a truly appropriate holiday - Halloween. To add to the charm of the occasion we were married in a funeral home, by a mortician who was also a justice of the peace. We didn't know just who was being laid out at the time, but they had some really spectacular flower arrangements.

Why Halloween? It's a lot better day to begin a marriage than Pearl Harbor Day when some friends of ours were wed. (I have a poem called Ceremony on this very topic.) After all, a masquerade is safer than a war. Besides, don't most starry-eyed couples clutch their masks tightly, as well as their delusions about the true nature of their beloveds?

Ghouls aside, removing our masks is the stuff of true intimacy, the thing that separates infatuation from love. So, what could be more appropriate for a marriage than Halloween when one puts on a mask only to remove it later?

This leaves the nagging question - just what is Valentines Day appropriate for? Staying home and drawing the blinds has always worked well for me....

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Short poem with digital foolishness

Here's a poem to go with this crazy digital sea:

The mix, the shrift of wave and gilt,
all gnarl or growling storm
All life's atwist in azure time's wild light.
Adapt! Transform!

Quiet streets after polls close

On Super Tuesday, I came home after a poetry reading around 10 p.m.. I drove up old Route 7 and though the streets of downtown Danbury. No one was walking. No cars passed. The streets were eerily empty. Really empty. I could have been driving though a deserted movie set.

I can't help but wonder if people were so interested in the voting results, that they were cloistered at home in front of their TV sets waiting for the tally. If so, that's a promising sign in a democracy where most of the electorate traditionally stays home on election day. Whoever you favor, whatever party, whatever philosophy - register to vote and have your say in November.


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Pixies pluck forget-me-nots

Being an agnostic heathen doesn't mean one can't draw fairies or angels or sing scared music. Here are two versions of something I drew for My Not-Quite Blank Book, a book of writing prompts put out by Hanover Press. One was used in the book, but I forget which.

 For elegance and lightness I like the angel on the top. For impudence and a sort of solidity, I like the one to the left.... Forget-me-nots are my favorite flower which grew in miniature in the yard of the house I grew up in. They were originally planted by my father, who also mowed them into mutation when they spread out from the corner flower bed.