1.4 Million People

Today I am 60 years old, born January 20, 1949 in Muskegon, Michigan. For the first time in over a decade I am proud to be an American. My birthday present is the Inauguration of Barack Obama. Tonight I dine with my kids and friends and that is truly an exceptional present. That I lived this long astounds me! That I have lived to see this historic and wonderful opportunity happen in my country has restored my faith in America and what we are capable of. I am proud to be an American, a mother and an artist. I am going to leave pity and bitterness and grief and anger behind. I am going to move forward with love, hope and hard work. 2009 is the year of change for all of us and for me. I look forward to how I can be called to be of service and I am hopeful that now we can, yes we can, and yes we must!

How to Become a Failure in 60 Easy Years

People ask me continuously: how do you DO it Allison? How do you juggle total annihilation with complete poverty. crappy jobs with no benefits or job satisfaction, the creation of an enormous body of work no one has ever heard of, tremendous multiple talents with no outlet an STILL manage to apply for Food Stamps? I tell them it's easy, while secretly thinking how there is nothing more egotistical than false humility--but hey--that's the style these days, and well I know that the Gen-X'ers are coming up behind me, breathing down my neck,SO TO SPEAK, waiting to overtake me on the pathway toward self deprecation and phony, false humility. I can beat them at their own game! I can be more falsely humble than they are! I will stop bragging about how spiritually uplifting it was for me to live in a shelter for 4 months, how wonderful I feel having lost everything I owned, how strengthening and uplifting I find it to live "beneath my means" in two rooms with 600 books and all my clothes strewn all over boxes and the floor of my humble 2-room flat--because THIS IS CHARACTER BUILDING! And God knows, I need more character. NO. I am truly grateful for all the pain I have suffered and I let everyone know about it daily. However, I want everyone to also know that I can handle all this pain with ease, with the equanimous wisdom of a Buddha, while deep down I am seething inside with revenge fantasies and tossing and turning on my couch that DOES NOT fold out to a bed but IS a couch that I sleep on because I have no bed, thinking of ways to skewer and destroy my enemies with the power of the pen. I think of these things during those long and arduous nights, but then I just get up every day, put one foot in front of the other and GO ON with the life: you know, food stamps, welfare food, salvation army clothing, telemarketing job where I am daily humiliated, ridiculed and scorned--the list is endless about how many things I could scream about! But DO I SCREAM? OF COURSE! Does this attract me friends and win influence? NO! DO I CARE?? Who knows?? The bottom line is: I am like that flounder God got onto his hook while fishing--not dead, not alive, struggling to break free and go back to the blissful life of swimming in the ocean waiting to be eaten by something bigger. Which is better? Getting hooked and KNOWING certain death or swimming around under the illusion all is well? That's a philosophical question I'll leave to Bertrand Russell.

In the meantime I thought I would give you the 10 east steps towards total failure that I have developed over the past 60 years. I know you are going to want to digest and comprehend this in detail and I am SURE that once you see how factual and amazing this plan is, you TOO will want to implement this program in your own life, which is why I have created my WEALTH DESTROYING PROGRAM BY SIXTY plan. Ten easy steps will introduce you into the lifelong plan. With your first package you will receive the 1) 10 Easy Steps 2) The Workbook: How to Squander the Most Money in the Least Time 3) A Useless Education: YOU Can Have it Too! 3) How to Have NONE of it! Most of us are scrambling around to have it all! What a waste of time! This course will teach you how to squander time and money and end up with NONE OF IT! None of us really has it anyway! It's just an illusion. Now, you can have this incredible knowledge born out of 60 years of total failure for the LOW LOW price of $19.99 plus shipping and handling! That's it! Allison Fine's lifelong research into Being a Loser for only $19.19. And if you act now and fill out the form below you will RECEIVE NOTHING. But first we have to charge your credit card, before you get nothing in the mail, because YOU are probably NOT a loser and actually have a credit card! But in receiving nothing and getting duped into our system, you TOO will have the opportunity to experience how to LOSE IT ALL, like me.

Specially for readers of the blog, we offer the first ten steps toward complete failure in life below. Warning: THIS MAY TAKE 60 YEARS. If you can do it sooner, why, all the better! But I recommend taking the full 60 years so that you can really savor what it is to flub up, fail, squander, blow it and totally humiliate yourself in the eyes of society. Because WHO CARES ABOUT SOCIETY, RIGHT?

