Blog Stories

Today I am back in Philadelphia.  I’m sitting in my sun-drenched room, alone in the house because I am in recuperation from another attack of diverticulitis.  This one started up while we were in Mexico.   I could write about it, but I don’t want to talk about how I feel (awful) or how the staff at the Medica San Miguel hospital treated me (wonderfully) or how my specialists here in Philadelphia cured me (awfully well).  Rather, I want to give voice to the insight I have now about how I should be writing.

I should not be telling what happened to me, but how I feel about what happened to me.

For example, rather than telling how I met a person, I should be expressing how they made me feel on our meeting.  I should also look closely at them, now that I know them so much better, but not nearly well enough to be able to describe how they might have felt on meeting me. Why is that important to either or both of us?  Is it important to us?  What does it matter?  It matters because it is about us, one or both of us, and we are very interested in each of ourselves and by extension in each other.  The more you think about it, the more you realize there is a gigantic story we have not even admitted to ourselves about how we feel about ourselves, each other, and the individuals who are intimately tied to us.

I have reached an age where my desire to read, to learn new things, to explore the philosophy of favorite authors is so strong that I scarcely have time for anything else. Can it be that others of my age feel the same?  Do you reach a time in life when you realize you never paid enough attention when you were young and in school because you were preoccupied with more important stuff like getting a job, being in love, finding love, losing love or feeling sorry for yourself because of lack of love? 

And now I find a new quote: “Love is a reciprocal torture.” Proust

I just received a book from Amazon called Writers in Paris about literary lives in the City of Light. I looked at the cover which held photographs of six or seven authors. I recognized a few – Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I thought about all their stories and writings and wondered: What were the thoughts and ideas that they did not write about? What are the unfinished stories, hidden thoughts, sacred memories, silent feelings that they could not or would not write about? Were any of them like me – afraid for most of their lives of writing about it, about their innermost struggles?

Sign up to be notified when Joanne adds a new blog post

It’s taken me too long to get back to you.  I’m sorry.  It’s just that life goes so fast now. It’s not that I am getting slower getting the work done, it’s just that there is so much more work to be done!  Why couldn’t we have been this busy when we were young, when we had the energy to do it all – everything – including a busy social life?  God!  I’m just so glad to get to sit down at night! 

I went today to get my hair cut. I went upstairs at the beauty salon to use their bathroom. The upstairs today is furnished as an extra place for Maisy to do her makeup or get a massage or overall just get prettier (I’ve decided that when I write, I will refer to Maisy when I want to write to or about every woman). 

It was dark up there and looked as though no one has been using it. Paintings were stacked randomly around the room and I went to search for a good one. I was disappointed to find that every single one was a poor painting of some part of the anatomy of some woman’s body. There was one painting of a man making an ugly funny face that was in reality an ugly picture of an ugly man making an ugly face. I looked more and found not one that was worth any extra perusal or thought. 

Then I looked around the room and wondered why I thought that I should stay and try to find an artwork of beauty. I thought perhaps this house – since it is a very old house on our street at 2nd and Arch in Philadelphia – is very old and maybe it is haunted. I looked around and concentrated on the seventh rung of some kind of ladder for knowledge of the spirits that inhabit this house. I was disappointed to find that there did not appear to be any.

So I took a last look around and opened myself to communication with any spirit that lives there. Unfortunately, there was no response and there was no feeling that anything other than me inhabited that room. I walked to the top of the stairs and started down, taking care that my bad ankle does not give away and hoping that no bad spirit would mess up my gate so I took them one at a time.  When I got close to the bottom, my ankle gave out and I fell down!  So much for no spirits there!

Sign up to be notified when Joanne adds a new blog post

The Elders. . . Who are they?

People who have accumulated a full lifetime of experience. In living life, of having been educated in the school of hard knocks, are street savvy, aware, cautious, loving, brave and willing to share their happiness.

Today’s elders include people like honest politicians, and people who have raised their children as born leaders, people who trained others to fulfill their destinies.

Not like Paul Fejko’s father. The Horse Whisperer, who Paul best  remembers from when Paul was fifteen:  Never sober.  Cigarettes normal.  Pool  Hustler – “Look What I won!”

Jockeys, horses – “All are all crazy.”

Lived and raised in Chester, Paul’s dad was a groomer, and he died from being stomped by a race horse.

From that point, Paul was an orphan, never having known what it would be like to have the guidance of an Elder.

Sign up to be notified when Joanne adds a new blog post