My addiction to Pilates may be no more than another indication that all my life's choices have been selected in direct opposition to what my mother would have done, meaning, I suppose, that she had as much impact on me as she would have had if I'd followed in her footsteps.

Alright, so my mother was an exercise fanatic, went to the gym every day, ran marathons -- until her osteoporosis doctor made her quit, since running, for her, was half falling, and her bones were snapping with each fall -- but none of it had to do with her body.  She was not an athlete, was clumsy as slippery shit; she was just an endorphin junkie, plain and simple.  

But then nothing's ever plain and simple, is it?  The degree to which my mother both tortured her body for health, and had no connection to her body whatsoever, has always made me suspect abuse of some kind in her early years.  And I'm not referring to the emotional abuse she passed on to her offspring, learned from the best, her own parents.  

The woman had such an extreme combination of body obsession and thorough body disconnect that I have to think somebody, some time, did something to that body at a time when she had no understanding and no say.  In order to tolerate that (un)knowledge, she spent the rest of her 82 years having no understanding, and therefor, no say.

No say?  Seems an odd conclusion considering her insistence on hitting the gym at 5 o'clock every morning, practically til the day she died, which led them to dedicate a portion of the joint to her in a giant ceremony, 5 weeks before her death.

I'm merely suggesting she was an absent slave in the process.  But how harsh is that?  The outcome was that she made for a toned corpse.  I still argue that if she'd had even the slightest conscious connection to her body she'd be alive today.

One of her ways of tolerating life within the confines of skin and bone was to absolutely feel no pain.  I mean not even any oops-I-was-just-runover-by-a-bus pain.  Her simplest route to bypassing any treatment for a type of cancer which is extremely slow-growing and highly treatable -- with shit that doesn't even make you sick -- was to ignore basic human signals for long enough that by the time she was dragged to the emergency room and diagnosed, barely conscious, it had spread to places this cancer never goes, and -- over probably 10,15 undetected years -- mutated into something far more deadly.

To Be Continued.....

The other day was sunny and blue, then the minute I mentioned to someone here that my life in the desert feels like a collection of awe, a sudden burst of wind began pounding hail at my window.  I danced around the house, viewing it from various standpoints, until it stopped as quickly as it had begun.  

The wind moved the clouds along and the day carried on blue, until a little later when someone commented on my status (which was currently proclaiming the awe/hail phenomenon), and the minute I commented back, ferocious sheets of water poured from the sky.  I mean the blinding kind, like we get only during summer monsoons.

That, too, was somewhat brief, however powerful, but when the deluge quit, the wind and clouds remained, with some sun and blue dancing between, flickering rainbows.  It was coming on our walk time of day, which usually begins before sunset and and ends in the dark, but I didn't feel up to dealing with fresh mud and a chilling wind, so decided to stay in.  Then I remembered I was having company the next day (Brutus, Cora Belle's mini-me), so thought I'd better at least drive down to the pond, to make sure the road wasn't washed out too badly for them.

So I threw on a bathrobe, thinking I'd just peek, and return quickly.  Unexpectedly, the road was fine, didn't even look particularly rained on, but then I've been on my roof in storms here and seen it rain on one solar panel and not the other, 3 feet away.  I swear, there's a different eco-system and weather pattern every few feet in the desert!  Of course it didn't turn out to be a Peep & Return mission -- cold as it was, and me just in my bathrobe, it was too glorious to avoid capturing with my trusty camera.  Especially when a huge flock of birds suddenly swooped down, shrieking -- obviously just in from northern climes -- and parked themselves on one lone tree.

The chill wind was blowing right up my robe, and my hands were freezing, but things kept changing so rapidly I couldn't quit snapping.

In school I was famous for being the one who "ruined it for everyone", though nobody seemed to hold it against me, since my antics were so entertaining.  The teacher always said it in a way that made it clear her intention was to turn crowd favor away from me.  Good luck, ya old hag!

What do you think would be more fun for 4th Graders -- to listen to an ancient, cry-baby of a teacher wax pathetic about Hawaiian music, or to watch me leap on the table for an impromptu hula, which would, inevitably, make the old bitty cry, at no extra charge?

