Overloaded Circuits
(Computer art by author)
I’m in somnia
with jackhammer brain
a buzzing mind
a humming with emotions
thoughts and pictures
memories of joys
lost to death
spirits close to my heart
seemingly worlds away
guilt, loss and happiness
sickness and death
as well as
breathtaking beauty
a bedfellow with
gnawing worries
and gnashing nerves
fleeting images from films and
music playing at high speed
in the library of my mind
voices of today, yesterday and
fears of tomorrow
vying for an ear
asking me to listen
to them all
all at once
a cacophony of sounds
in the humming silence
of the specter-filled
haunting darkness
with fearsome death dangling
its loathsome threats
before my darting eyes
afraid not for myself
but of losing him
as he lies beside me
breathing noises
breeding worry, sorry
dashing thoughts of love, passion, doubts
a scarily-still lump beside
insomniac-hyper-racing-mind
manic me
finally arising out of
maudlin months
of dismal darkness
and deep, dark despair
when death smelled sweet to me
*
I get out of bed
to lay my face
upon the windowsill
to gaze at the mystery sky
full of twinkling stars
glittering to the rhythms
of the pulsing universe
my only hope for some
semblance of somnolence
my only chance for peace.
For info on my Bipolar memoir, please see: http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html
The Breath of Love
Until I can connect with my Muse again and develop a New York City aesthetic that connects with Spirit I rely on revising old writing and photographs…
I awaken to moonlight– it is at that particular slant that lights up the front yard at 3 AM. What really has awakened me is my husband’s breathing. It is labored like he has just run up a flight of stairs. At times I awaken because I do not hear his breath and some alarm goes off in my head to check him. And if I can not hear him breathing I put my hand lightly on his chest so as not to wake him to see if I can feel the his heart beating. Feeling it pulsing in my hand I am reassured once more. I am not alone in this. My sister-in-law confides in me that she wakes up at night to listen to my brother to see if he is still breathing. My first-grade friend says much the same. She does a breathing check on her husband. Our husbands are relatively well. They have diabetes, heavy smoking and drinking, a delicate frame among them, but they are not on death’s door so far as we know. And yet we are plagued by morbid fears.
In the wee hours of morning fears loom large. My husband’s heartbeat, a mere flutter, seems so delicate. I am reassured that it is beating just as I am reassured that he is breathing. But the breath itself is so fragile. It scares me awe-fully– the fragility of the breath, the fine line between breathing and cessation of breath.
I prowl the house. Through the skylight the stars beam brightly along with a shining half moon. A clear day tomorrow. But it is already tomorrow. It is so still my ears hum. My husband, who knows so many interesting things, tells me the humming I hear is the sound of the nervous system. Our bodies hold such mystery.
I look out the window, now hearing my neighbor’s dogs barking quietly. I look for coyote thinking that is what they are barking at, but see nothing. The moonlit grass on the lawn is whitish silver, looking almost as if it had snowed, and the water in the marsh sparkles in the moonlight. The deep woods behind are pitch dark, the home of many a creature. Nothing stirs. It is too early for the birds. The house across the way is always dark; it is up for sale. And in the other direction, at this hour, no lights shine in the driveway of the house down the road.
I am reminded of a line from a poem by Tagore “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.” I am at my most faithless at 3 AM.
Along with the supreme beauty of Tagore’s thoughts, a frivolous line from an old song runs through my head: “There ought to be a moonlight savings time…” and the line continues so there would be more time for loving. But moonlight in the middle of the night also brings with it intense dreads.
Now chilled I finally go back to bed. An owl hoots in the distance– a reassuring sound. My husband is breathing freely now. His body is warm in the bed and I am filled with love for him as he lays in a heap, so trustingly in the arms of sleep. Our marriage a wonder. Unexpected. An endless source of ever increasing love brimming not only with joy but also the dread of loss. Perhaps all wives check their husbands for breathing. Perhaps there is an army of women out there prowling the wee hours of the night, at times by moonlight, checking on their husbands, their children, their animals to see that they all have that breath of life flowing.
“There is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. Then, there’s another way: a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity.” Rumi said that. And it is breath of love that I must master.
