This is the 11th year since the attacks on the 11th day of September in 2001.

In Manhattan the day began in a routine way, the way weekdays begin here, but for the fact it was a primary election and that sky was a peaceful blue. By the end of the morning the day would be remembered for attacks and death — The World Trade Towers. The Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania.

In the days immediately following the tragedy, our city was a killing field and a cathedral. Things secular seemed sacred. We were softer, kinder, and quieter. We were a wounded city. Grief was in the air, I could feel it in every exchange I had with another person, whether a friend or stranger.

I wrote these words then:

“The first time I approached it was just at dusk. The steel skeleton of what had been the mighty tower hung suspended as though it were a piece of scenery for a play. But it was too large for any theater’s stage, and the scope of the tragedy too massive for the confinement of the playwright’s craft. It was a stark shard, and on that shard, as on the attacks itself, the nation and the world has attached much meaning and symbolism.” *

Eleven years later, the huge shard is gone. A growing new tower is visible from the end of the terrace. Some feel the tower avenges some of the deaths by making a statement that we won’t be intimidated. I don’t focus on the new tower. Instead I think of the pools of water, the reflecting waters that now stand where the base of the towers once existed. Those waters and the names of each person lost that day are what I think of today. Water can be healing and in sacred or religious rituals signifies renewal, cleansing, rebirth.

Hatred took down the towers. Softness in Manhattan is in short supply again. We’re almost as we were, and that’s not necessarily good. There is war, bloodshed, violence and hatred in every corner of the globe. My speck in the universe – this island of Manhattan — is part of a larger national political drama unfolding as we near the presidential election. Eleven years after 9–11, the rhetoric is angry, misleading, and accusatory. We are shown maps with red and blue states as the news commentators excitedly chatter about the closeness of the race to the White House. I see division. I see anything but a United States of America. I wish it were not the case that tragedy seems to be what binds us and not compromise.

Healing Waters. Waters Heal.

I think of the lives of all who died that day, not just their manner of death. I think of the many new cancers now discovered and named because of the poison that went into the bodies and systems of the first-responders and others at the site. I think of the gentle water and all the words that can’t be said on a memorial stone of what constitutes a mass grave. May each name be for a blessed memory.

May we find peace in the world and on our shores. May we retreat from prejudice, intolerance and the arrogance of assuming we are always right, and the other person is always wrong.

Tonight I will go the far corner of the terrace and look to see if the white beams of light are being displayed this year, as they usually are. The ghost towers I call them each year. But even if they are not, I will see the light of hope that we will move forward in a way befitting a country founded on liberty and freedom. And dream we can move into a decade of compassion.

* “From the Shards” by Alida Brill in To Mend the World, Marjorie Agosin and BettyJean Craig, editors, White Pine Press, 2002

©Alida Brill/From This Ter­race 2012

Today is August 22, 2012 the 235th day of the year.

I last reported (that’s a fairly glib use of the word) to you From This Terrace on the 11th day of a newly minted year. Although I wrote with honesty about reaching a place where I wasn’t waiting, I think I must have been waiting, as we all do. It’s the human response to life’s challenges and perhaps an indication of hope for change.

I’m not recanting. I’m confessing I couldn’t live up to the idealized higher self I thought I had come close to touching in the heady days of early January. At least I glimpsed what I thought I could achieve. Then many things collided at once. The temptation to push aside what I felt wasn’t essential overtook me. And silence ensued, and did it ever last. 224 days of it. The Stone Sage Lion began to roar at me and that’s quite a feat.

Silence is a writer’s best friend, or so I’ve been told. The great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova said that there was only one luxury a writer could not live without — the ability to be absolutely alone. I’ve been mostly alone in the days of this year — if not always in actuality, a still solitude has taken up residence in my brain. It’s not felt like a luxury, but more a defeat occasioned by illness and life choices. It’s made me think about silence and solitude. It’s made me remember the writer and scholar Carolyn Heilbrun who spoke about solitude being something one craved only if one did not have to endure it all of the time.

Summer is a silent time in my part of the world. Suppress your laughter. In fact, my Manhattan neighborhood is quiet because people go away. They “do summer” and I don’t “do summer” any longer. Summer was never my friend but I pretended we were intimates. Eventually, the pretense gave way to the reality of my life. I stopped being a truth-evader. Summer and I do not get along well. We’re not a good match – I think of us as a constantly quarreling couple. So rather than wintering through as Rilke commands in his sonnet, I’ve summered through. I’ve decided what’s essential is to combine silence with connections, even if those take the form of sustained email conversations with friends. I still believe C.S. Lewis was right when he said that we read to know we are not alone…but I now add my footnote to his comment … I think many of us write to know we are not alone. That is surely the case for me.

