Lovers

People never seemed to notice the blemish that appeared high on her forehead, startling on her porcelain-smooth complexion. Even people who had known her for many years, in fact, were unaware of that scar. It helped immeasurably, needless to say, that she wore her hair with a side part, so that her long, straight hair hung looped over that side of her forehead. And it suited her, it certainly did. It enhanced the sultriness of her dark hair expressed against the fairness of her skin, her large hazel eyes with their oddly asymmetrical appeal, her large, expressive mouth. The shape of her face was different too, somewhat reminiscent of the rare result of a kind of oval perfection resulting from a cross-fertilization of South Asian- and Western-generated genes. Although this wasn’t really the case with her; she was pure Anglo, her forebears sturdily British Isles-originated.

People liked her. They liked her natural easiness, her lack of social pretension. With her wide circle of friends, everyone invited her out to spend time with them, for social occasions and just plain get-togethers, one on one, or with some of the crowd that made up their social compact. She was generous with her attention, fixing her gaze directly at the person to whom she was speaking. Age had not diminished one iota her grace, nor her calm, warm presence. What people appreciated most about her was her seemingly casual disregard of others’ fascination with her physical presence. She was just like them, unaffected and well-balanced.

Her on-again, off-again acting career superimposed on her more lucrative and certainly more frequent modelling gigs and television-ad appearances had people turning in the streets, not quite certain what was so familiar about that passing face; her ubiquitous appearances on the public stage, as it were, gifting her also with a eerily-familiar, quasi-celebrity appearance, one she dreaded and did her best to offset. She remained, whatever else she did to shield herself from public scrutiny born of curiosity, a fragile creature of uncertain emotional stability. The quiet panic attacks she experienced followed by black moods when she cloistered herself in her apartment until they eventually passed, were her little secret, not to be divulged to anyone.

And when they’d finally met again, there was no mistaking, even after all those past years, that his appeal for her had resisted the years. When she saw him as she entered the large reception room full of familiar and some unfamiliar faces, she quickly averted her eyes when she realized he was looking directly at her, as though anticipating her arrival. Because she looked elsewhere in that split second she did not witness the dark look that engulfed his face, obviously shocked to see her there. Why that should be was peculiar, since despite his long absence from the country he had been eager enough to link back up with people he had once known and shared certain social pleasures with. Those people, in fact, who had formed a firm compact of friends during their university years.

Little surprise, then, he thought to himself immediately after, that she would also be there. He hadn’t thought to ask… Now that he saw her, he cudgelled himself mentally for his lack of caution. Resigned himself to coming face to face with her. He would never forget the way she had once made him crawl in his fever for her. The heat of their shared passion had seared him, left him unable to form a trusting relationship with any other woman. It pained him to think of all of that. The lack of intimate companionship throughout all those years of living abroad. He had even, at times, encouraged people to believe that he was gay. He could do that, with no blow-back, in the more relaxed social atmosphere that prevailed there.

When their host made a great show about finally bringing them face to face, somehow it seemed to them both that the tumult in the room became hushed, as though all eyes had swivelled toward them, to observe their re-introduction to one another. That isn’t quite what happened, people were more discreet than that, those who knew their history, and most of them avoided looking directly at them, continued with their spirited conversations, on this, their regular annual get-together.

Most of them represented the original crowd of university students who had formed a fairly close bond. Year to year, the changes in marital status, re-marriage or alteration in ‘companions’ expressed a changing repertoire of the presence of others swelling their ranks. They’d all, over the past several decades, experienced their full measure of life’s opportunities and disappointments. Most of them had prospered, and their languid self-assurance spoke volumes about their place in the larger society.

He wasn’t the only one who had found the satisfaction of living abroad to their liking; only the one who’d chosen to be longer in deciding to return to the country of his birth. He tired, eventually, of being an expatriate, even though he enjoyed all the benefits of a foreigner perfectly adapted to his adopted country which had rewarded him handsomely with a prestigious position in an international bank. His old friends, acquaintances and intimates were eager to re-connect, pump him for not only personal information, but financial insider-stuff as well. And he was glad to accommodate with respect to the latter, formally withdrawn in responding to the former.

