tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11165688287218840772024-03-13T21:15:11.205-04:00Sarah KernochanSarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-78174438868138938722017-11-29T17:19:00.000-05:002017-11-29T17:19:48.793-05:00At Home With a Ghost - 68 (final chapter)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Ghost</td></tr>
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(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
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This memoir, a very long ghost story that is now ending, <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost.html" target="_blank">began</a> with my first phantom encounter back in 1974. The year before, I’d won an Oscar for best documentary feature, but recognized that female directors seeking a spot in the film business faced high walls and deep moats. Turning about, I parlayed my five minutes of fame into a recording contract as a singer-songwriter with RCA, which issued my first two albums. Working late into the nights, I spun my music on a gleaming mahogany grand piano that had belonged to my paternal grandfather, a composer who died when I was 7. Though exhausted by the time I collapsed into bed, my sleep was troubled. I was woken by odd inexplicable noises, or someone gently stroking my hair, or impatiently yanking my toes. <br />
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I had come down with a ghost. This might as well have been an illness, as nonbelievers believed. Nowadays I don’t care what they believe, but in those latter times I hid my problem, being unsure myself if I’d made the leap from mere weirdo to psycho. <br />
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It was when <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-2.html" target="_blank">the music came</a> that I knew who my ghost was: my grandfather Marshall, the composer who wasn’t done composing. In me he had a pair of hands on his piano. In me he also had a temperamental granddaughter who hated authority and disliked taking orders, especially from ectoplasm. I was easier to coax when in a vulnerable state: asleep. In the blue hour between night and dawn, between dreaming and waking, I would receive brief bits of melody and lyrics, repeating over and over, with the silent directive <i>Remember this</i>. In the morning, before the memory dissolved, I would pick out the tune on the piano and set to work on the new song. Though I had received the music fragments from my unseen houseguest, I went my own way with them, because that was the only arrangement I would accept. <br />
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Before long I put a <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-8.html" target="_blank">stop</a> to working with a collaborator, which has never suited me; I do not play well with others, alive or dead. Marshall stuck around anyway, showing an unsettling interest in my sex life and substance abuse. I received messages and warnings. His best trick was breaking glass: lightbulbs, <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/02/at-home-with-ghost-21_22.html" target="_blank">ashtrays</a>, picture <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/09/at-home-with-ghost-43.html" target="_blank">windows</a>. (That was his roguish side. I did not appreciate having to sweep up.) Although our relationship was sometimes contentious, I grew fond of Marshall, feeling I wasn’t alone, that he was always there to talk to out loud. I had a protector. <br />
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More, he opened the world wider than I thought possible. It was made up of more than meat, twigs, fire and stone, more than dirt and rain, the tangibles. The overlaid world of Spirit came into focus, as when we shift our vision to see the limpid shapes like protozoa that constantly drift by in the fluid over our eyeballs. I wanted to know, if a ghost was real, what else was true? <br />
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Until this memoir, I’ve told very few people about my adventures in the ethereal, which have continued up to the present. Readers now know of my wrestling horny <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/04/at-home-with-ghost-33.html" target="_blank">poltergeists</a> in Morocco, my jiffy <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/07/at-home-with-ghost-41.html" target="_blank">exorcism</a> in Haiti; my struggles with the demon <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-56.html" target="_blank">Harvey Weinstein</a>. They’ve followed my drug-fueled escapades with <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/02/at-home-with-ghost-57_63.html" target="_blank">Harry Nilsson</a> and <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/a-personal-remembrance-of-john-lennon.html" target="_blank">John Lennon</a>, and later, my lessons from <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-56.html" target="_blank">Harry’s ghost</a>. They’ve read about the making of my two documentaries, one about a faithless <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/07/at-home-with-ghost-61.html" target="_blank">preacher</a> on the evangelical circuit, the other about an American <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/08/at-home-with-ghost-62.html" target="_blank">dervish</a> channeling the music of a nonexistent land; and the winning of Academy Awards for both. They know about my rescue by a <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/07/at-home-with-ghost-60.html" target="_blank">mysterious dog</a> in the Andes. I have been <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-13.html" target="_blank">rebirthed</a> on a bed in a West Hollywood hotel; have received an infilling of pure Spirit while in <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/09/at-home-with-ghost-54.html" target="_blank">trance</a>; explored the mysterious act of creation and co-creation; stood awestruck in the weather of rampant divinity. <br />
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The one constant was Marshall, although he disappeared from my life for a few years while I got married and dove into motherhood. I was happy, no longer needing Grandpa’s protection and guidance. I reckoned his mission was done and he’d gone to glory. He was not a ghost in the sense of being trapped in a state neither here nor there; he was not unaware of being dead, or unable to locate the exit. He could freely come and go, and for a long time he went. I was busy on earth and he was busy in eternity. <br />
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Marshall may have been content with not being needed but he didn’t like to be forgotten. Ghosts’ backs are never turned to us. They don’t have backs, for one thing, being disembodied. When they show themselves to mortals, they conceive and project their forms from their habitat in the great consciousness that infuses everything. Since they are blended into this limitless awareness, they can be everywhere at once. Marshall had accompanied me all over the world, until he withdrew.<br />
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He chose to stage his comeback on Martha’s Vineyard.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Big House</td></tr>
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When our daughter was a toddler, we started spending summers in Marshall’s beloved beach house. The “Big House” as we called it, two stories and six bedrooms plus servants’ quarters, stood on a low bluff above the ocean. In the 80’s, my parents built the one-story “Little House” next door, which was better suited to my handicapped mother’s crutches and scooter. <br />
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My husband and I slept in the master bedroom of the Big House. Marshall’s furniture still adorned the room, and when I stood at the bureau I pictured him there, attired for a night on the town, mustache freshly trimmed and cufflinks fastened, lifting a snifter of brandy to his lips and glancing at his image in the bureau mirror in time to catch his look of surprise before he collapsed to the floor and died. I saw the glass fragments scattered in the pool of brandy. <br />
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Marshall’s <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/01/at-home-with-ghost-part-16.html" target="_blank">return</a> to form started with doors opening by themselves, lights blinking – innocuous stuff. Then one night I lugged some groceries from my car to the servants’ entrance. The flagstone path was lit by a bare bulb mounted under the eaves. Suddenly the bulb leapt from its fixture and crashed into smithereens at my feet. <br />
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“Marshall!” I yelped. Who else? A lightbulb does not unscrew itself and launch five feet. It took me an hour with a dry vac to get all the sharp pieces out of the grass where children ran barefoot. <br />
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Many summers passed, my parents’ health deteriorated, and they no longer came to the Little House. Needing money for their care, my siblings put me in charge of renting out the Big House for the whole summer to strangers. Of necessity my husband, daughter and I transferred our effects to the Little House. On two occasions Marshall <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-10.html" target="_blank">manifested</a> to the renters so I knew he wasn’t done lurking. Over at the Little House, I rather missed him. So he exploded a lightbulb there, too.<br />