So, am I waiting for something? Yes, I am. I am waiting to learn how to let go of extreme expectations for myself that blindside me to the smallest pleasures of a day. Early this morning, I was awakened by the sound of birds in the middle of this completely urban landscape. They were rummaging through the terrace’s hanging flower boxes to see if by chance there was a tasty morsel for them to enjoy for breakfast. They were chattering to each other, and to me.

From This Terrace is Open…again…finally.

©Alida Brill/From This Terrace 2012

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding because to understand is to be free.” — Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677)

So much of what we do and think about involves waiting. We wait to grow up and wait to get a job only to spend years in jobs waiting to retire. Once we are grown up many of us want to be young again and will do many expensive and dangerous things to look as young as we did when we were waiting to be older.

We wait to fall in love with the perfect person, often overlooking the love that would have lasted. Then we wait to get a divorce or wait to find the next flawed companion or spouse convincing ourselves that it will be the right one, only to wait for them to make a mistake or miss a step. So we can wait to start our lives over once again.

We wait for miracle diets or miracle cures for what is wrong with our bodies. We wait to have children or once we have them wait for them to grow up and leave us alone. When they do, we wait for them to call us, spend more time with us, or come back home. If they come back home, we wait for them to get a job and move out. Some of us are waiting to go to heaven when we die, but if we become ill will subject ourselves to almost anything in order not to die.

It seems the human condition is about waiting for something other than what we have or waiting to go or be somewhere other than where we are — in life, in the age cycle, in the world, in relationships and in our careers.

I can’t help but wonder what the calculation of time lost waiting would tell us about the way we have spent our time allotted on this planet. Surely it would tell us that too often we have failed to find joy in the moments. The eternity of now is a concept much under-appreciated but one that forces me out of the waiting room of my life.

For 2012 I decided not to make resolutions I’ll only break in the first month. This year I didn’t promise myself once again I would stop watching very late night television completely. I refused to con myself into believing I had eaten my last over-the-top chocolate or that I would give up carbohydrates. I’ve stopped writing down exactly how many pages I will write each day or how many friends I promise to see this year.

Most importantly, I’ve stopped waiting for the perfect life to occur because despite all that is difficult … maybe, just maybe, my life is perfect, as it is. It’s all in the definition.

Here are my thoughts on Not Waiting for 2012:

I am not waiting to get well.

I am not waiting in fear that I’ll get sicker.

I am not waiting to be loved and understood in precise and rigid ways.

I am not waiting to die.

I am not waiting to suffer.

I am not waiting to change others or myself for the better.

I am not waiting to be surprised by 2012’s goodness.

I am not waiting to be disappointed by 2012’s events.

I am living. Just living because it is a full and complex job.

I am resolved to enjoy living in each moment of each new day.

Waking up each morning to start living over and over again each day until I say goodbye to 2012.

And won’t wait in order to begin again, begin anew.

Because I am not waiting I am free.

I am present.

“Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)

©Alida Brill 2012

TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR 2012

A Song For the New Year
From A Sheltered Place

I’ve stopped to watch a man skipping stones in a sheltered cove
In a graceful angular motion he takes each one then hurls it into the bay
I see only him and not the stones — he seems a gently textured man
With each one he moves in toward the water to help it take an extra hop
Crouching by the shore he judges the distance of the skip then begins again
His maleness has a dangerous vulnerability and I will not let him go
Over and over he skips stones across the water in a pre-ordained ritual
Enormous pain and happiness dance together in his eyes.

I wonder what the stones at once so heavy and so light mean to him
I think they are hope and death because that is what he is to me
I see Virginia in another time putting other stones into her pockets
Not stones for skipping but for sinking. She sits at her desk
and then writes her last letter to him:
I’ve done the best I could, please forgive.’ And Leonard did.

Now he moves to the far end of the cove and casts the last stone
His mouth wide open in a mournful scream but there is no sound
Counting 1–2-3–4-5–6-7 — 8 jumps it takes, the best stone of all
In a look of release not victory he continues on his way
He bows in tribute to an enormous absence he alone knows.