1) Squander vast sums of money by burning through whatever you have without thought to the future
This is not as difficult as it sounds. Simply pay no attention to your bank account and spend whatever you want, whenever you want, WHILE IT'S THERE, of course. When it's gone, I will teach you how to behave like a begging, whining, fool who got hit from behind.
2) Ignore bills you are not interested in. Why pay them? They were made by you when you were in a bad mood, right? This will drive your credit score down and no one will give you credit for a stick of gum. This will further ignite self pity and a total lack of self esteem which are the cornerstones of my 60-year plan.
3) Act cheerful when you talk about your poverty--tell them it's a spiritual pathway and you are being "tested." They will probably either believe you or believe you to be a fool, but what matter? They will certainly be grateful they are NOT you.
4) Borrow over $100,000 in student loans to complete an education in your 50's you never finished in your 20's. Pretend that age doesn't matter. Blissfully skip through a BA and an MFA with no thought for the job market or your future, because you KNOW that being a better writer is what GOD ( the Fisherman who just got you hooked from that wonderful ocean you were swimming in) wants for you! Tell people THIS IS MY DESTINY, THIS IS MY KARMA. TO WRITE GOD DAMN IT, TO WRITE! They will believe you and tell you to get a real job.
5) Gain 40 or 50 pounds so that you are no longer attractive to the opposite sex, then tell people you have been celibate for the past 165 years as a spiritual penance and as a pathway toward internal peace and world understanding. You have given up sex, really, because no one you find attractive wants you and the ones you are attracted to sneer at you as if you were a pig up for slaughter. You may actually BE a pig up for slaughter. At any event, your celibacy must be seen as a spiritual choice, not because you have low self esteem and a horrible body image. It also must be seen as something you've given up in order TO WORK ON YOURSELF.
6) Put yourself at the disposal of abusive people for long periods of time. Keep loving them as they verbally and sometimes sexually and physically abuse you over a period of years. This will drive down your self confidence and drive UP your loneliness and desperation. Loneliness and desperation are essential to TRUE FAILURE in life and that is what this MIRACLE COURSE is all about!
7) Continue on the pathway of self destructive behavior and rejection by withdrawing from life and living out of your fantasies. They're better than reality anyway!

Now--in order to keep you coming back to this blog I will reveal 8, 9 and 10 of the 10-point plan next time. In the meantime I do want to mention that drugs and alcohol have NEVER been part of my life or my life plan toward failure! The miracle of all this is that I accomplished this complete failure WITHOUT THE AID OF DRUGS, ALCOHOL OR OTHER SUBSTANCES! IN fact, I have never even used or abused prescription medication! I did this ALL ON MY OWN, and I can teach you to do it too! You don't need anti depressants or other psychotropic drugs to do this, or cocaine or alcohol or anything! Why, your own fucked up mentality will do it for you!

Until next time, I leave you in peace and wonder.
Namaste.