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My husband woke abruptly one night to the sound of a mysterious <i>pop!</i> He got up to investigate the other rooms but found no cause of the crash. In the morning I went outside and discovered myriad glass fragments littering the ground under a lantern fixture The light had been off all night so there was no question of overheating or faulty wiring. As I fetched the dustpan, my husband, who had never been fully convinced of this ghost business, shook his head and sighed: “Marshall.” <br />
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I don’t mind the shout-outs. I do mind the clean-up. <br />
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After my parents’ death, we bought the Little House. The Big House, too expensive to maintain, was sold. Its new owner loved the property, with its widescreen panorama of Nantucket Sound. He did not like the house, with its too-small rooms, filthy attic, and schizoid plumbing. My elder brother and I cleaned out its contents before it was due to be torn down. I wondered why the old place seemed so passive about its fate. Strolling through its empty halls, I asked Marshall why he hadn’t simply scared off the buyer, as I knew he was capable of doing. Didn’t he want his cherished home to endure? <br />
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The answer came immediately, and not from Marshall but from the house itself. Here is what it had to say: <br />
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The Big House was meant for our family alone, the generations that stemmed from Marshall’s seed. The house had watched over his descendants, and they were now departing. New families with irrelevant bloodlines were at the door. With the Kernochans gone, the Big House preferred to end: its story was told, and whatever it had to teach had been taught. <br />
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It was an answer I could accept. It gave me the fortitude I needed to stand over the horrifying oblong cavity in the ground after the demolitionists had left. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Big House gone</td></tr>
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The Big House is gone, in the way of earthly things. The ocean remains, a reminder of eternity. <br />
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The new owner has built a very large house, the Bigger House; his family only uses it for a few weeks every year, so peace reigns as before. Next door, on the other side of some woods, we have remodeled the Little House so it’s a Little Big. Our daughter has become a writer, like my husband and I; sometimes we three write all day, in different rooms but with the same view of the sea. <br />
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When alone, I still talk to Marshall, particularly to thank him for our beautiful spot. I still demand out loud for him to return objects gone mysteriously missing. His portrait hangs over my piano, and his war medals and baby picture hang in the entry. He can’t complain he’s forgotten. <br />
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He knows I am ending this story, but it is not done. He made that clear a few nights ago, when he began again at the beginning. Asleep in our bedroom in New York, in the lacuna between dreaming and waking, I received a short 10-note melody. <i>Remember this</i>. I played it back again and again while I struggled to lock the sequence in memory – whole step up, then up a half step, then down a sixth, key of F, never resolves…But my memory is not what it was, and the tune kept slipping away. I forced myself to wake up so I could set it down. Stumbling past the clock reading 5:30, I went to my study and sang the tune into my iPhone, then returned to bed and sank back into sleep. <br />
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Upon waking at eight, I couldn’t recall the fragment and at first didn’t even remember that I’d received it. When I checked my phone for emails I saw it was set on audio and had recorded something. I heard my sleep-furred voice faintly dah-dah-dahing a ten-note passage. Turning on my electric keyboard, which I hadn’t touched in years, I picked out the melody. Chords were next, and soon I was working again, as I had in 1974. <br />
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I like my grandfather’s tune, and I’m pretty sure where to go with it. I should be doing other more pressing things with my time, but an assignment is an assignment, and he will not let me go. <br />
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Back in the day, I stopped Marshall from channeling any more music for the sake of my sanity. Since then, I have shed all doubt for belief. I am grateful for my ghost: he made belief unavoidable, and I’d rather not conjecture what my life would be without it. Once you accept the afterlife, belief expands past the border of death into a welcoming stratosphere that throbs with energy. I’m looking forward to passing away. The adventure will continue, and being incorporeal will be so cool. <br />
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Thus I owe my spiritual fortune to my persistent companion, my grandfather, born 1880, a pampered only child, World War I veteran, a composer of songs, a music publisher, a mischievous wit, a remote husband; and a dedicated Freemason. Embracing the mysticism of that occult brotherhood, he came to believe in eternal life, in spiritual bonds lasting beyond death. And then his own death came: Marshall Rutgers Kernochan lay near a pool of brandy and broken glass, his body deceased and his spirit rushing ecstatically toward the eternity he always believed, he <i>knew</i>, awaited. <br />
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I know he will be there, offering an aperitif, when I pass over: the moment when I leave to arrive, when goodbye overlaps hello. I will receive the glass, unbroken, from his hand. <br />
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<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-40849940126033818372017-10-22T22:10:00.001-04:002017-10-23T15:19:14.142-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 65-67<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
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Mom always found a way. <br />
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Handicapped as she was, my mother faced a life of limitations. She just didn’t recognize them. <br />
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Obstacle? What obstacle? Show her a barrier and watch her barrel through; or, recalculating, she’ll take backroads around it. I suspect she was a defiant character even before the polio. After all, she’d been an equestrian rider and had urged many a horse over gates and stone walls. <br />
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Watch her get into the ocean. If the sand isn’t too soft, she can get herself to the shore’s edge on her crutches. Another very careful step puts her in ankle-deep water. Now, in one continuous motion, she twists at the waist and flings her crutches behind her onto the beach, then turns back and falls headlong into six inches of water. You must assume her nose isn’t broken because she is already swimming away. The disease left her without the musculature to raise her arms much above her head, so her stroke is weak; she cannot kick her legs, so her progress is slow. But she does move forward without any aid, and she is weightless in the salt water. Both are bliss. <br />
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See Mommy drive – only don’t ask me to explain how she does it. She refuses even to try out a handicap-equipped car. Her method involves crossing her legs and wedging an old cookbook ripped in half under the brake. I still don’t understand how this works, but she is a speed demon; a favorite game is testing how fast she can fly through a toll plaza and still hit the toll basket with her quarter. <br />
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Observe her driving from Connecticut to the United Nations where she works as a consultant. She wears a nice suit and silk blouse from Paris, and the little car is French – <i>évidemment!</i> – with an open sunroof and no airconditioning. The heat is merciless inside the vehicle. No matter: she has her own method of staying cool. She empties a bottle of water on her head. By the time she pulls her Renault Dauphine into the UN garage her hair and suit will be dry. She has a quick bite in the car before going up to the office. Lunch is in a repurposed yogurt container, one of many littering the car floor. Most are empty, smelling of meals past; the lids are caked in mold. The Dauphine reeks of banana peels and sour ferment. I call it “the scow.” <br />
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None of her UNESCO colleagues has any idea that this lovely, gracious, heroic lady travels in a rolling landfill. They don’t see her at home, typing her teaching plans and articles outdoors on the porch – topless. They don’t know that her unusual filing system consists of sticking papers and magazines in old purses and shopping bags piled on the floor around her desk where they are easy to reach. She remembers perfectly what each bag contains. It’s a method doomed to failure; the bags multiply over time, spreading to the walls. As her papers spill into other rooms, she loses track of what she put where. <br />
