Texas Road Trip Memories

Three Piles of Red West Texas Dirt

The fun pile of memories

the heat of childhood visits

where there was no pain or struggle only picnics and watermelon

walks in the dry red river swimming in the cold

spring fed pool after

standing behind the falls.

The pile of gossip and pain

who owes who what

who left who, when, and for whom where the dead are buried

and despair of

no water

no job

is too much and

wind & heat take over.

The pile of dreams

how they are moved around

piled up

pushed down

endless attempts to persevere

when red turned high contrast

to remains of cotton scattered in fields.

Laverne Zabielski

Opioid Abatement Op Ed

photo by Kevin Nance

An opioid addiction disease has taken over Lexington. The Opioid Abatement Commission recently appointed by Mayor Gorton and scheduled to meet this Friday, September 15, 2023 has the opportunity to enact solutions. Citizens are suffering. People in Lexington don’t know how to deal with the sudden rise of addicts and homeless roaming our streets, sleeping and camping on public property and often, because of a lack of public toilets, defecating.  Ky House Bill 248 provides no provisions for harm reduction or housing first. They expect complete and total abstinence. Where does the Legislature think those suffering from an opioid addiction disease are to live?  The Opioid Abatement Commission has the power to address these issues. I am grateful that the courts have ordered the corporations and individuals who knowingly allowed the proliferation of this destructive drug to pay reparations.

Recently I attended a community meeting to address concerns about homeless people lingering around the bus stop at Elm Tree Lane and Third Street. Everyone likes to relax in the shady areas in public spaces. But when trash is left behind because there are no trash cans and some could be using drugs, it makes neighborhood citizens uncomfortable and they want something to change. My hope is that those suffering from an opioid addiction disease are provided housing and access to the medical care they need, medical care that includes getting their teeth replaced. 

My daughter has been homeless, living on the street for four years. She could be your daughter or sister. If you’ve been around Lexington, you probably saw her dance with Syncopated Inc. at the Singletary Center or in Woodland  Park. Now she sleeps there sometimes. She may have served you at Alfalfas restaurant. She made huge oatmeal cookies at Everybody’s Health Food store. She went to Henry Clay High School, played basketball, and studied fiber art at UK. 

But life didn’t turn out for her. And it isn’t as if she hasn’t tried. She is probably an expert in chasing down agencies, making phone calls from borrowed phones only to listen to answering machines say they will call you back. How do you call a homeless person back? Sometimes they have phones, sometimes they don’t.

I’ve called agencies. I leave messages. I don’t get a return phone call either. And if it’s a weekend, everything is closed. Once I heard a story on the radio about how people with disabilities and mental illness qualified for a room during a cold winter. She called and all they said was she didn’t qualify. 

She and many others need housing first. A room to sleep in, not on the street or in somebody’s shared tent. A place where they can focus and get on a path toward getting off the street. You can’t get your life together when you’re sleeping in a culvert during a rainstorm. 

Some say addiction is a disease. Others call it a choice. Maybe it’s a little of both. Providing housing and medical treatment on demand allows those addicted to opioids the help they need to address their disease and make appropriate choices for healing. This cannot be done while living on the street.

Many tell opioid addicts to go to rehab. It’s not that easy. It is very painful to detox from opioids. And if an addict has gone once and not been successful it is even harder to go again, because they know the pain they will confront. Nonetheless many go as many as seven times before a successful detox. Some are never successful and they begin to wonder if there is a difference between the rehabs that Medicare pays for and the rehabs that say Medicare is not in their network. 

Some of these private rehab agencies do offer a cash plan of $30K per month. And after detox, the opioids have so altered the brain that prescription maintenance drugs need to be prescribed. Often it takes two years to rewire the brain from the damage that the opioids have caused. Detox and one month of rehab does not solve the problem. Housing, medical care, and education/job training is needed. This is what the reparations from the producers of the opioid drug crisis are supposed to pay for.

My concern is that the commission members will be afraid to draw upon the lived experiences of the addicts and their families as evidence of what is needed. My concern is that those suffering will have to remain on the street while more research is being pursued. Their lives will continue to be at risk. If we expect addicts to handle their disease, then we need to help them facilitate the complicated, maddening bureaucracy they must face in order to get the housing and medical care they need. If they are to be healed, they need to get that housing and that care now.

Published in the Lexington Herald Leader, September 13, 2023

1946 Sex Education Letter

Saturday night, early February, 1946

Dearest Ray,

Grace Laverne is planning to leave tomorrow afternoon for Canyon and Monday afternoon for Chicago.  So I want to write you this letter in order that you will have received it before she arrives.

I wish she had not insisted on going to Chicago before hand; that the plans had worked out as first arranged, the wedding in the Spring, her, and both of you leaving together.  But they didn’t and she is coming to you instead.

Now, I would be right along with her if it were not for the “small” matter of money, so I just have to trust her to your care and protection.

