Saturday, June 1, 2013

A Chair on the Beach - Kat Tennerman



How I love the ocean.
When I was young my mother would pack a lunch and us kids up in the car and drive from Boston to Gloucester, Massachusetts on Sunday afternoons. Mom had wanderlust so for her gazing out at the ocean meant imagining infinite possible places to land. I must have inherited my love of the sea from her.  She’d park along the shore road so we could get out and walk. The shoreline in Gloucester is always glorious and the air is salty and brisk, no matter the season. I loved running along, challenging the grey water and annoying the fisherman from the enormous rocks at the edge of the water.
When Bill and I were dating and had money to burn, we vacationed in Nassau in the Bahamas. We went to nighttime barbeques hosted by hotels on the beach where we danced in the sand under colored lights strung from poles.  In the daytime we rode horses in the blue waves and white foam of the tide. We lay in the sun holding each other. For us, the beach was romance.
After we married and had children, Newport R.I. became our family getaway spot. It was only an hour and a half from our home so it was easy for us to go there on daytrips to swim and enjoy the seaside. When the kids were in elementary school we spent their spring vacation weeks there. We’d get a time-share right on the water where I’d stare at the yachts on the horizon late at night, relaxing and losing myself in the their rocking on the waves.
The ocean has always been one of my best friends. Right now I’m sitting on a different beach looking out at another lovely ocean view. I thought coming here to Cancun would be good for me. I thought seeing the sun and the ocean in a different place would rejuvenate me. I bought an e-reader so I could read on the beach. It’s supposed to symbolize that I recognize my vacations have to have a new take on an old theme. I feel foolish using it though. It doesn’t make me less of an old woman sitting alone, passing the time.
I know I should be grateful that I have memories but I miss those good times on the water and I miss everyone so much. Mom and Bill are gone. The kids aren’t kids anymore and they’re off making their own memories.  It’s a gloriously sunny day and I’m sitting here watching plucky seagulls hop across the sand but Bill isn’t here to make jokes about them. I see children up the shoreline playing in the surf and I wish they were mine. The beauty here seems cruel because I don’t have anyone to share it with.
It’s such a beautiful day and I’m here wrapped up in my sarong and my own arms. But this is my “new normal” as my therapist calls it. It’s my new reality and I’ll have to get used to it.  So I’ll be taking a walk along the beach, leaving a single set of footprints behind me.



Kat Tennermann



It’s interesting that living in modern, technology driven America means that we are rarely physically isolated from other people and yet the same fact can make many of us feel isolated. Maybe it’s because the Internet allows us to participate in a worldwide community but most of the time it’s a community of strangers. We can text conversations anytime and from anywhere but there are people who think that to hear a voice or see a face make for more meaningful meetings. Social media implies interaction but it allows us to do all kinds of things instantly without involving another person. We can grocery shop, bank, submit a resume and be turned down for the job.
So lack of access to others isn’t the definition of isolation but rather the feeling of being disconnected from others.  Why does it seem as though technology, the use of our devices specifically, create barriers to making connections? Sometimes it seems as if we’re communicating at arms length.  Maybe it’s not the technology itself but the way we choose to use it. Why do we use it to frame ourselves as wholly set apart? Here are two tweets from my feed that were posted from unrelated sources but within seconds of each other:
Nathan Fielder Has People Text ‘I Haven’t Been Fully Honest With You’ to the Person They Are Dating” and the second one was “…that's the best way to respond to "WHY DON'T YOU EVER ANSWER YOUR PHONE".
When I read tweets like those I feel as if we’re intentionally trying to close ourselves off. What have we done to our sense of commonality? Are we so alienated in our own culture that we’re willing to sacrifice the thing we need most, human interaction on a personal and intimate level, to protect our sense of self? The image of an isolated soul, alone and lonely is easy to conjure up. It’s the added subtext of purposeful separateness that makes it seem so tragic.