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She dismisses the housekeeper/cook who had labored in vain to dust the piles of papers. To Mom, this means she is finally free of live-in help, after twenty years of dependence on servants and no privacy. She doesn’t need help. Now, to keep the floors clean, she cruises the hall in her wheelchair with two feather dusters tied to the back. Dust collects anyway. My father keeps to his study with an air purifier. <br />
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In her sixties she decides to ride a horse again. She has it all figured out. She will ride sidesaddle, which, back when she was young and her legs were strong, she sometimes did for fun. On a sidesaddle the horsewoman hooks one leg over a pommel to stabilize her weight in the center. Mom wants to lash one knee to the pommel for extra security. <br />
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Judy Richter, a friend of mine with a horse farm, happens to own a sidesaddle. She can get my mother up in the saddle, but she is worried about the horse part. What will happen to Mom once the horse starts to move? Worse, if it spooks at something, Mom could lose her balance and fall, her leg still attached to the saddle, whereupon the horse gallops off, dragging my helpless mother around the ring like Ben-Hur. <br />
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Nonetheless, my compassionate friend is willing to try and fulfill Mom’s dream. To ensure a slow, calm ride Judy chooses her most-trusted, chillest horse and gives it a double dose of tranquilizer before Mom arrives. (Owners often tranquilize their steeds at horse shows so that crowds and sudden noises won’t faze the animals.) <br />
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The saddle goes on; the grooms lift my mother onto it. The horse stands passively, lids half-closed, as alert as a junkie. One back hoof is cocked, a sign that the horse is dozing. The men tie Mom’s leg to the pommel. Judy unclips the lead rope from the horse’s bridle and steps away. My mother straightens her back proudly, testing her stability, then takes the reins, clucking to the horse to move forward. <br />
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The horse wakes from its reverie. It doesn’t move. Judy gives it a light whack on its backside. The horse sinks to its front knees. We suddenly realize that it is preparing to roll over on its side with my mother tied on top. The thoroughly stoned animal has decided it would be more comfortable nodding out on the ground, unconscious of the rider crushed under its tonnage. <br />
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Judy frantically grabs the bridle and jerks the horse’s head up, hollering. Somewhere in its drugged-out brain the horse remembers to obey the smaller animal. It scrambles back on its feet; Mom lurches off balance and is caught by the grooms, who unlash her knee and pull her off. <br />
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Mom’s dream will stay dreamt, never to be realized. She of course wants to try again. Nobody offers to help. <br />
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She yearns, too, for her own helicopter to park in the backyard; too expensive, alas. Instead she waits for that rotary one-man flying machine – a sort of stool with a pinwheel – that futurists keep saying is just around the corner and soon everyone will have one. Mom will be the first to lift off. Because independence is the great thing. Dependence is the bitter end. <br />
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In her seventies she is diagnosed with a brain aneurism. The surgery will be precarious; she may not survive it. In case the worst happens, Mom and Dad say a tearful goodbye in her hospital room the night before the operation. They watch a beautiful sunset bloom outside the window. The color fades slowly; in silence they share this exquisite day’s end, the last of life’s wonders she may ever see. <br />
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My father shivers. The window, as usual, is open. Mom must perpetually have air, even the very cold air that flows into the room on this late autumn evening. There’s no use in anyone shutting the window; she will only throw it open again. The air, the sky, the weather – they are breath and freedom. <br />
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Dad leaves so I can go in; she wants to see me privately. It’s my turn to stand in the chilly breeze while she exacts a promise from me. She has assigned her medical proxy not to my father but to me. She doesn’t trust anyone else to keep this vow: that, if she survives but is incapacitated in some way, even if she cannot speak but can indicate her desires, I will make sure her will is done and no one else’s. She must have her way in everything that concerns her freedom. If that choice is taken away, then life as she values it is over. I must keep everyone, doctors and family, at bay while she goes her own way. <br />
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I promise to protect her independence. <br />
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The next morning, after reviewing more tests, the doctors decide the operation is too risky after all. They surmise the aneurysm has been there a long time; perhaps it will never burst. Since she has been living with it unawares until now, she might as well continue, if she can somehow manage to ignore it. <br />
<br />
What aneurysm? Mom has no problem forging ahead heedlessly. She drives herself home. <br />
<br />
In their seventies, my parents move to a retirement village. Mom installs an endless-current spa pool in their bedroom so she can continue swimming. It’s her lifeline, to keep the circulation flowing in her legs. My parents sleep in a cloud of chlorine, somewhat dissipated by the draft from the window Mom has insistently left open. She now has a snazzy red scooter to replace the wheelchair, and speeds contentedly around the building complex. Once in a while the battery wears out and she must be rescued. <br />
<br />
As they enter their eighth decade, Dad starts mentioning that Mom is crazy. He says it good-naturedly, with a helpless shrug, and we the children nod in agreement. We take it to mean she’s eccentric and stubborn; she’s that brand of crazy. This is old news. When we were growing up, Dad would quite often shoot us a secret look behind Mom’s back and point to his head, twirling his finger. He decided long ago in their marriage not to take her seriously, a source of considerable hurt to her because it isolates her. He refuses to engage; instead he tunes her out, stepping aside to let her have her nutty way. <br />
<br />
However, it now becomes apparent that the kind of crazy he means is something new. She doesn’t remember what you just told her. In fact, she’s indignant that no one saw fit to inform her of these things. How dare we claim otherwise? She would remember if we’d told her and she knows perfectly well that we didn’t. We tell our father everything, but not her. She feels ignored. Everyone is acting strange. <br />
<br />
She’s tired, needs increasingly long naps. But the thrum of the pool’s self-cleaning mechanism in the bedroom keeps her awake. She takes to sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Her scooter rolls over bits of food on the carpet, the sink overflows with dirty dishes; she won’t let the housekeeping staff in anymore. She struggles to write the same article for the UNESCO magazine over and over, in a study piled with papers in plastic bags and purses. She collects her urine in repurposed yogurt containers because it’s too much trouble to transfer herself from scooter to toilet. The containers sometimes spill; often they’re shoved under the furniture and forgotten. The apartment now smells of chlorine and pee. <br />
<br />
One winter night, after my father retires to the bed in the pool room, Mom goes to sleep in her usual spot, under a blanket on the sofa. Outside, a huge blizzard rages. Though she has left the windows closed for once, there is plenty of fresh air in the room because she forgot to close the front door and now the frigid wind has blown it wide. Snow hisses in, creating drifts on the carpet. Early the next morning, a maintenance man shoveling the walkway notices the open door. The temperature is freezing inside. He finds my mother fast asleep on the sofa with one leg sticking out from under the blanket. The leg is blue. When he touches it, the flesh is cold as ice. <br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 66<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3UIVbl0tGE1wihydjrUPlgETS5lSMUylC9NVtwjIuZTSRmMuMuNOciJT_xmdGAMm_Pu1lq_asfSs-wdtVTg5sBxrxj2zn0wHDohk73We0TQ1H_2YhMhWfrBkHveED_CCktFAuRPKq0de/s1600/Mom+AK+last+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="502" data-original-width="466" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3UIVbl0tGE1wihydjrUPlgETS5lSMUylC9NVtwjIuZTSRmMuMuNOciJT_xmdGAMm_Pu1lq_asfSs-wdtVTg5sBxrxj2zn0wHDohk73We0TQ1H_2YhMhWfrBkHveED_CCktFAuRPKq0de/s400/Mom+AK+last+pic.jpg" width="371" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom: here but not here</td></tr>