I wait for the arrival of the stone’s absolute absence
I desire that precise moment when there is no trace of existence
I think then of other absolutes: the predictability of sinking
Of Virginia, and of me
I think about this man and the burdens he carried in the stones
I wonder what further sorrows he will yet discover on his journey
Across the rocky beach I witness him moving away from me
Despite his retreat I believe in him and that love exists in silence.

In soft dreams my own stones leave me without effort
Gathering themselves from inside my heart they fly upward
And catch an osprey guarding his nest
Osprey misses nothing – he sees all our stones
He knows the disappearing man and my heartgrief
In a flash of his wingspread Osprey covers me in shadow

He flies toward his nest, his home, his refuge, his duty
In obligatory exultation of joy I watch him land
I look up to him and down to the water
Possessing nothing I indulge a thought of enormous gratitude
For this small event of lasting magnificence
In my past resides a man in a sheltered cove skipping stones
I surrender my stones and in an instant’s breath I release
Everyone’s stones and feel suddenly and completely … Alive.

©Alida Brill 2012

TODAY IS THE 355TH DAY OF THE YEAR

ALL OF US AT FROM THIS TERRACE WISH ALL OF YOU A HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON FILLED WITH THE JOY OF FAMILY MEMORIES AND WITH THE ANTICIPATION OF ALL THAT IS YET TO COME.

The Family Tree

I retain almost no visual image of my grandfather except that his eyes were crystalline, as shimmering blue as Lake Michigan’s deepest waters. He cut ice with his friends and co-workers. I have fantasy images about this man who spent so much time on frozen surfaces to make his living. Ice Men sold blocks of harvested ice from horse drawn wagons throughout the streets of the city. The icebox was the only form of refrigeration then available. Grandfather was a harvester, not a salesman of ice. But when I was a girl I heard about a famous play, The Iceman Cometh. And made the assumption Grandfather must have been important if an entire play had been named for his occupation.

On land he designed and built a large wooden home for his wife and growing family. It was crafted from the reclaimed lumber of an abandoned ice storage house. I try to imagine it being dismantled and hauled off a frigid lake or river to a street named Lillibridge in the Village of Fairview, which eventually became part of Detroit. From this forgotten and once frozen lumber he created a residence of graceful substance and a large hearth for the wife he loved. My grandmother was a woman considered beyond his station in life. Grandfather was proud to be part of the industry that kept food fresh, safe from spoiling. The invention of the modern electric refrigerator as a common domestic appliance changed everyone’s life. The fact of industrial progress transferred his primary identity to the category of historical footnote.

As my mother grew older, stories about her father were more often about his life on land. He worked as a skilled carpenter. Today he would be called a custom cabinetmaker. Her favorite memory was walking to meet him at the end of each working day. Patiently she waited on the corner where he got off the streetcar. He greeted her — always pretending surprise. She slipped her hand into the pocket of his jacket and reacted with reciprocal surprise when she found half a cheese sandwich saved from his lunch. Throughout her long life the meaning of the cheese sandwich lingered as a code. Through a scrap of leftover lunch he found a way to express love. Theirs was a large family — all the other siblings were boys; she was his only girl and the youngest.

For a time I lived close to the sea. My writing room was a slapdash addition over the garage. I loved that solitary peaceful space. It was the only part of the property with an ocean view. Each morning I counted the waves from my perch. Already in her 90s, my mother climbed the stairs to sit with me. We drank tea. We talked about books and the importance of women’s equality. Mostly we talked about poetry or read it aloud to one another. Sometimes her words drifted back to Detroit to relate the tales of her enormous extended family, by then all deceased.

As her lifespan compressed she talked increasingly of her father who had been dead for at least four decades. One visit she produced a snapshot taken of the two of us – a tiny child standing next to a lean old man. She said I had broken his heart. On a visit to Detroit he presented me with a fancy teddy bear, and I did not permit him to hug me. The story shamed me, but there wasn’t a place for my emotions. No person left to ask forgiveness. I was a young child. He was tall and thin as a pencil. — An ancient man with foreign ways I did not understand; he frightened me.

At the end of that visit Mama made the announcement she had something important to give me. She had the unfortunate habit of giving me a small trinket of sentimental family value only to decide in a few weeks she wasn’t really ready to let it go. And would then demand return of the family remembrance. It was a game I didn’t enjoy. I had become disinterested in these offerings and intolerant of her behavior. This particular day she pulled out a worn folding wooden ruler. Its numbers were faded.