R.I.P. “Rabbit” with Love, Mouse
My friend
My friend with cancer
My friend
My friend who had chemo
Three runs of chemo
Radiation
Two surgeries
My friend who was cured
Whose cancer had gone
My friend who was cured
Who wanted to write a book
Who wrote to me often
Who listened to me with Heart
My friend
Where did he go?
Why did he die?
Why when he was starting anew
With his wife who stood by him
Helped him when he was sick
Why did he die?
I want to know
Where did he go?
I want to know if the chemo
Killed him
Chemo
It did not help my father,
My mother, my brother
My best friend
I thought I was wrong
I thought this time it helped my friend
Yes, it helped him alright
It killed him!
Why did he have to die?
Why?
My friend, “Rabbit,” Rest in Peace
Love forever, Mouse
Tyranny of Mind
4AM
and you a warm lump
under the covers
of Morpheus
Me wide awake
eyes moist with tears
I write
lest I forget
the vulnerability of you
yesterday
lest one day
you ARE no longer
a day of dread
so locked into desire
for your presence am I
fearful of the future
lest it tears me from you
or you from me
Not yet awake
to the wisdom
of the sages and the ages
to live forever in the present
“Until death do us part”
The import of those words
have begun to resound
with a fierce vengeance
now decades later
The treasure of you
multiplies like the loaves and fishes
I fear a famine
not of food
but of your presence
I try to hold each wrinkled emotion
on your face
in a forever place
lest you be torn from me
The specter of loss
hangs over me
haunting our life together
And yesterday
when you cried
when you disguised your tears
with embarrassed laughter
your eyes dripped diamonds,
sparkling as they fell
in response to mine
I crying because
there will never be
a “happily ever after”
at our age
sure as shooting
death will come
and rip us asunder
Perhaps our love
will be born again
in Samsara
but it is a “perhaps”
without a guarantee
My faith is feint
My heart shudders
and flutters
under the threat
of separation
as you lay
a lump of warmth
in the land of Nod
Our love a fairy tale
in a fierce steely reality
of endings.
“Unless we can discover that basic ground of goodness in our own lives, we cannot hope to improve the lives of others.”
Chogyam Trungpa
“My Eyes are Leaking”
The world a watery blur
one less source of joy and laughter
on this ailing earth
a delight to so many
in so many ways
“My eyes are leaking”
(Robin Williams as the alien on “Mork and Mindy”)
The Reign of Pain
Tears,years, fears, pain, pane, rain, car, far, are you there, somewhere?
I can’t hear you. I can’t see you. I can’t feel you. Any more.
Why did you have to die? Why did you have to go?
Your kids bleed for you, you know.
Your wife aches for you, you know.
I pine for you, you know.
Your absence is our has been.
Attachment our sin.
And in this reign
of pain we fail
we ail
each in our own ways.
It may be a thin veil
that divides our souls but
why then does it feel like an iron curtain
creating the great divide
between our being and your nothingness?
(Written for the three year anniversary of my brother’s death.)
Cowboys and the “Dallas Buyer’s Club”
Tom Attwater Is Dying. His Daughter Might Die, Too. The Letter He Left For Her Is Unforgettable.
To see a video of Tom reading this letter, click on:
Spirits Past and the Mystical Bliss of Horses
It is almost Christmas, and my birthday, and today I cried reading an old birthday email from my sister. She signed it “Lisa the Pizza, Tony Baloney and the rest of the gang ‘up there’,” meaning my brother, and my mother and father.
“Tony Baloney” died two years and a half ago, leaving behind three adopted children whom he adored and who adored him, and a loving wife. My father and mother died 25 and 20 years ago, as impossible as that seems. Dad and Mom died this time of year. And my best friend, Wendi, died shortly after. All of cancer of some sort or the other. But they all loved horses.
We now live in Millbrook — horse country. Horse farms dot the countryside. My father and mother and Wendi would have adored it. My brother was the only one to visit Millbrook, coming with his family whom we put up at a nearby horse ranch. They all had the time of their lives. One of my fondest memories of my brother is from that visit. We are holding hands as he is relaxing after a day of riding with his kids. He is drinking and smoking (what eventually killed him) and we are taking in the sunset on the porch of the dude ranch.
