Day: February 11, 2018

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that’s beautiful.” – Milan Kundera

Today may be the nastiest winter day ever, at least in my memory. There is a thick and wet sheet of ice over everything, we cannot get to the car or close to the pasture, unless we veer through the deep snow.

I’ve been forbidden to go outside and do anything, and I’m not fighting it. Maria is lighter and has killer snow boots. These restrictions made me feel vulnerable and unhappy. But I accept them. I know what it means to fall.

And you don’t want to fall on that ice, for sure. I admit to fantasies about New Mexico, and even the a beach somewhere along the Atlantic Coast down South. Where it is warm, and I can walk. For some reason, I never wish to live in Florida, I’m not sure why.

We’ve been trapped inside the house all day, no movie, no eating out. I get to cook. It’s kind of special. We are cut off from the world, we can’t really go anywhere, the snow and ice continue to fail, Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that is beautiful.

There is nothing to escape too, for all the grayness and cold. This is where I would escape to.

Maria and I do not tire of one another, and she is buzzing around the house tending to plants, sketching, reading, talking. We’re thinking of playing chess tonight, or looking for a worthy move on Netflix. Or just reading. I’m cooking fish tonight for dinner, salmon for her and Haddock for me.

We did find something strange on Netflix, a Spanish movie about a rebellion in Morocco.. Then I actually got on my stationery bike and read.

Maria is feeling better, she is over her bug or her cold, a bit pale but just about normal.

We dropped plans to go see “The Shape of Water,” it was just too risky. Got some new novels to read, eager to get to them. More later.

The challenge of this wet nasty day is that it forces me to consider where I am and if I secretly – or openly –  want to change it. The answer is no.  On days like this you have to look inside of yourself, or at least I do. Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being that the person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

I have been an unhappy person, and for much of my life, yearned to leave the place where I lived. It is sometimes valuable to realize how unhappy you are, and I left that place and came here, to this remote and isolated and cold place, where I became happy.

The Nastiest Day talks to me, and asks, “are you sure?”

And I am sure. I am happy, and do not ever yearn to be somewhere else. There is a lesson in that, and I finally learned it.

I’ve learned that many people are always shouting that they want to change, to leave, to move, to create a better future. It’s not always true The past is bursting with life, the future is a gray void, empty and dark, of little interest to me. The past is eager to irritate and upset me, provoke and insult me, tease me with regrets and the thought of destroying or repainting or re-imagining it.

Sometimes I think of all the things I would do differently, say differently, think differently. What an empty vessel that is.

The only reason I can think of to be a Prince of the Future is to somehow change my past. For me, there is no other reason, and that is not a good enough one. Thanks to the Nastiest Day for reminding me where I  wish to be.

Where I live.

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world.

That is beautiful.

Yesterday, at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility, Joan and I continue our very happy, even joyous, search for memory.

Joan is a wonderful student. We are having a remarkable time working together on her memory and reading.

Classes of any kind were an awful chore for me, but Joan brings a passion and eagerness to it that are soul-enhancing. We are using the workbooks of reading2connect, two researchers publishing books to revive the memory of elderly people and enhance their voice and confidence.

This does not feel like work to either of us. I am careful to support Joan’s memory work, I might help her, but I don’t correct her. The overall feeling is of us having fun, and working together, there is no right or wrong, no failing.

So far, the Army Of Good and I have purchased more than $200 worth of these books, and I’ve begun one-on-one reading workshops and group meetings, we are going to put on four skits in April – we are using their skit books –  the resident/volunteers will be the actors. I will produce and direct, perhaps the most interesting creative challenge of my media and cultural life.

Joan has severe memory loss, but she and I communicate easily and perfectly, through voice, words, tone and eyes. And most, I think, feelings.

To do this reading work, one has to believe several things that are somewhat controversial.

One is that memory doesn’t die, the connections between them and the brain wither. If you can find a safe and simple way in, the memory sometimes re-appears. The impact on the residents is electric, they feel engaged, successful, excited. They all want more.

This is a major breakthrough in my volunteer work at The Mansion, and I’m excited to move forward and grateful to Susan Ostrowski and Dr. Peter Diamon, the co-authors of these books and workshops.

We are not seeking miracles or claiming them, there is no known cure for serious memory loss.

it’s not clear how far this can go, and I am not doctor or psychologist, just a volunteer. I am also aware that this is not the kind of work the doctors who come to the Mansion do. They don’t have time.

I think many institutions have written off the idea that memory can be revived, or that independent reading is possible. I’m grateful to the Mansion for permitting me to do this work. As a writer, it has special meaning for me.

The reading2connect researchers argue that memory can be revived, and so can the practice of reading. The goal of the program is for the residents of senior citizen facilities to read to themselves and one another, and let the facilitators and teachers and staffers recede. This promotes intellectual growth, community and social skills.

I plan to keep buying individual books from reading2connect and then turn them over to residents who wish to continue reading and share reading with others. Seed books, I think.