“This was your Grandfather’s working ruler. He used it in everything he ever made.” He was precise and careful in his craft. I owned a toy box he had made. This ruler was an essential tool of his trade. I was transfixed by it. I wanted his folding ruler for reasons I could not express. Now I know I wanted it as a symbol of the eternal marriage between creativity and craft.

“Are you sure, because I do want this, and I won’t return it to you. Even if you ask me to give it back. It will sit here on my writing table.”

She kept her word. The ruler stayed.

There is a sacred quality to this old piece of wood with its worn numbers.

I have little experience of what family life means and scant history living within one. The folding ruler means I belong to a longer story than my solitary one.

Some months after Grandfather’s ruler came to stay, I looked out the window that faced the sea. I didn’t bother with the ocean view. It was a windy day. I focused on a tree bending deeply in the breeze. An eclipsed memory of Grandfather came into my head. It was based on the repetition of Mama’s stories, not personal experience. His presence flooded my senses.

I picked up the ruler and thought about the connection between these two crafts — writing and woodworking. I imagined him closing and extending the ruler until the wood was perfectly measured. In my mind I saw him tame that wood with his skilled hands, as it turned into something useful, something beautiful. I, his grandchild from another century, was seated at my writing table. I was working and reworking ungraceful wooden sentences, clause-by-clause, word-by-word, and then letter-by-letter. We were connected to each other by his old and faded folding ruler.

Today a branch sags in the wind
Grandfather you are this branch

Weathered and brown as nut
I cut the branch down and
held it in my hands
it turned into my pencil

A half-century away from me
I wrote this note to you:
Grandfather I Love You.

Ice
becomes
wood
becomes
the house
becomes
the tree
becomes
the pencil
becomes
the words
becomes
me
remembering you.

©2011 Alida Brill

What killed the marriage was not my numerical dyslexia, what murdered it was my chronic illness.  He was, in his own words, “all healed out”…and who could blame him?  I still am not healed from the illness. Only now, countless decades later, have I finally healed from the loss of love, of that particular love that was offered by him and his family.

Recently a trusted friend told me that I sometimes retreated to a childlike state.  Actually I think he said “childish” — if truth be known.  It stung me, because  he wasn’t suggesting it was a delightful Annie Hall trait of mine.  It was an annoying trait of mine. I thought about working hard to correct it, at least in his presence.  I thought about the fact I was largely unaware of it.  I was however aware that I had been scolded by him.

It made me think about lives lived with illness and disability, with little or no reprieve.  It’s made me think about the alternative world I live in which I’ve called the Planet of the Unwell.  I turned to Virginia Woolf  not because I was thinking about immediate suicide. But because I admire how she continued on for as long as she did when so very ill with depression, in her case.  All the feminist correction to the record notwithstanding, I still admire Leonard Woolf for not leaving her, despite his flaws and mistakes.

At some point, if you are never going to be a well person, you’re likely to be scolded.  The patience of those around you will fray and they will say hurtful things.  You will say rash and intemperate things because you can’t help it, although you try, sometimes you try with all your might.

The holidays are difficult for many or most of us for all sorts of reasons.  For the unwell, the sick, the disabled, the holidays are not always deck the halls with boughs of happiness.…if you’re with someone or in a family, you’re likely to want them to be happy and your status makes that challenging.  If you’re alone and unlikely to be remembered at the holidays, the isolation of illness becomes an even more predominant reality.  I fight the feeling of abandonment, but not very successfully.

I don’t have holiday presents to offer my readers, but I offer Virginia on illness and behavior –

‎“There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional), a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truth blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.”
Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill, 1947

And by the way, the Stone Sage Lion reminds me that the 333rd of the year is a palindrome — which means something that reads the same backward as forward.  Mathematicians tend to like them.  Mine did. I think the 333rd day of this difficult year is a warning to me to stop going over and over the hurts I’ve sustained as well as the things I’ve done wrong. The challenge is to move forward to another year …with hope, however guarded.  The even more daunting challenge right now is to move through December with some amount of joy and without a clenched jaw and grinding teeth.  Stone Sage Lion says if not, I’m likely to turn to stone as well and spend the winter outside with him…on the terrace.

That’s it for us today, the 333rd day of the first year of the second decade of the 21st century!!  Stay Warm, in body, mind and heart. Compassion and forgiveness still trump almost any other available gift we have to give another living being.

©Alida Brill 2011

We’ve been off the screen but we’ve not jumped off the terrace.