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<br />
My mother cannot understand why all these hospital doctors are so alarmed. The leg she had exposed to the winter wind and snow while she slept seems fine to her. Since contracting polio when she was twenty-four, she doesn’t have much sensation in her legs anyway. She glances suspiciously at the director of the retirement village – what is that dragon-woman doing here in her hospital room? <br />
<br />
The doctors explain that Mom’s leg had been frozen; they were able to thaw the leg, but she just missed requiring amputation. Oh pooh, she says, just release me. <br />
<br />
The director tells her that a community van with a wheelchair will come soon to pick her up and take her back to the village. My father hurries to the apartment, taking advantage of Mom’s absence to let the housekeepers in. They clean the place as best they can. But my mother never shows up. <br />
<br />
Instead, the van delivers her to the retirement facility’s dementia unit. Deaf to her objections, an aide steers her wheelchair inside; the door clanks shut behind her and locks. <br />
<br />
Hysterical, she calls my father from her cell phone, but he is unable to bring her home. The director has blocked him. Though Dad is a law professor, when he originally signed the contract with the retirement village corporation he did not notice the clause that states they have the power to transfer clients into Alzheimer’s care whenever they see fit; the client has no part of that decision, and no recourse. The client has dementia, after all, and so cannot evaluate her state. Thus the managing director makes that call. And clearly my mother has crossed the line. Why, just recently a resident complained that my mother had peed on her scooter right in front of him, while they were talking, and then laughed it off. She’s unruly, contentious, disdains social norms. And now, with Mom’s latest, throwing a door open to a blizzard in her living room, clearly she is a danger to herself. It’s the director’s legal right to lock Mom up where she can’t wander at will. <br />
<br />
<i>At will</i>. They have robbed her of it. She calls me in New York, weeping: why is she here? What has she done? She has no memory of her offense, and when I explain their position, she forgets it ten minutes later and I must answer her question all over again. She begs and pleads in a heartbreaking manner: please, get her out, please. They are controlling her. <br />
<br />
Be patient, I say, it won’t be long. But you mustn’t make things worse for yourself. Don’t make a fuss, do whatever they say for a couple of days while we work on getting you home. <br />
<br />
Nevertheless, even after Dad offers to hire round-the-clock supervisory care to keep Mom in line, the director still refuses to turn his wife over to him. Weeks go by as his attorney wrangles with the director, threatening a lawsuit and adverse publicity. At last an agreement is reached: Mom may go free if my parents pack up and leave the community immediately. <br />
<br />
My father moves into a hotel room. My four siblings and I convene there for the crisis. My oldest brother gets busy scoping out other retirement places. Meanwhile, Mom is released. She emerges from the hell of airless incarceration, of having her wishes ignored, of being treated like a recalcitrant child. Where before she was eccentric and forgetful, in just a short time they have made her a lunatic. Her rage is scorching, it spatters on everyone in her vicinity. Out of my way! she snaps. Arms pumping on her chair wheels, racing so fast across the hotel lobby we have to chase after her, she flees us all. She doesn’t know where she’s going except <i>away</i> from everybody. She needs no help! Leave her alone! Where is the god damned pool? She wants to swim! <br />
<br />
At last my parents are accepted in a new facility in Boston. The directors there are contrastingly nice. In spite of Mom’s dementia, they will allow her to stay in the assisted-living building with my dad as long as my parents like – to the end of their days, if need be. We hire caregivers for 24-hour shifts. My brother supervises the combining of three units into a spacious apartment, complete with a desk area for my mother to pile up her plastic bags and continue her work. <br />
<br />
But she does not calm down. Her fury only increases at finding herself in a totally unfamiliar place. She hates the caregivers – they infuriate her by touching her, cooing, wanting to help her. She does not need help, even though she does. She bites anyone who tries to lift her into the shower. There is a local pool, but she refuses to let people help her in. She loses more muscle mass without that vital exercise. The scooter sits abandoned and she is now confined solely to the wheelchair, except at bedtime when the caregivers endure her yelling and thrashing as they stuff her into a hydraulic sling to lift her into bed. <br />
<br />
Nailed on a cross of anger and depression, a thorned crown of confusion encircling her head, Mom fights on for freedom. Her physician prescribes anti-depressants and a strong anti-psychotic. She quiets down, stops resisting. Steeped in a pharmaceutical miasma, her memory shrivels further. When she speaks, she becomes lost in mid-sentence. When we visit, she tries to keep up her end of a chat with a few stock phrases, the most common being: “Not particularly.” <br />
<br />
But she always recognizes us, her children, and her face lights up when we drop by. And every time, at the sight of her, I drown in guilt. <br />
<br />
I did not keep my promise to her. Her existence has become everything she most dreaded: she is fettered and caged, at the mercy of her jailors, and her will is broken. Ten years before, I had vowed to ensure she could rule her life to the end, that her choices would prevail and her wants be heard and honored. But when the moment came to defend her, I found it impossible. When we made the pact, we had both imagined a stroke or some physical impairment might subject her to the will of others. We had not envisioned a mental catastrophe like dementia: that her mind might betray her, and when she insisted on her own way it would be the wrong way. That she would drive, as she did once, on a one-lane high-speed thruway transition road and suddenly come to a dead stop, pausing to figure out if she’d taken the right turn, ignoring all the cars screeching behind her. That her will, the very core of her personality, would become her enemy. <br />
<br />
Dad parks her wheelchair in front of the TV most of the day, tuned to the Animal Planet channel. He has no idea if she’s interested in the doings onscreen because the drugs make her unintelligible. In any case, if she doesn’t like watching puppies and crocodiles and killer sharks, she cannot change the channel, turn away or leave the room of her own accord. Every four hours, the next meal is delivered and she is rolled to the dining table. Her arthritic hands are so gnarled she can’t hold a fork. She is fed by helpers, sometimes by me if I’m visiting. <br />
<br />
She is aware, even through her stupor, that she is bored to death. <br />
<br />
I am unaware, as I view her with sorrow and self-recrimination, that the day will arrive when I will get another chance to make good on my promise: to free her. <br />
<br />
<br />
Chapter 67<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
My father rarely leaves my mother’s side, planted in his recliner next to her wheelchair and reading the newspaper while she faces the TV. This would be a remarkable display of devotion except he doesn’t talk to her. He assumes, as others do, that her mind has retreated into gray mists and she is incapable of real conversation. <br />
<br />
It’s true she cannot initiate a conversation, and if someone questions her, the response sputters into incoherence after a few words and she gives up, marooned in uncertainty. Thus she has little interchange except for hovering caretakers, strangers who want to know if she is ready for a snack into which her meds have been crushed, and when she replies her two default words “Not particularly,” they do whatever they want with her anyway. Being inert is one thing, but being ignored must carve a deep wound in her spirit, or so I imagine. <br />
<br />
I’m told that Alzheimer’s patients sometimes respond to music from their youth. I buy a <i>Best of Fred Astaire</i> CD. She must have been a teenager when his star rose. I play “Cheek To Cheek,” “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “Night and Day”…and suddenly she’s beaming with happiness, swaying her head. What else does she remember from those years? Excited, I drag out the scrapbook my grandmother kept for her, photos and mementos from babyhood to wedding.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DZRdsmjMFrrPSfD_5wwRjLNgnWlK0JGpb3K6qvD-DD-Z77qj_GaIio6r3fYHAQsHfNZbaPK3kYUjKKqM_Pv-bq8bhHtU3vHwoHHNaLzy5dXAH4FLyMqvt3EkYpgh1jXhQd5kOHPrtQ-h/s1600/AK+Mom+%2526+sis+Lake+Forest+snow+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1279" data-original-width="1600" height="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DZRdsmjMFrrPSfD_5wwRjLNgnWlK0JGpb3K6qvD-DD-Z77qj_GaIio6r3fYHAQsHfNZbaPK3kYUjKKqM_Pv-bq8bhHtU3vHwoHHNaLzy5dXAH4FLyMqvt3EkYpgh1jXhQd5kOHPrtQ-h/s640/AK+Mom+%2526+sis+Lake+Forest+snow+copy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the scrapbook: Mom and younger sister in Lake Forest with governess</td></tr>