Joan is the first of three students I am working with, and all are loving the program, eager to work with me, and anxious to read independently again. That’s the second thing one has to believe: that reading is healing, important, central to identity and confidence and a sense of self. Some of the people I’ve been working with have given up on the idea that they can read again and turn off the TV.

Joan cannot have a sequential conversation at times, but quickly grasped the read-aloud workshop exercises. I read a familiar phrase, and she finishes it. You can see in the video how engaged Joan is. This is not a person without memory or drive, and she has very strong communications skills and ambitions.

She wants to be in the play, and I’ll be alongside of her to help make it work.

I’ll do more reading workshops in the coming week.

If you wish to support this work, you can do so by sending donations to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. You can write to the Mansion residents c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816,

 

Maria and I have had this argument for years. She says she would not have made a good mother, and did not ever want to have children, she did not think she would be good at.

I think it is  true that she does not wish to have children, that is up to her. But I disagree that she wouldn’t have been good at it.

She is the most nurturing person I have ever known, and if she had chosen to have children – I wish I had been young enough, I think we could have made a great, strange,  kid together – she would have been a wonderful mother.

Maria also claims not to be nurturing, so with her permission, I took this video of her holding Gus in the approved megaesophagus position after he eats. See for yourself.

She wrote about this issue on her blog today, it is a great piece of self-awareness and truth.

Of course, she has created a Gusophagus song for Gus. I don’t have a video fo her chatting with her goldfish Frida every morning. Of or guilt-tripping the dogs when they don’t go into her study. Or of her stuffing gourmet pasta into a napkin and putting it in her purse for the chickens when we go out to eat.

Or of her scolding the barn cats to leave their cozy basement perch and go outside whenever the temperature hits 32 degrees. After all, she tells them, they should be outside hunting. Or of re-homing spiders and bugs so I can’t kill them.

Then there are the donkeys, with whom Maria shares her daily prayers and quite often has a good and secret cry about the vagaries of life and the spiritual path.

Not to mention her friend the loud black crow, with whom she chats regularly from the tree above the Schoolhouse Studio.

I greatly respect her decision not to have kids.

But it wasn’t because she wouldn’t be good at it. It’s because she just didn’t want to do it and preferred to follow her life as an artist. What she has done with her career as an artist has been nothing less than astounding, and she choose to not live a life of distraction.

I think that, along with great talent and strength, is how she did it.

Come and see Maria singing to Gus (I joined in), we call it the “vomit song’ or “Gus-a-sophagus.”

At the end of the song, we added our own stanza and sang it together: “Clean Up Vomit, That’s What We Do.” Take a look.

I wrote last week that I was ordering a surprise for the members of the RISSE soccer team. I didn’t want to say what it was, and I also decided to pay for it myself, as I didn’t want to ask other people to pay for it.

The surprise is a Nike Brasilia Sports Equipment Bag, it is considered the coolest equipment bag in sports, it’s a favorite among professional sports players. On one side is the NIke  logo, the other is blank and we are having the bags personalized by stenciling each player’s name on that blank side.

I see how the suburban teams in the league here are intensely supported by parents and schools. The kids have personal coaches, large teams (for rest), fancy European soccer shoes and expensive uniforms, they have scores of people cheering for them.

The bag is classy and business-like, no less than the scrappy team deserves. There’s even a wet-dry compartment for storing shoes and sneakers, and another for water and a change of clothes.

In the countries from which many of these kids come, soccer is played in front yards and available empty fields, the refugee kids often played barefoot or in flip-flops. Nobody had uniforms. In the American suburbs, the teams are lavishly equipped, and the parents leave nothing to change.

Our team- the Bedlam Farm Warriors – has one coach, Ali, and nobody gets a chance to rest. Their stands are usually empty, their parents are too busy working two or three jobs.

So I wanted to give the team a bit of a morale boost, Ali says these bags are “the coolest things ever” and will really boost the team’s self-esteem and pride. I think they’re pretty classy, I thought of getting one myself.

I ordered 20 bags directly from Nike, and they were good enough to give me a discount when I told them what the bags were for, and also free shipping. Still, I choked a bit on the price. I thought I should pay for this one myself because it is a bit extravagant, and  donations should go to food and clothing and tuition. It seems like a personal gift to me. You all have been quite generous, but the needs are great.

Ali and I are taking them to be stenciled during the week. Can’t wait for the kids to see them., and to see them out on the soccer field. We don’t have much money, but we do have style and attitude. And the betting is we will win the regional championship.

For the first time since we’ve lived in this farmhouse, we couldn’t get the car out of the driveway, even with snow tires and four-wheel drive. The ice was just too thick and too slick.

Maria is recovering from  her cold, I wanted to take her out for pancakes to celebrate. We never got far, we retreated to the house. I went to put some laundry into the washing machine in the pantry, and saw a bottle and some figurines the curator placed in this dark corner of the house.

It captured the feel of the day perfectly. Hopefully, we can get out this afternoon in time to see “The Shape Of  Water.”