The Stone Sage Lion said we should have hung a sign on the terrace that said: GONE FISHING…

But it would have been more honest to say, I fell off the track, broke the promise, and am so sorry.

Life does that to all of us. Creeps up, destroys plans, ruins schedules and eventually you have to own up to it or feel fairly crummy. So, I’m owning up to it now.

The Stone Sage Lion knew from the beginning that every single week wouldn’t work, and it didn’t. What intervened wasn’t life as much as my illness. Then, when I began to feel stronger, I was stunned by how far behind I had fallen on the next book I’m writing.

However, there’s a new posting on Wordpaint that sums up my philosophy of the writer’s life, such as it.

I’ll be in and out of the terrace, putting things away for the winter, hoping for easier days for all of us. And the Stone Sage Lion and I will be chatting with you again, so hope you’re still around in the vapors of our virtual neighborhood.

See you soon and ….

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

© Alida Brill 2011

The 230th Day of the Year

When I first moved to Manhattan, now three decades and counting ago, I was stunned by the surprises it held.  Any given week might bring a series of random events and meetings that made me a different person than I had been before, someone more in touch with a larger world.  I have had to spend more time inside than outside in the last year. Sometimes I forget the power of these accidental and beneficial collisions.

Paul Mutimear is a magician in his own right and on his own terms — artist, photographer, musician, and by self-definition “The Color Guy.”  I met Paul a few years back when I zipped into the Janovic Plaza paint store on Lexington and 64^th.  Painting walls is instantly therapeutic and a fairly inexpensive way to escape your surroundings.  Feeling trapped that day, I decided to paint a room.  Much to my delight I met Paul who is not someone who is pushing paint toward the next customer. Everything about him has artistry to it. Paul captivated me — his manner, dress, humor, and vocal refusal to be intimidated by my insistence I had the right color. (I did not and not listening to him caused the need for a quick return trip!) We began to talk about creative pursuits and what he calls his improvised life.  He told me a few things about his wife, the artist Katherine Bowling, and their life together.  I was hooked.  Occasionally I drop into the store and we pick up where we left off the last time.

Procrastinating (not writing) earlier this summer I decided to “moth” my closets thoroughly before I packed up the winter clothes.  We notice moths mostly for what they leave behind… holes in the clothes we love.  I grew quickly weary of the task. Without any consideration of its ramifications, I decided my main room was too dark.  One long wall had to change its color-costume … immediately.  I went to Janovic and there was Paul. I was fresh from the moth-killing chore and Paul told me about his published book of extraordinary photographs … of moths! Paul’s Moths are not to be killed but instead appreciated for all their transcendent and iridescent living and flying beauty.  His photographs and understanding of these critters made rethink words such as:  insects, pests, and bugs.

The collision that brought us into one another’s lives happened for no other reason except the Muses provide random joys.  Ours made me once again savour “the treats along the way” Manhattan still provides.

We are excited and pleased to welcome Paul Mutimear as our guest on From This Terrace.  I hope all of you will enjoy your time with him as much as I do.  Please note he has a show up for the next two weeks, if you’re anywhere in the area – all details are included below.  Since the gallery is out of the city, Paul has given us a preview for those who won’t be able to attend.  It’s his most recent print of a June bug.  Here’s what he says:

“It’s called ‘June’ which is the name of the bug, the June bug, so named because it only seems to appear in the month of June. Their evolution is a mystery to me, as they seem completely ill conceived. They have big fat bodies and fly as if completely out of control for the entire duration of their flight, which lasts an average of 1.5 seconds before they crash into something, and fall to ground and if they land on their backs they seem completely incapable of righting themselves.

When I shot this picture I had three of them stuck to me from random collisions. I’ve decided that this picture is an accidental tribute to the legendary photographer O. Winston Link who set up incredibly elaborate shots, with only once chance to get everything right, most famously, the express train passing a drive-in movie. My shot captures the wild flight path of the June bug just as a car passes in the background, leaving the streaks of red taillights. The difference is that mine was completely accidental and a million to one coincidence, especially as cars pass here at night at an average frequency of one every ten minutes! Sometimes you get lucky.”

If you are now bitten by Paul’s work, as we are here on From This Terrace, please read on and learn more about his vision and the journey to finding his creative path.  I find I can’t look at any of his photographs without seeing something new in each one, each time.