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<br />
As I point to pictures of her childhood home in Lake Forest, Illinois, she becomes animated. “Yes…yes…” she flicks her tongue between her teeth, searching for more words. Photos of horses, report cards, debutante balls, trips to Europe. Everywhere she’s on the move: riding, diving, skiing, running with a basketball. <br />
<br />
The next time I visit from New York, she has forgotten everything, so I can open the scrapbook and she will have the pleasure of recognition all over again. One day we come upon the letter from her headmistress commending her for her recitation of Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Chambered Nautilus.” I’ve never read the poem; out of curiosity, I find it on the Internet. Reading the lines to her, when I reach “…<i>Til thou at length are free/ Leaving thine outgrown shell</i>…” I fight back tears as I realize the poem is about the soul leaving the shell of the physical world for the heavenly one. And then I look up to see that Mom’s lips are moving. She has been shaping the words as I was reading, and although I have stopped, she silently finishes the line: “…<i>By life’s unresting sea</i>.” <br />
<br />
So she remembers this long-ago poem. She is reachable, more than I knew. <br />
<br />
The scrapbook becomes a portal, a passage to communication. Once she is on sure territory, that small island in the brain where her youthful past still lives, she regains more words and longer thoughts. Even fragments of French surface, because she learned it in her childhood. We can hold a conversation now, though I must be careful to ask short, simple questions requiring only one- or two-word answers. <br />
<br />
My parents have only been in the new retirement home for a couple of years when I get a call from their nurse-practitioner, who reports that for the past three days Mom has refused both food and liquids. She has stubbornly locked her jaw. Short of prying her mouth open by force or inserting a food peg, there is nothing to prevent my mother from starving to death. Since I hold the medical proxy, I must decide whether to take steps to prolong her life or to request hospice care. <br />
<br />
Hospice, I reply without hesitation. Back when Mom’s mind was clear, she had been unequivocal: if she is dying, she wants no interference to keep her alive. But now that her mind is confused, does she really understand that her choice not to eat will result in her death? Does she intend it? I will have to find out somehow. <br />
<br />
When I arrive in Boston, I find the hospice nurses setting up camp in Mom’s bedroom. My father is freaking out: “She’s committing suicide!” He can’t stop her; she has turned the tables and holds all the power now. Propped up in her hospital bed, Mom ignores him, her mouth clamped shut, treating him to her silence. Since she refused to ingest her meds, it seems her anger has returned. Her mind, too, is sharper. <br />
<br />
When she spots me, she smiles. Everyone leaves the room so we can visit. I sit on the bed beside her and begin by chatting about family news, mentioning all five of her children’s names. She still knows us all and takes happiness from hearing about our lives. “Really?” she says, and, “I didn’t know that.” Her tongue taps around her dry mouth searching for moisture; after four days without water, there is not enough saliva anymore. She allows me to moisten the inside of her cheeks with a lemon-flavored swab the nurses provide me. There’s a cup of applesauce at her bedside. They still urge her to eat now and then, in case her resolve has weakened or she has forgotten why she’s resisting in the first place. <br />
<br />
“Would you like some applesauce?” I ask. She shakes her head. <br />
<br />
“I have to ask now, do you want to live?” <br />
<br />
“Not particularly.” This phrase is meaningless; it’s what she always says when she doesn’t know what to say. Her eyes travel over me sadly. Maybe, now that I’m in her presence, she realizes she’ll be leaving her children behind. Maybe she will change course. <br />
<br />
“You know, this is what your mother did. She made herself die on purpose.” <br />
<br />
“She did?” This event belongs to the part of the past Mom doesn’t remember. Her elderly mother had a series of strokes. After each, she was confined to bed. Every time, by grit and persistence, Grandma recovered enough to go for walks. The last stroke, however, incapacitated her to the extent that she would never regain her feet. <br />
<br />
“Yes, when she knew she’d never walk again. So she started to cough – deliberately. She knew if she kept it up she’d make herself sick. Day and night she coughed, until she got pneumonia, went to the hospital and died.” <br />
<br />
“Well!” says my mother. “<i>That</i> worked out well.” <br />
<br />
I’m staggered by this remark: a cogent sentence, complete with humor, as if the dementia has briefly lifted. My mother is back. I must press on, before the fog returns. <br />
<br />
“Would you like some water?” <br />
<br />
She shakes her head, pressing her lips together. <br />
<br />
“Let me understand. You won’t eat, you won’t drink. You mean to die. You’re not in charge of your life, so you want to be in charge of your death.” <br />
<br />
“<i>Right!</i>” She utters this one word with such venom that I know without a doubt she understands her choice and its consequences perfectly; she’s fed up with existing in a world that has piled up impediments until she is choked by life’s limitations. And now she is setting her jaw against further indignity. <br />
<br />
Mom always finds a way. This time it is the way out. <br />
<br />
“Then I’m going to let you do it.” I stand up to leave. “I’ll call everyone to come say goodbye to you.” <br />
<br />
On the morning of the fifth day of her fast, when my siblings are due to arrive, Mom shocks the caregivers by uttering a full sentence requesting a shower. This one time she doesn’t fight them off, and when they dress her up afterwards she submits eagerly. By the time my sister and three brothers walk in, she is sitting up in bed, bright-eyed and overjoyed to see us all arrayed before her. She does not seem at all like a person who is busy dying. She even consents to drink a little juice when my elder brother holds the straw to her mouth. <br />
<br />
In fact, my siblings wonder if this has been a false alarm and Mom is making a comeback. They want to encourage her. My sister brilliantly proposes throwing Mom a party. Mom has no awareness of dates so we’ll pretend it’s her 87th birthday, even though it’s still two days off. A cake is hastily procured and, when our mother wakes from her afternoon nap, it is to our happy faces and candles alight in chocolate frosting. “Happy birthday, dear Mom, happy birthday to you!” <br />
<br />
She says little, but her delight glows. She sips more liquid, as well as, astoundingly, a small bite of cake. My brothers and sister each spend tender moments with her, and then one by one they disperse. They hope that their goodbyes are premature, that Mom has rallied. <br />
<br />
But when the last of her children has left, she closes her eyes, and her mouth clamps shut, never to receive sustenance again. <br />
<br />
I stay on, maintaining my vigil. The nurses give us privacy, instructing me how to administer morphine. Another day wears on. She drifts in and out of consciousness, and it is difficult to tell anymore if she is awake or not because she is so quiet. Sometimes she groans, whether from pain or a bad dream; sometimes her eyelids lift. I play the Fred Astaire CD again and again, alternating with <i>The Messiah</i>, which she also loved: sublime songs of birth and death and resurrection. <br />
<br />
I believe that awareness is not dependent on the senses, and when people seem comatose they can still absorb thought and emotions from another person. They occupy a plane where communication is intuitive and vibrational. Whether I am wrong or right, whether she can hear me or not, I talk to my mother, or read to her from children’s books whose sentences are short and simple. Dad wanders in now and then, at a loss for words, and kisses her forehead. <br />
<br />
On the sixth day, the doctor reports her vital signs are still quite good. She is still lashed to the saddle, holding firmly to life. After a week, I am yearning for my family; I decide to drive home the next morning, grab a quick overnight in New York before returning to her bedside. But, for the present, another day stretches before us. The nurses keep shutting the window against the January air; I keep opening it, on her behalf. As I turn back to the figure stretched out on the bed, I muse what a terrible burden her body has been for most of her existence, and now how heavy it must seem, and hard to slough. <br />
<br />
I wish she could feel weightlessly light, as in salt water, and swim to freedom. An idea comes to me. I decide impulsively to try a guided meditation. “Mom, let’s go somewhere away from this bed.” No response, but no matter: I’m going to wing it. <br />
<br />
