OF ZOMBIES AND MEN

The early morning news story of a Miami man, naked and growling, biting off the face of a sleeping homeless man, on a city causeway, was not only horrific, but was also the first Urban Legend come true that I have experienced. As if the homeless do not have enough strikes against them...now they must worry about drug-induced zombies prowling in broad daylight, walking over the freeways in search of helpless human flesh...

Everywhere I glance, it seems I am encountering zombies. From video arcades to my students' hand-held gaming devices--there are zombie stuffed animals and zombie dolls--both ironic--as well as zombie comic books. For those with a longer attention span, there are zombie graphic novels, zombie classics, zombie spy and zombie romance books. There are zombie movies (where the first zombies I ever encountered originated) and zombie television/cable series (now going into third seasons!). There are zombie aliens, zombie religions, zombie chatchkes, zombie jewelry, and zombie music.

Why are we so taken up with flesh eating humans who rot their violent ways into our lives? Why do we dream of our loved ones turning on us and trying to get a viable piece of our brains? (Weren't vampires enough?)

My sisters gave me a zombie manual (How to survive the incoming...) and gave my nieces a zombie board game. My brother plays zombie video hunts with his two teen-aged daughters and their friends. My brother is a cop...(another irony manifested)...There are zombie-themed parties and zombie cocktails..(probably a cookbook somewhere in cyberspace waiting to be born)...But why?

 Frankenstein's monster was never sexy. The dead smell. Their teeth are bad--imagine their breath--or the insides of their mouths (since they don't actually breathe anymore). Zombie fashion isn't a big hit, either. I haven't seen a single Cannes runway show covered by TMZ featuring zombie couture, nor zombie models. So why the infatuation?

The need to control others, it seems, is why Voudon culture first came up with the idea of the undead. (Since we cannot seem to control  ourselves--why not get some peaceful slaves?) Current zombies, however, are less amenable to spiritual powers. They have no religious beliefs. They are immune to all suggestions. They simply want to feed--on us. (And then, it seems, they don't really finish a meal. They always are moving on to the next new thing--much like TMZ...) I guess that's one way they keep their numbers up.(If you eat too much of your mother-in-law, how's she going to help you take down your father-in-law?)

Perhaps it is the issue I struggle most with: judging one's neighbors.

If you are a zombie, there's nothing left to judge. You don't give a rat's ass about anybody, except where the next brain is coming from. You don't worry about make-up, fashion or your weight, do you? (And who the Hell asks a zombie what their political affiliation is?) Secretly, maybe we are all craving relief from the constant judging we inflict on each other and this is the best answer we can come up with.
What happened in Miami is (reportedly) due to drug use--they are saying in the news, based on cops and doctors, that both men were using. What they are not saying is what led both men to that horrendous confrontation. (Who had they lost? What socio-economic curse was upon both of them that they have found each other and danced this karma out, together?)What was the meaning of the stripping off of the clothing of the homeless man, who had little enough as it was, by the naked attacker? Did race motivate or accentuate or ameliorate the act? (What about age? Territory? Spirituality?)  What were the real reasons this brutal feeding frenzy played out on that bridge?

And why didn't more people help?

Why did the police immediately fire? ( Did they think it WAS a zombie movie, for reals?)

Have we walked over the edge of the abyss into our own nightmares? What now? What next?


Zombies are real, people.

( Just say "no"... )

BBall Coaches and Short Girls

Mrs. Mulqueen died this week.
 She's been fighting cancer the way she fought our opponents in the Catholic Girls BBall League back in the 60's. Unrelenting until the end--even as she had to know there wasn't going to be a trophy.

Her funeral mass is on Saturday; I will surely attend. Her successful children and grandchildren and extended family, none of whom I've talked to since Gardner High School, in 1974, but most of whom I knew, up close, back in 1974, will also surely be present. (What a weird "homecoming"...in this continuing saga of "coming home"...)