I love horses, too. It is in my blood. Dad played the horses and my brother worked on several racetracks, including Belmont. Now I abhor horse-racing, finding it cruel. My brother had horror stories to tell of how the horses were drugged and run hurting. I have seen horses being put down– all for a senseless sport. Dad and I would quarrel about this if he were still alive.
I remember stroking a horse once at a show nearby and the bliss I felt was mystical in a most spiritual way. I wanted that moment to last forever. And the happiest I have ever seen my husband was on a moonlit ride we took in a canyon in Arizona on our honeymoon. Horses bring happiness. My husband knows it. Dad knew it. Tony knew it, Wendi knew it and to some extent, Mom knew it.
Too old to ride now I pet horses when I can, and admire them as we drive by horse farms. I photograph them when the spirit moves me. I ache inside for my parents who would have adored it here in our little barn. For my brother, the cowboy, as different from me as night and day, but bonded by a deep love and shared losses. For my friend, Wendi, with whom I shared a not-to-be replicated link of love. Merry Christmas, Tony Baloney, Mom, Dad, Wendi!
My blessing comes from the love I share with my husband who married me despite my mental illness. It comes, too, from our spiritual connection to nature. I admire my husband who works with society’s outcasts as a clinical social worker. My giving is on a much smaller scale– tiny things here and there– online activism and such. You play the hand you are dealt.
Christmas can be a hard time, and New Year’s, too, and I know there will be the inevitable meltdown into tears over losses of loved ones, over mortality, over our material nature. And perhaps you will also have your own moment of bleakness. But I hope that you, too, will be able to touch your bliss at Christmas and find a blossoming hope for the new year.
Blessings of joy to all!!
An Apparition
Here one second,
the next, gone,
with traces only in our hearts.
The ephemeral nature
of all life.
Our loved ones,
people and creatures,
here with us
for a pause in eternity
and gone for seeming eons.
*
It is as the Hindus say
all “Maya,”
a dream of life,
an apparition,
some form of us
awakens one day
somewhere
we know not
when or where or how
right now.
The Spiders’ Secret
A chill wind blows the yellowing leaves off the trees. They drift down to the ground like giant snowflakes. The air is pregnant with the feel of the coming holidays. Fall has truly come, with the sudden drop in temperatures, a full 10-20 degrees cooler than a few weeks ago. This is the real Fall, no faltering Fall, but a Fall that will guide us appropriately into winter. November appears as a mirror image of March with its vibrant color of decay, while March is the decaying color of about-to-burst-forth Spring.
The birds are at the bird feeder all the time now. They are not stopped by our presence when we come to fill the feeder or blow leaves under it. Nothing stops them. They swoop around the feeder and the surrounding trees like Kamikaze pilots, darting here and there recklessly. The squirrels are in a frenzy as well, stock piling acorns and walnuts which they will retrieve without fail in a month or so in a snow-covered land.
To me, the trees are most beautiful at this time of year, when many of them are bare and a scattering of leaves remain on dark brown branches. The leaves that remain quiver daintily in their precarious positions on the tree limbs. Yet these are the survivors. The other leaves have fallen and gone the way all living things eventually go. Most trees have lost all their leaves and they stand in stark contrast against the blue sky, the stormy sky, the grey sky. But I find them most beautiful against the night sky, with arms reaching up to the darkness, trying to touch the stars twinkling between the branches, as moonlight dances on their limbs.
November holds the last glimmer of color. A carpet of yellow lines the woods now– and one can see inside the woods that are so dark and impenetrable in summer. Some forests have carpets of oak leaves– dark brown tan in color. Others are paved with variegated colors– vibrant crimsons against yellows and faded greens and tawny tans. The un-mown lawns are now taken over by the spiders covering the fields. At precious moments, one can see a world of webs that only appears in a certain slant of sunlight and reveal a silent take-over by the spiders in webs that sparkle secretly, mirroring the infinite web of creation.
The yellow, brown, and crimson leaves are complemented by the ubiquitous yellow, brown and crimson mums that appear on the roadside near mail boxes, on porches or along driveways. These tough little flowers withstand frosty chills and stand tall throughout most of November– hearty, generous souls, so giving in their colorful, velvety splendor.
