Diana's Blog: Quirky Words and Book Reviews

October 10, 2008
SECRETS OF THE MONARCH was meant to be medium Allison DuBois' first book, but it didn't get written until recently, following two others. Mediums have an extra door to understanding, and Allison wanted to reveal that. It took her awhile for this book to come together. Her subtitle is WHAT THE DEAD CAN TEACH US ABOUT LIVING A BETTER LIFE.
The book is filled with stories that remind us to pass on the love we get from others, and even if sad and disappointed, to turn the situation so that we can benefit someone else. Allison tells lots of stories of finding the killers of innocent women who have vanished, fun stories like a poker game in a haunted basement with some poker players from two centuries ago playing along, and her family stories.
What caught my eye was the monarch. How did that relate, I wondered? Her husband Joe actually answers that question in the foreword. He says she chose the title long before she knew the real story about monarch butterflies. Joe writes that the monarch butterfly takes several generations to complete its journey north, only to turn around and fly back to where its great-grandparents are from. Joe continues, saying that the monarch concept is also the story of how each generation builds on the energy and work of the generation before, creating a circle of life.
This hit home. I was living halfway across the country, and driving in the middle of the night from Iowa to Indiana, years before cell phones and answering machines. In other words, there was no way for my mother to get a hold of me -- even find me, since I was headed with my fiance to see some friends get married. My mom and I weren't in constant phone contact at that time.
I was at the wheel. The night was black, punctuated by millions of stars. The highway was dark, except for a few headlights zipping past every now and then.
The interior of the car suddenly burst into flames. A vision. It was impossibly bright, and there, before me, was my grandmother, who, at 85, was still alive as far as I knew, enwreathed with flames. Inside that circle of fire, with my grandmother was my grandfather, who had passed when I was a few years old. She spoke. She said -- words I remember to this day -- "Like two fires foraging the space around us, we've swallowed the last detail."
And then, poof, the night was black again.
When we returned from the wedding, I was consumed by this image, and painted it in watercolor. Finally, a few days after the vision, the phone rang, and it was my mother telling me that my grandmother had passed.
My mother orchestrated the funeral without telling me, so I arrived too late to say goodbye to my grandmother. But one day, as my mother got out of her car and I stepped out of the passenger side, a butterfly fluttered by. I closed the door and watched...as the butterfly circled my head over and over and over, floated a short distance, then flew back to me, and around and around me, hovering so close I could almost touch it. I turned to my mother and said, "Look! It's my grandmother, saying goodbye."

Labels: Allison DuBois, butterflies, grandfather, grandmother, mediums, SECRETS OF THE MONARCH WHAT THE DEAD CAN TEACH US ABOUT LIVING A BETTER LIFE, vision

September 11th, seven years later...
On a somber day such as this, it doesn't feel quite right to review a book that has as its roots the destruction of New York -- even while it is literary and well-researched, and even while it is about the books, movies, and art that have targeted Manhattan for hundreds of years. At the same time, when I received Max Page's THE CITY'S END: TWO CENTURIES OF FANTASIES, FEARS, AND PREMONITIONS OF NEW YORK'S DESTRUCTION a few days ago, it brought back childhood memories.
My grandmother, an RN in the ER at Lenox Hill Hospital for decades, lived on the Upper West Side from the time she was twenty-something until she passed nearly seventy-years later. I lived with her until I turned school-age, and my mother transplanted our little family to the Jersey suburbs. It took just twenty minutes to get back into the city to visit my grandmother.
I remember when the Empire State Building was the tallest on the Manhattan skyline, and when there was talk of building something taller. I vividly remember discussion that the towers would be too tall, that they couldn't possibly be structurally sound, that they wouldn't last. Nevertheless, I saw the space in the NY skyline fill in with the towers, and they were gorgeous. But I kept the sense that the towers were as permanent as the lights today that ceremonially fill in the space where the twin towers once stood before 9/11 . When I looked at the newly-constructed towers, I saw, instead the space.
A couple of years before 9/11, my two sons, and then-husband and I visited NY -- a homecoming for me after more than a decade. A first time for my sons. We took elevators and stairs and stood at the very top of the World Trade Center, our hair blowing in the wind, a magnificent 360-view of the city. We were charged with amazement and power and vertigo.
Even with this, the sense that the towers would vanish remained. I can't explain it -- childlike stubbornness? A prescience? Comics, some of which are beautifully depicted in Page's historical book?
The morning of 9/11, I walked into the gym just after 5:30am Pacific time. 8:30 Eastern. I got on the treadmill, started it rolling at a comfortably fast walking pace.
Moments later, like everyone else in the room, I was stunned as I looked up at the bank of televisions, all showing the same bright blue NY sky and billowing clouds, flames, terror. The same shot of the destruction and devastation wrought by the hijacked Flight 11 over and over and over. It became hypnotic.
That easy walking pace -- that became hypnotic as well. A vision appeared to me -- a vision I would write about, which would be sent around the world in several e-newsletters over the next few days.
This vision was more real than the treadmills and the televisions.
In this vision, my grandmother came to me, dressed in her RN uniform. She told me she and many others were ready to help. She waved her arm for me to look again at the scene. I looked and saw a solid rosy hue about three-feet above the streets of Manhattan. She bid me look even closer, and I realized that what I was seeing was a field of angels spread wing to wing. The rosy hue was the love they were emanating.
The vision held steady -- and at that moment I understood that out of that cruel tragedy could come a world that embraces love.
The rosy hue of thousands of angels wing to wing. Just imagine.