Dead Sheep

Dead Sheep
Short Story by Allison Fine

This morning at 8 a.m. I open my door. The floors are wood and they squeak. Outside my door stands a woman dressed to clean the stove in Poltava, Ukraine, 1875. Persecution and Russification have done its duty on her face. Around her head she has twisted an ugly, dirty printed cotton schmate some might call a scarf. She may have been shot. I think it might be a head wound. You can never be sure about these things.
-The guy next-door thinks you’re a lunatic, she says in Russian, which I just happen to understand. She has Balto-Slavic undertones. I find this amusing.
-You play your trumpet all night—the same three notes. It’s driving us crazy.
-Who’s the guy next door?
-What difference does it make? He hates you.
I look down at her feet.
-I don’t like your shoes.
She points a finger at me. Her hands are like large potatoes with claws.
-Watch out. You think being a man is a biological fact? She turns away and clomps down the stairs in her ugly, brown shoes.
I already know her history. It is bleak. And her future—well—she appears to be a friend of Stalin. Although he is dead. And I know, without a doubt, that I do not own a trumpet.
Closing the door I hear the sound of partygoers outside my window. They are just coming home at 10 o’clock in the morning. It feels like the fermentation of a Mongol invasion. So, they have obviously partied their Asses off all night, focusing primarily on their urges. I have an urge to pillage them, plunder their women and wipe my face with sheep’s blood. Instead, I open the window and shout:
-I am from the bloodline of the Kipchak Khans!
-Are you fucking crazy dim-watt?
I shut the window.
I was born a man but I am a politically correct woman.
Sheep’s blood gets on my brain and I mull it around for a while. What’s in slaughtering sheep? Where is the challenge? They have no brain, they follow along as sheet are wont to do, even when you throw them to the ground they don’t struggle. It’s only when—the knock at the door again. What’s with these people?
This time it is someone else.
-Hello. I am Kathleen H. Good.
-What does the “H” stand for?
-Horrible, she says.
-Well—there is nothing much to say for that.
-Ich mochte mich in der Freude an Ihrer Penis aalen.
-I don’t know German, I tell her.
-You got one word, didn’t you?
-Yeah.
I shut the door on ‘horrible’. If I had a trumpet I would blow it. Back to sheep. It’s only when the knife cuts the throat and the sheep smells his own blood that the fighting begins. He knows his own death. And he doesn’t want it. By then it’s too late. Then you have to drag it from the pool of blood to cleaner ground. Then you strip the skin from the back legs and hang the body up with a stick between the back legs. Then carefully, oh so carefully, you begin to strip the skin off. After getting off the skin you open the sternum. After this you begin sorting the good organs from the bad organs.
Feelings of profound empathy come over me. I could touch myself I am so bathed in the glee of self-appointed integrated worldwide compassion. It is my job to fight for the unfortunate! But sheep will be slaughtered in any event, no matter what.
I sit down at the small three-legged table an ex-girlfriend left here. She moved all her stuff out, her Old Navy shirts, the silly and weird skirts with non-matching purses from Target, the multi-layered colored things that draped themselves all over my bedroom and the bathroom for three months while she decided whether this relationship was going anywhere, whether I was going anywhere and of course the answer was no, no one was going anywhere, at least not where she imagined she wanted to go, and the aggravation of constantly shifting boredom did us both no good. We simply substituted the boredom of being alone with the boredom of being alone with someone else. It was a rotten three months and the sexual aspect of it did nothing but make me horny for the real thing.
Yes, one might conclude I suffer deeply. The suffering, predicated on memory, myth and imagination, haunts me with an unpleasant consciousness and further, a deep fear that others will see through my hypocrisy. And let us not forget, no small part of my suffering has to do with the slaughter of sheep. I know this, but I keep it to myself. Killing a sheep is an ancient rite; we must not rattle the cage with circumstantially driven stories about animal rights. Animals have no rights. Humans have no rights. Rights do not enter into the consideration at all. We are screaming our bloody heads off up until the moment we die and that’s it. I walk over to the 3-legged table to write this all down before I lose it. Underneath a magazine I see a tiny little newsletter sent me by mistake. Something about “incarnating your creative authority.” This makes me curious, although I guess even before I read it that it has a lot to do with psychic, spiritual and earthly resources and it will probably plunge me into grief about my inability to generate power and money and my codependence on the kindness of strangers. I always have a feeling of dread when I approach newsletters like this because I know my own comparatively stupid and weak gestalt will be no match for the self-development they attempt to fertilize. My soil is blank! I conclude and then, of course, there is a knock at the door.
But just before the knock at the door, I think about the sheep.
The graphic nature of animal slaughter is no longer part of our everyday life, but I witnessed in Romania where men (and some women) still get their meals by slaughtering, picking, pruning and digging for it. Everyday they deal with life and death and suffering—for these farmers it is simply the circle around and around again. Man has Dominion over the animals; we know this. The power of this Dominion demands that we sacrifice ourselves at the altar of Fear and what greater fear do we have but fear of death? And so, we give it to others—this death; the blood of the lamb. We can go into the Paschal lamb later. When we drink the sheep’s blood we are drinking the blood of fear.
When you pull the intestines out of the sheep hanging by its sternum, one must be very careful so as not to rupture the organ and create a nasty smell. This is a smell no one wishes to remember. It stays on your clothes and your skin and your hair for a very long time. It is not the sort of smell that brings women over to you with desire. Sheep intestines and eros—not a good mix. At this point in time one must remind oneself that this collection of skinned organs, drained of blood, was once an animal because it does appear very much like a thing.
Are the sheep conscious of their slaughter?
This is the question I cannot answer, but since I have observed their panic at the smell of their own blood, I would conclude that at some level they know the end is near, and yet they still hope for freedom. Perhaps ‘hope’ is too complex an emotion to attribute to sheep, but I have a tendency to anthropomorphize anyway, so why not sheep? Even my beloved 3-legged table throws out quips on occasion. For instance;
-You’ll never get that published! was a quip I heard from the table yesterday.
I had been writing a sheep poem:
You rebelled with a positive snap
Your neck was broken
I truly missed you
The bleats unspoken.