Halloween pumpkins begin to sag a bit or shine with wetness as if encased in glass. They will soon be tossed– pine combs, wreaths and fir swags to take their places, and the season of lights will begin. Anticipation hangs in the air. Autumn seems the fastest season to come and go. I try treasuring each moment, but the minute/hours/days just sift through my fingers like so many grains of sand. Then Christmas/Hanukkah comes and fades in a flash and we are into the Nor’Easter blizzards of January. Another year is gone and a new one has come. Would that we could be in forever in the season of love, but it is also a season of loneliness and loss and darkness. It is good we are defenseless against time.
Now, at Thanksgiving, it is our time to give thanks. Inspired by the Native Americans, let us thank the earth. Let us give thanks to the trees for their constantly changing beauty, to the stars for their piercing presence in the night sky, to the leaves for their inspiring colors, to the sun for its life-giving power. Let us thank the Spring for its awakening hope, the Summer for its warm, thriving growth, the Fall for its beauteous bounty, to the Winter for a time of renewal. Let us thank the soon-to-come snow for its hushed, white silence that transforms our world, to all the animals for their pure souls, to our families and friends for their precious love, and, lastly, but mostly, to the Higher Power of our belief for the macrocosm of creation.
Happy Thanksgiving and may you each be blessed with the all-embracing, pervasive, pulsating Love in Nature.
Tempus Fugit
Poof!
After awaiting September all summer, the month of the Autumnal Equinox came and is almost gone. I try desperately to stop time, clinging to each day, to no avail. These next few months, my favorite time of year, go by in a flash, like sand sifting through my fingers. Poof! In a flash the trees turn beauteous, with variegated flames of color. Poof! The leaves are gone.
First, there is the change in light. The sun, still hot in mid-September, does not pack the punch it did in July, when one could be outdoors for an hour and come in with a change in skin color. Temperatures cool. The grass starts to stop growing. The “blood” of the trees starts to flow back into the trunk, causing leaves to change color. Walnuts, acorns and apples fall. Butterflies, so rampant outdoors in August, have gone inside the stomach of many a child as they go back to school. Even adults are not immune. Many feel the flutter of “back-to-school” anxiety come Fall. Summer vacations are a memory and it is time to “honker down” at work. Fall offers a new beginning but there is a tinge of anxiety in facing some thing new.
And most of all, Fall is a time of riotous color, when a walk in the woods finds one reveling like a drunk, besotted by the yellow, orange, crimson, russet world which our eyes imbibe like a hefty cocktail. It is a time when Italian comes to the lips in a loud “Que bella!!” The green of summer is bucolic and raises the spirit, but the many colors of fall intoxicate. People start talking of peak color, and leafing becomes the pastime of many. It is the time to plant bulbs and endlessly rake blowing leaves.
But Fall is a time of melancholia, too. Flowers die. Reptiles go into hibernation. Insects die or overwinter. Songbirds migrate. Trees eventually loose their leaves. And the end of the lazy days of summer brings with it shorter days, longer nights, and concomitant depression for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Moments of sobriety seep into intoxication with the new world of color as we may remember loved ones who can no longer share the beauty–who can no longer enjoy those coveted, cooler, crisp days of September when coolness kisses the cheeks. For autumn is a celebration of endings, too, perhaps best described by the French poet, Guillaume Appollinaire, in his poem Autumn:
“A bowlegged peasant and his ox receding
through the mist slowly through the mist of autumn…
Oh the autumn the autumn has been the death of summer
In the mist there are two gray shapes receding.”
(Click http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/ellen-stockdale-wolfe.html for information on, and to purchase my Bipolar/Asperger’s memoir.
Abandonata
Abandoned by life
choked by overgrowth of unkempt green
once upon a time
breathing, seething with energy
steaming with the hot breath of cattle
teaming with the tenuous tenure of life
*
Your body long gone
your loving heart now ashes
your caring now a memory
which nothing can erase
and time cannot erode.
*
How I long for thee
though a mere thin veil
separates your spirit from me
small comfort
when I miss thee mightily.