One son, who has been helping to run the Worcester school system for years, used to play in the band with me. Younger, shorter back then, will he even remember? His brother has been a successful doctor and runs a clinic in Haiti, along with his wife, since Haiti needed clinics, before it was "cool". He gets high school kids to do a brief "internship" there, every year, too. (I learned to dive in their pool. I shared Oreos and family bar-b-ques and sibling rivalry.) Will he remember?

I remember--their Mom--allowing a short, round kid with glasses, and lots of internalized secrets, a place on the Sacred Heart Girls' basketball team. (A girl who always felt she was really six-four, just folded; who loved hardscrabble street games and though short, could actually shoot from the outside, if given a chance. A girl who needed someplace to excorcise the frustration and aggression of the "boys first" mentality of the town they all lived in--even if no one had ever told her "girls' rules" (in the 60's) on the court...

Mrs. Mulqueen realized, (when I caught a loose pass and ran, clutching the ball against my flat chest, down the whole center court) that she needed to "teach Minns" girls' rules, 101.
 So, we began.
Hundreds of laps, sprints, drills, though we played the same three teams over and over...
It was our Universe.
It was fierce.
Transcendental.
It was Everything.

In seventh grade, she didn't hold it against me.

She also never held against me the short fuse I carried--which insured, if I was ever in a scramble, I came up with the ball.(Even if most of the time my opponent was two feet taller.) Only once did she send me home "to cool down"--later showing up at the house, to make sure I was okay.
(I was.)
Embarrassed, dehydrated, trying to hide my scarlet face from my Mom, who was pleasantly surprised at the unexpected "visit".

Mrs. Mulqueen understood howI needed basketball.

I needed to run, and slip on too-waxed gym floors, in my  knock-off Keds gym shoes.
I needed to sweat my face off in practices with girls way better than I could ever hope to be--in order to get way better, myself.
I needed the friendship and comraderie of people whose bodies "thought", instead of just their minds.
I needed to exalt in being tough and strong and part of something bigger than myself.

I needed that kind of Spiritual Support.

(The one time my Mother attended a game, our only "exhibition for the parents", I played so poorly that she never showed up again.) When I began a debate at dinner, about Federal funding for girls' college sports, I was shut down with the line: "Why do you care? You were never very good at basketball, anyway. It won't ever affect you!"

Mom was very wrong. It did affect me. Big Time.

It created a platform to build a life that remains challenging.
Unsatisfied with the average.
 Spiritually independent.
Filled with other comrades on the same path--some of whom ARE professional athletes, today.

It taught me to play fairly; to learn from my strengths AND my weaknesses; to share the ball; to lose gracefully, and to occasionally run, even if you aren't sure of the right direction, (simply because it's thrilling to hear the crowd roar!)
To never let Fear stop you.
(Ever.)

Just like Mrs. Mulqueen--who always knew.

So, for her and for her family, I send prayers. I send praises.
 Because, it does matter.

I'll teach my kids the same.
  

MEMORIAL DAY

It's one and a half hours up to Vermont.
Dad's driving tailgate all the way.
Mom's talking over talk-radio, changing the volume so loud I can't hear. The dog buries her nose in the sheet covering the back seat--ostensibly to protect us all from her hair. Secretly, I think it is in honor of her. She hogs the back, both pissed she has to share and proud she gets the middle. Like all Divas, she knows who rules the car. I put down the window. Dad says, innocently, " Does someone have a window open?"
"I do."
"Oh." He hits the power button and closes it an inch.
"Dad, I'll puke if we have all the windows closed...it's like eighty-five back here. The sun is broiling us alive--"
"Oh."
Mom interjects, " Do you want me to sit back there with the dog?"
I try not to roll  my eyes, or sigh, or do anything but put the window, the one window in the back, down, and stick my head out.
"I just could feel the breeze," Dad says, but doesn't hit the button again.
Maeve looks at me. She rolls her eyes. She sighs, audibly.