This will be a quatrain and I haven’t finished it yet so the table doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Even my table has gender.
Now onto the knock at the door.
A beautiful man who looks like a famous artist stands at the door. Or perhaps he is a sheep killer with attractive silver hair in a cashmere blend topcoat.
-There’s good news and bad news, he says.
-Yes?
-The bad news is that there is seven years of famine ahead.
-No sheep?
-No shit. The good news is that there is no good news.
-That’s not good news.
-I know. I’m sorry.
I feel like inviting the man in for nothing else than he is the worst joke teller in the universe. But I am prohibited from practicing compassion. I’d rather kill sheep. I slam the door on him and a piece of his cashmere blend coat gets caught in the door. I reach for a pair of scissors on the 3-legged table and cut off the piece as a souvenir for his bad joke. I know I am a sheep killer but it does me no good to reflect on it. There is no solid truth to life; in fact we are all wading in a pool of vague ideas that have labels on them. Labels like: hurt, simple, truth, vanity, virginal, crotchety, bloated—these kinds of visual images make a gallery of distortion I revel in. I go to my table to write this down but comes—you guessed it—a knock at my door. I open it and there stands the man in the cashmere coat.
-You cut my coat, he says.
-Yes, but better I cut your coat than cut your throat, I tell him.
-I don’t find that reassuring.
-I don’t think you do. But have you ever witnessed the slaughter of a sheep?
-Look, he says, his hands held palm up as if in supplication, could we start over?
From where I stand there is no middle and no end, so how can there be a start?
-Where’s the piece of my coat? He is getting agitated, I can tell, and I see the ragged edge of his coat where I cut the piece off. The imperfection of it reminds me of—what? The truth? Perhaps not. Rattling the cage, I must ask him—are there legal rights for animals?
-I’ve written a book about it, he tells me, walking into my place uninvited. People deal with property as things, even when this property is alive.
-I’ve been dealt with that way, I tell him and hand him the ragged square of cashmere I cut from his coat.
-Thank you, he says. Things--things possess passion! Even rocks. Their emotional content is just—slower than ours.
-Well, how can you frame that? I mean, a rock can’t make an oral argument for itself.
-Of course. At least, not an argument we can understand. But some people say they can hold certain rocks and experience the consciousness and thoughts of those who held those rocks before them—many thousands of years before.
-I don’t believe that, I tell him.
-You haven’t got much hope, he says. The Stones cry out! Did you know that trees talk? Well they do. They talk to each other, and they'll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, people don't listen. They never learned to listen to each other, for God’s sake—so, I don't I suppose they'll listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees; sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about sex. I have a giant fir tree outside my apartment, at the back, and we talk all the time—she tells me how hard a day she’s having, or how good or whatever, and sometimes she just tells me I’m beautiful.
-Do trees have gender?
-Who cares! He explodes, there’s really nothing you can say in universal Western concepts that is going to make a lot of sense! So you can forget about trying, except I do. I keep on trying. What’s the matter with me?
-You want some water? I ask.
-No. I’ve had enough, he tells me, I should be going. Anthropologists would probably call this “animism”, a view that is accepted by a great many people in the field of religion. We are put in a cultural evolutionary framework, and then we are supposed to move from animism to some great abstract conception of one god! Lord, we are stupid! Science describes things at a level of abstraction; by leaving out of account a whole range of properties that these so-called things have, such as color, beauty, consciousness—whatever! This is for many a very useful procedure, but it does not follow that the properties with which science concerns itself are more real than those it leaves out. Rocks talk! Yes, I am aware that this is an audacious claim made in the context of late modernity (or even post-modernity, if you insist) and in the context of a world indelibly marked by the accomplishments of modernism—whatever--modern shit is what I’d call it!
He suddenly stops.
-I’m done.
-Go on, I say.
-I can’t he tells me, and neither can you.
-Probably not. How will you repair that coat?
-I’m working on it. Could I have a glass of water before I go?
-Sure. I get him a glass of water. As he drinks it I can see the clearness of the water in the glass reflecting a rainbow of colors from the sun coming through my window. Prussian Blue, Alizarin Crimson—the artists pallet of color coming through the tedious window looking out onto the street where now some of my neighbors sit on their stoops smoking, chatting, looking colorless and vague as they stare out into the street. I am staring at the man.
-Your name?
-What matter? He tells me. I am going. I don’t think, to your credit, that you really are conscious of what you’re doing so I don’t blame you for thoughtless acts. He leaves, the square of cashmere in one hand, his body moving with some kind of grace toward the door, the hallway, down the stairs, out into the day which has turned cooler and driven the stoop sitters inside, except for a few of the die-hards and the regulars.
Is sheep murder a thoughtless act? I write in the notebook on my 3-legged table. People who slaughter things are not always wrong are they? Inside of this thought nestles another thought but I am not grasping it—elusive, small, vague; it threatens to incarnate itself as frustration if I don’t grab it, but I cannot. Some thoughts remain beautiful, fabricated or misrepresented, or not even thoughts at all.
There is a knock at the door but I do not answer it.
The sky is darkening. I see the shoes of the person underneath the door in the space between the door and the floor. I can hear the pause, the shuffle and the clearing of the throat of whoever stands there. Perhaps it is the Russian woman or Miss Horrible or someone else, but I don’t care.
An entire day has passed.