Labels: 9/11, AND PREMONITIONS OF NEW YORK'S DESTRUCTION, angels, FEARS, grandmother, Max Page, rosy hue., THE CITY'S END: TWO CENTURIES OF FANTASIES, twin towers, World Trade Center

September 6, 2008
"Which book is right for today?" I ask, as I walk around my stacks of books, opening to whatever sense is pulled. I do that, sometimes. It's fun, harmless, and sometimes -- like today -- downright astounding.
James VanPraagh's new book GHOSTS AMONG US, is two-thirds of the way down the stack in the middle. I choose it, and slip it into my workout bag.
First I am off to a baby shower, where, instead of guessing how many cotton balls are in a jar and how big the mother-to-be's waist is, we have ritual. In a beautiful ceremony, we are each called on to give a personal reflection. Only half the women have given birth, and we are forewarned, no birth horror stories. It is my turn, and I truthfully say that I loved every stage of it -- including labor and delivery -- and since I had plenty of time, with 42 hours labor the first son, and 28 the second son, one technique I found mystical and amazing was as simple as playing music. A lot of music. I tell the women that there was one tape that I played over and over during the late stages of pregnancy, and particularly during labor -- the music was rolling piano chords, played by a man at Portland's Saturday Market -- and I loved the heavenly tones he created. A few years later, when I was driving home from church in the middle of the afternoon, I found the tape, and slipped it into the deck to listen. My three-year old son said from his car seat, "Dark, momma, dark!" Bringing goosebumps to everyone.
I drive to the gym along that very same road, so many years later, this afternoon, and my phone rings. It is my ex-husband, telling me that the matriarch of his family has just died. I tell him I loved her and I am sorry, and I present the irony that I had just been telling of our sons' births a half-hour earlier, and we hang up. Aunt Lenore was in her nineties, and -- in his words -- had not lived fully in the last several years. He and I have been divorced five years, and immediately I talk to Aunt Lenore. As my words begin to pour out -- about being sorry I hadn't contacted her -- I feel my heart fill with warmth and I hear Aunt Lenore say in her kindly southern way, "Dear, I understand. You did the right thing, divorcing him, and I love you both." And then she answers another concern, I've begun to express, "I will be able to help him and your two sons much better from over here." Thank you, Aunt Lenore!
And then I get to the gym with my book. The choice makes perfect sense now. There's a very peaceful chapter about relatives passing, and VanPraagh says "Because our consciousness doesn't die at death, we carry our mind-set of thoughts and beliefs with us to the other side." Which explains why Aunt Lenore is still so sweet and kind.
GHOSTS AMONG US is full of interesting stories of the medium, ghostbusting, VanPraagh's explanation of ghosts from different vibrational planes, and his reassurance that "Love is the most powerful, natural force in the Universe." He writes that many people ask him "Do spirits know I am thinking of them?" The answer, James says, "is always 'Yes!' More importantly, the spirits feel the love that we have for them." More goosebumps.
Years ago, I interviewed James VanPraagh in person about his book TALKING TO HEAVEN. After the interview, with the tape still rolling, James shifts into his medium persona, telling me he sees my dad with me, and that my father is proud of me. Then James says my dad "died of a broken heart" after he was blocked from seeing me ever again. He says my dad is sad about what happened to me in my own home, and that he couldn't protect me from that abuse.
James asks if my mother now lives near a lake.
"Yes!" I answer.
"Her mother has passed," James states.
"Yes,"I say.
"Your grandmother is working to get through to your mother," he says. She wants your mother to be loving to you. What happened wasn't your fault."
James looks at me, "It was horrible, wasn't it."
"Yes," I say.
"Your grandmother is trying -- it is discouraging, but she is trying."
It hasn't worked just yet.
But many times, I will walk through a room in my own home and catch a strong scent of gardenias.
Gardenias.
Comforting.
My grandmother's perfume.