When we get to the winding road that leads us to the mountaintop cemetery, Maeve recognizes it. She begins whining.
(I also recognize it. Last time I was there, Mom and Ann and I took a Sharpie and inserted the hyphen in Gram Minns-Bushway nee Kelley's name on the tombstone. It was the only act of "vandalism" that Mom ever engaged in...though it hardly counted. Even Dad agreed, Gram would have wanted it that way, given short shrift as the second wife.)
I also recognize the road from the first time I drove. Gram's funeral, age sixteen, my license newly minted. Nobody warned me Gram's casket would be open--or that she would be sitting up. Nobody warned me that because Mom and Dad were the first generation of kids, they would be riding in the official death cars, provided by the funeral parlor and Grampa. I had to drive the "kiddie car". Our giant turquoise station wagon up a steep mountain in a funeral procession that included enough cars to be bumper to bumper around all the hairpin turns.
Yeah, I recognize the cemetery. Not much has changed.

"What happened to Jesus' hand--his left one?" I ask as we drive slowly in past the gates.
"Kids!" Mom sighs.
"Are you sure?" I ask. This is not the kind of place where teens run wild breaking off pieces of Jesus.
"Well, they put a beer can in Jesus hand at the cemetery in Gardner!" Mom spits.
I don't contradict. They probably did.
"Maybe it was an offering?" I offer.
Nobody responds.
The dog licks my cheek.
We roll up to the big Bushway stone.
It is bare naked in the glinting spring sun.

"Take the dog to pee," Dad points to the edge of the graveyard. The woods.
While he and Mom wrangle the several bouquest of silk and plastic out of the trunk, I try not to sprain my ankle in a disguised sprinkler hole, while holding the dog back from full tilt boogie escape into the dark trees.
Once we get away, we enter the shade.
Cool pine and maple and high bush blueberry greet us like old friends. Literally, I feel I'm embraced by the forest--that I can breathe again.
Looking down, however, I find the edge of the grass marked by a border of empty soda cans, ice-tea
and beer bottles, empty flower pots--some with dried and rooty after growth still clinging to the edges. A few fast-food wrappers and it feels as if I pull away from the pines and I'll enter a landfill.
Both sad and upsetting.

I sit on a big chunk of uncut granite, listening to the birds unwind.
Maeve poops. I scoop, though wondering what's the point out here amid the trash and wildness...but I scoop.
I watch Mom and Dad, fading in the sun. They argue and wrangle wire and clippers and make sure no Vermont vandals will get away with our family's artificial bouquet.
Mom crosses herself, praying too long in Dad's opinion. He informs me when I get back to the car.
I give Maeve some of her designer water we always travel with. (For her, not the humans. We have to wait...)
When Mom finishes, she orders me to take Maever again, around the graveyard, "so she won't pee in the car."
Maeve has never peed in the car.
(Mice have gotten into the engine and peed all through the exhaust system, but not the dog.)
It also doesn't work quite that quickly.
I don't argue.
It's a cemetery. I am still the struggling-to-do-right grandchild of all those people laying down around us.
I walk Maeve around.
She happily pees on every stone she can manage--even lifting her very female leg up when she's empty. (Such are Divas in the world.)

Dad drives around behind us, almost running us over. He stops when I flag him down. I push the heavy-ended pup into the back seat, now dry as a proverbial bone.
I shudder.
I open the window, again, praying nobody has followed us inside.

DISCO DIES, AGAIN

We all have soundtracks in our lives. Like all soundtracks, some are just more dynamic and memorable than others. In the sixties, the folk-rock music scene clearly dominated. Beatles and Stones are cliches we embrace, passing them down as short-hand, to our children. In my college years, the singer-songwriters were the tunes we went to classes with: Joni Mitchell, Carol King, Paul Simon, James Taylor. Hard rock tenderized us and the folk-rock writers took us to school.