The Falling Away of Cynicism

New Year's Day 2009

The Falling Away of Cynicism

We start our lives quite hopeful and as the result of a series of betrayals (discovering our parents lied about Santa Claus and the gradual and inexorable disintegration of the archetypal all-powerful Mother and Father) ) we become increasingly more cynical. Studies have shown that most children give up their trust and become cynical, humorous skeptics so to speak, and more bleak (it's a one-way route, a lot of effort with very little reward--more on that later) between the ages of 8 and 11! Shocking--a child of 8 or 9 or 10 or so can actually start having a jaundiced and skeptical lens on life--looking at things from the smirk--what I call the "enlightened smirk!" The dangers of not being cynical is that you could end up being taken for a ride, but is that the worst thing that could possibly happen? I guess it does depend on where the ride goes--if you lose your life, then idealism and trust have definitely betrayed you, or perhaps you were simply ignorant. Many people lose many things out of misguided hope and trust--the current housing crisis is a monumental example of how a few, nasty, cynical and manipulative greedy people could hoodwink a huge segment of the population into thinking that the "american dream" could be had for nothing! "There's nothing for nothing," a New Jersey friend of mine once said. You don't have to be born in New Jersey to understand that mentality inside the context of modern cultural and social structures. And more than likely, it was true way back in Stonehenge A.D. 42 where local chiefs and various tribal factions bartered goods and skills for women. In those days women were the commodity of sacrifice because beautiful ones were hard to find and there were a lot of randy men. And hey--what's changed? On line dating sites make it plain that if you don't post your picture you aren't as likely to receive as many replies to your biography and therefore we have all manner of women in all shapes, ages and sizes scrambling around trying to post a picture that flatters them and makes their waist to hip ratio or the facial features show them as "viable" (Viable meaning: Beautiful, Young and Potentially Procreative) even when they don't want to be or can't be! On the other hand, on the MySpace site of a well-known actor there are hundreds of posts from gorgeous young women showing themselves in seductive but tasteful poses, I imagine endeavoring to get the attention of this man who may not even maintain the site! Does he endorse their desperate attempts to get his attention and/or approval, or is this just the fantasy of a 17 year old who maintains the site? We'll never know. In either case we have women putting themselves out on the marketplace for people to peruse in the hopes that the physical attributes they possess will get them what they think they want? And what is THAT, pray tell? That's the subject of another blog

Where are we going with this? We move from cynicism to sexism but I suppose it is all one ball of wax, really. In my own biography, it is clear that I saw through most of the lies, deceptions and hypocrisies of the adults around me at a very young age, but I never gave up my hope or my idealism. This really set me apart from my peers, I can see it clearly now, although at the time I just though they were mean. Now, at the age of nearly 60, I am still embracing an idealistic hope for the evolution of humankind, for the development of love and compassion, for the possibility of the future, even if I am not here to participate. At least, not there in THIS form--the body and mind of Allison Vivian Fine. However, I can be hoodwinked, I can be shocked into sadness and grief, I can be swept away with brilliant moments of hope and vision (the week after Obama's election I was floating all over Chicago)--all of these ups and downs simply baffle the vast majority of people I know and encounter--they simply cannot understand why I don't "get it" and I, in turn, don't understand why THEY don't get it!