An improvised life by Paul Mutimear:

Basically, I have had a strange and under-achieving sort of career, having been blessed with an abundance of creativity, but, growing up, I had little encouragement. It was also the 60’s and I had little interest in a traditional “career”. I studied mechanical engineering because I liked making things and thought it would be interesting (it wasn’t) and became a musician and recording engineer before coming to America with a rock and roll band.

I had always been interested in photography as another creative outlet but never had the patience (or memory) to learn film-based photographic technique and only got into photography seriously when digital cameras of sufficient quality finally became affordable. My favorite part of playing music is improvisation, partly because I am untrained in music too. Digital photography gave me the instant feedback that I needed to improvise — waiting 2 weeks for a film to be processed only to find out I had used the wrong settings didn’t work for me! It would have been akin to playing a guitar solo with a 2-week delay before I could hear what I’d done! These photos are the direct result of the newfound ability to improvise with a camera. The freedom that unlimited shooting and instant feedback enabled was breathtaking and as soon as I had a camera good enough, these photographs came quite quickly.

Incidentally, my music career had a little boost about 4 years ago when I was able to write, record, and produce my own solo CD (with a lot of help from great engineer and producer, Allen Farmelo). I made it under the pseudonym Paul Britten and it’s called “Life and Death (Part 1)”.

My accidental career as a colorist follows a similar pattern, as again, I have no formal training. When Janovic offered me the job, disillusioned with 15 years as a specialty-painting contractor with ever-increasing overheads and diminishing job satisfaction, I improvised. Every customer is different and I was soon able to find my way by treating every person as an individual and improvising to their personal requirements. Feeling that I should study a little color theory, I discovered that it basically reinforced what I had already learned intuitively from my practical experience in color mixing and application. I already had the advantage of extensive experience in paint application and in dealing with clients but the biggest key to my success was probably just having an English accent!”

Like the moths drawn to the light, Susan, the Stone Sage Lion and I are drawn to this imaginative artist and how he re-envisions life-on-the-wing.  I am beginning to wonder how the mothproofing will go next year….

In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the gifts of Paul’s lens.

Good-bye for now from all of us on From This Terrace.  See you soon!!

©Alida Brill 2011 From This Terrace

#########################################################

For an actual look at the man behind the mystery of moths and a few words about color, which after all, brought me to him:  here is a link to a featured piece that appeared in The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/nyregion/13experience.html

Paul is represented by master printers and print publishers Oehme Graphics of Colorado. He has just returned from working there on the new series.

The book Solid Air is available at: www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2038594

See more of Paul’s photography at:

www.paulmutimear.com

You can obtain limited edition archival prints of these images by contacting Paul directly: pmutimear@yahoo.com

You will find his music on www.paulbritten.com

Here are details about Paul’s upcoming show:

It’s about a 3 hour drive from NYC (so City residents who can’t make it are forgiven). For those who saw Paul’s last show there, there will be some new moth pictures but also a lot of other photography, video and his first series of etchings made with master printer Sue Oehme in Colorado.

Opening Saturday August 20th 5pm — 7pm. The show is up for 2 weeks and Paul will also be at the gallery Sun 21st, Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th from about noon until 5pm.

If you are unfamiliar with the location, here are some clues:

website:

http://www.wayoutgallery.com/16764.html

Address: Wayout Gallery, 5046 Delaware Turnpike, Rensselaerville, NY 12147.

Today is the 185^th day of the Year, and 235 years since the Founders declared our Independence from England.

By mid-August in 1776 battles raged in Long Island, New York, where this 4^th of July weekend many celebrated with fireworks, fancy catered champagne parties as well as simple ones on beaches with families.

The 4^th of July means something more this year in New York because on the 24^th of June, the state passed the Marriage Equality Act.  In a few states, my own now one of them, there is independence from an unjust discrimination.  Women and Women may marry one another.  Men and Men may marry one another.  If they choose to do so, it will be under the law, with full entitlement to the enjoyment and privileges of what legal marriage means, under the laws of the State of New York.  Andrew Cuomo, our Roman Catholic governor, exhibited political savvy and went forward with military precision in order to accomplish this revolutionary equal rights victory.

He did something else as well.   By personal example, he taught us a lesson that’s become too easy to forget.  The State and The Church (any church) are not interchangeable entities.  Some organized religions, faiths and denominations — that is the “Church” in the generic sense of the word — will welcome couples of the same sex into their sanctuaries to exchange marital vows.  And some will not.  That is not the business of Government.  The business of a civil society, a democratic one founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence, is that each of us should be free from the yoke of intolerance and oppression –from another country – or from opposing sets of beliefs or rules of those who would seek to impinge on our rights to full humanity.