As long as you were here with me you were safe.  But with out my protection you might have been swept off your feet.  (“You” is plural).  Now you will not have that loving supervision.  So I am depending on you to keep yourself well in hand.  For you know the

paths of love and passion often run side by side and at times are intertwined, so that they are indistinguishable.  One doesn’t have to be bad to make a miss-step; they can be mistaken. And two people as much in love as you and Grace Laverne are could make that mistake mighty easy.  The result being that immediately your love would turn to hatred.  There is a story of just such an occurrence in the Bible, if you care to read it -  2 Samuel, Chapter 13.

Now, if just can’t bare it any longer, you can be married at once.  But be sure and let me know for by that time I may have my land money and can come up.  Besides, I want Grace Laverne married by a Methodist Minister at the alter rail of my church. 

Then there is another thing, Your parents may not believe in so much affection between two persons and they might get shocked.  There are very few persons like I am.  So be reserved but out in the open also.  I can’t stand slipping around or getting off in dark corners.  You have nothing to hide or be ashamed of.  But even so, I don’t want them to have the wrong opinion of my little girl.  I don’t want her lying in your arms; it is going a little too far and is too much of a temptation.  Besides, remember, your parents’ opinion is to be considered.

Now, I could say a lot more but I have given you a general outline and you know what I mean.  Every thing I have said has been said because I love you, I am glad to give Grace Laverne to you, and I want you to enter life together without a blemish, without a regret to look back on.  I think you are the finest young man in the world.

Lovingly,

Mrs. Tilson

Coffeeshop Journaling

The Girl at the Yellow Table

The girl sitting at the yellow table 

in sunlight in the coffee shop 

is drinking iced coffee 

eating pastry with a fork. 

She is looking at her phone

while she eats and sips.

A thick journal with a deep red cover, 

leather like, sits next to a paperback book. 

I can’t see the title. 

To her right is a colorful spiral bound notebook. 

Like me she has several books. 

Her gray backpack 

sits in a yellow chair.

She’s wearing black Ecco sandals, 

pale blue blue jeans.

Her printed top gathered under her breast 

has a scoop neckline.  

Brown glasses

her hair pulled back in a ponytail

held with a gray scrunchy 

her complexion is soft and smooth. 

A diamond engagement ring sparkles

on her left hand.

I write.

The girl sitting in the yellow chair has walked out carrying her phone

leaving books and pastries on the table. 

Through the glass window I see her 

pass out of view and then return

opens the leather like journal

and begins to write. 

She reminds me of me

only

I walk like an old woman. 

With clear skin soft and pristine

she has her whole life ahead of her. 

Unlike the woman in the courtroom earlier. 

Several felonies 

6 trips to the ER after suicide attempts 

ruddy  complexion 

streaked bleached hair

strong jaw. 

She could have once been

the girl at the yellow table 

in the coffee shop writing

before the spiral began. 

Not up. 

Down

into the maya of matter impossible to contain. 

The judge in the high seat

with a fake soft concerned voice  

cannot understand why she 

cannot get it together.  

She might have one day been holy and pure before the spiral.  

Down. 

The girl sitting in the yellow chair 

Is gone

The table empty 

No lovely journals or paperback.

Gone

A vision held for a moment.

I write 

A woman now sits in the sunlight.

She is older 

her skin rough. 

No pristine of youth.

Her body thicker.

She wears a fuchsia hoodie

her jeans well worn.

There are no soft journals.

She wears black tennis shoes 

Types on a black laptop.

Her cell phone

coffee cup

briefcase

black. 

Sunglasses perched on her hair pulled back, black.

She types with determined fingers.

Her pen, red and black, sits on the yellow table 

high contrast. 

She too reminds me of me

in the coffee shop drinking latte

writing. 

Laverne Zabielski

Happy Mother’s Day

I had a feeling, or maybe it was a desire, she would stop by. 

On Wednesday, when she had texted needing money, since all her cash

had been stolen, she apologized for not calling on Mother’s Day. 

I said, Mother’s Day is next Sunday. She said, oh. She was dark & frustrated. 

We talked a little about rehab. She said it’s hard. She said she’s close, but 

she has to make her mind up on her own. She asked if she could take a shower. 

Afterwards, I asked if she wanted a ham sandwich. She cut the crust off. 

Too hard with missing teeth. I gave her 50 & then she left. 

Today, I was looking for her to stop by or text. But her phone is lost. 

Later, in the evening, just before dark, she knocked. She was holding 

a white pillow with embroidery, holding it like a silver platter. 

There was a pink rose on top and an envelope with a big red heart 

drawn in her style of art making. On the inside, on fine paper, 

there was a note. Happy Mother’s Day! Written curvy & colorful. 

Her buggy, a.k.a. grocery cart, was parked in the driveway. 

She had pushed it all the way here. It was full of stuff.  She asked about 

drying some clothes in the dryer, but knew it was late and decided not to. 

I thanked her for the lovely pillow, gave her a hug & then she left. 

I have no idea where she went, or what her plan was for the night. 

I said, stay in touch. 