When they came face to face each made a distinct effort to appear cool, detached, in perfect control. There was no particular warmth expressed, as he held out his arms to take her hands in his, and press them. She leaned forward toward him, her face grazing his, as they shared a perfunctory shadow-kiss. He had murmured something as his face passed hers, but she hadn’t caught what he had said, if indeed he’d said anything. He still held her hands, seemed to not realize that, then looking from her face down to his extended hands encapsulating hers, loosened his grip, allowing her to reclaim what was hers.

"It's wonderful to see you", he said truthfully, hoping that he sounded casual enough.

"Great to see you too again", she responded carefully, well enough aware of that dreadful flutter in her chest.

"Sorry to hear about your failed marriage. You see, I have kept myself informed. I know you were married for almost twenty years. I know you've got two grown kids."

"That's all right" she said. " We had a good marriage, for as long as it lasted. We've remained friends. That's what's important."

"Yes, of course", he said quietly.

Two decades hadn’t, after all, made that much of a difference. He was still captivated by her presence, the ethereal beauty of her appearance gripping him as though he were in the presence of an other-worldly figure. One he’d wanted to possess, make his own. But she had been so profligate with her favours, so generous in her liking for so many other people, her attention to him was diluted to a degree he could never accept. It had grated on him, torn tiny ragged holes in his self-esteem, that while professing to love him, she would still insist it was her right - not a privilege that he could bestow upon her - to see whom she wished when the mood took her. He was driven mad with jealousy.

It wasn’t that their entire relationship was like that. They'd shared long periods when she seemed resigned to surrender her autonomy - that’s what she called it - to 'assuage his possessive constraints' upon her. She would do this, exhausted from those short, sharp and nasty periods when his barking orders so completely enervated her normally ebullient personality, to bring a halt, however, temporary, to their temporarily dystopian existence.

When that happened, when she studied furiously, made no effort to see those of her friends he mistrusted, when she spent all of her time with him, they really did revel in the sublime comfort of mutual devotion, and really incredible sex. It was soothing to her soul, priceless beyond endurance, she thought, their relationship. And she was right; it was beyond endurance, since with the lapse of several months she began feeling restless, began to rage that she was being kept a prisoner, that he must regard her as a helpless dependent he forever hovered over, unwilling to trust her, to give her a little freedom of movement and relationships.

They had originally met at one of their shared classes, one he dropped after the first semester. They both lived in residence, but since they and a number of other students weren’t comfortable there, they had decided between them to rent a downtown house close to campus, and equitably share rent, an affordable luxury which gave them plenty of room and removed them from the closer confines and the kind of raucous environment that they weren’t interested in sharing.

Living together in close proximity brought all of the seven who ended up renting together even closer as a group of intimates. But it was the chemical reaction between they two that stood out, that everyone recognized and made amused allusions to, thrilling them both that others too had understood their need for each other’s proximity.

It wasn’t long before they took on another house-mate, since they found themselves with a spare bedroom, when they moved into the room he had originally had to himself. From there, it wasn’t long in the following year before they moved out to a place of their own, when they both earned a bit of a salary, she waiting at a nearby restaurant, he doing remedial math for high school kids.

They were doing all right. They both agreed that this was so. But he somehow continued to become irked with her. With her still-casual clinging to the notion that she was a free agent, despite their fixed status as a couple. It hardly seemed to matter how often she told him she loved him, he was never satisfied and he was never convinced. Any deviation, however minor from routine, would perturb him. If she arrived home late from her part-time employment or university, he would interrogate her. And she would become furious with him, berate him, warn him that she would take only so much, and no more. That he was not entitled, no one was, to treat another human being as a possession, a thing that could be controlled. He was breaking her spirit, sucking the life out of her, and she could not, despite her love for him, accept that.

Each time, witnessing her white-hot anger and her anguish, he would repent, apologize, say he hardly knew what had come over him. He knew better, he said, it was unfair, he just couldn’t control himself. But he would, he promised, he would.

“I couldn’t bear to lose you” he pleaded with her when she had first intimated that she would be prepared to break their relationship rather than continue to submit to his jealousy.

“You’re working toward that eventuality”, she responded grimly, in no mood at that juncture to help him to smooth things over.