New York has done this.  I wasn’t sure it would ever happen.  That it has come into our laws fills me with pride for my adopted State of New York.  The legislation provides hope my hometown state of California will reverse its decision and come back into the fold of  human rights.  Mostly, the passage of the Marriage Equality Bill reinforces a strongly held conviction about the United States.  If we’re given enough time, and reasonable debate ensues among people of goodwill, justice comes.  It doesn’t come as soon as it should, and is often accompanied by severe causalities along the path toward freedom and independence, but it does come.

I posted a few comments on my Facebook profile page that jubilant night when the New York legislature passed marriage equality.  Many others were writing and some responded to what I had written.  The entry that made the strongest impression was from a childhood friend whom I’ve not seen in years, but we reconnected through Facebook.  We were girls together in Lakewood/Long Beach, California.  Peggy got married and had a family.  She’s lived what appears to be a far more “traditional” life than I’ve lived.  Yet, it was Peggy who posted a heartfelt remark to my assertion that we are all one human family.  “Good for New York.  My son Steve married in California during the brief time it was legal here.”  Reading this simple statement about her son whom I have never met, from a childhood friend I’ve not seen for decades brought me right back to her.  And her words made me know how deeply this victory is felt in many families throughout our country.

For me this is a 4^th of July about love for this diverse and expansive country, and our abiding love of family, love for one another, love of mothers and fathers for their children, gay and straight, love of children’s spouses of different or same sex.  It is, quite simply stated, about the freedom to love and to be protected and validated as equal citizens under the laws of an amazing and still evolving nation.

In 1991 I published a book about privacy entitled Nobody’s Business.  I argued that the rituals of our lives, including marriage, legitimated our existence and marked our place as equal citizens.  I meant, of course, legal marriage for all when I wrote this impassioned plea for Gay Rights during the horror of the AIDS years. This was the era when it became easy for many to scapegoat the gay community.  I wrote much of that book with a heavy heart, having attended too many funerals, having lost faith in otherwise rational people who were arguing against full-scale rights for all.  In these last years I felt we had come to a place where more people understood that to deny equality in marriage to one segment of our people is a violation to all.  Then California came and went, as it were, and I was in despair, again.  But not today, thanks to this original colonial state of New York, which gave me an opportunity to feel the Spirit of 1776 in the festivities of 2011.

In Nobody’s Business I called the section on intolerance The Open Bedroom.  I did so because of the draconian laws that permitted gay people’s privacy to be invaded within their homes, because homosexuality was deemed illegal in some states.  The odious and infamous Hardwick decision of the Supreme Court remains a stark reminder of how far we have come in this long-fought battle.  It would take the Court seventeen years to overturn that Georgia law and their initial decision in Hardwick. There are still many more miles to travel before we achieve universal marriage equality throughout our land. Let’s do this together as one people, who believe what the Founders did on the Fourth of July in 1776. We are all entitled to freedom from oppression and the right to individual liberty and pursuit of happiness. Let us do as Governor Cuomo has done.  We can maintain a loyalty to our private and deeply held individual faiths but insist that those spiritual beliefs do not intrude on the sanctity of law. — And just as fervently prohibit practices and laws that intrude on the sacredness of faith. —  We can do both in the United States. The principle of the Separation of Church and State is one of the  most precious gifts contained in the secular creed of the Constitution.

This is a holiday for open hearts.  A new chapter has come to New York, which is what Katie Bamberger’s photograph says to me.  A blank book with its center pages folded into a heart.  It’s a communal book about love and commitment ready to be filled with stories of love, lives joined, families formed, and the celebration of understanding and tolerance. At long last.

Here is my first entry in the Open Heart Book.

Mark J. Grisanti is a Republican who represents the Buffalo area of New York in the State Legislature.  He opposed same-sex marriage in his election campaign.   After voting for the passage of the Marriage Equality Act in Albany he reflected that he had agonized, that he had thought and thought about it and about his responsibilities as an elected representative of the people of his district.  In the end he said he could not vote against the Bill. Here’s what he said about why he stood up for same-sex equality in marriage:

“I apologize for those who feel offended.  I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across the state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is, the same rights that I have with my wife.”

Happy 4th of July 2011 From this Terrace, the Stone Sage Lion and the Empire State of New York, originally settled in 1626.