Seeking Connections

Seeking memories, wisdom, advice for nothing in particular, I turn to my artful journals and writing assignments. The ones that come through the phone, over the internet, from across the country and around the world. I seek connection through my words, reading their words. I long for a cup of coffee with them or gathering around an artist-journal-making table. 

Step one. Gather your story. Print business cards and write a mission statement. I was being cavalier when I said that to a friend. I had heard she was struggling and what I know now after my 76th year is that there is struggle everywhere. A fact I denied. I remember the man a man on the street from my past. I would’ve been a vibrant 30-year-old. I was a woman on a mission, a career mission, an independent woman. A mother from a far. Writing love letters to my children who lived in Texas with their dad. Sending them poetry and beautiful cards in the mail. Traveling on airplanes to visit. Or flying them on airplanes to visit me. Or taking them on road trips. Staying in hotels with swimming pools, eating at nice restaurants for dinner, or at roadside parks for lunch. Avocado sprinkled with tamari dipped with corn chips. My health food days had already begun.

I was an exposure to a different way. I never abandoned them. I was there full strength. In my mind, with love and connection. 

1991 Texas Kids

When I needed someone to talk to I called my mom in Texas. She was not worldly, highly educated or well read. But she knew things. She spoke carefully at the right moment when she knew her message would be heard. 

The man from my past said he read faces. I never heard of that. He looked at my face and said he saw sadness. I rejected the information. Smiling at the fact, coincidentally, that my first name was Dolores, mother of sorrows. It was as though my mother chose to call me Laverne  to deny me that sorrowful fact. 

I rejected the information the face reader passed on. My children and I were deeply connected. I was pursuing more than a dream. I had important work to do, and they too would one day have important work to do and must pursue it and therein lies the challenge of life to be imparted. The ability to determine and accept your and others important work will determine your happiness. 

That day when I was sad and called my mother and told her I had no one to talk to, she told me I could talk to anyone. A woman cleaning houses, washing floors, frying eggs in a restaurant, serving coffee. They will listen, she said, and have wisdom to share. 

Absence of Consciousness

“You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring back a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. ”

— Terence McKenna 

Today, I explore new ideas and ponder the crisis of the absence of consciousness. My desire for creative self expression for myself and others increases. By consciousness, I mean one’s ability to stay present, to be attentive to the moment, and act. To listen. This is not to say bounce around from idea to task. I do it with consciousness. Act on new ideas that may be old but are now appearing as new. I explore repurposing old scarves to create new fabric. I seek new ways to share my stories and techniques.

My new self publishing venture could be perceived as a new idea. I know it’s been around awhile. Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Benjamin Franklin and Walt Whitman self published. And it has gone in and out of vogue. With our world in crisis, it’s time is now. There is a oneness that collaboration via self publishing creates.

In “This Is Us” Kevin asked, “how can I know so little about my father’s life?“ Perhaps, when Kevin was younger he didn’t want to know. Perhaps his father didn’t want to tell him. These facts are true for many of us. We don’t want to share every little detail of our past. There are many creative ways to tell our story.

I am older. I am aware that time is of the essence. I have seen and accomplished much. I must not leave my legacy untouched, to be discovered in disorganized words and stories found in boxes.

Creative self expression though self publishing addresses the crisis of the absence of consciousness. We can no longer wait for others to determine if our legacy is worthy of publication. There is not enough time. There are not enough people to do that kind of editorial intervention. We are old. We are wise. If we listen, and stay conscious, we know what needs to be said and what needs to be shared. And we know that it needs to be published, now.

Back in the day, people had separate skill sets. Writers wrote. Editors edited. Publishers had access to printers with printing presses. Today, that hierarchy is challenged. A community is desired. In the digital world, those skills sets are more accessible. Writing workshops, online and in person, abound and provide editorial intervention. Digital access provides layout and printing. Collaborations occur when a writer’s creative self expression merges with digital artists. Together, they produce beautiful and timely books. In a time when a heighten sense of consciousness is necessary, collaborating with others makes self publishing an equitable and creative form of self expression. It creates oneness. Crisis averted. Be an indie publisher. Create and Artist Book now.

To learn more about famous authors who chose to self publish click below.

https://indiereader.com/2016/10/6-famous-authors-chose-self-publish/

Finding the Right Balance to Sustain a Life of Pleasure

It all started when I realized that I always say no after a dinner party when guests, usually women, offer to help clean up, do the dishes. It’m not ready to leave the party zone, the family dinner. I want to linger in the glow of conversation, the warmth from love and food. To jump up and do dishes feels like work, it’s a struggle. I feel pressure. I don’t mind waiting to clean up slowly, one countertop at a time, gather empty glasses on end tables and remember bits and pieces of conversations as I pick up dishes, blow out candles, and scrape scraps into the compost. 

Work vs Pleasure

Finding the right balance to sustain a life of pleasure. 

A friend posted on Facebook, “I have become overwhelmed by my potential. I need to get out of my own way so that I can pursue all that I dream. I can see what I am capable of accomplishing. Only it’s beginning to feel like too much work. I have a strong work ethic and don’t want to appear weak or lazy. And while I have heard those phrases, the less you work, the more you make, the concept just doesn’t seem to fit.”  