“I know you’re angry with me. I know that. I’m kind of angry with myself. I know I’ve promised enough times that I would restrain these impulses” he said, his face a grey, worried colour.

“You’re right there, on all counts. You’ve promised time and again that you wouldn’t keep jumping on me, accusing me, giving me ultimatums. I’m not prepared to continue to overlook your failures to control yourself. You must know that now.”

“I do, yes I do. I know I’ve been unfair. I can’t for the life of me understand what comes over me. It’s not something I want to do. It’s as though I’m being controlled by some malign force.”

“You’re right again, Jeff. It is a malevolent thing, to continually insist on controlling someone else’s personality. That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to drain me of those characteristics that express my unique personality, and replace them with those you find acceptable.”

“I’m not! Really I’m not. You’ve got to believe I love you, I don’t really want to change anything about you.”

“I’d like to believe it. How can I? How can I keep making excuses for you because I want to believe the things you say when you try to disown what you do to me?”

He stood there, mouth agape, not knowing this time how to respond, what to say. And then succumbing - despite desperately attempting to stifle the heat that suffused him - to that same chasm of vibrating, headache-inducing rage that initiated their interminable arguments revolving about her independence. Only this time the heat escalated to a kind of rage he’d never before experienced.

He found himself suddenly mentally detached, and physically manipulated. He felt, in fact, like a puppet that someone was experimenting with. With invisible strings manipulating his limbs. An artful ventriloquist was bellowing disgustingly hateful invective. Even as he felt helplessly detached, the thought flashed into his mind that what he was screaming at her would never be forgiven, never forgotten. He wanted to swallow his tongue, torque his body into helpless convulsions, so she might have pity on him and forgive him.

Instead, while still lashing her with those bellicose threats that poisoned the very air that surrounded them, he advanced toward her, and flung his open hand against her head, and she reeled backward, but caught herself from falling. Her shocked, frightened face, focused unbelievingly on his blistering anger seemed to motivate him further.

His second, backhand slam at her face succeeded in throwing her to the floor, body twisted sideways, face downturned, where her forehead hit the metal table lamp that her falling, twisted body had brought down.

 

Wearable Art, Disposable Dreams

The dresses - actually they were full-length gowns - took up an awful lot of cupboard space. On the other hand, their new house had plenty of storage space. And there was just two of them, so what need did they have to conserve space? If they were the conserving type they wouldn’t have sold their four-bedroom two-story only to exchange it for an even larger house, albeit with three bedrooms.

The larger house, with its spacious walls, some two-stories in height, better suited him. Fact was, over the years he had assembled quite an art collection. And he wanted to be able to hang everything, see it all. And that’s just what he did. But he was so busy continually that he rarely took the time to stand back, look at his precious paintings. Which didn’t stop him from always being on the look-out to expand his collection.

As for her, those ball gowns - for that’s what they really were - nagged at her. There was a time, once, when she wore them, when they attended formal events. That time was past. She couldn’t bear, she thought, to dispose of them. Besides which, even if she’d wanted to, she knew he would object. They were beautiful, and he loved beautiful things. Objects that were well-designed, well crafted, made of exceptional materials, expressing creativity and aesthetic perfection. He had a keen eye for these things, they delighted him.

So there they hung, sumptuous garments wonderfully well made, recalling a much earlier ante-bellum era, never to return to the world of fashion. Crepe de chine, gossamer net, silks, satins, bows, furbelows, flounces, ribbons, sequins, beading. In ivory, scarlet, the palest of melon colours, these were fabulously lovely gowns. When they’d bought them, in a mad spree of acquisition, he’d had her model them when they’d arrived home with their treasures, and he took photographs of her wearing them all. With their great layered, flounced skirts and close-fitting bodices.

She was a dainty woman. Even at fifty, which was her age when they’d bought those dresses in Tokyo. Of all places to purchase formal wear. But these were - or had been - formal rental garments, just like the coloured silk, massively embroidered marriage kimono that he also lusted after, as wonderful works of wearable art. The Japanese were extremely fastidious about everything; the food they ate, and the clothing they wore, particularly those worn on formal occasions. [ And what could be more formal than a wedding?] Where a social convention had arisen that part of the marriage ceremony saw the bride wearing a marriage kimono, so heavy the silk and embroidered lavishness of the garment that an attendant was required to ensure the bride was able to negotiate her way around without tripping over the kimono - far longer than her height. The bride’s face mirroring tradition, with its heavily white-powdered mask, the white extending over her neck, including the nape, where the collar of the kimono would be pulled slightly back. Beguilingly erotic, it was thought to be.

