Julie R. Enszer's Blog, page 17

Stop All the Clocks

When my mother died, the immediate response was a flurry of activity. Plane tickets to purchase, classes to cancel, things to be arranged at the house for my absence. Death required action. Then there were the decisions in Michigan. Casket, program, phone calls. Death required choices. The action and the choices seemed to shield me in some ways from grief.

This weekend, another death. One which requires nothing of me. Early in the morning of October 29th, Susan Levinkind passed away with her beloved spouse Elana Dykewomon by her side. I learned the new from Facebook when I woke Saturday morning. Susan was for many years the business manager of Sinister Wisdom. She and I worked closely together. She was in many ways the mother, sister, and lover of Sinister Wisdom for twenty-five years. She registered the journal as a nonprofit. She handled all of the books until last fall. She wrote for the journal. She managed the mailing list. She served on the board and sometimes managed the board. Her labor and material contributions to Sinister Wisdom are too many to numerate.

It was not the labor, though, that inspired me about Susan. Do not get me wrong, I appreciated it mightily, particularly over the past year as I have taken on some of the tasks she did for many years. She was a wonderful volunteer and champion for Sinister Wisdom. What inspired me about Susan was how much she loved lesbians. Susan loved lesbians and believed in lesbians. She was all in with lesbians in a way that was delighted, interested, and sustainable. In addition to Sinister Wisdom, she volunteered for many years with Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (OLOC). She loved lesbians and their organizations and their gatherings and their wild and wonderful ways of being in the world. Twenty-five year of working with Sinister Wisdom and its lesbians and she seemed to have LOVED every minute of it. I have never done anything that long in my life. I cannot imagine doing anything that long and do it with such sustained passion and even tempered goodness. Yes, Susan was good and kind and loving.

I have been thinking about all of this for three days now. Today, I did not want to work. I did work, there is always work in front of me, but what I wanted to do was stop all of the clock, cut off the telephone, and just sit in tribute to Susan. That time of silence, that empty space of not doing is what I have missed.

When Tibe was in exile, I came to visit him every day and we would sit for an hour or so, sometimes lying together, sometimes just playing quietly in the basement where he stayed. In Michigan, we had some quiet time as well, but it never felt peaceful and nurturing. I was so angry, so enraged about the conditions that brought us to that space. Here, in Florida, we can lie together. This weekend, I lounged around a lot. Not doing anything. Not making decisions, not making plans. Stop all the clocks. Here is Auden’s final stanza:

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Susan Levinkind, lover of lesbians, devoted Sinister Wisdom volunteer, now of blessed memory.

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I am going to need a machete

I admit it. When we embarked on the pond refresh, I thought it was a bit of a boondoggle. I thought why don’t we just fill in the hole. Put sod over it. Call it a day. When we sell, no one will be the wiser. The beloved prevailed. Today, I am glad she did.

I am sitting on the lanai. A glass of sofa water is next to me. My iPad is on my lap. I am looking at the waterfall, listening. Enjoying it. It is like sitting in the waiting room of a spa. Except I do not have to leave. It is a part of my daily landscape. Bliss.

I saw the finished project last night, after returning from a lecture in Sarasota. At night, there are seven lights illuminating it. They come on and go off automatically. So when I arrived, it was here. Glowing.

This morning, I decided if we were going to have such gorgeousness in our life, the least I could do is trim the banana palm behind it. So at 8 am, Tibe and I are trimming the palm. Some of the dead leaves peeled off easily. Others needed a sharp instrument. I used the only tool that I had: desk scissors. It worked. The palm is now beautiful. I realized, though, I am going to need a machete.

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Tibe is a Teenager

Who just got his driver’s license and wants to spend every evening carousing. I remember the impulse from my own teenage years. A short drive to the store becomes a three-hour trip. At night you want to stay out longer than you are allowed and drive by everything to see what is happening.