"Halfway Around the World", "Songs", "Prophecy" - Joe Oppenheimer

Half Way Around the World

I have traveled so far,
so distant, I was gone:
alone in no where
even with a phone
and email.

Alone in my mind. 

Distance makes news from friends
a shadow satisfying nothing;
their wrinkles, eyes
unable to be recalled. 

Half way around the world 
is as far as we can go I thought.
So wrong again.

Not quite so distant as my friend Bill. 
His death left only regrets.  
Once it seemed miles cause fabric to tear.

But death leaves one in rags of solitude.




Songs

I asked my mother
to sing her song
by a campfire
when I was young.

“No,” she cried.
“Not now, my son,
Not tonight, by the fire
in the moonlight.”

Before sleeping,
I watched the tops of trees
touch stars so high –
wondering why
she stayed silent that night.

Years later, when
she was frail and old.
Not at a fire but in bed,
ill and cold,
I asked, “Why did you
never sing your own song?”

She looked away,
at first said nothing.
Then quietly “there is no wrong
to not have one’s own song.”

For the life of me
I can not see
reason in those words
given before she died.
Not then nor now,
though I’ve often tried.


    Prophecy

Having turned 65, 
I returned home 
from New Zealand’s snowy peaks,
to DC’s heated streets.

I would go to the wedding, 
of my eldest son Evan, 
held in a city.

That night a dream so clear
made me fear it as true. 

The dream of the party,
now held in the country,
was for young Rob 
who shows his lady 
to friends and family. 

We danced and sang, ate and drank. 
My friends from college days came to stay.
Herb and Fred.  All to celebrate. 

Bill never came.  I wondered why 
he used his heart attack to die.  
A doctor, so he knew 
symptoms, but told his wife, a lie. Then I feared would I 
know my friends?
Could I mix them up 
when they came by? 

Herb spoke; he brought a book 
“Tools for Happy Wanderings”
all about taking care of the old.

Funny, that he would be so bold 
as to talk about our ends.  
We know of happy wanderings, though
we don’t take care of anyone anymore.  
Francie died - years ago – above 94.  

Yet, I wondered, “Did I lock the car?”  
I left to see: I had. 
So I turned on the radio 
and sat a while.  What for?  

I don’t know.  It was winter then.  
Snow lightly falling. 
Friends came to bring me home. 

I wasn’t sad until I awoke, 
home again from New Zealand.

Joe Oppenheimer

What looks solid is a chimera.  We only have the memories of the moments that are past, the less than instant that is fleetingly present, and the fiction of the future.It is hard to sculpt a meaningful fiction out of such a continuity of disappearing instants, but sculpt we do.
Only by looking backward to what was can one make any meaningful pattern in life out of our never present now.

Extinguished - Tina Manousakis


Intellect dazzled with brilliance.
Pondering principles of physics.
You explained.
Never laughed,
Nor belittled.
All extinguished now.

Faith confused
Warring with science,
Perplexing in its intensity.
I questioned:
Is there a God?
With patience you explained:
Bothering God was easier,
Than bothering family,
With your obsessive tendencies.
All extinguished now.


Love for humanity your hallmark,
You claimed life as beautiful,
God’s great design,
Lived to the fullest
A treasure, a gift
To be revered.
All extinguished now

What remains now is anger
For the six cast adrift
Children all, even the adults,
Did you not consider?
They need you
Now
Always
It was the wrong time
To leave.

 Eyes, once bright
Now darkened, vacant
Without sparkle, without life.
Your mirrors
Smiles, once quick,
Now labor.
Minds once brilliant,
Now founder.
Laughter and love,
All extinguished now.

I wonder
Will any follow you?
Seems likely for one.
But my hands are tied.
Like yours were
Still I watch, inwardly raging.
Waiting.

To see if I can catch them,
Before they fall,
So that
Another life can continue,
To Grow
To Contribute
To Thrive

Against your legacy:
Of Lies.
Of Pain.
Of Cowardice.
All extinguished now.