©Alida Brill, From this Terrace 2011

The 144th day of 2011

“We read to know we are not alone.”

C.S. Lewis

Books make me happy.  They comfort me as well as inform and entertain.  I think of them as companions, best friends.  Some are old friends and show the wear of travels through my life — a journey that’s had a number of starts and stops along the way.

And there are my newest friends still in freshly pressed outfits (others call them dust jackets).  Here’s a picture of one who came also wrapped as a gift.  I enjoy seeing Marilyn Monroe posed in front of a shelf of her own books, rather than the familiar photographic images.

When I discovered C.S. Lewis initially it was not the children’s books that captured me.  I read his books of theology as well as A Grief Observed, which he wrote after the traumatic death of his wife, Joy.  Most of the world learned about his marriage from the play Shadowlands and the movie that came after that.  However, it’s in the published words of mourning where one finds a profoundly different way to think about and imagine intimacy and love.  In that book a reader feels palpably the private struggle and spiritual crisis he endured after he lost her.  C.S. Lewis was alone until he was 58 years old — in that he was an unmarried man.  But he was not alone before he met his wife.  He had a full life. He was accompanied by his far-reaching creative brilliance, a deep faith in God, his writing, students, brother, friends and the books he loved to read.

It’s the comment about reading that brings me closest to C.S. Lewis.  I’ve always surrounded myself with books and have read since a young child.  Even when in the company of others, I’ve been alone.  Chronic illness does that, whether you’re lucky enough to find one person or friends to stay with you or not.  In my situation, there’s the actual lack of companionship, but I have many dear friends with me 24/7.  There are bound volumes on my shelves, and virtual books I’ve downloaded onto the Kindle.  Those are portable friends always available to come along to the hospital.

These last several weeks in Manhattan have been unkind ones for those of us with respiratory troubles.  I’ve been isolated more than is wise psychologically.  But my books and the ability to read them have gotten me through this rough patch.  These old and new friends have kept me from falling into a ditch of hopelessness.

In the room where the Stone Sage Lion guards the door, there are two pieces of art representing books.  There’s a trompe-l-oeil painting by an artist I met in California.  She took a photograph of a bookshelf in the study. The painting is that shelf’s reality, as it existed at that precise moment in time.  However, she added two fantasy confections – on one sits my cat, Jennyanydots.  This was a thoughtful gesture as my fur-person friend had recently died (at over 20 years of age). In front of the cat is another invention — a book entitled How To Train Your Dog. That bookshelf and most of the people in my life at that time have left my world, along with the beloved feline.  But the books are still around.  On another wall of the terrace room is a miniature library created within a desk drawer. I purchased it in Venice at a shop owned and run by a family. Sadly, I’ve heard they’re no longer in business.  The shop’s enchanting name:  Zacaria’s …i libri non libri di.  It was in the Campo San Provolo – San Zaccaria in Castello.   If you’re in that neighborhood, do check and let me know if they’re still there. Both the Stone Sage Lion and I are eager to find out and hope the news of their closing was only rumor.

What is it about my enduring relationship to books?  I don’t think my attraction and attachment to them is only because I’m a writer, although I think becoming a writer originated with being an enthusiastic reader.  When younger people ask: “How can I become a writer?”  I answer with one short sentence:  “First you must develop a healthy reading appetite.”  It doesn’t always make me popular with people who want a shortcut or a magic formula.  Those don’t exist.  Writing is a skill one must work at conscientiously and constantly in order to sharpen the brain’s language tools. You must be willing to fail utterly and start over again …  and again.  The true magic is often in finding at the end of a day you’ve written one good sentence!  Colette understood that and wrote about it eloquently.  It is hard work.  I’m not a celebrity nor am I a celebrity author.  I don’t find anything all that glamorous about being a writer, but I respect the craft of it. I’m grateful to be able to do it — at times successfully — at other junctures quite dismally.

I do celebrate what reading does for my spirit, and how it has shaped me as a woman writer.  I’m surprised and sometimes stunned to learn my own books have lives of their own after publication.  Books.   Reading.  Writing – these are things that sustain me.

That’s it for this week from the Stone Sage Lion and me. And from our loyal friends – the books on the shelves, and those piled on the tables, scattered on the sofa, and the chairs.  And the ones resting all over my raft-bed.

Am I so alone?

Not really.

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.”

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

©2011 Alida Brill From This Terrace