I begin, “You’re on a beach, standing at the edge of the ocean. The water is clear and calm and warmed by the sun. You can feel the sand between your toes; the little waves tickle your ankles. You’re ready to swim. You wade out and let yourself slip into the water. It feels like silk on your skin and it holds you up because it’s salty. You make circling motions with your arms, pulling yourself slowly through the water. You start kicking your legs to go faster, because your body is whole and strong and you can swim as far and as long as you like, farther and farther from land. You’re no longer stuck in this room, you are completely free, you belong to the water and you are safe because the water will always hold you up.” <br />
<br />
I pause, hearing her covers rustle. Her shoulders move a little. Then her hands shift on the sheet. The movement is slight but she is plainly tracing circles with her arms. The moment doesn’t last long, but I am certain now that she’s with me, gliding through water. <br />
<br />
After she swims for a while, I take her riding. She walks into a wildflower meadow, where a bay horse is waiting. He’s so gentle that she doesn’t need a saddle or bridle. She finds a rock to stand on and pulls herself onto his back, which is broad and comfortable, and his coppery coat shines in the sunlight. She nudges his flank with her bare heels and he breaks into a lope as easy and restful as a porch swing. She can hold onto his black mane and he’ll go wherever she wishes. <br />
<br />
My father knocks on the door; lunch is delivered in the next room. <br />
<br />
After eating, I return to Mom’s bedside and we go on another trip. In this one she learns to fly. This requires no strength; she only has to will it. If she wants to lift off, she can, into the fresh air, to soar and swoop, and travel wherever she wishes. <br />
<br />
Later, following dinner with Dad, there’s time to take one more trip with her. <br />
<br />
It’s summer. She’s standing in grass, looking up at wispy clouds in the sky. One of them detaches from the rest and floats down to where she is. She lies down in its cool, dense vapor, and it bears her into the sky. “This time,” I caution her, “it’s important that you let go of your will and let the cloud have its way.” <br />
<br />
The cloud carries her over all the splendors of the world below. At last she comes to Lake Forest and the house where she grew up. The cloud floats her to the front door. When she opens the door, stepping into the hall, she moves through the house and all the rooms she remembers. She can see her mother and father sitting in the parlor, the cook in the kitchen, and climbing the stairs she walks down the hall; the wood floor is so long and polished so smooth she used to have rollerskate races with her sister and two brothers up and down its length. <br />
<br />
She ends up in the nursery where the governess is bustling around. “In the nursery is a fireplace. You float up the chimney, and you pop out on the roof, and there your cloud is waiting. Lie down and let it lift you back into the sky. The sun is setting, and the cloud reflects pink and gold and then mauve as the light dims and the stars come out in the twilight, and this is where your cloud stops. You lie on your back looking up at the sky turning to night. You are like the cloud, airy and light. You’re not sealed in this body anymore: you are among the stars and you’re perfectly, perfectly free.” <br />
<br />
I end here, dazed as if jet-lagged from our travels, and wondering where all that impromptu narrative came from. It’s time to leave, a thirty-minute drive to the friend’s house where I’m staying. I lean down and whisper to my mother, “I have to go back to New York tomorrow but I’ll be back the next day, and the doctor says you’re strong enough to hang on. But if you decide not to, it’s okay. You’ll be gone but not gone. You’ll be here but not here. And we’ll be all right.” I kiss her goodbye. <br />
<br />
In my friend’s guest room, I set my cell phone alarm for 6 a.m. so I can get an early start for the drive home. Hours later, I’m still sleeping off my exhaustion when I sink into this dream: I enter my mother’s sickroom at the retirement facility. It’s empty. Everything has been cleared out. I’m bewildered: why? It’s too soon for that. I look through the open door into the adjoining room. My mother’s mattress is on the floor and she’s sitting up in bed. She looks younger, about 40, blonde again, her hair no longer white. She grins, waving at me: <i>I’m fine</i>. <br />
<br />
When I wake up, I’m surprised to find my bedroom full of daylight. Grabbing my phone, I see the time is 7:30. I’ve slept through my phone alarm and missed a call from the night nurse. I listen to her voicemail message: my mother has died. <br />
<br />
The call came in a few hours before, around the time I was dreaming of finding Mom in the next room, sitting on her padded cloud, her wave and her smile. She has managed to die on the day of her real birthday. <br />
<br />
She visits me twice again over the next two nights. In each dream she is younger. The last is brief, only a glimpse. She crosses a large vestibule, swinging her arms as she walks briskly and with purpose. She looks about 16, tanned and golden-haired in a bright lavender dress, incandescent, spirited, fresh. Her athletic stride carries her too fast for me to intercept her, and before I know it she has disappeared behind a screen and out of sight.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3V8RuE4eUCh-7QI8SqrTNty_h9bAKWVlNnsxJ_CFeh8jyfRRohNkgbY1i9_R8yRSaSAvJeK6KJaikGcaucH83OmFgn7eHT3MwG9AsYWOcTZAJc5cOuFX5Vrb8o04fu_lkHZuK73LIvsH/s1600/SK+AK+on+MV+beach+Mariana+Cook+20002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3V8RuE4eUCh-7QI8SqrTNty_h9bAKWVlNnsxJ_CFeh8jyfRRohNkgbY1i9_R8yRSaSAvJeK6KJaikGcaucH83OmFgn7eHT3MwG9AsYWOcTZAJc5cOuFX5Vrb8o04fu_lkHZuK73LIvsH/s640/SK+AK+on+MV+beach+Mariana+Cook+20002.jpg" width="638" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom and I: facing the final swim together. Photo © Mariana Cook 2002</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">P</td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
(To be continued. The next post will be the last one in this long memoir.) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-46031337301078385732017-09-04T16:29:00.002-04:002017-09-05T23:11:37.721-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 64<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5 out of 10 psychics can't be wrong</td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
I suffer from ESP envy. It’s said that everyone is born with this intuitive ability, but most don’t know how to access it. I’ve never had much confidence in my own intuition, since my predictions were often wrong, which can be really embarrassing. Consequently I have sought and paid for the advice of professional clairvoyants whose powers of foresight made me jealous. <br />
<br />
Over the years I must have seen a hundred psychics. I used to belly up to the smorgasboard and heap my plate. Whenever someone raved about a new one, I shot to the phone and made an appointment. My curiosity about my future was actually less than my curiosity about their techniques, which varied widely. I’ve already written about the <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/05/?m=0" target="_blank">Marrakesh shuwafa</a> whose divinations were based on the shapes that hot lead made when poured into cold water. Another medium relied on the pronouncements of her spirit guide, an ancient Chinese princess who was obnoxious beyond belief. Another psychic simply stared at me for an hour before speaking. I kept notes on every session and, in the years that followed, I would re-read them now and then, to see which prophecies had come true. Did I indeed have an affair with a European man, possibly from Spain, with a drug problem? Not even. Did I get chronic ear infections when Mars in Virgo transited my second house in Taurus? Wow, yes. Bang on. <br />
<br />
According to my records, not one of these soothsayers had a higher percentage of correct predictions than about 50%. When told they were wrong half the time, they shrugged. “It’s an imperfect science,” they said defensively, “but look at the half I got right!” <br />
<br />
My obsession with fortunetellers came to a head when I was chasing a most elusive man. I was dead certain he was tagged for me forevermore, and with my whole heart wagging I dogged his footsteps all over town. During a two-year pursuit, I polled psychic after psychic: Would he be mine? Or was it in vain? <br />
<br />
It wasn’t helpful that half said yes and half said, just as emphatically, forget it. I decided this was a great way to rate them. Eventually my question would get answered: either this guy would spurn or return my love. Then I could stop seeing the psychics who were wrong, and only subsidize those who were right. It would thin out my Rolodex. <br />
<br />
After I married the elusive man, I became so content with my lot that I felt no need to spy on the future as I used to. I still saw, once a year, a few psychics whom I thought stupendous, like Maria the Russian painter whose day job was reading coffee grounds for eighty bucks an hour. She would brew a very strong, topsoil-thick expresso, serving it with a cloth napkin folded between saucer and cup. After the client drank the coffee, Maria upended the cup onto the napkin, draining any remaining liquid. She would then examine the dregs left in the cup. In their configurations she picked out images that could be translated into the language of destiny. <br />
<br />
