Month: January 2014

The Secret Life of Swimmers

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Secret-Life-of-Swimmers-06A few days ago, at the pool, I was telling one of my pool friends about one of my last blog posts, Helen the Mouse.  She told me that she’s fascinated by pool culture as well, in fact, she had created an art project a couple of years ago.  She told me the name of it and indeed, I remembered reading about it when it first came out.  If you live in Culver City, you might remember seeing the images on streetlight pole banners. The pictures are evocative, crisp, sexy, and honest.  I loved them before I knew who did them and now I love them even more. You really never know who is swimming in that lane next to you.

Here is the link to the series.  

http://judystarkman.com/projects-/secret-life-of-swimmers/11/

Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You?

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52757c19ca8b4226d18dc1939940ea5bThis is not a review of last week’s American Horror Story.  I will merely offer that the best moment of the episode was Stevie Nicks’ haunting ballad she sang at the end, just her by the piano singing to Jessica Lange’s character, Fiona Goode.  I did not remember hearing the song before, so I did a little Google search and I found this video of her singing it at one of the most, pardon my pun, magical concert venues I know of, Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside of Denver.  On Youtube, in the comments someone left the background about the song which I’d also never heard.  The man she is talking about is Joe Walsh, of The Eagles.

Apparently, the following was in the liner notes of her 1985 album, Rock a Little

“I guess in a very few rare cases, some people find someone that they fall in love with the very first time they see them… from across the room, from a million miles away. Some people call it love at first sight, and of course, I never believed in that until that night I walked into a party after a gig at the hotel, and from across the room, without my glasses, I saw this man and I walked straight to him. He held out his hands to me, and I walked straight into them. I remember thinking, I can never be far from this person again… he is my soul. He seemed to be in a lot of pain, though hid it well. But finally, a few days later, (we were in Denver), he rented a jeep and drove me up into the snow covered hills of Colorado… for about 2 hours. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but he did tell me a story of a little daughter that he had lost. To Joe, she was much more than a child. She was three and a half, and she could relate to him.

“I guess I had been complaining about a lot of things going on on the road, and he decided to make me aware of how unimportant my problems were if they were compared to worse sorrows. So he told me that he had taken his little girl to this magic park whenever he could, and the only thing she EVER complained about was that she was too little to reach up to the drinking fountain. As we drove up to this beautiful park, (it was snowing a little bit), he came around to open my door and help me down, and when I looked up, I saw the park… his baby’s park, and I burst into tears saying, ‘You built a drinking fountain here for her, didn’t you?’ I was right, under a huge beautiful hanging tree, was a tiny silver drinking fountain. I left Joe to get to it, and on it, it said, dedicated to HER and all the others who were too small to get a drink.

“So he wrote a song for her, and I wrote a song for him… ‘This is your song, ‘ I said to the people, but it was Joe’s song. Thank you, Joe, for the most committed song I ever wrote. But more than that, thank you for inspiring me in so may ways. Nothing in my life ever seems as dark anymore, since we took that drive.”

Helen the Mouse

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beatrix-potter-the-tale-of-two-bad-mice-1904-hunca-munca-arrives-to-clean-dollhouse.jpg.pngFor the last few years, as you know, Dear Reader, I start most mornings swimming laps at a nearby pool.  There are those that drop in from time to time, but for the most part, the people I see each day are the people I see every day.  I’ve developed a relationship with all of the regulars, even if our communication is mostly non-verbal.  I know who swims for an hour, who swims for 15 minutes, who doesn’t mind sharing a lane, who splashes unnecessarily so they don’t have to share a lane, who does flip-turns, who swims fast, who swims slow, who likes to swim in the sunny lanes, who likes to swim in the lanes nearest the wall.  And generally, all of the regulars have one thing in common, myself included.  We all look like swimmers.  Maybe it’s the chlorine damaged hair or the winter tanned skin or something else, but all of us, including us portlier ones, look like we swim regularly.  The one exception is a woman I call Helen the Mouse.  I call her that because she looks like a Helen and she looks like a mouse.