“Life Goes On”
“Life Goes On”
*
That’s what Dad always said,
Remember, Tony?
My dear swarthy brother,
dark of skin,
warm of heart,
we shared the same hazel eyes,
a mix of Mom’s Sicilian brown
and Dad’s brilliant blue.
We lived separate lives,
you in Michigan,
me in New York,
you with three adopted children,
me, childless with Ko-ko and Tom.
You weren’t supposed to DIE!
You and I were to be
fellow way-farers
on the road through life.
We were to live parallel lives
and you were supposed to die
when you were old and feeble,
not middle-aged,
in a tortured death!
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
*
“Life goes on.”
*
Today I light a candle
on my altar to you and Mom and Dad
and send you Reiki
like I did while you fought for your life
for two years
after a prognosis of two months.
My heart aches
on this second anniversary
of your death.
*
“Life goes on.”
*
Your wife, your children, and I
cry out for you
but you have moved on to some higher form.
You paid your karmic dues,
with your diagnosis, cancer.
Long before,
you always told me
not to worry,
that you’d live long because
only the good die young.
But you were too good
and you died far too young
and I live on in my little, reclusive life,
Ko-ko no longer here,
just me and Tom.
I should have been the one to go
but the good die young.
*
“And life goes on.”
The Leaf Devoured
Water droplets magnify
the verdant veins
through which
the life giving blood flows
through which
the life giving source
that keeps
giving life
keeps
life going
despite the wear and tear
of an alien attack
by a catapulting caterpiller
that offers another creature
a world within world
in which to live.
Despite
bitten tears,
bitter tears,
the leaf will live green
through the summer
and then shrivel to crimson,
life blood draining
and it will cry no more
as it drops dead
from the branch
where it lived
for a few short months.
Two Lips of Forever Love
He didn’t “get it,
the “loss thing,”
when my aunt died mid-April,
and I lost my second mother.
Didn’t “get it” when I lost my first.
This was not the only time
he was lost in oblivion and
puzzled by my tears.
*
He didn’t see me hurting
from the loss of my lineage,
and his lack of empathy for my grief
as he made me meet and greet
a friend the next day, as if all was normal.
This time I balked, bolder and older,
and he agreed it was time to ponder
and talk with his mentor.
*
When he came home
one night days later,
full of hugs of apology,
and tulips on the kitchen counter,
it was a breakthrough for us both.
It took a few days
but what came out
brought tears upon tears.
*
Not having grown up
with emotional displays
he didn’t “get” the meaning of loss.
With no models of grief
he didn’t know how to feel it himself
nor how to give solace,
not just lip service,
to those who had lost.
*
I cried for him.
How very sad, as a child
he didn’t know the love I knew.
He, a sensitive child,
in an icebox family
fraught with frigid emotion,
and warm, deep affection only
from his great-aunt, Dot.
*
He brought me pink tulips,
flowers of a contrite heart,
and held me close
and kissed me
with lips full of apologies
but I was the one
who felt sorry for him
for the years he knew not love.
*
Twenty-eight years ago
God told me “Love this man,
trust him and have faith in him,
and hold him to your heart.”
Many moons later, I love him light-years
more than the day we met
and in then-unimaginable ways
has our love strove for the stars.
*
He has brought me:
kindness and gentleness,
generosity of spirit,
goodness of heart,
and healing humor.
What I have taught him:
the glories of love
and agony of loss.
*
From the beginning
the seed of love was sown
for better or worse
deeply within the parched,
but fertile soil of my imperfect heart.
And he has cultivated the growth
of a stalwart, staid evergreen,
amid the blooming two-lips of forever love.
The Line is Dead
She’s finally gone
after fighting for life for
6 months of painful half-life
and multiple causes of death.
*
Gone is my last link
with Grandma and Grandpa
and happy days in Larchmont,
Grandpa playing the mandolin,
me dancing,
and Grandma cooking
unimaginable treats.
Happy days in Larchmont,
the Larchmont one weekend
Aunt Nina and I revisited
with our respective spouses
and cried tears of nostalgia.