There were many posts in the comment section. I was impressed that so many of her friends were so aware of their potential. “We need a Brag Group!” I said. We often create online spaces where we can feel safe to express our concerns and weaknesses. We seldom create places where we can just brag without fearing that subtle critique from childhood, “Who does she think she is?” When that is exactly what we eventually begin to realize. It’s no longer who we think we are, it’s who we know we are. We begin to see all the challenges we have overcome, recognize all we have learned, the elixirs have been uncovered and we realize we are heroines on a path, we have a legacy, and it must be shared. 

Based on Joseph Campbell’s work that a set of principles guide our life, Christopher Vogler writes, “Trust the path. Keep marching ahead to the next stage of life.” It’s when we listen to our body and trust that our instincts are good and natural we find a place where we will feel all our potential.

When you are feeling overwhelmed it is worth listening to your instincts. And if it feels like too much work, don't do it. At least not yet. I understand this dilemma. It used to frustrate me, and I would push on, no matter what. Now I realize this is a message to listen to your body’s wisdom. It speaks to you in many forms; emotions, pain, thoughts, and the personal critiques and edicts that you don't often want to hear. The key word is feel. This is the most important thing you need to pay attention to every day. How do I feel? Your internal dialogue, “it’s too much work,” is telling you to pause and decide if another more pleasurable approach is possible. This is your first clue as to whether or not it is something you want. Ask yourself, “Do I really need to do this? Where’s the playfulness?” When you make every task playful, when you find pleasure in what you're doing, you will be prolific. Ultimately, that’s the goal: To be playful and pursue life with pleasure.

My suggestion is to devise strategies to fall in love with every layer of your life, every task, including accounting and bookkeeping, cleaning and organizing, going through old photos and letters discovering where you came from and what you’ve accomplished. This means transforming every bit of marketing into being in relationship with others, making love to your friends and clients by the way you communicate. 

Falling in love with every aspect of your life is where your 3creative legacy lives. When you trust your instincts, discover all the layers of life you have managed and the challenges you have overcome, you are able embrace the heroic journey you have been traveling, you know what to cherish. You find the thread that weaves it together and identify your elixir, the magical potion that contains all that you have acquired and desire to share. This is how your experience the sensation of trusting the path and developing your life story instruction manual.

Developing a new strategy means that everything you do must contain the same amount of energy and excitement. I often refer to this as being continuously artful. However, since many people cannot relate to the term art, artist, or being artful, I also refer to it as being playful and giving pleasure. It’s all about feeling. When you are creating a new piece of art, or developing a program, or designing a structure, or writing a poem, you know that feeling you have inside when you are in the zone of creativity. That same feeling has to be present when you are preparing to advertise your creation, to market it, the letter you write to promote it, the records you keep for documentation. When being creative, balance and emphasis are two of the principles of design. You can find balance when working on your spread sheet simply by making each column balance and you determine emphasis when you decide what’s important when you evaluate your closing statement.  

Recently while digging through my collections of poetry and photos I found a poem I had written in 1983. It revealed to me when the power of feelings first began to resonate. I had received a note from my son’s teacher. He was three and a half. I was a hair designer at the time, and of course, each time Danny John came into the salon he wanted a haircut. I was so devastated by his teacher’s comments that I momentarily began to question my entire parenting style. Seeking pleasure in this disturbing situation, I ended up writing a poem. And so began my life of responding creatively.  

Punk at three and a half

We got a note from his teacher

I mean, he’s only three and a half

It’s the sillies, she said

he’s got the sillies

he won’t settle down

and do his work

he’s just too silly

having too much fun

he doesn’t seem to know

what is socially unacceptable.

I’ve been wondering what would happen

all this freedom he’s been having

I never say no

unless 

it’s morally wrong

or

physically damaging.

So this is how he turned out

too silly.

What is socially unacceptable, anyway? 

I ask.

Playing in his food.

Interesting, I say, considering

his favorite friend is an artist

and she calls food art

and Hershey’s syrup food paint.

Maybe he’s making food art?

And about his hair

maybe it would be better

if he didn’t get it cut so short

it disrupts the class

the children gather ‘round him

what did you do to your hair?  

they ask

and they all want to touch it.

Oh my God

they want to touch him?

He’s the one who wants it cut so short

do you think it could be

he likes to be touched?

So this is how he turned out

too silly

having too much fun

and he likes to be touched

What is socially unacceptable 

anyway?

(c) 1983

Danny John wanted to be playful and have fun, even though these qualities challenged social norms. After writing the poem I gained insight into his experience and was better able to understand my feelings. By the time Danny John was seven his feelings began to reveal themselves again during a family therapy session. My recent marriage had blended two families. Out of the combined 11 children, there were six living in our home. We had decided that a group session would be a good way to bring everyone to the table and create a safe space for them to express themselves. We went around the room and each child told what it was like to live in our family. Danny John was last. He said he didn't like it because he had to do all the work. Of course, we all looked at each other, aghast, since we thought he hardly did anything. Clearly, he felt he did too much work emphasizing it wasn’t what you did, it's how you felt.  Friedrich Nietzsche said, “There is more wisdom in your body than your deepest philosophy.” Let’s pay attention.