Labels: birth, Ghosts, GHOSTS AMONG US, grandmother, James Van Praagh, medium, mothers, TALKING TO HEAVEN, transcending the trauma

August 27, 2008
THE FRONT is the perfect size for summer reading. It's spare and smart. Patricia Cornwell has a somewhat new set of characters -- Massachusetts State Police investigator Win Garano and DA Monique Lamont, who debuted in AT RISK. Very different from Cornwell's well-known character, Kay Scarpetta, but still as sharp a read.
Lamont "owns" Garano, which is all the more perturbing when he realizes that she is creating a connection between a victim of sexual homicide and the Boston Strangler -- that may not exist, and for her own gain. I bristle at the improper use of power and the lack of integrity in Cornwell's female DA. And I really like Garano, even though he seems confused and insecure at times.
My favorite is Garano's grandmother -- Nana, a woman of the Craft -- a good witch. Those two powerful forces -- Nana and Lamont -- both lay pressure on Garano.
His Nana reminded me of my grandmother. Her name was Blanca, and there was a mysterious silence about her. Every afternoon, at four, she would dress in her nurse's uniform, and head for Lenox Hill Hospital in NY. She'd worked there for decades as the head RN in the ER. She giggled when they finally figured out that it was time for her to retire. They thought she was 65. By then, she was close to 80. She knew things. In the 70's -- long before the body-mind connection was in the mainstream -- she would say "Don't keep that anger inside you. It is a toxin -- it will poison your body if you don't release it." There was also a back-story I found fascinating.
Blanca came from a family of about eight children, but several passed away along the journey from Peru, over the Andes, eventually to New York. I met two sisters -- my great-aunts Lola and Raquel. Lola played piano at Carnegie Hall when she was four. Raquel was an artist who invented pop-ups. Blanca's daughter -- my mother -- was born around the time of the Lindberg baby's kidnapping, and Blanca invented a baby intercom so she could hear my mother -- as a baby -- sleeping in the other room. The kids in school teased me wickedly, not believing me, until I showed them the newspaper clipping documenting that. Another sister was a dancer. And Marguerite, whom I never met, was said to be a lawyer.
The story goes that Blanca wanted to be a physician, but her father forbid her -- simply because she was a young woman. After he died, Blanca got her RN in the early 1920's, and worked in the ER -- as close as she could to make her dreams come true.
She would make predictions -- and I never knew her to be incorrect. And, she could read cards and palms. She knew about salves and healings. And, I always wondered if maybe, just maybe, she wasn't a doctor or a nurse...but a good witch. Like Garano's Nana.

Labels: books, dreams, grandmother, Patricia Cornwell, THE FRONT

August 26, 2008
I love Broadway musicals.
I believe in breaking into song and dance.
Call it corny, I don't care -- I love musicals because they raise my spirits.
My grandmother lived in NY all her life at 93rd and Central Park West in a rambling old apartment that she could afford on social security. Thank rent control, and the fact that she lived there for decades.
I thought it might be cool to live there -- the apartment unfortunately isn't with the family any more -- so a few months ago, I located the realtor for that apartment building and asked the price. I lived with my grandmother, my grandfather and my parents there until I was three and a half; I visited most weekends while going to school in the suburbs; and I lived with her the year after college graduation.
So I ask the guy how much.
"Nine million dollars," he says, "Would you like to see it?"
"Oh I know it quite well," I say and tell him the history.
Holy crap. I lived in a nine-million dollar apartment!
That's not what was valuable. It was my grandmother scrimping to buy tickets to Broadway shows so my little brother and I could escape into this rich, fabulous fantasy. To this day, strong emotions evoke songs that just pop into my mind. I may not know what I'm feeling, but if I analyze the lyrics to the song, I'll get it. Hey, "Don't Rain on My Parade."
So I receive with great delight the book HISTORIC PHOTOS OF BROADWAY: NEW YORK THEATRE, 1850-1970. Something strikes me right off about the book, but instead of puzzling over it, I pour through every page.
I find reference to LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, written by Eugene O'Neill, and I reflect on the paper I wrote on O'Neill in tenth grade. The teacher gave us the choice of any playwright, and when I asked a literary family friend for a suggestion, she recommended that I research O'Neill, noting that I would relate to him. Then I discovered the violence and alcoholism in O'Neill's family.
Back to the theatre. I remember seeing PETER PAN and THE SOUND OF MUSIC on Broadway, along with many other shows. I wander through the book, seeing black and white photos of a young Fred Astaire, Imogene Coca, Helen Hayes, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, Ethel Merman (who began life as Ethel Zimmerman), and Katharine Hepburn.
Way past page 200, I begin seeing some of the shows I grew up with.
Then it hits me. FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. It's the next page in the book, and it's on the cover. I'd seen the musical on Broadway, and when I was in college and the show was on campus for a week, I went to every performance. I felt compelled. I wanted to immerse myself in the story. There was something in that story that connected so deeply with me, but I didn't know what.
Until a couple of years ago. That's when a family friend revealed a fact about my family that my secretive mother had never mentioned. I knew my mother's mother was born in Peru, and that my grandmother's hyphenated Latina name ended in -berg, but these pieces never connected until one day my family friend said to me, quite out of the blue. "Your grandmother's father was a Russian Jew."
He lived in Russia about the time the character Tevye did, and also had to emigrate.
We always know the truth.