I’ve swam next to Helen for the last four years. She is probably around 55.  She looks like she’s a librarian or a secretary, but I doubt that’s the case, because, like me, she sometimes swims in the afternoon.  For a while I thought she might be a mystery novelist. I even went so far as to Google search images of Mary Higgins Clark. (not a match) She is unmarried, or at least she wears no wedding band.  Because she is fair-skinned, she always sprays herself with an ample amount of Neutrogena aerosol sunblock and wears a black long-sleeved rash guard.  Like me, she is not slim, but let me tell you something: she is a very good swimmer.  Once in the water, she swims her laps, at least a mile’s worth every day, with elegant form and respectable speed until she is finished.  I always wonder if she was a high school or college swimmer.  She really is that good.  

If you are a distance swimmer, you know you can get a little bored in that water.  It’s amazing the journeys one’s imagination can take one on during a mile or two swim.  One day, in my head, I wrote an entire short story about Helen, that embarrassingly was a subconsciously plagiarized reworking of William Inge’s Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff, the point of both stories being that beneath the veneer of primness, there always lurks a beast aching to be set free, usually by sex.  In my sophomoric imagination, Helen swims every day, even still because it reminds her of high school when she was the secret hookup of the breathtakingly handsome captain of the swim team, probably named something ridiculous like Blake Devereaux.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I love Helen the Mouse. I love that even though she looks like a Helen and looks like a mouse, she still manages to be one of the best swimmers at my pool. And while I can conjecture about what drives Helen into the pool every day, I think I know she’s there for the same reasons I am there. It makes her feel young. It makes her feel accomplished. And more than anything, it makes her feel alive.

What a Wonderful World

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griffith-observatory-llEric’s Dad passed away last night. Diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease several years ago, he’d been in poor health for the last few months. His passing was not a surprise, and while there is a relief that he is no longer in pain, there is an obvious sense of loss and sadness.

Eric and his Mom and I were eating at a restaurant tonight. While there were a few tears, it felt right, to me, anyway, that the laughs by far outweighed the tears. His Mom told several stories about their over 50 years together: courtship, last minute road trips to Vegas, early married life, Sundays spent with the family in Griffith Park, their 40’s, their golden years. She told me that 45 was her favorite age and since that is my current age, it made me feel good. There are many things that I love about my life right now. I feel like I understand me better than I’ve ever understood me before.

While we were sitting there in the restaurant, the only family in the place, “What a Wonderful World” started playing. It was a quiet moment in our evening and I was struck by the juxtaposition of how sad and yet hopeful, even positive the song is. I thought about all of the sweet things people had said about Eric’s Dad in the last few days. Is it luck to be so beloved? Probably not, it’s probably an indication of how one lived his life, what he gave to those who came into his path.

This song really is metaphor for life. It is sad and hopeful, a dirge and an anthem. It’s the sad times that help us value the good. It’s the suffering that Eric’s Dad is out of that eases the pain of the loss.

So, if you happen to click the link below and listen to this gorgeous song. Please spend a few moments honoring a man named Doug. You may not have know him, but he was very, very loved.

Guest Blogger, Michael Patrick Gaffney: Old Wallpaper

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wallpaper 2My good friend Michael has written another guest blog, the first guest blog of 2014!  Partly because my parents have lived in the same, relatively unchanged, ranch style house since 1980, I can relate to this story.  And yet, since this is a story about constants and changes and our relationship to those things, I am sure everyone can relate.  

Old Wallpaper

In 1973 my dad moved us from Queens, New York to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.  Needless to say it was a bit of a culture shock for the whole family.  No one could understand what we were saying with our thick, New York accents and every time the lady at the Piggly Wiggly store said, “Ya’ll come back now, ya hear”, we would literally come back to the counter wondering what we had done wrong.  It was like living on the planet, Mars.  But one of the great things about our move was that we got to watch our house being built.   The first time my dad took us to our lot, all that was there was the cement foundation.  Once a week the whole family would pile into the new Ford, Galaxy station wagon and check out the progress of our house.  Soon there were studs up, then walls, then brinks and stone, and then the roof.