For instance, I refuse to feel pressured. Lately, I’m not sure if I'm always working, or never working. I work to fill stations, not to finish projects and I love every step in my process. When I’m writing and I get stuck, I move on to ironing the silk that I have recently dyed. Now that could be seen as work, especially if I don’t want to do it but feel obligated in order to satisfy a deadline. But when I can iron and also ponder an idea I’m writing about, or a letter, suddenly it is not work. 

Arrange everything so that you can pace yourself and be artful. Write down goals, however, you don't constantly have to refer to them. When I look back at things I wrote down three months ago, I find that many have been accomplished. George Szekely, a strong advocate for play and the creative process, says, ”All work is guaranteed to get better if one stays with it.”When we make the work playful we tend to stay with it longer.

Recently I was talking to my brother who lives in Chicago. I am frequently making suggestions for things he should do. He always replies, “that’s too much work.” I used to not take him serious. Now I can see that living a harmonious life is important to him and deciding to do things that might interrupt that flow are just too much work. He stays focused on what matters most, delegates when possible, is prosperous and always has time for friends and family.

Yes, getting out of your own way is an important distinction regarding choices and taking risks. The way to weed out unnecessary tasks is by seeking the playful pleasure factor. If you can’t find a way to make it fun, don’t do it. Something else that leads you to your goal will fall in it’s place. Listen to your body’s wisdom. She’s got something important to say. It’s all about feeling. Louis Armstrong said "what we play is life.” Make that your goal. What I’m playing at now is making a Creative Legacy Recall Playbook where I will collect significant photos, stories and life writing. What will give me great pleasure is to include my poem Punk at three and a half.  Thirty two years have passed since I wrote it and DJ has become a fine young man. I no longer doubt my parenting style, I claim the creative legacy of the heroine’s journey and I want you to claim yours, also.

Ambiguous Tour With Sequins

When I say, the title of my next  book will be “Everything I Need 

to Know in Life I Can Learn In Art Class,” I am not kidding. 

Marilyn said, Don’t waste paint. Don’t waste anything. 

A make-do life becomes a make-art life as I paste sequins in my 

altered artist journal and begin to define what I am thinking. 

Do I define what I’m thinking before the fact or after the fact? 

This begins my ambiguous tour through the maze of not 

what is there to learn, but what I want to learn. Take what you can 

and apply it to what you want. Joyce said, don’t let them lead you 

astray. I can see that I will have to make the list of teachers in the 

front of my book longer since my friend Joyce becomes my teacher 

by suggesting the use of metal leaf on my sequins. Before making 

art my life art, I would not have taken her suggestion seriously. 

Now it’s yes, yes, yes, teach me, teach me, teach me. Arturo said, 

bring what you are already doing to class. Jim said, keep it 

personal. How can so many people say the same thing and it be 

so difficult to understand? Do you really want to know why 

I put sequins in my book? It is survival. It is tedious. I want it tedious. 

What do you worry about, Mom? Johnny’s only 13. Of course 

he has no idea. I am old. When I was a young mother, I didn’t worry. 

Now, I know too much. Seen too much. Done too much. 

I paste sequins in my  journal. Tedious. The mind cannot worry 

when choosing a color combination for sequins. The mind cannot worry 

on the ambiguous tour through art, ambiguous art, where excitement 

and adventure live. Life is predictable. Art is ambiguous. We know 

where life goes. All over the place. And sometimes the colors smear. 

I slow down. I don’t turn the page so fast. I said, if you were to smoke

pot and I’m not saying it’s OK, but, if you were, I’d  like to think 

you were responsible, like not smoking before school.

published in Trash to Treasure

https://www.trashtotreasurelit.com/search?q=laverne%20zabielski

Parallel Comfort

Parallel Comfort

So desired

it is sought in hidden places

anguish rises from my gut

near the womb in which you grew

it leaks into the breasts

from which I nursed you

works its way into my throat

a tension pushing me over

falling me down

I write into this ache

my body calms

as does overwhelm

with desire 

to dig into my words

my only path to redemption

this drunkenness of pain

my pain, your pain 

we walk side-by-side

yet far apart

we do this alone.

Mothers of Homeless, Addicts, and Estranged

The landscape she’s created for herself doesn’t match the one I carried for her all her days in my womb, as a toddler, a teen, a young woman.

It was a good day the last time she stopped by.

I don’t know why.

Was she high or taking antidepressants instead of one of those maintenance drugs, Suboxone or methadone? 

I don’t know.

In fact it’s clear,

I don’t know much anymore

and I’m not in charge. I listen. 

If I debate her and she’s not in a good place, coming down, maybe, or from no sleep. Hungry.