After the ceremony, though, during the formal dinner, there would appear stage central the modern Japanese bride, wearing a Western-style wedding gown, her face transformed with Western-style make-up; the stiffness of her Japanese white-face having slipped into the red-lipped, albeit shyly smiling new wife to whom toasts were being elocuted along with those for her new husband.

It was those kimono, those gowns, not all of them representing bridal wear, that were later sold at a fraction of even rental cost in the boutique sections of Tokyo department stores. When she had herself worn those gowns later - the Western-style gowns; the amazingly-embroidered kimono were meant to be hung on their walls, not worn - they caused a sensation. For one thing, her weight and shape hadn’t changed since she was in her 20s, and she looked far younger than her years, and the dresses, with her dark, curly hair, showed her off to as much advantage as she advantaged the garments.

They’d come across the gowns hanging in great spacious racks in a special area of the Mitsukoshi department store. Amazed at the presence of these sumptuous, luxurious, hand-sewn and -embroidered gowns made of the finest fabrics with immense care to detail. She had fingered them longingly. He had urged her to try one on. There was a series of very small change rooms set up for just that purpose. Go ahead, he’d said, give it a try; what can you lose? So, against her better judgement she selected a gown, took it along to the absurdly small change room and tried it on. He knocked at the door, said he wanted her to exit, wearing it so he could examine her radiant appearance in the gown. She did, he enthused about trying others on as well. She demurred, mentioned the money involved, and he laughed, then thrust another gown at her to try on.

The Japanese tend to be extremely curious about what foreigners get themselves up to. There hadn’t been anyone other than themselves looking through that rack of gowns. Suddenly, other shoppers took notice and began showing an interest. An interest that extended to a small bank of onlookers ranging themselves casually outside the change room. She was startled, wearing the second gown for exhibit, to see that she had become a focus of interest, and at her re-appearance onlookers clapped. She blushed, turned directly back into the change room to shed the gown and pull on her own clothing. But there was her husband again, with another gown, and the watching crowd erupted yet again in approving claps.

In their later postings abroad, those gowns were well utilized when the occasion demanded. There were six of them, and they more than paid for themselves from one posting to another, allowing her to dress the part of a diplomat’s wife. In one of their postings, where formal wear had been relegated to the back burner of society’s expectations, she had flaunted the informal eschewing of long dress, and worn the peach-coloured gown with its tiny seed pearls and self-cape, to great acclaim. She was photographed and appeared in the following week’s society columns, after which time formal wear was resuscitated; she had set a trend. (Which she hadn’t suspected, since, the following year, she chose to wear a slinky black silk calf-length cocktail dress with the long rope of black pearls she had acquired while still in Japan; and this time she was the odd-woman-out; everyone else emulating her costume of the year before.) Just shortly before they left on another posting.

But there they were, those dresses, taking up an entire closet that covered one whole wall of one of their spare bedrooms, and there they hung, for the next twenty years. Their presence alarmed her, haunted her, taunted her, reminding her of the time that had lapsed. She was now in her 70s. Even her granddaughter, who when much younger had so delighted in looking at those gowns, now thought them passe, uninteresting. Why had she ever imagined her daughter or one of her granddaughters might be interested in them? Clearly, they weren’t. This was an entirely different world they inhabited. All of them, actually.

Since they no longer attended diplomatic affairs, and hadn’t for over a decade. And even before her husband had retired such events were no longer the formal ones they had once been. She knew that specialty vintage shops might be interested in such garments. Among the cognoscenti, those with a large appreciation for the lushness of eternal fabrics, of classic design and sterling workmanship, these garments would have great appeal. And then again, perhaps not. Since there were no designer labels sewn carefully into them. They represented an earlier era, but were produced in the far East, where quality of workmanship was unparalleled but lacking the cachet of a Great House designer label.