“I see a big ‘C’,” she told me once, inspecting my dregs. “You’ll be writing about a classical composer. I hope you do. I want to see this film.” This took me by surprise. For some time I had been tempted to write a spec script on Frederic Chopin’s affair with George Sand, but decided it would be a lot of work to no avail. Though the story gave me writer’s drool, producers were not beating the bushes for a movie about the 19th century French Romantics. And I was too busy with paid assignments anyway. Nevertheless, when Maria told me I was <i>going to</i> write that script, I took courage and wrote the thing – because it was my fate, right? Two years later, I invited Maria to the premiere of <i>Impromptu</i>, with young Hugh Grant in the role of ‘C’-for-Chopin. <br />
<br />
I don’t think it’s amazing that Maria saw a ‘C’ in the coffee grounds, which could have left any random shape in her cup. The genius was in her interpretation. Where did she get “classical composer”? The ‘C’ could have stood for colorectal cancer, or Cleveland, or coffee cup. How did she know? Once again I lusted for ESP. If only I could do that, be able to pull names and specifics out of thin air, to tell someone, “I see you’re going to fall in love with a woman who wears a sapphire ring. I get the name Marianne – or Miriam? Maybe Marilyn. My ancient Babylonian guide isn’t clear. It’s an imperfect science.” <br />
<br />
The most gifted and accurate clairvoyant medium I ever met was Colette Baron-Reid, a singer-songwriter from Toronto who supplemented her income by reading Tarot cards and relating whatever popped up on her mindscreen. A friend told me that Colette was extraordinary, so of course I made an appointment with her when she was visiting clients in New York, in January of 2002. On the day of our session I was in very high spirits, bursting with some terrific news I’d received earlier in the morning. I told none of this to Colette. Whenever I have a first encounter with a psychic I stay quiet, giving no information about myself other than my name. We were only a few minutes into the reading when she interrupted herself: “I’m seeing you in a dry place, a desert area, with palm trees…I’m going to say southern California. It’s a city with some mountains in the background. Looks like Los Angeles? Anyway, you’re there for some award. Wait – !” Her eyes grew wide. “Could this be an Oscar?” <br />
<br />
The Academy Award nominations had just been announced that morning. My film Thoth was chosen for the Short Documentary category. “Yes,” I said, “but I’m not going to win.” <br />
<br />
Anyone would have agreed. I was up against two other nominees. One rival film was about Eurasian orphans, a feel-sad weeper narrated by Rosie O’Donnell. Academy members couldn’t vote unless they’d attended an official screening of all the nominated shorts; I knew Rosie would pressure her many friends in the Academy to go see her film.The other short was about an adorable children’s chorus, a feel-good weeper. The directors were a mother/daughter team. The mother was head of the Academy’s documentary branch. She knew many, if not most, of the members and could likewise urge them to attend the screening. I had no inside connections to Academy voters, and my film was a non-weeper about a weirdo in a gold loin cloth. <br />
<br />
“Well, you’re gonna win, girl,” Colette insisted. “You don’t believe me, but I’m seeing it.” <br />
<br />
I thought, of course she has to say that. What psychic is going to hose your hopes by saying you’ll lose? I wrote the prediction in my notebook, as I had jotted so many others from so many fortunetellers. If Colette was right, cool. If she was wrong, then my Rolodex shed another card. I would know the answer very soon, since the awards ceremony was only two and a half weeks away. And, as there was no chance of my winning, my overwhelming anxiety became about the gown. <br />
<br />
Thirty years before, I’d accepted an Oscar in a tuxedo. This was less a fashion statement than a practical solution. I couldn’t afford a nice dress. My partner and I had not been paid for producing and directing our nominated feature documentary <i>Marjoe</i>. I was living with my parents to save money. In my closet there were not many clothes not made of denim. I did own a nice black pant suit with satin piping, and black patent leather boots. I borrowed my father’s cummerbund, bow tie and cuff links, and bought a boys’ tuxedo shirt. Thirty dollars total did the trick. By wearing men’s clothes I also accomplished one of my main missions in life: to stick out. <br />
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<br />
This time I wanted a real gown in which to stick out. I couldn’t see the sense of paying thousands of dollars for a single occasion; the dress would have to be a loaner from some designer. There was no question of my wearing anything but a Romeo Gigli gown. I’d been collecting his unique creations for fifteen years; my closet barfed Romeo. He was my fashion soulmate. I would never cheat on him with another designer. <br />
<br />
However, Romeo Gigli was having business problems. American boutiques no longer carried his collections; he was down to one eponymous store in Milan. I called the shop and spoke to the sales assistant, who happened to be American. He informed me the press office people were “idiots”; if I called out of the blue, they would very likely turn me down because they’d never heard of me. He advised me to come in person. <br />
<br />
My husband gifted me a round-trip ticket to Milan, and off I flew. My new friend the sales assistant marched me into the publicity office, explaining in Italian what a golden opportunity it was to dress an Oscar nominee. He swore I was a celebrity. After all, I’d won the award previously. <br />
<br />
Sure enough, the press folks were slow to comprehend. Sensing their reluctance, I entreated: “Please! If I win, I promise to thank him in my speech.” With that, they relented. Which dress did I want? <br />
<br />
I had no idea, since Romeo’s fashions were not on view in the U.S. anymore. The publicists sent me to a workroom that held a few pieces from his spring collection. My spirits sank. There was only one gown on the rack. Entirely made of ribbons, it was voluminous; I would have needed two chairs to sit in it. The rest of the evening wear pieces were out to style editors all over Europe. <br />
<br />
The press people decided it was time to be actually helpful. They handed me the “look book” from the runway show. If I would choose a dress from the photos, and if they could locate it in time, they would have it shipped to New York before I flew to L.A. for the ceremony. <br />
<br />
I paged through Romeo’s typically brilliant collection. His inspiration for that season was the ocean: fish scale sequins and foamy bubble patterns and lacey sea fans. I spotted an exquisite black evening dress with tendrils of chiffon hand-snipped to look like seaweed floating about the shoulders and skirt.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0QzCsAuuA_6UdZEuQcuzMFjkB6x3G4fN5q1AIMZr9n-SkG3T6NT626O-sltsxYuW7-EjBjnGGwVnUvos5LzYatkJezzXkcI_FRv9g9Ij_jRedkAhREuGbsjGZyuU7Mu8MDRYwaaspdHtl/s1600/Romeo+Gigli+seaweed+dress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="391" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0QzCsAuuA_6UdZEuQcuzMFjkB6x3G4fN5q1AIMZr9n-SkG3T6NT626O-sltsxYuW7-EjBjnGGwVnUvos5LzYatkJezzXkcI_FRv9g9Ij_jRedkAhREuGbsjGZyuU7Mu8MDRYwaaspdHtl/s400/Romeo+Gigli+seaweed+dress.jpg" width="260" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The seaweed dress</td></tr>
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<br />
I’d look pretty good in that. Marking the page, I continued flipping through the look book until I arrived at the final garment in the show. <br />
<br />
Hanging by thin strings from the model’s shoulders, the dress consisted of a double layer of black tulle, with long tatters at the hem and gleaming crystal globules of all different sizes scattered over the airy fabric. It looked exactly as Romeo had intended: water drops on a fisherman’s net. <br />
<br />
It was also totally transparent. The model’s nipple dots and perky boobs showed clearly through the tulle. She wore black briefs to cover her pubes. I was fifty-four non-perky years old and I would definitely stick out – everywhere – if I wore this one.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBUDu_2iybSnpev_bCFRGdEwrtTy-5f9XaLMKMYxfFcrxFk4gyvdOMzh_xY6H_OcxhxdkPJ1QN-T6Wtfz749_Y9r7RytEbujd04xN5lc7wiuyqAXmK5Fm8pXTO-6a8idMSH6Id7GAGIcH/s1600/Romeo+Gigli+fishnet+dress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="587" data-original-width="358" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBUDu_2iybSnpev_bCFRGdEwrtTy-5f9XaLMKMYxfFcrxFk4gyvdOMzh_xY6H_OcxhxdkPJ1QN-T6Wtfz749_Y9r7RytEbujd04xN5lc7wiuyqAXmK5Fm8pXTO-6a8idMSH6Id7GAGIcH/s400/Romeo+Gigli+fishnet+dress.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fisherman's net dress</td></tr>
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<br />
Not feasible. <br />
<br />
And then came the Flash. Suddenly I saw myself mounting the left side of the Kodak Theater stage to accept a gold statuette from the Academy, and I was wearing <i>this gown</i>. The image did not come from my always-febrile imagination. The scene seemed as fresh and detailed and factual as if it had happened mere seconds before, yet it was not a memory. Where did the image come from? Neither imagined nor remembered, it was an orphan, born in a brain place that was unmarked on my map. My flash presented itself, not as a known fact, but as a thing simply <i>known</i>. <br />
<br />
