Why does night feel supernatural?

The world feels supernatural at night, because nighttime opens up more possibilities for imagination. I think this is for three reasons.

You might be thinking less about work or daily practicalities. There’s more time for introspection. Even if you’re not tired, you’re also slipping more into a dreamlike state which allows for abstraction.

Another reason is that shadowy spaces naturally spark our imagination. Sometimes it’s in a fearful way, but fears can be creative.

Also, it’s because we can see the stars. This always feels like magic. Preexisting formations make us want to create; outer space absorbed into inner space. The galaxy reminds us of the seemingly endless expanse we can begin, bit by bit, to fill with ideas. 

Notes from across the divide

These are all quotes from the diaries my aunt Mary kept as a young person. For those new to my friends list, I have posted about her a lot. She’s my mom’s youngest sister, who died in a car accident in 2007 after a 17-year drug addiction. I found years’ worth of her poetry and journals after she passed away.

Anyway, these things were written in journals throughout the early to mid 1980s, when Mary was in her teens and early twenties. This is how she explained herself to whoever she imagined reading her words in the future:

“Dearest, kindest world with endless opportunities,
Be nice to me and give me a little freedom, and just a few things to enjoy.”
-Summer 1980 (she was fourteen years old)

“I wake up in the morning and shake dreams out of my hair.” -July 1980

“I would gladly give away my creativity to all my friends.” -1980

“Life can be good and life can be treacherous. That’s why they say it has its ups and downs. Then again, death is more than often caused by ups and downs, so to live is to die.” -July 1980

“I love loving. It’s the ultimate in a deciding factor. It’s the difference between reality and the supernatural.”

“Touch the stars, they’re breezing by.”

“When people smile, I smile too. When they cry I cry. When I don’t see them I wonder what they are feeling and if they think of me.”

“Next time you want to understand me, look between the empty pages behind the lines.” -1981

“Words stuck in my throat are released beneath my pen.” -1981

“We are the young ones crying out.” -1984

“Take me as I am: alone and dreaming, a poet without a plan.” -April 1984

“What is written shall remain.”

“Maybe I’m not star material, but I know how to feel and be real.”

“You speak of the coming days. I speak of today and laugh a lot. Your crazy smile keeps me going.”

“This is Captain Mary aboard the cosmic ship Bethany [her hometown]. I am quite alive and enjoying this evening. I am at the head of my bed, in full control, and the music is real cool.”
-February 14, 1985

“I am the living Dead: ahead of my time and behind.”

“I’m filling in words that shouldn’t be said between bound covers.” -1989

“If I die soon, I want everyone to know my life was good. If I live longer, then everyone will know they helped make it that way.” -January 1989

And this last one was written in 2004:
“I dedicate my words to everyone I’ve ever known, dead or alive, or will ever know, dead or alive.”

*****

Rest in peace and poetry, Mary. You’re a supernova that will never stop bursting into life.

Eulogy for a great creator

My grandparents in New Haven, CT in 1948, when Harold was a student at Yale Art School.

In one of my earliest memories of my grandpa Harold, we celebrated Hanukkah with a menorah shaped like a Christmas tree.

He wasn’t strictly religious, but he had a love for certain traditions. He didn’t follow them as prescribed, though. He had a way of making everything his own.

Passover meant sitting around my grandparents’ table with all my cousins while Harold told the story of Moses, passing candy around to demonstrate the ten plagues. The chocolate chips he gave us represented boils, and there were gummy frogs. The grand finale came when he’d bring out a big bowl of red Jell-O and “part” it by spraying a line of whipped cream down the center. Then he’d drop a handful of little plastic soldiers into the bowl, and we’d all dig in.

One year he told the Passover story by putting on a shadow play with my aunts and uncles. They set up a big screen and a light in the living room. Harold narrated while they acted it out with shadows of puppets. My grandma Kiki had made a witch puppet for the Angel of Death. She flew it across the screen on a cardboard broomstick, making it cackle with glee. Aunt Abbie’s hair was the burning bush. She crouched behind the sofa, revealing the silhouette of her wild curls as she shook her head around, mimicking fire.