So, surreptitiously, one at a time, she carefully folded the gowns, and took them over to her local Salvation Army thrift shop. Her husband would never notice. He hardly thought about them, so much time had gone by. And she had a yearning to see herself freed of their presence. She wanted to be able to open that clothes cupboard, and see a great yawning gap where the gowns hung. After all, wasn’t that the new trend? To rid oneself of all clutter. How did that mantra go? If you haven’t worn it in a year, discard it. Did that, she sometimes mused, extend to relationships?

Well, she hadn’t worn any of these exquisite garments in over two decades. She was now 70. Still the same shape, same weight, but her once-dark hair was decidedly silver, and her face, once smooth-complexioned was now weighted with wrinkles. Her eyes no longer bright, her carefully articulated eyebrows thickened, yet now barely visible. She was a ghost of what she once was. A faded, wrinkled elderly companion to her now-elderly husband.

Now this was something she rebelled against. She didn’t feel elderly. And there were times when she could look in a mirror and feel good about herself. Which she knew was entirely attributable to the fact that her faculties too were fading; her eyesight nowhere near as acute as once it had been. From a distance, viewing herself in a mirror, she could hardly make out the wrinkles, though the absence of her dark hair was remarkable enough. Her breasts did not sag, but her conformation had altered with the onset of menopause; her waist had managed, somehow, to thicken and her stomach to broaden. But not her derriere, and her legs looked as immaculately smooth and shapely as they always had.

But even if she had an occasion that demanded formal wear to attend, would she wear one of those dresses? Hardly; they would be a mockery; she, elderly and wan-looking in those scrumptious gowns crying out for a slender-waisted, sprightly young woman to adorn. (Even if her waist was still sufficiently slender to enable those long zippers to close.)

She felt guilty, nervous, carefully folding and packing the first of the gowns into a bag, and taking it along to the Salvation Army store. Leaving it there. As though she were abandoning something that had once meant something dear to her. As though she was leaving behind a bit of herself, her history. Preposterous to be sure, but she did find it difficult to part with them, even while she ardently wanted nothing else but to heave them out of her life, her cupboard, her home.

Five of those ball gowns were disposed of. She had no idea what had become of them. Who might have been attracted to them, who might have taken advantage of owning so elaborate a garment. Or what price might have been put on them. Not much, of that she felt abundantly certain, given the clientele of the place. But who knew? It had recently become attractive to many middle- and upper-middle-class people to recycle, to shop at such places.

One dress only remained. The bright red silk gown with the clusters of seed pearls sewn thickly over the bodice, with its hooped skirt that had a mind of its own when it was worn. Its puffed sleeves, and cinched waist under a shaped bodice made quite the fashion statement when it was worn. The skirt had swooshed about her as they had danced, away back then. It would also be the most difficult to part with. She had no idea, really why she felt so conflicted about their disposal, dispersal.

They represented a time long past, a tradition of excess that was no longer recognized in a society given over now to relaxed attitudes and lapsed social mores. They might be useful to someone as a costume representing a throw-back to another social era; to be worn to a masquerade party, or for Hallowe’en, for all she knew.

But she did know that difficult as it had been to shed herself of their ownership, she felt relieved finally to be rid of them. She slid back the door of the clothes cupboard, and carefully lifted the heavy, brocaded and beaded garment that shone with a life of its own as the bright satin caught the light from the overhead chandelier, and gently placed it on the bed. Then began folding it onto itself. No easy task; the overlapping skirts refusing to lay in place, the stiffened underskirts unfolding themselves as though resisting the intent to remove the garment from its long resting place.

It had to go. That long-ago time was just that, long ago. The gowns had little meaning for her now, though they were regarded by her husband as works of apparel-art, appealing to his aesthetic appreciation of creative objects spanning all categories of art production. He hadn’t noticed the absence of the other gowns which she had surreptitiously removed and taken away to the thrift shop. Nor would he notice the absence of this last one, until a complete inventory of their belongings was undertaken. And it would be.

Their collective property was to be categorised and inventoried and evaluated. Many objects of value would be retained, but many more were to be de-acquisitioned, sold to the highest bidder. In a general dissolution of joint ownership. Needful, since they were dissolving their intimate relationship. She would become an elderly, single woman, a divorcee. He was destined for another marriage, and she was bloody well damned if the much-younger woman whose welfare he had focused on as his future second wife would inherit anything that she had once worn.