*
Aunt Nina died Saturday,
the last of the LaMannas,
the aunt who knit the best-ever
Christmas stockings for
my brother and sister and me
which I still drag out every year.
The aunt who let me
play with her jewelry
in her blue bedroom
in Larchmont
with light that slid in
through the venetian blinds
and danced a jitterbug
atop Renoir prints,
with twin beds
covered in puff-ball bed spreads,
kept so clean by Grandma and
Aunt Nina wanting to sleep
and me pestering her to play.
*
Aunt Nina took me home once by taxi,
back to the city I hated
when I was sick.
She nursed me on the ride
And said “hang in there”
and held my hand
as I said to her a month ago
as she lay shriveled into a ghost
of her former self.
*
Gone are the days
of spaghetti and meatballs,
Arancini and sugar cookies,
wine and mandolin,
chewing gum in the desk,
watching at the windows
with Grandpa, as evening
fell all around.
Days of Big Grandma Castiglione
in her light-filled, white-tiled,
lace-curtained, one-room apartment,
with holy water font
and the smell of steam
in the yellow kitchen.
*
Gone are the days of
visiting Nina as she raised
her two “adopted angels”
as they were called,
and, who, with my uncle, she crafted
into two magnificent children
and later had four grandchildren
who adored them both.
Larchmont repeated.
*
Gone are the days of
visiting Aunt Nina in Kent, CT
and later in Danbury,
now much older and
with my husband whom
Aunt Nina and Uncle Ray
welcomed with open arms
and grew to love,
my husband of almost 24 years
who never knew this love as a child
and so does not know its loss.
*
Gone are the days
of a phone call
every few weeks,
Aunt Nina always seeming
happy to hear my voice as
she exclaimed “Ellen!”
as we talked about problems:
difficulties in the best of marriages
the downhill spiral of my Mom
after Dad died,
Nina giving support while
my husband and I cared for Mom
during her difficult path to death,
Aunt Nina listening to me recount
the downhill spiral of my brother
as he spent 3 years
dying of lung cancer.
And we talked of our
problems with anxiety
and later of her sorrow and fears
as her friends were dying
and she was fighting Parkinson’s,
bravely shouldering through every day.
*
Gone are the days
of pasta salads and olives
and prosciutto and provolone
as Aunt Nina and Uncle Ray
visited our little barn upstate,
where we laughed and laughed
in the Memorial Days sunshine.
*
Gone gone gone
my Italian heritage,
the last of my blood elders.
Aunt Nina was there
For 63 years,
All of my life
and all I can do
is cry
and try
to imitate
her admirable character.
For the Lord giveth and
the Lord taketh away
but why such pain
when he taketh away?
*
Because love grew
year by year
visit by visit
phone call by phone call.
I did thank her,
before the end began,
in a foresightful note,
telling how great an aunt she was.
God put the thought in my head,
and for that I am grateful,
for now it is too late
for now the line is dead.
That Extra Squeeze
?
Hold your dear ones a little closer today
Give them an extra squeeze as you say goodbye
*
Rejoice in making their breakfasts
and doing their dishes
and mending their socks
or working in a job you hate
to keep them
housed, clothed and fed
For the work you do means
they are still alive
*
The horror of terror
has struck again
on our soil
What is de rigeur
in other countries
has happened here
and shaken us
out of our complacency
Terror “there”
is now terror “here”
*
Hold your dear ones a little closer today
Give them an extra squeeze as you say goodbye
For after yesterday
many cannot
*
And pray for the first responders
and their families
the unhailed heroes of our land
who face bad odds everyday
*
Hold your dear ones a little closer today
Give them your blessing as you say goodbye
For each goodbye could be the last
has always been true
but terrorism has taken that truth
and shoved it in your face
*
Hold your dear ones a little closer today
Swarms
The attack
not killer bees
nor locusts
nor hornets
nor any insect
but the contents
of the mind
Tied up in knots
not safe
not secure
not strong
not peace
Sick with
the plague of fears
negative thoughts
insidious
invidious
poison
killing joys
bringing tears
of pain
and loss
and grief
The swarms cloud the sun
taking away the Light
and all it enraptures
attacking
the very source
of life
Love
MOONSIDE 