Labels: books, Broadway musicals, Eugene O'Neill, grandmother, HISTORIC PHOTOS OF BROADWAY, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, NY, PETER PAN, SOUND OF MUSIC, Tevye, transcending the trauma, truth

Blogging is like being on the radio -- you wonder sometimes if anyone is out there.
Either way, I love it, so I do it.
I also love cards. How they feel in my hands. How they crackle as I shuffle. Today I received a beautiful Tarot deck by Llewellyn. It is THE DREAMER'S JOURNAL, and the cards are exquisite. Unlike Anna Franklin who painted the 78-cards in THE SACRED CIRCLE, artist Heidi Darras created these cards online, using existing art work, and designing them through photo-manipulation. They are dreamy. I haven't met Heidi, nor the author of the book, Barbara Moore. I appreciate Barbara's musings over what a challenge it was to write a book of interpretations about such an intuitive deck.
But, I interviewed Anna many years ago. She seemed like a fairy cast in human form, her lilting voice, delicate bone structure. And as someone who feels a rush of fear when a card is reversed, I was quite happy to hear Anna say that she ignores reversed cards, deciding only that they may have a bit less power than they would while upright.
So today -- in life -- I had a reversal of fortune. Usually, a few hours later, I will notice there is a lot more good about such changes than I first see. There's the grief thing, the anger thing, the sadness thing. Those emotions flit about the surface, and must be expressed. Beneath, I am beginning to connect with Faith. Not hope. Faith. Deepak Chopra once told me that to hope infers uncertainty, and one must know that the desired outcome exists.
The Dreamer's cards arrive, and in my pensive state, they are just perfect. I shuffle and shuffle, and listening to the rustling, they take me back to when I was a little girl, and my grandmother was shuffling her playing cards. I watched her play canasta with her sisters long long ago. They were all Peruvian, and would chatter in Spanish. As her sisters passed, my grandmother had other friends to play cards with. Now it was gin and gin rummy. She taught me all three games. I retain -- loosely -- the rules for gin, which I play with my sons.
She was ruthless at the card table. I loved her enthusiasm. But when she and I were alone, and we were about to play canasta, she would shuffle and shuffle and shuffle, and I would pass under a spell. I don't remember winning and losing, I only recall that faraway place, dreamy, where she and I would play cards.
I pull a card now, randomly, from the deck. It is the Wheel of Fortune. "It is likely that the temporary chaos will bring good fortune in the long run."

Labels: Anna Franklin, Barbara Moore, books, Deepak Chopra, faith, grandmother, Heidi Darras, hope, playing cards, THE DREAM'S JOURNAL, THE SACRED CIRCLE

A fat softcover book arrived today called SEW ON. Fat, because it was padded with five patterns in the back pocket.
The woody smell of the pattern paper drew in memories of my grandmother and mother. They sewed dresses for my sister and me when we were in elementary school. Rather, they competed -- or, my mother competed. My grandmother had sewn a gorgeous triplet of burgundy velvet dresses for my mother, younger sister, and me, and my mom pointed out the nap of the velvet was pieced the wrong direction on one of the dresses. "She should know better, sewing all these years," my mother said.
I thought the dresses were beautiful. The nap laid all funny anyway when we sat down.
My grandmother sewed all her dresses. Except for her RN uniform,I don't remember her wearing anything but her Singer-sewn dresses. And there was her gold necklace she wore every day -- Our Lady of Guadalupe pictured inside, Jesus and Joseph on the other side of the circular two-sided pendant. It was mysteriously beautiful.
My mother and grandmother wanted me to sew. If they taught me, I blocked it all. I also blocked knitting and purling.
But for a short time, living three-thousand miles away, when I was pregnant for the first time, I bought what seemed like bolts of denim and a pattern for a maternity dress with a flat-pleated top and a tie that was generous enough to make it around nine-months of belly. And the skirt was full. I finished it just in time to wear it when I was seven, eight, nine months along, and the jumper was admired. A friend of one of my girlfriends -- I don't even remember who -- begged to borrow it, she would give it back.
It must be out there somewhere, that denim jumper. At times I wish I could have it to pass on to my children, and then I just wonder how many pregnant bellies it has covered in these many years. And I wonder if I have any talent, handed down from my mother and grandmother, for sewing. My sewing machine is in the garage. The pattern on page 80 of the silky scarf, halter wrap-around dress looks lovely.
But I do have my grandmother's necklace that she wore every day. She bequeathed it to me.

Labels: bequeath, grandmother, mothers, patterns, pregnant, Sew On, sewing