Harold was an incredible storyteller. He didn’t write, but his inventive and articulate style met perfectly with his theatrical flair. He came up with thrilling sagas to tell his kids and then his grandchildren. He brought stories from the Torah to pulsating life. He invented epics about dragons and monsters. His sound effects were flawless. He knew when to whisper and when to shout. His eyes would pop wide as the momentum built. These adventures left us gripping our seats or shrieking with laughter. His everyday manner was as animated as his stories and art.

Harold did everything to maximum capacity, sucking the last bit of air from every experience yet leaving more for everyone else. He danced on tables. He rolled in the autumn leaves. He watched sad movies with tears streaming down his face. He smacked his lips in appreciation while he ate. I used to try to correct his table manners as a toddler. When I was two years old, I’d shake a finger at him and say, “Grandpa, you’re not supposed to chew with your mouth open. You’re supposed to chew like this!” I’d stuff my face and chew exaggeratedly, mouth closed, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk. My whole family would laugh hysterically and I wouldn’t know why. Harold ate just as he was supposed to, though. He consumed, and he gave, with unrestrained joy.

It seems so appropriate that his middle name was Wolf. He always reminded me of a canine with his exuberant manner and love of people and food. With his exploratory nature and endless curiosity, he always seemed to gather a following that became his lifelong pack. Even his physical features were embracing and full. His round face, broad nose, and full lips conveyed generosity. I’ve never known someone so financially thrifty who gave so much.

The frugality had a lot to do with his upbringing. He grew up during the Great Depression in a family where he had to vie with his brothers for food. But this seemed to only feed his resourcefulness. When my mother and her siblings were little, he’d take them on family trips to the Bethany dump. They’d explore the junkyard to look for materials they could use in art projects. This became a time honored Rabinowitz tradition.

I can’t think of Harold without remembering that, or without thinking of Kiki. He and my grandma are forever linked in my mind. I’ve always said them as one word: “HaroldandKiki.” One of my favorite stories was the memory of how they got together. They knew each other from the time they were children. They went to junior high and high school together, but were only distant acquaintances back then. In their class photo, they’re seated next to each other. On the last day of high school, Harold signed Kiki’s yearbook with, “I’ll be seeing you! Ha ha ha.” Neither of them had any idea they’d see each other every day for seventy years.

They reconnected three years later on the day World War II ended. They found themselves at a mutual friend’s party to celebrate. They sensed an interest in each other they hadn’t felt before, and started dating. Kiki told me they went to a carnival for their first date. At one point during the night, they got stuck at the top of the ferris wheel. Harold smiled at her and asked, “Can I kiss you?” She laughed and said, “Well, I guess I can’t run away.”

            They were married a year later and rode their bicycles cross country for their honeymoon. And then, in the early ‘50s, they built their tall, gorgeously chaotic, ramshackle stone house. Kiki built it while she was pregnant. That’s how badass she is. They made friends wherever they went with their playful antics. After Kiki gave birth to their sixth child, they gifted the nurse with a watermelon wrapped in a baby blanket. Kiki told her, “We’re returning the baby. It leaks.”

Over the years, their house became a haven. It was a community in itself. They took in family friends. Many of their kids knew someone who, at least briefly, had lived at their home. They started their family business there, Rabinowitz Design Workshop (later renamed Witz End Workshop). Creative Arts Workshop also began at their house when they gave art lessons to kids from the area. They used to come over, and Kiki would make them all a big pot of spaghetti and hot dogs.

For two people who seemed like one entity, Kiki and Harold butted heads a lot. They had some pretty hilarious arguments. I’ll always remember them fighting over directions in the car. They’d be equally insistent about which way to turn. Finally Kiki would shout, “Goddammit, Harold, I’m not going to listen to you anymore!” and pointedly veer off in the opposite direction, even if it got them briefly lost. He’d do the same when he was the one driving. Despite this, I’ve never met two people more wildly in love.