The effort it takes to maintain a cynical attitude is simply not in my repertoire and to be honest, I am too lazy. But also, and this is the point, I just don't know HOW to be cynical because, to my observation, it involves quite a lot of laughing at other people at their expense, making fun of them, ridiculing them and since I have been the object of cruelty and ridicule all my life, and even most recently in the work place, it would not be in my consciousness to do the same to another person. I would feel too guilty, I would know I was transgressing one of my own sacred vows, to give to others only what I believe is true and right and good--now! That said, God knows I am not perfect, and I do have ugly thoughts of revenge and anger and all sorts of things toward those who attack me or make fun of me, but thank God I know better than to act them out, although when things get really terrible I do set boundaries and defend myself through the proper channels. Still, I grapple with the same nasty stuff we all do, but underneath all that I know that anyone who is acting out cynicism, sarcasm and ridicule of others is essentially deeply hurt inside and after all the law is that what we do to others we do to ourselves! Imagine the pain one causes for oneself to be continually in judgment of everyone else! I just don't want to go there--I guess I am too dumb--it takes a certain kind of cunning intelligence to know how to hurt other people just exactly where it will do the most damage. I don't have that kind of smarts. It takes way too much effort to be sophisticated and sarcastic--I'll stay my same dumb, naive, foolish self.

The ability to embrace hope and drop cynicism is the understanding that we are ALL vulnerable beings with a soft heart and a fragile mechanism--that as Pema Chodrun writes in her book Start Where You Are: "..if we begin to surrender to ourselves--begin to drop the storyline and experience what all this messy stuff behind the storyline feels like--we begin to find bodhichitta--the tenderness that's under all that harshness. By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others--if it's done properly with proper understanding--we benefit as well." And for me, this is the essential point--the point where I drop having to see myself as a certain way or to having others see me in a certain way--I can be the naive, the silly, the laughable fool that falls into puddles and slips on bananas--I can also be the fool that carries a lantern and lights the way. But the only way I can accomplish being myself, I realize, is to accept and recognize that in my entire life of 60 years cynicism and sarcasm have never worked for me. I would rather have the experience of all those emotions coursing through me--I can always watch them come in and out without thinking they own me--because they don't. I would rather you betray me, upset me, ridicule me and hurt me, because at the end of the day the price for being hopeful is the joy of knowing life is interconnected and that we live on a compassionate planet.

Love and Peace to All in the Coming Year.

Christmas 2008

Oh dear--it really is possible for me to get sentimental and a bit sad right now. And yet it feels like a sweet sadness as I had a rather beautiful day, going out with my two daughters and their crowd of friends to The Bagel, the best Jewish restaurant in Chicago, had an enormous meal and then we all went to a movie, "Spirit" which was mediocre and half of us almost fell asleep with all that food etc, However, the fun of the day was the good spirits and the love I felt for my children (2 out of 3) and the joy I got watching them talk and joke and be themselves. The day was only marred a couple of times when the kids, in my estimation, overstepped the bounds and got too familiar with me. I guess I may have been giving the message that's OK for me to be considered a friend, but really I internally feel that somehow there ought to be some boundaries and that I want some kind of respect for me and my stage of life and my accomplishments shown. That isn't about to happen. I have allowed the boundaries to be softened and now it's too late. I regret this. A part of me wishes they worshipped me but hey--I also raised them to question authority and be irreverent! You can't have it both ways. The other sad thing is that my son is over in Dublin visiting his father and step mother. Now, it is very heartening and happy that he is seeing his father and establishing a relationship with him after 33 years of fatherly absence, the sad part is that Brendan, I am told, is not well and has some rather serious health issues that might shorten his life span. Since he and I are the same age, I am reflecting on this. It has been 34 years since I saw Brendan and all the sadness and regret and hurt I ever felt about his not wanting to marry me and be a husband and father to Ben and Sheba (who was then only 3 years old) has totally dissipated away, like a cloud moving across the sky. I see him as a moment in time, a short experience in my life many years ago when I was young and foolish, and yet the long lasting result is the beautiful little boy who is now a fascinating young man named Ben Fine: an actor with intelligence and creativity and mystery. To me, Ben is a mystery since he has avoided having much of a relationship with me since I sold the house and left Michigan in 1996. We see each other once a year, if that, and once we went 3 years without seeing each other at all. If I phone him more than once every 6 months he gets annoyed. I can't tell whether it's just because he can't stand me or it is just that he doesn't want a relationship with me. I do know that his father and stepmother extended themselves to buy him a ticket and fly him to Dublin for a visit and for this I am very very grateful. I do also know that he does not plan to make it from NYC to Chicago for my 60th birthday January 20, 2009, and that makes me sad. I guess the archetype of motherhood is all about sacrifice, loneliness and loss. At least it is so for me. That is the sad part of Christmas for me--as I get older I realize my children have very little knowledge of who I am and very little interest in finding out. I am just an object of ridicule and fun--something to poke fun at and misinterpret terribly. There is nothing I can do about this--in times like these one must accept and move on. I move on. Glad to be alive. Glad to be healthy. Glad the creative juices still flow. Glad the kids are all doing well. Glad to be in Chicago. Glad that somehow the earth will evolve with me in or out of it.