In L.A., I moved between two eras of sound: punk rockers in torn leathers and gliterry disco citizens. Any weekend might find me switching "costumes" as I travelled Sunset to Silver Lake, or attended a slinky party in the West Hollywood and Hollywood Hills environs. I might be moshing in a pit with sweaty kids my own age (or younger), the sheer tribal cacophony its own pulse-pound; then the next evening, I would be tearing up a disco dance floor, in a white linen three- piece suit and platform shoes, surrounded by "beautiful people", designer drinks and imported cigarettes on every table. Somehow, I felt at home in both environments. I had friends who were eclectic artists and radical politicos. I worked for all non-profit agencies and drove a 1959 Volkswagen Beetle with kudzu painted across its hood. I lived in a multi-level house on stilts on the side of a ravine, with a group of other artist-friends. We breathed music.

The women's music scene was the third alternative--sometimes visited by the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez--but more likely populated by Ferron and the ladies of Redwood Records. Politics, environmental issues, women's concerns, these were subjects showing up in the lyrics of the third choice of soundscape in my life . (It probably helped that the owner/founder of the music production company, WOMEN ON WHEELS, was also my landlord.. and that every other woman I met in California, at the time, belonged to a start-up band...but it was REAL.)

 I began to lose touch with huge musical movements, of single singers, right after that. My life became more focused, more mainstream, more insular. Opera, classical music, serious chamber concerts, the ballet began to fill my off-duty hours, replacing the rowdier and more visceral beats. However, if I needed to remember where I'd come from, one old l.p. or tape, popped in, and I was back there, like a time machine.

Today, hearing of Donna Summer's passing...well...what's to say? She was a bridge over all those periods of my life. So many of the diverse communities I lived with, lived in, listened to her, loved her. She connected us and allowed us to enjoy the joy of each other. Never too heavy; never too serious--and yet, what is more serious than allowing diverse sociological groups access to each others imaginations? Each others hearts?

You may moon over Mick or cry with Joni; you may scream yourself dry with Xenene and the Pistols; James can fill your broken heart with velvet and Criss may take you over a waterfall; but Donna Summer would always increase your heartbeat; pick up your pulse; introduce you to your neighbor and leave you flying high!

East L.A. to Inglewood; North Hollywood to Malibu; San Diego to San Francisco--when  you heard Donna, you knew there was a party going on--you knew you would be welcomed inside. I might attend "Madame Butterfly" and cry my eyes out...but dancing under a diamond-flashing ball with Summer belting in the background was how I desired to end my evening.For me, Donna WAS Los Angeles big city nightlife for almost forty years.

So, please, Angels and God, take her to Heaven and give her a disco to dominate. (Keep it open till the rest of us arrive.)

 Vaya con Dios, Amiga. Gracias.
Mucho, mucho gracias. 

ORANGS AND IPADS

Reading this morning's local paper, I came upon an article stating that at some zoos in the world, zookeepers are offering Ipads to their great apes. Orangutans seem to be the preferred species. (Perhaps after PLANET OF THE APES, people don't trust chimpanzees anymore...) The apes seem to be capable of sign language communications, inter-species, but simply lack the physical equipment to speak verbally. Giving them Ipads, employing programs used for autistic kids and other developmentally different humans, enables the orangs to communicate their rudimentary thoughts, feelings and needs.

Of course I began to wonder if wi-fi was also available to them. If so, can they download movies, books, SKYPE apes in other facilities? How long will it take for them to start comparing menus, play areas, downtime? What happens when PETA starts to e-mail? Will their screen-savers and wallpaper include photos of Jane Goodall or other primatologists? What religious tracts will they subscribe to?
(What will they think of alien abductions...)

Of course we can speculate ad nauseum. We can fill the op-ed pages and the funnies. The next cover of  THE NEW YORKER may even feature an orang on Wall Street, checking out the stock market...(I better get royalties for that idea!). But stop for a moment. Consider what we've done in the name of conservation and the name of experimentation to our Great Apes all over the planet.