They loved to dance together. Any time I visited, I’d see him grab Kiki and twirl her around in the kitchen while they laughed. If there was no music, they’d invent their own. They were constantly ad libbing silly songs and rhymes together. Harold was a master of words. He invented a game to play with his children, and later his grandkids, called Stinky Pinky. In the game, people took turns coming up with a pair of words that rhymed and then gave a short description. Everyone else had to guess what it was. For example, someone would say, “A wet puppy.” Others would guess what they had in mind until somebody said, “Soggy doggy.” If you guessed it, you won that round.

Harold could speak in iambic pentameter off the top of his head and improvise limericks and poetry. This made him really popular at parties. At one event he donned Kiki’s purple muumuu, held a pineapple in his outstretched hand, and began to recite Hamlet. At another he stood under the balcony in his living room and extended his wine glass, shouting “My cup runneth over!” At that exact moment, a guest tried to pour wine over the balcony into his glass, but it ended up spilling on his head.
               And, of course, there was the time his son had Show and Tell back in first grade and decided to stand up in front of the class and announce, “Last weekend my dad was at a party and had a lot to drink and fell into a big bucket of popcorn!” My uncle hadn’t been there to see it, but he’d heard the story. Harold wrote legends just by living.

This is why it was so sad when Harold had a stroke back in 2000 and lost a lot of his verbal abilities. He went from someone who could keep a whole room in stitches to having trouble articulating basic thoughts. I remember the look of anguish on his face as he once said, “I can’t say what I mean to say.” And, for a short time, he referred to everyone he spoke to as Kiki. It was because of the stroke, but it made sense. He loved Kiki so much that he saw a part of her in everyone.

Even so, he never stopped enjoying life. He still drew beautifully. He still saw friends and rejoiced in family. He laughed until the end and died surrounded by everyone who loved him; all the lives he had changed. In the end, I can only regret that he won’t be a part of the memorial celebration, because it would be just like him to surprise everyone by showing up in a jester hat or a purple dress, ad libbing satirical poetry. But he’ll be there regardless, because he is everywhere he’s painted and joked and sang.

          Harold is the world he created.

Life on the Spectrum

           One of the last things people learn about me is that I’m on the autistic spectrum.

            When I’m telling someone about myself, that’s usually the last fact included. It’s not that it isn’t important. It’s just something I usually omit because once people know you’re near-autistic, it reshapes their whole perception of you and you start to be defined by that context.

            I was born with NLD, or Nonverbal Learning Disorder. It’s similar to Asperger’s Syndrome, distinguished by only a few divergent traits. I have only ever met one other person who has it. NLD affects everyone differently. I’ve searched in online groups for others who function in the same way, but so far, nobody else’s version seems identical to mine. I’m not saying this to sound like some pretentious, unique snowflake. If anything, it would be great to find someone whose case I could relate to.

            While I can’t explain what living with the disorder is like for everybody, I can describe how it is for me.

            To imagine how I’ve spent most of my life, try to remember the drunkest you’ve ever been. Not giddily tipsy, but crashing-into-walls sloshed. You’re easily distracted yet struggle to multitask. You get lost all the time and can’t drive. A short leap looks like a mile’s trek, and a stranger’s silence sounds like a prime opportunity to treat them to stories about your most awkward first dates and complain about your bacne. This is hyperbolic, but it’s how I felt throughout all my years growing up—without the influence of any substances.

            My disability was first identified in fourth grade. I was desperate for a diagnosis so my teachers would know it wasn’t my fault. They’d get frustrated because they thought I was smart but I couldn’t follow directions. Despite my knack for writing, I wasn’t allowed into the gifted program. They only included kids who had straight A’s in every class.

            I was clumsy in many ways. Synchronized dancing in theater camp was a hilarious nightmare. I was hapless at sports. I once managed to stub my toe while my foot was three feet above the ground.

