Two True Friends

Knowing that I have at least one person in my corner, always supporting me as a true friend, makes life feel less scary and full of many more possibilities.

I can almost bear anything if I know my friends are holding my hands and understanding what I am trying to do and say.

Friends for life, friends until the very end, this is the unique gift that Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe gave to each other.

"Just Kids" is a beautifully, beautifully written memoir by Smith.  You may know of Patti Smith from her infamous Horses album and also from her magical poetry.  In "Just Kids," Smith's writing is intimate and she instantly makes you feel a part of her life.  She takes us back to her childhood when she first met Robert Mapplethorpe and then continues with their close friendship as young adults which then evolves into a romantic relationship and then goes back again to a friendship in the last years of Mapplethorpe's life.

Mapplethorpe became an infamous photographer who triggered a highly charged public dialogue in the 1970s and 1980's about the public funding of controversial works of art.  Mapplethorpe's stark black and white photographs included celebrities, flowers but it was his explicit photographs of nude men that caused a furor in the art world.

"Just Kids" is also about New York City in the late 1960's and 1970's when Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were literally starving artists sleeping in parks and doorsteps and then living in the hip Chelsea Hotel, hanging out with Andy Warhol's entourage while Smith and Mapplethorpe experimented and developed their counterculture lifestyles and artistic talents.

 

I write about "Just Kids" not because of  the sensational nature of Mapplethorpe's photography but for the touching human story of their unusual friendship and for the kindness and constant support they each showed to the other during good times and bad. In particular, Smith's compassion to Mapplethorpe as he lay dying of AIDS is particularly poignant.

Thankfully, Smith comforts us in "Just Kids" by sharing a few pieces of her crystalline poetry.  Here is one of my favorites:

Wild Leaves

By Patti Smith

 

Wild leaves are falling

Falling to the ground

Every leaf a moment

A light upon the crown

That we'll all be wearing

In a time unbound

And Wild leaves are falling

Falling to the ground

 

Every word that's spoken

Every word decreed

Every spell that's broken

Every golden deed

All the parts we're playing

Binding as the reed

And wild leaves are falling

Wild wild leaves

 

The spirits that are mentioned

The myths that have been shorn

Everything we've been through

And the colors worn

Every chasm entered

Every story wound

And wild leaves are falling

Falling to the ground

 

As the campfire's burning

As the fire ignites

All the moments turning

In the stormy bright

Well enough the churning'

Well enough believe

The coming and the going

Wild wild leaves

 

Widow Chick

I don't know the woman who writes the amazing blog called "Widow Chick" but I feel as if I do.

 

She (aka Catherine) is to-the-core honest and humorous in writing about her daily travels as a widow and a woman who is trying to be Mom and Dad to three young children.  I regularly read her blog and it always gives me a boost!

Widow Chick's Husband

 

Yesterday she wrote a particularly touching post about an important anniversary in her life and I would like to share it with you because she is right on point in expressing her thoughts and feelings about what happened.

 

Please read this link which will take you to Widow Chick's blog post:

http://widowchick.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-6th-anniversary-to-yall-its-just.html

God bless you Widow Chick!

Wild By Cheryl Strayed

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

                     ~ Mary Oliver

                     "The Summer Day"

From the moment I started reading the first words of the New York Times bestseller, Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, I couldn't put it down.

 

It has truly been a long time since I have read a book so honest and at the same time so poignant in its telling of a compelling personal story.

 

In hiking the Pacific Crest Trail all by herself from the Mojave Desert in California to the Bridge of the Gods that crosses the Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border, Cheryl Strayed tests herself physically, mentally and emotionally in ways that many people never do in their whole lives.  And don't ever want do.  Ever.  Talk about pain!  You will never think about hiking boots the same way after reading Wild.

 

But Cheryl Strayed is a beautiful writer and through her unfiltered descriptions of what she is feeling and thinking, she is able to grab you and take you along on her powerful journey as though you are right there with her, step by step, the whole time. 

 

As she treks along the Pacific Crest Trail, Strayed slowly finds her inner resources and becomes stronger as she sleeps outdoors, purifies her water (I could feel her thirst), dreams about Snapple lemonade, adjusts to carrying a heavy backpack for miles and miles every day through intense heat and then snowfalls, deals with rattlesnakes and black bears and sometimes just being the only girl on the trail.  As she occasionally meets fellow hikers along the way, I was amazed by the immediate trust and support that most of them felt for each other; as if there was an inner radar that told each of them who was friend and who was foe in the great outdoors.