Are You jaded?

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
– e. e. cummings

Are you jaded? If you are, you are probably between the ages of 30-45--squarely falling into the "Gen-X" designation. Looking sideways at the Gen-X'er's, (my 3 children are all in that group) I find them and the adults who commune with them off-putting, defensive and ultimately destructive with their phony, false self-deprecation (there's nothing more egotistical than false humility!), their jaded, nasty cynical attitude toward life, their determination to do everything possible to disdain hope and freedom of expression, curiosity and wonderous delight in the moments of life. Delight is considered "childish" by this jaded group. We all have to be realistic--the "bubble" of denial that has burst into a river of weeping and wailing in this country is certainly sign enough that unrealistic expectations and hopefulness based on fantasy can end in terrible disillusionment and hopelessness. On the other hand, the antidote to disillusion is not cynicism and sarcasm--it is renewed hope in the moments of life, the firm belief in values that actually last, such as relationships, love, giving, compassion and true self awareness. Whatever spiritual or religious path you are on is not the issue--the fact is whether you are even bothering to look for a path at all. It does seem to me that the Gen-X'ers have more in common with my parents who sunk all their eggs into the commerce-money-materialism basket, only to find total despair and loneliness in their later years. In order to affirm life one must affirm hope. Without hope what is the point? The next question should be: what are we hoping for? This is a question that I am in the process of answering for myself and for those of you who are reading this, my wish for you in the coming year is the courage to embark on your own private journey in this direction and find out where it leads you.

Could we find another e.e.cummings in this day and age--a poet who has the hope and open wonder and delight--a poet who could write something like this?

you shall above all things be glad and young

you shall above all things be glad and young
For if you're young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:
i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man's
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:
for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave
called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

Making Fun of the Homeless

I sat at Thanksgiving table as the disrespected (somewhat shamed, even) Elder of a group of Gen-X Thirty-Something's who, it seems, (I exclude the hosts who struck me as a sweet and kind couple with their first child) have perfected the cynical, sarcastic, edgy phony self-deprecatory manner many 30-somethings I meet seem to possess as the personnae and face they wish to present to the world. Many of them make more money in a year than I have ever made in my entire life--in fact, when I looked at my latest social security benefits mailing I realized that the most I have ever made working 40 hours a week since 1976 was $12,000 a year--that was slogging away at Borders in Tucson, doing the Retail Shuffle. This particular group, which included my two daughters and several of their long-time friends, are all hip and plugged in, the winners of their generation it seems. My own two daughters are in this club--the Club of Winners--one is going to be a Neurosurgeon and the other is starting her own salon here in Logan Square at age 36. As a mother I want to be proud of them--after all, they are doing what any mother would want for her kids--self actualizing, acheiving and being successful! On the other hand, as a spiritualized human on the planet earth, I was ashamed of them. As a dedicated lifetime Reject From the Club I found them to possess the very characteristics that made me reject the Club in the first place. They, along with the other sibling society, hip and cool and RICH gen-X'ers at the table, spent a good twenty minutes ridiculing, rapping and raging about the homeless. My youngest daughter even told a story about how homelessness has now become a "profession" and there is one woman near her apartment that gets her nails done and makes $30,000 a year begging on the street! If this is true, I doubt it, but even if it were true, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Of course, the elephant in the room was that here sat their mother and the oldest member at the table, someone who had just got out of a shelter and was mind numbingly homeless for nearly a year and half! Here sat their mother whose rent is being subsidized by the generous if resentful older daughter--the same daughter who had warned her mother on the walk to the Thanksgiving dinner: "just stop asking me for things, all right! I'm starting a business! I don't have time for your problems! I can't tell you where to go to find things or what to get and I am already helping you out with rent--I can't help you any more!" As this lecture went on I flashed on my grandmother from Russia, the always miserable and complaining white-haired Clara Ostrovsky from Russia ( a distant cousin of the playwright Alexandr Ostrovsky) who was totally co-dependent upon my father and his money and his noblesse oblige. In addition, before he died, my grandfather, who was a cockney Jewish baker from Stepney Green in London, was essentially in and out of work his whole life, and when the depression hit, my father, who was a young, brilliant man in his 20's, became the major breadwinner for the family and stayed that way his entire life. The fact that he encouraged me to become toally dependent on his money for his own purposes is what I am working on in therapy today. But here we are in the present--the failed Jewish American Princess (me) has been relegated to the position of the shamed idiot who knows nothing. But then again, in Zen we say that knowing nothing is the beginning of consciousness! However....there I sat listening to these young people laugh and make sarcastic comments about the homeless--knowing full well I was one of them! I finally broke in and informed them of an NPR story I had heard last week about a medical doctor whose entire practice is dedicated to solving and healing the medical problems of the homeless on the streets of our cities in this so-called great country of ours. It is estimated that there may be 10 million homeless people in America--(that could be a low estimate)--enough to fill a city--more people than we have in Chicago! There are many reasons for homelessness but many of the most dire cases, the ones we see on the street, are riddled with mental and physical illness, filled with shame, humiliation, hopelessness and grief, not to mention sorrow, regret, misfortune, wretchedness--doesn't the Stature of Liberty say something about this? Isn't this supposed to be the country where the poor, the meek and the humble can find safe haven? Where did we ever get that life is "of the money, by the money for the money?" Is it in "God we trust" or is it in "money we trust" because if so, we're FUCKED! As recent events in the financial world are telling us, if we put our faith in money as a source of power, we will lose every time. Every civilization has fallen because of a faulty value- structure--we are no exception. At any event, I told this story, hoping my daughter the soon-to-be-doctor and a Pisces, might activate the dormant compassion inside of her, but there was no compassionate reply. The doctor, I told them, literally takes up residence on the street in order to gain the trust of the homeless so he can treat them. Many of the street people have multiple physical and mental problems and these problems deteriorate exponentially the longer they are sleeping out in total exposure. In order to unravel the causes of homelessness, we have to unravel our own consciences. And this will take a miracle it seems.