When it was finally finished it was the quintessential 1970’s ranch house, with avocado green, shag carpeting, burnt orange appliances in the kitchen, a wagon wheel light figure in the living room and lots and lots of loud wallpaper throughout. 

Flash forward 40 years!  My mother and father still live in that same house, minus the green, shag carpet, etc.  When I was visiting last summer they mentioned that they might finally take down the old, original wallpaper in the half bathroom off the garage.  “Oh, no don’t!  That’s all that’s left of the original design and it’s so cute”, I pleaded.   I made sure to take a picture of the bathroom before I left in case they followed through with their foolish plan.

This morning on the phone, my mother casually mentioned that they finally remodeled the half bath off the garage.  She also mentioned that they were thinking of finally selling the house and moving to a smaller place.  A four bedroom house was just too much trouble for a couple in their late seventies.  It was time.

 It was just old and worn wallpaper, hanging in the half bath off the garage. It was dated and silly and dingy so it was time for it to be torn down and replaced with a fresh coat of beige paint.  Preparing the house for the next family to take over perhaps.  What’s the big deal?

But that wallpaper was my youth, my memories and a link to the past.  When I would visit my childhood home, little by little things would change but I could always go into that half bath off the garage and I was immediately  pulled back into the 1970’s and my childhood.  

As a kid I probably spent too much time in that bathroom, sitting there trying to figure out the story of those characters on that red and white, kitschy wallpaper. There was the woman sitting at her vanity painting her fingernails.  The bald man drying himself off with the checkered towel.   The woman with the night cap on, checking her wrinkles in the mirror.  The man in his bathrobe combing his hair.  The mom brushing her little girl’s hair while she plays with her toy, with the cat watching closely.  The naughty poodle pulling the towel off the rack.  What did it all mean?  Pondering it now I guess it was just a simple story about a family living together and sharing a space on a daily basis.  It could have been any family I suppose, but I guess to me it was my family that I imagined on that wall.   I think that is why I find it so hard to let go of it completely.   So this afternoon I blew up the picture I had taken last summer, put it in a frame and mailed it off to my folks.  I want it to be a reminder I guess…or a monument really, to that young family from Queens, New York starting off their new life and adventure together on the planet, Mars.

house

I Was a Diver

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20140101-105954.jpg
I spent a significant portion of my New Year’s Eve at a nursing home not far from Temecula. If 12/31 is a day that lends itself to making one ponder the circle of life, spending it in a nursing home only increases such thoughts.

Last night, after the residents had been fed, (tuna salad sandwiches and chicken soup, which looked and sounded real good to me) the nurses gathered those able in the living room to watch That’s Entertainment! on television. I happened to walk in during a lavish Esther Williams swimming number.

“That’s Esther Williams, isn’t it?” I asked. A gentleman answered me, “Yes, I believe that is.” Some watched the screen transfixed, others stared into space. One woman, I’ll call her Missy, looked at me and told me that Esther Williams had been the best. I agreed. And then, I think, she told me that she’d been a swimmer herself. “Competitive,” I thought I heard her mumble.

The moment reminded me of my favorite scene from How to Make an American Quilt where the cantankerous Sophia, played by Lois Smith, at the end of the movie comes up to Winona Ryder’s character and girlishly confesses, “I was a diver.” And then even later, one of the last scenes (maybe it’s even the very last scene), we see 70-something Sophia climb the ladder of the high dive and sail into the water below.

Real life is often more heartbreaking than cinematic life. I could hope that Missy woke up this morning and went to swim a couple miles at Temecula County Pool, but I know that didn’t happen.

I hope that Missy had a good life. I hope she loved and was loved in return. I hope that the memories of good times are a comfort for her at this point in her life.

Who knows what 2014 holds for any of us? My wish for you is that it’s a year filled with good memories and I hope that those good memories are able to be a comfort to you in years to come.