In the mornings, Emma, who is herself very fond of the yard, goes out and pees. Then she happily comes back inside and waits for breakfast. Tibe runs around the whole yard, surveying to make sure nothing has happened overnight. He sits at the front gate and waits for “rush hour” so that he can run back and forth, back and forth with the traffic. Sometimes he comes inside so exhausted he can barely hold up his head to eat. At night, he takes his job of protecting the property seriously and again surveys the whole perimeter. Any sound, he runs to it. Right now, I just dragged him inside. Dragged only because he kept saying, no no, I’m still wide awake, let me stay out and play, but he was lying on the ground, exhausted. So I insisted he come in to sleep. He is cashed. He will not come in from that yard though unless I insist. I am hoping this teenage phase passes. I like Emma’s efficiency. She is interested in the yard, she will perambulate about, but she knows, her job is to hold down the floor and she does not leave that job for long. Tibe just wants to cruise the streets and alleys of our property until he cannot hold up his head any longer.

It is good to be a teenager like Tibe. It is good to be an old woman like Emma. I wrote 1,500 new words today; it is good to be me. And the pond reconstruction progresses.

The upper left will be the waterfall, supported by a retaining wall around it.

The full black liner will be covered with rocks.

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Water Feature Renovation Day 1

What was found in the pond.

The pit. It smells. The whole property smelled all day. 

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Water Feature

The beloved tells me when she saw the house in June, there was a beautiful pond with a waterfall feeding it where fish swam serenely, adding to the overall bucolic nature of our Florida home. When we arrived at the end of August, the water was down in the pond, the liner was ripped, no water fell down the rocks anywhere, and though the pump worked during the walk through it never worked thereafter. As of last week, the pond looks like this photograph. It is bleak. It is also where mosquitos are breeding, and I fear that the algae blooming in the stagnant water is too thick and is strangling the small fish left. 

Yet, we have a healthy number of frogs in the yard and we hear them plop into the pond at sundown. It fills a bit bit of land and there are plants all around it. This “water feature” as people in Florida call these things is our first home renovation. It starts tomorrow.

Getting to this point has meant meeting with three different people who do this work and learning more than I ever wanted to know about these water features. It is not knowledge that I relish. I wanted to fill the whole thing in, put grass seed over it and be done with it. The beloved with a calmer head prevailed. She had the vision of a pond with a trickling waterfall, fish she could feed, and beautiful lights creating a site for thought and contemplation.

Recently, Emma has decided that this pond is her mud bath. On the very day that we had the walk through, she jumped into the pond; we hosed her down. It seemed like that might have been an anomaly until about three or four weeks ago. On the very day she came back from the groomer, her first appointment in our new town, she jumped into the pond, covering her whole lower body with mud, algae, and rancid water. She loved it. The beloved was in New York. I confess I cried while hosing her down. I knew she would never get clean and Tibe was barking about the water and jealous about the attention to Emma and I was soaked in warm water from the hose and had no towels to dry us all off. Fixing the water feature became urgent, a task that rose to the top of the list.

So, tomorrow it begins. A new water feature for our new life her in Florida. I have been skeptical, but this weekend, it is cooler. All of the windows and doors flung open. Yesterday afternoon, I took a nap with the doors to the bedroom open to the world. During the day, the pool filter runs and one of the spouts makes a small splash of water. Napping, I could hear the water running, gently trickling in the swimming pool. It was calming. The whole day was serene. Who knows what will happen when the pond is finished?

The photograph of the pond from the home advertisement.

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Train

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We live about two miles south of a train track. On the days that I leave the house, I cross the train tracks both leaving and eturning home, it is a single track, raised a bit above the road. I have only seen Amtrak trains on the tracks. One midday, around 1:15. The track runs between Tampa and Orlando and trains go both north from Tampa up to Savannah and other places yonder and south to Miami. Already I am planning a trip to by train to Savannah, where we have never visited. And I think I would like to take the train to Miami when it comes time to go down there. It is surprising to us afte leaving the Amtrak corridor and that familiar train ride from New Carrollton to New York to be once again near the train.