This doctor, not a young man, literally sleeps on the street and has learned the detailed ins and outs of street culture and etiquette, which, as he describes it, is complex. The people on the street are rightfully paranoid about strangers and have certainly been abused, hurt and attacked in the course of their years on the street, and therefore are wary of people claiming to "help" them. A lot of help is condescending and humiliating--this doctor has none of this. His only sincere desire is to address first of all, their physical ailments which are numerous and multi-tiered owing to non treatment for many years, and then their mental and emotional deficits, which are also numerous and complex. He has no drive or campaign to "rehabilitate" these people in the traditional sense of social work--his one desire is to give them a sense of self esteem and perhaps a small sense of empowerment and primarily to address the physical problems that plague them. Many of these people suffer from diagnosable mental illnesses which can be treated with psychotropic medication to some success. In addition they have heart disease, diabetes, cancer, AIDS, TB, Hepatitus and other ailments that make their lives miserable and dangerous. Before any of these people can be taken off the street their most glaring physical problems need to be addressed. In some cases he said, maybe 30%, he and his crew have succeeded in medicating someone for all their illnesses, both physical and mental, and have found them subsidized housing. Once a homeless person experiences a place to live that is warm and clean, is surrounded with concerned therapists and social services that meet his/her most basic needs, it is actually possible for this person to begin to address the basic issues of existence and move forward in life. The road to homelessness is long and the road back is certainly not short or easy, but it can be done. The crushing grief and loss of self esteem can be debilitating, but with the right resources and time, a homeless person can become a person once again. I know this road because I am traveling on it.

No one could have predicted that moi, Allison Fine, the daughter of a successful contractor, from a "good family" would end up here, but I did. I was not and am not an alcoholic or a drug user--my biggest sin was going back to school in my 50's and sinking all my money and savings into an education that proved to be a practical bust. True enough, I became a much better writer, I learned how to be a director and theatrical dramaturge, I can teach and read and write like nobody's business! I just didn't count on meeting up with the wall of opposition concerning my age and stage in life. I've passed 50. I am expected to fade away with grace. I didn't, I won't. I can't. That makes me different from the people I see and often feed on the street. They've given up. They've lost hope. I look at the Barack Obama poster on my wall everyday--the one with the fabulous portrait of his face looking up with HOPE written in bug letters on the bottom--I look at this poster and allow the feeling of hope to wash over me. We will not always be a cynical, nasty, judgmental, mean-spirited culture. This kind of mentality cannot last--it eats at the fabric of our humanness and feeds on itself. Eventually it will destroy itself and the only thing that will be available to rebuild things will be pragmatic, realists with ideals, hope, and dare I say it, LOVE. Earth will never be Heaven--I think it's Hell down here, but while we are in this school room, let's try some new lessons!