I don’t know,

but that’s when I will get put in my place and I  tell her it’s time to leave, find different scenery.  I need my own landscape where the presence of her turmoil doesn’t press upon my chest,  leaving me anxious. 

****

Last night Larry and I watched The Morning Show. There was the exact scene, only it was a sister and brother. Everything the sister said to her brother, I’ve said to my daughter. And in the show, when the brother didn’t like what he heard, he yelled at his sister.  Larry and I looked at each other. “This is way too close,” Larry said. 

Larry and I think we are the only ones having this experience. 

We’re not.

We’re all worried. 

I will be teaching a class on Mothers of Homeless, Addicts, and Estranged, Writng for Healing, at the Carnegie Center in Lexington this winter. This is not therapy or a support group. This is writing, digging deep into old bones to tell our story. This is not easy.

The Night She Found Her Beat

If you’d like to listen to my reading of this story, scroll down to the link.

I’m pretty sure I was there that night when he learned to be beautiful. Only it wasn’t called The Oscar. It was Johnny Angels. It had the same layout and I danced all night. Instead of being a teenage boy, with a fake id expressing his sexuality, I was a woman who let her kids live with their dad in Texas, had two abortions, and could be anyone she wanted to be in her avant-garde hair salon wearing a black polyester jumpsuit with a rhinestone zipper and black handmade cowboy boots.

When Bradley, who booked his haircut appointments under the name Adam Stills, came in, she asked him if his mother was a poet. He asked why. She said, because your name is so poetic. He answered, no, and asked her to cut his hair so it would look like he cut it and she said, well then why don’t you? Later, when he showed her the long black silk nightgown he just bought, and  even though she had no idea he intended to wear it she said it was very nice.

All her young gay clients loved the haircuts she gave them. And they loved her, especially, when she got a Grace Jones cut. That night in 1980, they gathered around her as though she was their mother come to see their beauty. She wore a black, polished cotton trench coat, walked up to the bar and the architect whose hair she had trimmed took her collar and turned it up giving her a dramatic style. He ordered a drink and the bartender said, here darlin’ as he handed it to her.

She walked toward the packed dance floor where the music never stopped and little bottles were passed around and everyone took a whiff making the pulsating music even more intense as a couple, high up in the bleachers, was moving and gyrating.

Life, Death and Art, a Creative Act

I thought of you while

wrapping and drizzling dye, your

walk, smile, endless strength.

When I die, there will be

no retrospective. I intend

to disperse everything.

At 80, a friend asks,

what’s there to do,

and why?

Planning a memorial

is the new

event planning event.

Once, we were into

where we wanted our ashes

spread. Then, we were not.

When he took his life

he left a note. “Don’t be sad.

I’m out of pain, now.”

I thought of him while

wrapping and drizzling dye, his

smile and endless strength.

Focus, Record, Implement, Document

As we get older it is important to create a life that is meaningful.

Looking back on all that you have accomplished, focus on that which has given you the most pleasure. 

Reinventing the next phase of your life is not about doing everything different. 

It’s about building on what you have accomplished. It’s about looking back and gaining insight about ways to keep doing those things, without the stress. 

What needs to change? 

What can you add?

What needs to go?

For me what gives me pleasure is when 

I share, 

entertain, 

create connection.

Write down what you discover and describe the ways that these experiences manifest. For me, 

I share when I write poems and make books. 

I entertain when I have tea parties, dinner parties, organize poetry readings. 

I create connection when I create opportunities to listen to others as they discover their passion for self-expression.

Create ways to do more of what you love to do. 

Remember, this is not about creating a job or money. 

It is about doing more of the things you like to do, the tasks you let slip away. Gardening, 

grilling out, 

projects, 

inviting friends over. 

This is the pleasure that will be with you the rest of your life. 

Everything you do from now on is very important. 

Don’t just take photos. Make prints, and small books. 

Write about what happened, who was there. 

Find the stories and poetry in your life. 

This is your legacy.

Reinventing Oneself

I have been thinking, writing and making changes in my life as a means for changing focus and gaining clarity. I call this process reinventing oneself. I will be writing more, but today when I came across this mini memoir I wrote long ago, I realized that this reinventing has been going on for me for a long time.

Contacts, Pleasure and Pain

1964

The year I graduated from Rome Free Academy in Rome, New York, my Dad was stationed at Griffith Air Force Base. I remember the gate to the base, the fence around the sergeants’ section and the fence around the officers’ section. The base hospital was a few blocks away and the pavilion was up on a hill behind it. They sold Kent cigarettes in the cigarette machine in the lobby of the hospital. They cost thirty-five cents and I bought a pack, took them up to the pavilion to try them out. 

The pavilion was dark and damp. No one else was inside. It was a wet, rainy weekday after school and Lorraine and I walked up there. Lorraine smoked all the time. I hadn’t tried anything and I was going on seventeen.