In addition to that train midday, there is an evening train and an early morning train. It is finally cool enough that we can open the French doors in the bedroom overnight and feel cool fresh air while we sleep. We can also hear the train. Not every night; the rumble of its cars and the slow, plaintive whistle do not wake me from sleep. But if I am awake, perhaps because Tibe has just come up onto the bed and positioned himself right next to me to sleep or because I was wakened by a dream, I hear the train and imagine all of the places it is going. I like the motion and possibilities it’s sounds present, but I am happy to be warm, at home, asleep in my own bed.

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The Day I Learned the Secret to Happiness and a Long Life

At the 1990 concert, Circle of Friends, Cris Williamson performed in Berkeley, California, celebrating fifteen years since the release of her album, Changer and the Changed. During the concert, she said, “when women did things they did them a little bit differently—and that it would be useful for the world.” I wish that I had been at the concert, but I only know the statement from the CD. Still, I return to these words often–and make them in the present tense: when women do things they do them a little bit differently–and it is useful for the world.

Last night, driving home from Gainesville, I rolled these words around in my mind beneath that big dark sky with the moon shining on me.

I went up to Gainesville to meet with some of the awesome women that are part of the Lesbian Feminist Activist Oral Herstory Project. Sinister Wisdom has published two compilations of the work that the women in the project are doing–Sinister Wisdom 93 documented southern herstory and Sinister Wisdom 98 was dedicated to landykes. We have a new issue coming out in April 2017 on art and culture and these ambitious wimmin have other ideas in mind. They continue to conduct oral herstory interviews, recording them, transcribing them, archiving them. They have an extraordinary commitment to documenting the herstory of lesbian-feminism. I feel so proud to be a small part of their work.

Rose Norman in Alabama has been my primary contact on this project, but I know that she works with lots of other women and is a part of the Womenwrites retreats that happen in Georgia twice a year. Yesterday, in Gainesville, I got to meet three other people who are part of this awesome lesbian-feminist cabal.

Gainesville is two hours north of where I live now. It was a gorgeous drive up there. I listened to the new Melissa Etheridge album. Once up there, we met in the Civic Media Center, a rad community space with books, posters, and a general positive collective feel about it. We went to the feminist bookstore, Wild Iris, a dedicated bookseller for Sinister Wisdom. We saw a new concert space that Fay, the owner of Sisterspace in Washington, DC, is opening as a jazz club. We went to dinner at a delicious Thai restaurant. The women I met with regaled me with stories and ideas, my two favorite things in the world! Rose is working on a history of a lesbian community. Everyone had fun stories about Florida and the south and lesbians. It was all round a great day.

I’m keeping the best for last, though. At dinner, Corky revealed the secret to happiness and a long life: ballroom dancing for an hour every day. There is something magical about the combination of the movement, the music, the partnered dancing. I continue to think there is just plain something magical about women. When we do things, we do them a little bit differently. It is useful to the world.

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Cicadas

The last time I was in Maryland, it was August. All of our worldly possessions were being packed and moved. It was a whirlwind trip of cleaning, sorting, packing. There was little I wanted to do on that trip other than help get us out of dodge. Permanently. Except there was one thing I wanted to do, one experience I wanted to have one more time. Each morning I woke up, went out for coffee, then sat on the front porch. I admit, part of the porch sitting was defiance. If anyone walked by the house, I imagined myself barking at them. Loudly. It was August though, the dog days of August. No one walked by. Mainly, I wanted to sit on the front porch and listen to the cicadas early in the morning as the sun was rising.

The cicadas in Maryland are loud. So loud, sometimes it was impossible to sleep with open windows. I love their collective sound. The rise and fall of their wings grinding and grinding. All night long. Well into the early mornings. To me, hearing the cicadas in August in Maryland is like being embraced by creation. Their song is the sound of the world, recognizing you, hearing you, holding you. On those few days in August, I thought there is nothing else like this in the world. Nothing that sings in such a way to remind you of your place in the world. Nothing that overtakes every single sense you have, reminding you that all together, all are one.