            The social clumsiness was a lot more painful. I had no verbal filter. Ideas were constantly bursting into mental subthreads, as if my brain were the original Reddit—including the trolling. It felt like word bubbles appeared above my head and would pop unless I filled them in immediately. I expressed thoughts with little to no awareness of how cutting, excessively unabridged, or just plain weird they were. Other kids teased me, but they usually wouldn’t take it too far in my presence. I could eviscerate them with comebacks that left everyone laughing. People seemed to laugh at me and with me in equal measure. I had trouble keeping friends. They rarely confronted me directly, but I’d hear what they said to each other. They called me a ditz and an airhead. They said I was always seeking attention. The last judgment was true, although a lot of them were doing the same. They were just less obvious about it, so my lack of subtlety allowed them to point at me and direct peoples’ notice away from their own similar behavior.

It wasn’t until I was twenty that my head began to clear. The spatial disorientation, obliviousness to my surroundings, and struggle with transitions is still pervasive. But my social awareness is now sharper, and sobering up to it was mortifying. I began to profusely apologize to those I’d offended in the past, handing out regrets like street flyers. Eventually I came to stop over-apologizing and strive for more balance.

            Others have told me I’m insightful. That might be true, but I’m not perceptive. It took me years to grasp the distinction.

            My consciousness does not exist in a linear and uninterrupted flow, but in snapshots with vacant spaces in between. In childhood I used to think of them as “blank-outs”; those lapses in which my brain briefly freezes and buffers. It’s like living within ellipses, jumping along islands instead of walking a continuous strip of land.

            This also means my mind doesn’t create an internal map of my whereabouts. When out in public and trying to find my way, it’s like I’m spinning and perpetually dizzy. This makes me a prime target for predators who notice I look lost and try to coerce me into their cars.

            For all of these reasons, I cannot move freely throughout the world. Instead I navigate through cyberspace, imagination, and ideas. I travel in stories and songs, with words as my compass. My husband says I seem to experience language in entirely my own way, and it’s true. Words are their own dimension. They’re like an additional sense.

            Because most of my journeys are not physical, my artistic and aesthetic taste is vivid sometimes to the point of garishness. I can’t surround myself with muted colors and grayscale music. I need atomic glitter bombs and guns that shoot rainbows. I need songs that flutter with caffeinated beats. I crave whatever makes ears tickle, eyes pop, and hearts roar. Maybe people with more external adventures prefer to settle into a mellow existence in between. That’s completely understandable, but it’s too low-key for me.

            People expect me to have more tattoos because I’m so stimulated by visuals. I don’t need them. I’m made of images and phrases and stains which I carry under my skin and express when I choose to. So is everyone else. Many of my most creative friends are inked, and I love getting lost in the stories of their designs. I just prefer to keep my skin a blank page.

            Some friends jokingly ask if I’m tripping when I write like this. I’m not inclined toward drugs. Maybe it would make little difference if I did use them, because either way I’d be surfing on brain chemical waves, but it’s already intoxicating to inhale words and pass them on. To snort colors and patterns. Inject musical notes. There is no withdrawal and it costs you nothing. It’s all free, and it frees you.

            When I did smoke weed for the first time, it was a very strange experience. I said I didn’t feel anything but then proceeded to talk for two hours. I explained, in minute detail, exactly why my brain felt like a cupcake (because I was rising above my usual state like a cake in a pan, my head was inflated with light, fluffy thoughts, and I was over-baked).

            These types of mental vacations might make up for my inability to physically navigate if NLD didn’t also affect my career options. Because I can’t drive, and public transportation has to be planned so carefully, I have mostly been limited to working from home. I’ve only recently branched out. It can take me five hours to learn a simple bus route.