That summer between my sophomore and junior year when we moved up there from Topeka I decided to change my whole style. First thing I did was remove my glasses. I couldn’t see without them but I felt I looked a whole lot better. Karen was getting contacts. That was the latest. They had just come out with them and I wanted them, too, but they cost eighty dollars and that was with our base discount. They’d be twice that off base so I had to get them before I graduated from high school or I wouldn’t qualify for the discount anymore. And it was me who would have to come up with the eighty dollars. That would require a lot of babysitting so I started figuring ways to talk myself out of wanting contacts. For one thing I’d heard about the getting used to them part and, I didn’t too much like the idea of going through all of that.

 So I started saying to myself the beauty would be more than I could handle. There are benefits in looking good, but there comes a point where you can look too good. I hadn’t reached that point, yet, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Look at Marcie. In sixth grade she was my best friend and had a long blond ponytail and someone wrote I like to f*** Marcie up on the water tower on Burnet’s Mound where everyone went parking. I know it wasn’t true because Marcie was my best friend and if it were true she would have told me so. Somebody must have written that because of her blond ponytail. So anyway, I figured it’d be best if I didn’t get contacts.

Karen got hers, though. There were a bunch of kids in her family, like mine. She worked in a beauty shop sweeping up hair, and she saved her money. She ended up getting murdered in a restaurant bathroom in Florida the summer after we graduated. I decided then and there when I read the murder story in True Detective Magazine and looked at her senior picture with no glasses, staring out at me, the photo blown up to fill the full page, that I was never getting contacts.

The second thing I did moving to a new base was that I decided not to be shy anymore. I didn’t know if you could just up and do something like that, just decide not be shy. I always figured shy was something you were born with but I figured I’d give it a try. I borrowed a white, low cut, sleeveless, cinched waist, circular-skirt dress from Lorraine. I had a suntan from being a water safety assistant at the pool all summer and that white dress next to my dark tan and no glasses, well, when I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t believe it was me.

We were going to a CAP dance, Civil Air Patrol. It was an outside dance and since I had this new attitude about not being shy, it must have worked because these cadets and airmen were asking me to dance. It might have had something to do with the fact that guys outnumbered girls ten to one, but I didn’t think about that at the time. I just said yes and danced.

The cadets weren’t bad, the airmen were too old and the base kids who happened to show up were the best. Tony asked me to dance three times. He was a big football player at the school I’d be going to. He walked me home and I let him kiss me good night. That was the second kiss I’d ever had. The first kiss was by Kenny back in Topeka. He was out of high school already and told Marcie I didn’t even know how to kiss.

Well, I figured I did better with Tony because my period was due and not coming. I was certain that sperm crawled out of him, down my borrowed dress and got up inside somehow. It had to: Why else would my period not come. Thank goodness it finally did, six weeks later. I still didn’t go out with Tony anymore. I just stared at his butt at football games.

Lorraine lit my Kent cigarette in the pavilion and handed it to me. I sucked in hard like she said, but it must have been too hard because I coughed forever. This is not fun, I said. Why do you do it? I asked her. It gets easier, she said, but I decided, then and there, I wasn’t going through pain for pleasure. I think of Karen every time I enter a restaurant bathroom.

---

Luigart Studios, 110 Luigart Ct. Lexington, Ky

Who Goes First

Who Goes First   

Laverne Zabielski, narrator

I have had enough. The weeds growing between the rocks. 

It’s Larry‘s job to do the weed eating. I can’t. I don’t want to. 

What will I do when he doesn’t want to? Can’t? 

I’ve had enough worrying about who goes first. 

He pays all the bills on the computer. I don’t know the passwords. 

We should pay them together, he said. 

I don’t want to. What if we both live another ten years? 

That would be ten years wasted me doing what I don’t want to do 

when he does it so well. 

Maybe you should just do it all, he said. 

Get used to it. Just in case I go first.

I fall quiet. I’m stern. 

You do not want me to manage the money, I tell him. 

Ask either of my previous husbands. Yes, I can do it. 

I know about due dates and bank balances.

But, I have different values and I’m not as frugal as you are, I tell him.

That’s why I threaten him I’m going shopping when he won’t weed eat. 

I don’t expect him to weed eat like before, when we lived in the country. 

And he was a weed eating maniac. 

I asked my son, Johnny, to move all the rocks so I could mow 

right up to the edge of the flower bed. Make it neat. 

I want the petunias to show and the zinnias not buried behind weeds. 

If we move the rocks, I won’t have to nag Larry about weed eating. 

I won’t have to threaten I'm going shopping. 

Which I never actually do. I understand frugality is necessary 

to have a little cash in our old age. 

I want the rocks! Larry said. I will weed eat. 

I called Johnny back. 

Don’t 

move 

the rocks! 

Larry got up early today to move the rocks closer together 

so the weeds won’t squeeze through. 

I’m waiting with anticipation for when I arrive home 

but not with too much anticipation. 

This has been anticipated before. 

And I’m not going to start paying bills, either. 

I will deal with it when the time comes 

which it may never come. I may go first. 