Tonight I was thinking about the cicadas again and how pleased I was to her them those final days. There are cicadas in Florida and all other manner of insects. They do not sing with the same intensity so far. There is however something extraordinary here that fills me with the same awe. The night sky. At night here it is very dark. The only light from the moon. The night sky is vast. Sometimes clear and starry. Sometimes cloudy. It is like the cicadas, but seeing the night sky, sitting beneath it, driving in it, is not quite an embrace. The night sky is a blanket. It covers you. It shelters you. It holds the world as if everything might just spin off its axis, turn away from its center, without the night sky blanketing things, holding it all together through the darkness.

There is no lack of wonder, no lack of splendor, no lack of love in the world.

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Mornings

I have never been a morning person. The alarm goes off and I want to pull the covers over my head, roll over, return to sleep. In college, I would sleep on the weekends until noon. Then nap again by three pm. Having dogs changed my ways. Then want to be outside in the mornings, eat breakfast. They cannot tell the difference between days that begin with S-es and days that do not. So I have become a person who rises in the morning. Every morning. To respond to their needs.

In addition to the dogs, the beloved has turned me on to mornings. Their glory. Their magic. Over the past year and a half while she has been commuting for work, what I have missed the most are the mornings when we accidentally wake up early, before any alarm sounds. When we have a spontaneous conversation, recount a dream, share a memory sparked by sleep. There is a magical time before the sun rises, before the animals stir, when we talk with no agenda, when we are uninterrupted by the outside world. I love these mornings. I missed these mornings.

Though I could never quite explain to people how and why I missed them. Mornings of brief chatter are so ordinary. There is nothing significant. The conversations are not really important. What is important is that brief fleeting intimacy. How the feeling of it, the memory of it lasts all day.

Yesterday for the first time in months we had a morning like that. No crying, no talk of hate, no fear, no anxiety, just a quiet conversation. That experience, that feeling that lingers all day, is what I missed over the past nineteen months. I am glad to have it back.

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Lost Year

The sun is sinking down in Florida. I am ready for a new year. Mainly, I am ready to leave behind this lost year. A year filled with losses large and small and few significant triumphs. The house in Maryland closed on Friday; I am relieved to leave it behind in last month, last quarter, last year. While we sold the house with the appearance of volition, we were in fact driven from our home by bullies who wanted to kill our dog. We were forced out of our home by people who, filled with hate, became obsessed with our dog and us and insisted on making our lives untenable in the home we had made for fourteen years. We lost our home because we refused to bow to the wishes of a bigoted, angry mob which included the mayor and elected members of the town council. We did not depart willingly. Our house was one of the losses of the year.

The physical losses are tangible and measurable, but even as we regain replacements for the physical losses (a new home, for example), the emotional losses remain and continue to carry their pain. I would like to leave behind in this year my sense that people are basically unkind and willing to harm and shun other people in service to their own wishes and desires. I do not know if I can let go of that new, basic understanding of the world. I would like to leave behind the loss of my sense that people in community help one another and lift each other up during difficult times. I have held that belief for decades now, but in the past year, it was destroyed. I do not think I can leave the pain of that destruction behind. I do not think that this belief can be restored. I would like to return to the conviction that people are good and community lifts us up, but experience tells me otherwise. Return seems impossible. I would like a return of kindness and generosity to my own mind, to my own way of being in the world, but I feel vulnerable and afraid, unable to risk such naive approaches to the world. I want to leave all of this behind in the old year and embark upon the new one, but it feels impossible. These losses linger; these losses shape everything I think and feel now.

Though not exactly lost, this was a year old dissembling the house where I grew up. Sifting through letters and knickknacks and dishwear and towels and a million other things that come together to make a life. It was labor I never want to repeat, though I fear I may be called to again. There is another loss: naive optimism.

The sun is sinking down, the new year is coming. Even as I spend my time counting losses instead of celebrating sweet possibilities in the new year, I will wish the next year to be sweet. I will wish it joyful. This defiance of tradition against my heart and mind reminds me: days continue, years progress. What is lost may never return, but what is to come remains to be revealed.

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