Utterly illogical, she knew. But she also knew she was distraught, devastated, intellectually disabled, and there was logic to that. 

 

 

The Uber Narcissist

 

That nation-wide exhalation of relief, the

euphoria of a wish finally granted, yet how

were we to know in the moment that it was

premature, that the object of our disgust and

rejection had yet other methods and means

to prolong his disastrous stay as the head of

government of a country whose pride in self

for its history, culture, values and geography

watched in dismay as it was peremptorily 

disassembled, leaving its proud whole in a 

state of disengaged parts, the past tarnished

and the future aspiring a complete dissolution

of nationhood. All accomplished through the

Machiavellian machinations of a psychopath

mistaken for a competent administrator who

was functionally incapable, a prisoner of his

own character, a charming, persuasive and

charismatic manipulator whose vanity and

theatrical flair fascinated then repulsed those

who saw beyond the veneer. A remorseless

demonizer, flagrantly exercising the power of

condemnation of critics, silencing voices of

reason and doubt, churning the status of a proud 

nation from a secure law-abiding homeland

to one of threats and violence enacted by the

introduction of unsuitable candidates arriving

on its shores bringing instability, tribalism 

religious sectarianism to roil the social order

all countenanced through the whims of a closet

racist portrayed as a humanitarian, one whose

grandiose self-esteem inoculated him against

the will of the people whom he betrayed.

The Silence of Snow

Wind spurts fierce thrusts compelling
the snow to drift languidly and
mound into voluptuous landscapes
while evergreen boughs heavy
with snow release great clumps
themselves springing to height.

Lazy clouds of snow drizzle
the landscape. Falling clumps freckling
the grey sky, shifting clouds to
pleasure the insistent sun. Shafts
of light haze through the forest,
firing the snow to silver crystals.

Through the soft and gentle
stillness, the staccato of a hairy,
red-capped woodpecker. Snow
generously comforts a recently-bereaved
copse of elm, maple and poplar,
naked no longer. Trunks grey,
black and brown stippled
gloriously-blinding white.

Desiccated, bright orange bittersweet
fruit cluster along their vines'
chokehold on prickly Hawthornes.
Their haws shy against the
flamboyance of the others.
The creek drifts clear and tinkling
over gathered fall detritus
now heavily banked in snow.

A raven crosses the undecided sky,
its raucous call shredding the silence
swift body a black arrow true to its mark.
Soon, snow-muted silence regains
its imperious reign.

 

Slaughtering The Peace

In the still solitude of the winter
woods a hush hangs on the landscape
of dark tree trunks standing like
sentry posts amid great pine forest
giants anchored firmly by an
accumulated snow pack sifted
generously with fresh-fallen snow.

The sky, too, hovers, a mirror
image of the ground billowed with
snow, shimmering pearl-grey,
silver, white. The silence suddenly
broken by a coarse, hoarse racket
of deafening dimensions. A murder
of crows slaughtering the peace.

They shift and shuffle around the
prickly, lofty spires of two-masted
pines whose size bespeak their
majesty, dignity offended by the
rudeness of the invading horde;
cackling, croaking, lifting their
black wings outspread like phantoms
circling the landscape of the sky.

 

Snow Imprint

The forest floor, well on its way
to freezing - encouraged, bullied
by impending winter's
dominion over land
and inland waterways...

Those ferocious icy blasts
have brought new, permanent
snow, covering that rigid floor.
Snow flurries pause lazily in
downward spiral toward
winter's certain depths.

Wind whips bare branches.
The scarlet head of a woodpecker
brutalizing the trunk
of an ancient pine, shards flying
reveals a wide, white gap;
the bird rewarded for its
destructive industry.

Clouds catapult their spare
contents with diminishing returns
as an insistent gust sweeps them
imperiously aside to reveal
an azure promise.

Beams of modest brilliance
modified by the season
yet still sufficiently solarized
illuminate a child's
luminous snow-angel.