Mom Danced the Charleston

mom, on the right, dances the charleston, 1956

When we moved to Tachikawa Air Force  Base in Japan in 1955, I was in the third grade. My mother blossomed. She entered a social realm, had more friends, as couples they gathered for dinners. She participated in a events at the NCO Club, non-commissioned officers club. It was not as “Country Club-ish” as the officers club, but better than what the airmen had, which was no club at all. Airman didn’t seem to have families. They must’ve gotten out of the military if had not made the rank of sergeant. 

While in Japan, Mom learned the Can-Can and the Charleston and they would perform at dinners at the Club.

Mom and Dad relax after her can-can performance.

Mom modeling

She sewed her own clothes and modeled them herself in fashion shows,  also at the club, probably at a women's luncheon. 

New Year’s Eve, 1956 Photo by Dad

Dad got into photography. He met Japanese photographers, bought state of the art, wide lens cameras. He developed his own film in a dark room on the base. He took me with him at times. When we moved to Topeka, Kansas, he set up a dark room in an unused utility room off of my added on bedroom. There are photos Dad took of us dressed for Easter in front of the house we lived in. At first, when I saw them, I couldn’t understand why his focus was so off-center. Now I appreciate it. We are all standing to the right in front of the decorative gas yard light. To the left you can see the house we lived in, and VW bus, and another sibling waiting for their turn to be photographed.

Looking back I see it’s not so much what my mother taught me directly, it’s what I absorbed. Today I model what I’ve sewn.

repurposed felted from old clothes

Red Dirt

On road trips 

the landscape changes. 

Dirt determines the location. 

the terrain.

Long fences, sage brush, sandy soil, rocky hills, gullies, cattle scattered.

We knew we were in the west

close to grandmother’s house  

when the dirt turned red, 

high contrast to white cotton

a pile of memories, 

the heat of childhood visits 

where there was no pain or struggle 

only picnics and watermelon, 

walks in the red river, 

swimming, 

standing beneath the falls. 

When driving north it was the Salt Lake white that stood out 

forcing us to stop and just look. 

A lake in the distance, glazed and still. 

Messages written in sand by the side of the road, 

rocks used to make each letter. 

My Mother's Gesture

Portrait of My Mother

In this photo at the farmhouse in Whiteflat, Texas, we are in my grandmother, Stella Tilson’s, kitchen.

I am not, nor are any of the grandchildren in the picture. All the adults are squeezed around

two tables that are pushed together. Everyone is drressed up for Sunday dinner in the same way

they would be if it was a picture in an elegant dining room. Only this is a very small kitchen. Stella

is proud of the dinner she has prepared. My mother, her very dark luxurious hair, and, as evidenced

from other pictures, is wearing dark lipstick. I cannot see her face. however. It is turned away from

the camera. Her posture suggests that she is reaching towards something or someone. Because I

remember this house, I know that she is sitting near the doorway to the next room where there is

a smaller table set up and all of the grandchildren are seated around it. The pose of her reaching is a

nurturing gesture. There is tenderness in the way she holds her arms. This is a portrait of my mother.

This is what she did, solely, and to the best of her ability.

What I Remember

Grandmother’s house, Whiteflat, Texas

The old photo in an oval frame with convex glass

of the Tilson farm in Virginia 

hung above the coat rack on the side wall 

next to the front door with its full length of retangualr glass panes 

in the house my mother moved to 

when she returned to Motley County, Texas

where she was born in 1927. 

In the late 1880s her grandfather 

had left that farm for Fort Worth

to become a cowboy, 

then headed further into the wild west 

a barren land of rattlesnakes, 

endless sky and a flat, rocky, cactus filled terrain. 

As kids in the ‘50s, Daddy driving west from Illinois for summer visits 

we fantasized as soon as the terrain changed. 

The entire journey entered slow motion. 

We were no longer in a station wagon. 

We were in a covered wagon. 

We knew we were. 

We could feel it. 

We were on horseback. 

Our eyes squinted, searching for our destination, 

wanting to hurry  and yet, 

wanting to savor the heat, 

each town exactly 30 miles apart. 

the distance the stage coach could ride in a day 

evidence, we were indeed part of history. 

The further west we drove, 

the closer we got to Grandmother's house, 

the farther apart the gas stations were

with their very dirty bathrooms. 

Sometimes we drove on past. 

Pulled over on the side of the road 

and carefully stepped out 

watching for rattlesnakes 

before we squatted down.

West Texas Road Trip, 1949

We had heard the story many times 

our mother, three years old,

stepping out of the house

her daddy yelling, 

“Grace Laverne, you stop right now.” 

He grabbed a gun

shot a rattlesnake 

right in front of her. 

The rattles remained on top the buffet

to be revered every summer we went to visit

the house that was nothing like 

the old Virginia farm house. 

Not two story and stately. 

a small, four room house,

added onto several times. 

First, the indoor bathroom

then, a large, bunkhouse type bedroom 

filled with bunkbeds and twin beds we could lay on 

next to the open, screened windows 

and listen to summer sounds 

during the day, 

cicadas and cows mooing 

during the night, 

the sounds of wild animals 

far off in the distance. 

Visiting the old homeplace