            Doctors can’t discern my IQ with normal tests because there’s such a chasm between my spatial and verbal intelligence. I spoke in full sentences at nine months old but couldn’t tie my shoes until third grade. I can explain how a color looks and feels to someone who has never seen it, but I have to count on my fingers for simple addition. Sometimes language can be a zero-sum game. Once I’m locked into its dimension, words are all I see and I stumble over everything else.

            When people hear that someone has a learning disability, they often assume they’re developmentally disabled. Years ago my dad was driving me to school and he wanted to park closer to the building because I could only recognize the location from one side, even though I went there every day. He told the parking lot attendant I had a learning disability and asked him to let us through. The guy appraised me as if I were a small child and said, “Can she get herself inside?” I was right next to him, but he addressed my father. As if I couldn’t answer the question.

            This is the backdrop of my life, and it will be for as long as I live. But as distressing, discouraging, embarrassing and infuriating as these struggles can sometimes be, I don’t think I would exchange them for a chance to be “normal.” NLD may be a disability, but it’s my disability. By blurring my vision in certain areas, it’s helped me see so much more clearly in others. And it’s allowed me to show others what I see, to share a communal vision.

            NLD may have been delivered to me in a heavy box which I often find myself caught inside. But in the end, it still came as a gift.

The shallow end, or why religious fundamentalism crushes creativity

There’s an idiom I especially love: “Religion is like the public pool: Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.” In hearing the description of the shallow end, I immediately think of the Religious Right. By this, I don’t mean religious people who happen to also vote Republican. I mean a particular and highly recognizable subset of the pious crowd: Those who are aggressively anti-gay, anti-sex (except in very specific, procreative circumstances), and anti-science. Those who believe anyone with a different outlook, even within their own religion, is going to hell. Those who burn Harry Potter books and believe Halloween and rock music are genuine threats to society. Those who want to instill their beliefs through law as a theocracy. Not all Republicans have this perspective by any means, nor do all who identify with a religion. But those who adhere to this worldview almost always merge it with conservative politics.

This group insists that anyone who rejects religion does so out of a reluctance to be good. The truth is that many reject religion because this boisterous and seemingly all-pervading subset clings to such an arbitrary definition of “good.” They think you can’t be good if you enjoy secular entertainment. They say your goodness is defined by dressing conservatively, believing the “right” theological statements, trying to convert others to your religion, avoiding all manner of drugs and alcohol, never swearing or enjoying more ribald humor, and avoiding sex before marriage (especially if you’re a woman). To me, and to others who cannot relate to this mindset, these factors have nothing to do with your goodness or worth as a person.

I got into Christianity for a while in my early twenties and tried to fit into the evangelical mold, but I always felt like an unwelcome outlier. This was because I’m bisexual and don’t feel a need to apologize for it; because I do not believe in hell and see it as an abhorrent concept which is antithetical to any kind of a loving god; because I didn’t see anything wrong with living or sleeping with my husband before we were married, nor with getting drunk or smoking a bowl once in a while; and because I love fantasy and punk rock and just about any alternative scene. This left me as a misfit who was seen as “double minded” and hellbound. I think that any god that exists could not possibly be so petty, like a popular kid ousting someone from their lunch table. Those who argue with that reasoning say, “No, God accepts everyone as long as they meet his standards!” But the whole mentality of “I love you the way you are, now change!” makes no sense.

The conservative evangelical subculture is particularly oppressive for creative people. They seem inherently hostile to artists, whether our drive manifests in music, visual art, or writing. Sure, the Religious Right will utilize those skills when they can be used to promote their perspective, but any coloring outside those lines is looked at askance. They’re quick to interpret artistic works as “witchcraft.” They see co-creators as God’s competition, which is why they demand that you credit all your work to their god. They especially see secular fantasy and mythology as competition for their own lore. People of this group will tell you they’re “sheparding” (ie: micromanaging) you for your own good, but it’s really out of self-interest or a commitment to preserving the status quo. Many of them don’t realize these motives, even when they’re acting on them.
           They rule you with an iron fist hidden inside a plush glove.