Grief is what puts Strayed on the Pacific Crest Trail and she describes every raw emotion of it: the falling apart, the sadness, the regrets, the anger, the exhaustion, the inability to wrap your brain around reality.

Just to give you a taste of how Strayed writes, here is a short except:

"There were so many other amazing things in this world.

They opened up inside of me like a river.  Like I didn't know I could take a breath and then I breathed.  I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail).  I cried and I cried and I cried.  I wasn't crying because I was happy.  I wasn't crying because I was sad.  I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul.  I was crying because I was full.  Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too.

I was entering.  I was leaving.  California streamed behind me like a long silk veil.  I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore.  And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.  I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too."

I don't want to give away what happens to Cheryl Strayed in her amazing book so I will not reveal the particulars of her long distance adventure in the wilderness. You must read it for yourself!
 

Michael J. Fox's Morning

 

 

 

 

Good Morning, Morning.

 

I have a mindless routine in the morning, the same routine that I follow each work day.  I am never really ready to do anything until I have had at least one cup of hot tea.  I think I definitely take for granted that I can get myself going in the morning without taking any medication and without dealing with a physical handicap.

 

Unfortunely, that's not true for everyone.  That concept was really brought home to me after reading a short excerpt from in this month's Reader's Digest.  Always Looking Up, is the title of a book written by Michael J. Fox, the wonderful actor who currently star in CBS's hit show, The Good Wife, who was diagnosed a number of years ago with Parkinson's disease.

 

Fox's morning routine and his uplifting attitude about the consequences of his degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system made me refocus and think twice about any small discomforts I may deal with in my morning.  Fox's narrative is brave and honest yet optimistic.

Here goes:

Courtesy of Celebtoast.com

My Bright Mornings
By Michael J. Fox (From Always Looking Up)

 

This morning my wife, Tracy, is already up, dealing out breakfasts and readying the kids for school.  I blindly fumble a plastic vial from the nightstand, dry-swallow a couple of pills, and then fall immediately into the first series of actions that, while largely automatic, demand a practiced determination.  I swing my legs around to the side of the bed, and the instant my feet hit the floor, the two of them are in an argument. 

 

 A condition called dystonia, a regular complement to Parkinson's disease, cramps my feet severely and curls them inward, pressing my ankles toward the floor and my soles toward each other as though they were about to close in prayer.  I snake my right foot out toward the edge of the rug and toe-hook one of my hard leather loafers.  I force my foot into the show, repeat the process with the left, and then cautiously stand up.  Chastened by the unyielding confines of the leather, my feet begin to behave themselves.  The spasms have stopped, but the aching will persist for the next 20 minutes or so.

 

First stop: the bathroom.  I'll spare you the initial details of my visit, except to say that with Parkinson's, it is essential to put the seat up.  Grasping the toothpaste is nothing compared with the effort it takes to coordinate the two-handed task of wrangling the toothbrush and strangling out a line of paste onto the bristles.

By now, my right hand has started up again, rotating at the wrist in a circular motion, perfect for what I'm about to do.  My left hand guides my right hand up to my mouth, and once the back of the Oral-B touches the inside of my upper lip, I let go.  It's like releasing the tension on a slingshot and compares favorably to the most powerful state-of-the-art electric toothbrush on the market.  With no off switch, stopping means seizing my right wrist with my left hand, forcing it down to the sink basin, and shaking the brush loose as though disarming a knife-wielding attacker.  I can usually tell whether shaving is a good idea on any particular day, and this morning, like most, I decide it's too early to risk bloodshed.  I opt for a quick pass with an electric stubble trimmer.  Miami Vice lives.

 

A bench in the shower takes the pressure off my feet, and the steady drumbeat of the water on my back has a therapeutic effect, though if I sit here much longer, I might never get up.  Getting dressed is made easier by the pills, which have begun to assert their influence.  I avoid clothing with too many buttons or laces, though I'm still addicted to Levi's 501s, making me a fashion victim in the truest sense of the word.  In lieu of proper bushing, I raise my twitching fingers up to my hairline and, raking it back, hope for the best.  Executing a slow shuffle (my legs haven't yet earned my trust for the day), I make my way out to greet my family.

 

At the turn from our bedroom into the hallway, thre is an old full-length mirror in a wooden frame.  I can't help but catch a glimpse of myself as I pass.  Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see.  This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stooped, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face.

 

I would ask the obvious question: "What are you smiling about?"

 

But I already know the answer: "It gets better from here."