While some in our ranks are waiting for machines to suddenly come alive and realize they are smarter than us, I cannot help but wonder when we will get the first text message from a zoo, stating:

LET ME OUT! 
   

ROOTS

I do not know if it is an American thing. It may be a Western World affliction. Or, perhaps, an Earthly condition. Wherever it came from (comes from), the truth remains that often, in my life, I have felt that I am living a movie.

It could be that from a very early age I have loved "stories". Soap opera afternoons with Gram and Nana...fractured fairy-tales...ANY fairy-tales, for that matter...Dr. Seuss to BLACK BEAUTY and PETER PAN...later, the darker tales giving me goose-bumps and setting in motion "how to save oneself and be a hero?". They all mattered. Movies gave them voices, gave them faces other than my own, which helped me understand how we all might acquire different kinds of beauty and guts. Movies have been a kind of growing template.

Was it any wonder, then, that when confronted with unfamiliar landscapes, new characters and situations my parents surely never warned me about, I looked to art and literature--and to movies--to formulate alternative plans? For the most part, actually, it was early Catholic School training and modern American cinema that got me through. Those are the roots that extended beyond the familial.

When things have gotten too bizarre, too tough, too bleak, something kicks in and I remember old heroes--the plots of the ancients and not so ancients--how they extricated themselves and saved all around them as they did so.(Yeah, if the Joads could survive, then surely, so could I. Old Yeller might have had to die, but the family moved forward, and it was the right thing to do...Even if life grew complicated, could anyone have a more whack origin than Luke Skywalker? Now there is a tall tale to twist your psyche in knots!) I remember my Bible stories, too. The parting of the Red Sea and the walls of water--fish swimming in utter confusion as they looked out at Moses. I remember the various faces of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and how,even in "Jesus Christ Superstar" there was a kindness I longed to emulate--the vision of supernatural strength that went far beyond comic book heroes. Movies allowed me to "see" and to "follow" and to realize that there are maps we are supposed to find--to help us return to our places of origin--evolved. Giving, and giving back.  

As they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. (Hopefully, makes you wiser, too.) Sometimes the lessons we are learning (and the stories we grasp to get through those lessons), give us remarkable abilities. Skill sets that we can later use in situations we hardly dream would occur--but they manifest. Exactly what we have mastered is what is called for, down the line. Like Luke, we can use all of the overcome mistakes, the bitter lessons, the growing pains and the final victories. We can use what we have internalized and add to the Family of People we come back home to.

 Movies give us a shadow play: help us put a soundtrack to our adventures.They get us ready to meet our convoluted karma; our destiny.

At the very least, they can point us home.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS HAVE GONE

It seems this spring is a particularly harsh one, as far as losing our favorite authors go. Now, Maurice Sendak, the wizard of childhood literature, the artist of our dreams, has passed on to his next adventure. While he had a fantastic and long-lived run, how can we not feel the loss of his flight from the planet? I surely do.

Maurice Sendak's illustrations, as well as his words, pushed me into becoming a lover of the line-drawn story. More than comics but less than oils, Sendak modeled a medium that I could aspire to--even given the rudimentary materials I had at my disposal. For a poor kid growing up in a factory town, fueled by big dreams (and bigger nightmares!), this was a life-line.(My four sibs, all younger, were an easy audience. Their continued promptings also kept me sketching while thinking up new stories. It was a combination that followed me into adulthood and still serves me well.)I believe that the arts educator, as well as the writer I am, was the natural progression from those Sendak-inspired days.

I have always known how powerful such early works are to students. I understand that, to face, head-on, and to name (to draw!) the monsters of our dreams, helps us to tame those wild things; to become our bravest selves. It's never about being creepy. (Just as most horror stories are NOT about sending people under the covers, paralyzed with fright.) It's always about becoming our own heroes;about learning how to survive a tough world.

Sendak didn't just write and illustrate children's books. Sendak was a sherpa who guided us over the scary precipice of our young lives--then brought us back, alive.

Vaya con Dios, Amigo.
Gracias.