 

It Was a Very ? Year

 

The year I was born my parents greeted

their first-born child, with three more

to follow at substantial intervals, all

to an immigrant family living in pride and

poverty, escapees from racial bigotry

social and institutional violence seeing

no possible future for themselves where

they were born. It was, coincidentally the

year that Nazi Germany denied the 

League of Nation having any business

interfering in the way it treated Jews. In

that year of 1936 Britain's King George

died, making way for the ascension of

Edward VIII; Hitler opened the 4th

Winter Olympics; 4 million French workers

went on strike; racists almost beat Leon Blum

to death; the Hindenburg had its first test

flight; Hitler broke the Treaty of Versailles;

Jews were warned of arrest should they

attempt to vote; Italy, Austria and Hungary

signed the pact of Rome; Britain, the U.S.

and France signed a naval accord; Italy

firebombed Harar, Ethiopia; Arab

highwaymen near Nablus killed three Jews;

Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa;

General Francisco Franco began the

Spanish civil war; The "Nazi Games" of

the 11th Olympic games opened in Berlin;

Benito Mussolini celebrated his "axis"

with Nazi Germany; A British Royal 

Commission investigated the underlying

cause of anti-Jewish riots which the Arab

Higher Committee boycotted; Japan and

Nazi Germany signed the Anti-Komintern 

pact; Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Kazakhstan and Kirghistan joined the USSR;

Edward VIII abdicated for Wallis Warfield 

Simpson; and humble me was born.

 

Sisters

 

 

Life began for them as sisters growing up 

in the Pale of Settlement where Jews were 

sent to live lest they contaminate others

in Imperial Russia with their direct presence.

Sisters but unalike in every conceivable way. 

One married a Ukrainian peasant the other 

married my father. They were together as 

man and wife for over thirty years raising

four children together. Cancer took him at age 53. 

It wasn't cancer that took my mother though 

she had entertained colon cancer twice. 

Eventually thirty years past my father's death 

my mother was placed in a communal setting 

for elderly patients with dementia. My aunt

an inmate, greeted her sister on arrival but my 

mother failed to recognize her. She did though

mention that the man whose wife she had been  

naming him by his family name, planned to drop 

by sometime later that evening, and smiled

coquettishly while my sister changed her diaper.

 

Birthdays and Memories

We're talking about Mum, a recurring topic

in most of our infrequent conversations. I fiddle 

with the receiver to position it so her voice 

delivers a clearer message as she struggles with 

that message, short of breath. We've long since 

exhausted our takes on our mother's suitability 

as a parental role model and through our emotion

starved childhood knew we'd raise our own with 

empathy, open emotion and loving guidance.

Did it help? Do our own children now that we're

so old think more kindly of us than we do of our 

mother? Questions we bat back and forth. Now when 

we speak of our mother it's to recall little events

things we remember about her. She is the younger 

daughter, the one who changed our mother's soiled 

diapers. I'm the older one who rarely visited. Each of 

us thought the other had it easier from our constantly

haranguing mother until one day we finally opened 

it all up and spoke for hours. She can't do that any more. 

Talking exhausts her. Walking exhausts her. She is 

approaching her 84th year. Our mother died at 84 of

frontal-lobe dementia. I feel badly for my little sister 

who sent her older sister a birthday card for her 88th 

birthday, arriving just around the corner of time.

 

Crime and Punishment

 

The good and the bad, love and hate

celebrity and notoriety, passion and

compassion they are opposites so closely 

aligned in human nature with the capacity 

to slide from one to the other unless carefully 

monitored one emotion leading to another 

in a confused mind where discipline never

lodged leaving society bemused and transfixed 

at its outcomes. How is it even possible 

that young girls remotely joined through the 

ether of communication conspire to meet on a

public street of a thriving metropolis their

intent to commit public mischief meant to

satisfy their own curiosity about themselves.

In the process three 13 year-olds happy in

the presence of three 14-year-olds thrilled

that two 16-year-olds would notice their

presence swarm, pounce, punch, kick and

stab a homeless man, moving in for the kill 

in lock-step with death each time he manages 

to fend off their wild advances. The girls are 

indulging in an experiment to discover more 

about themselves in a sordid sisterhood of 

bored enquiry that will inform them how 

powerful their combined control can be over 

life and death. What demons drove them on this 

blighted journey of discovery?  What vision

carried  them to this brave new world?