when i found this object i thought "oh what a profound sign of The Divine!"
coming to mean kindly ever so in my mind : "Handle with Care."
my subject ( in search of an object, never mind a verb )
saw it de-signed instead to be read (in another con-
text) : "The more I live, the more I object!"
i am aware that all of reality lies inside one's head
... no matter how absurd it is to observe;
and that every objet d'art might
be attracting its own dart
to hit or be "missing
the mark".
however clever by all means, it seems with 101 years up her sleeve today, 26 III 2012
i'd say yolanda is far from dead yet!
this is my friend yolanda franco. she doesnt know why god is still keeping her here. nothing is wrong with her mind...other than that she cant stand dumb people {if that is wrong}...and well, her body is healthy because she ate healthy all her life, only now she's sorry for that {if that is wrong} ...she just cant walk. she refuses to be hoisted into a wheelchair by the ever changing aids, and so she stays in bed, remembering her life, "the way it was"! she is forever telling us on each weekend's visit about all the things she had in her house on main street [which is now a shop called milk weed - in honor of her favorite flower] in which she lived for 97 years ...looking after both her mother and brother (until he married and lived next door with martha - named after one of the sweedish kings twin's daughter - for whom martha and her twin's father had worked as a gardener). martha now (close to 100 herself ) is up in bethany village since her husband passed; go know, yolanda was never invited into their home!
we are yolanda's family now.
she feels she is of no use to anybody now; i keep telling her she lives to tell us her stories! (we know all the gossip of town - since she moved there, and who is related to whom. she still remembers as the librarian who took out what book, and who never paid their fine!)
she mourns over where all her things have gone: her saved letters from her (gay, we suspect) boyfriends (who were coming to see her brother, we also suspect), the poetry books of edna st vincent melley, the pressed flowers , the pieces of italian lace, her jewelry...everything!
when she went into the nursing home, no one told her it was for "good" (and really, it isnt! its just because she couldnt look after herself anymore that she landed there)! if she could walk, she'd run miles around all the others in there...including the staff! she loves to talk about cooking and we share recipes...she cant stand what they serve there...including the mushy vegetables. she is sad that she never had her own house in the country with a porch and garden. she loves beautiful things, and if she would have not been such a servant to her mother and brother, she would have been an artist, like them. she is not the least vain, however celebrates that she always came first in her mind; she is not ashamed one bit for who she is!
she still saves, grasping at the last straws, the plastic forks and spoons, the paper napkins...just to "have"!
and yet she knows she will be leaving one day...to where she is not sure; "how can you believe in a man who died over 2000 years ago" she keeps asking. she still cant quite figure out if i am jewish why am i a minister and not a rabbi, and how can it be that i have no sin or hell in my "religion"...or no "the" in "glenn of trees". she thinks my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she adores ( like loves! ) my man! yolanda cant understand why gays are not accepted like anybody else; she has a hard time with germans, martha, anybody who becomes a roomate...and not knowing what happened to all her things.
i look at this being and relate so to "the" knowing of what it is to be missing "my things"...still, as i am consciously letting go! thats why you are still here, yollie; you are my teacher!
she keeps saying how much she'll miss us when we are in tasmania; i keep telling her, we're still here...just like she is ...for now!
i feel we "get" old when we turn serious...maybe she is really 201 today?
god knows, heaven's kitchen ( she is open to hell's kitchen too- loved the canolli we bought her from there!) will have to be ready for the way she wants her peanut butter sandwich!
love you got
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