Hell, it's not as though I didn't like Hawaiian music -- my earliest memories of music are of Highlife (by way of my Nigerian brother) and Klezmer (by way of my Jewish roots), and this combination developed in me an early taste for most anything exotic-sounding.  But both Highlife and Klezmer insist a body become one with their emotionally-stirring melodies, and I was not to be undone by lack of a grass skirt!

Alright, so my true motives were to fuck up the teacher and cause a little mayhem -- you'd think, still, I could get some credit for being so enthusiastic about her obsession!  Everyone had groaned when she dragged out the rickety old box-turntable and her well-polished Hawaiian 45's -- and then, after my demonstration, even the shyest members of the class got in some arm-floating butt-wiggling!  You'd think she'd thank me for turning the tide, or maybe praise me for my leadership qualities!  

Nope.  My caper caused the abrupt end of everything Hawaiian, and you know why?  Because I RUINED IT FOR EVERYONE!  Wow, can you imagine?  RUINING IT FOR EVERYONE???  That's a lot of damn power!  At home I was a miserable speck of insignificance, but all I had to do was to walk a half mile down the hill, and my power was unlimited!

I exercised my omnipotence at school in any way I could think of, all the time, but nothing ever compared to the heart-fluttering glee of accomplishment I felt whenever I was able to bat it out of the field, and ruin it for everyone!

I fell two-sidedly in love on sight with George 33 years ago.  Over the next few hours a party sprang up around us but we were stuck side by side, with so much energy shooting out the top of our heads that folks kept coming up to us, to see what we were talking about so urgently.

They'd stand beside us, peering in, looking for a double dutch entrance to the conversation that felt so exciting, so sexy, so heated, and finally threw up their hands and left, one by one, exclaiming that they had no idea what language we were speaking, let alone what the fuck we were saying.

My life has never been the same. George and I met on an island, and moved to 3 others before he died in my arms 10 years later.  His son, Bruce, is the one who built me my glorious castle, here in the desert.  And I'm clambering to meet Bruce's new son, my grandson, Sonny Jackson, in San Francisco within the month, after spending Thanksgiving in LA with my huge family.  For the most part I haven't seen them since my mother died, over 3 years ago, which is crazy, because we used to all get together all the time.

But right now it's beginning to seem like Cora Belle's sitter may be falling through, and I don't have any back up.  So if anyone knows anyone who knows anyone who could stay in a castle with the sweetest dog in the world for about 2 weeks, receiving $20 a day -- please let me know, the sooner the better.

This story was brought to my attention by "Little Hawk", a new reader of mine whom you can find by clicking on her recent blog comments to me, since Tom, of course, continues to forbid links on my blog.  

My first thoughts were that it's exactly why I haven't been back to Sedona in close to 40 years, though I've now been in Arizona for almost 12.  I've heard tell of what Sedona's become, and I've got my own little spiritual wonderland right here, without anutha muthafucka around for miles!  I've never much trusted groups, especially when it comes to spirituality.  And, of course, the thought of being charged at all is also horrifying.

I know folks need to be fed and all, but theoretically I feel that way about any helping scenario. I've had a lot of psychotherapy, but my best and favorite was with a man who didn't charge, expecting those he chose to help to think up their own methods of repayment, preferably by donating to a charity, or by finding physical ways of helping others.

But after I'd caught my breath from all that, I remembered losing it -- almost forever -- over my first piece of pussy -- toward which acquisition I'd been madly writing poetry for quite some time.  It finally happened in a private sauna, and though I was the one pulling out all my seductive tools, in the end it was also I who trumped seduction with survival, and finally kicked open the door with close to my last breath, as I'd cranked it way hotter than it was supposed to be, and we stayed in there way longer than is healthy.  It wasn't until my senses returned that I realized how close to death we'd ventured!

Here's a picture I recently found of her, from that very time, nearly 30 years ago.  She's in my kitchen on Whidbey Island, drawing Cricket, my first doggie love.