Now I understood what the psychics experienced. After years of ESP-ness envy, I had my first moment of “extraordinary knowing.” <br />
<br />
The peeps in the press office, who had been leery of me before, now thought I was mad. The dress I requested was an “editorial” piece, designed only for eye-popping runway effect and for press photos; the fishnet gown was never meant to be worn by anyone real. If I would choose a second gown, they would ship both, in case this one (insert raised eyebrow) didn’t work out (which heaven help us it wouldn’t). I chose the seaweed dress as backup. <br />
<br />
Back in the U.S., I worried that the publicists would deliberately fail to locate the water-drop dress. As more days passed I worried that, worse, they wouldn’t send either dress in time. Then I’d have to do the black pant suit all over again. <br />
<br />
Three days from our departure for Los Angeles, the seaweed dress arrived, a size 4. My husband thought it beautiful, though I would have to cease eating for a few days to get into it. A day later, just as the palace clock chimed midnight, a second box arrived, with the fishnet dress crumpled inside. There was no fit problem. It floated away from the body like a mist. The glass droplets gleamed on the black tulle. You could see my caesarian scar and count every mole on my torso. My husband made no comment because he knew I would come to my senses eventually. <br />
<br />
I had 48 hours to solve the see-through problem. We commandeered a theater designer to run up a black body suit to hide my bits. The morning of our departure, the designer called from the lobby. He was dropping off the slip, but had discovered an unanticipated problem with the dress. And he had been unable to solve it. <br />
<br />
Each of the hundred droplet crystals had a flat back, which had been glued on the tulle. The glue leached through the net, making the crystals tacky when touched. If I sat down in the dress – if, for example, I were to sit for hours through the interminable ceremony until my category came up – my body heat, pressed to the fabric, would warm the glue further. When I rose – as, for example, to collect my award – the dress would stick to my ass and the backs of my legs, producing a sort of wadded-up bustle effect. Possibly no one in the audience would think my outfit was any more bizarre than my seat companion Thoth wearing a gold loin cloth and chest chains. On the other hand, my husband and daughter would be mortified. <br />
<br />
“You don’t understand,” I raged. “I saw myself in this dress! I won’t win if I’m not wearing it!” <br />
<br />
“You’re being ridiculous,” my husband retorted. “The votes are already in. It makes no difference what you wear.” <br />
<br />
Once again I faced the inevitable. The gown was not created for any event except a quick walk down the runway. Not to be sat in, nor slept in, nor wept in. <br />
<br />
Still undeterred, on the plane to L.A. I racked my brain to find a way of fixing the problem. That evening I had to attend another ceremony for the International Documentary Association, where my film had already won an award. On the way back to the hotel I stopped off in a 24-hour Rite-Aid to buy a roll of Scotch Magic Tape and a pair of sewing scissors. <br />
<br />
All night I stayed up meticulously cutting little rounds of tape in the shape of each individual crystal. I stuck the rounds to the underside of the tulle, covering the glue on the back of a hundred glass droplets. I then sat in the dress for thirty minutes, warming up the crystals, at the end of which I rose up. The dress swung free, swishing about my legs as I walked experimentally around the hotel room. At last I had a dress to match my fate. <br />
<br />
Here is what happened the next night:<br />
<br />
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<br />
My husband had been right. Fishnet or seaweed, the outcome would have been the same. I couldn’t explain that, far more important to me than winning the award, I desperately wanted my psychic flash to prove true. At stake was my belief in the paranormal experience. I fought hard for that gown because I needed my instant of knowing to be accurate in every detail. <br />
<br />
I still can’t figure out, though, why I saw myself so clearly mounting the stage from the left when, on the night of, I actually entered from the right. But it’s an imperfect science. <br />
<br />
The next morning, as Romeo Gigli walked to his workroom through the streets of Milan, people kept coming up to him and exclaiming that someone had thanked him onstage at the Oscars. Puzzled, he asked his press staff if they knew anything about it. The fools hadn’t thought to mention my visit to him. They admitted they’d loaned me a gown from his new collection. Which one? he wondered. They answered, the last one in the show. <br />
<br />
His mouth fell open. “She wore <i>that?!</i> But – it’s completely transparent!”<br />
<br />
(To be continued.) <br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-72977421699004503622017-08-10T16:23:00.001-04:002017-08-11T11:07:11.268-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 63<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizosi1z6MjWfTfrAZ7PzQFPr3dpN2rCbbCuPB40_9HJuLo9fkeV9Zso1A6gTGgNm3om8pYMR4bmz_Xhvc8Gb9VXhuU6L5VjRmUmgERIDFPiOL9WXQ-_-Rfd5ck9UWYq-G69al7rZBpb-bP/s1600/HBOTHOTH6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1071" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizosi1z6MjWfTfrAZ7PzQFPr3dpN2rCbbCuPB40_9HJuLo9fkeV9Zso1A6gTGgNm3om8pYMR4bmz_Xhvc8Gb9VXhuU6L5VjRmUmgERIDFPiOL9WXQ-_-Rfd5ck9UWYq-G69al7rZBpb-bP/s640/HBOTHOTH6.jpg" width="428" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thoth in prayformance (Photo courtesy HBO)</td></tr>
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<br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
He wasn’t half-naked this time. Though he still sported the headband, red feather and Egyptian-deity makeup, the chill of late November had forced Thoth out of his customary gold loincloth and into black tech pants and windbreaker. Surprisingly, he could still move his fingers on the violin neck as he played, danced, stomped and sang in his multiple voices – all at the same time. <br />
<br />
The sun dipped behind the buildings surrounding Central Park; cold shadows slid across Bethesda Terrace. He’d begun promptly at 3 pm (his time slot by arrangement with some other buskers who shared the tunnel). No passersby gathered to watch. On weekdays at this time of year, the few people still in the park by dusk were hastening to warmer places, too rushed to stop and appreciate the whirling one-man opera in the Arcade. Yet Thoth performed full out, to the point of exhaustion, as if to a crowd instead of an audience of one. <br />
<br />
That one, a tall blonde bundled-up woman in a felt hat, leaned against a pillar and watched him for two hours, even after darkness fell and the tunnel’s ceiling lights switched on, along with the park’s sixteen hundred streetlamps. Whenever Thoth took a break to drink water from a camelbak, the woman moved off, walking around the terrace briskly to keep warm, then returning when she heard him tune his instrument for the next aria. She did not applaud, nor drop money into his violin case; whenever he glanced at her, she looked away. <br />
<br />
I didn’t want to engage with him in any way until I had observed a complete “prayformance” from beginning to end. When I chanced upon him the month before, I’d only witnessed the opening prayer that convoked his invented gods in his invented language. Now that I was experiencing the whole work, I was even more astonished. <i>People have to see this</i>, I thought. Lots of people everywhere, not just parkgoers and tourists. <br />
<br />
His was a unique feat. So many gifts had to exist in one person to accomplish it. The imagination, composing, fantasy writing, an extraordinary voice, impressive musicianship, foot percussion in complicated meters, all had to combine and work simultaneously. (You try singing Wagner while jogging.) There might be only this man in human history who could bring it off; hence it would live and die with him. A phenomenon of such fragility could collapse at any moment, with no record that it had ever occurred, except for the snapshots and videos that tourists brought home, describing how they’d witnessed an only-in-New-York freak show. <br />
<br />
Thoth belonged on film. Should I take the next step and make it happen? That hefty fee I’d just received for my<a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/08/at-home-with-ghost-62.html" target="_blank"> ill-fated script</a> would cover the cost. He was a great subject. Even for an outsider artist, he was way, way out on a limb. Yet his commitment was unwavering. One could feel his faith; it altered the air around him. Speaking in tongues, he had his own Holy Ghost infilling him. The sight repelled some, captivated others. Thoth moved me. He reminded me of all the sacrifices artists make, in ways small and huge, and the loneliness of our endeavor as we inch out on the limb. A documentary would show audiences not only what he could do but what it cost him to do it. <br />
<br />
But I still didn’t approach him because I hadn’t decided if he was nuts in a bad way. <br />
<br />
There is clinical-crazy, and then there is artist-crazy. The latter doesn’t frighten me, because I have my own seat on that spectrum. I love the company of wild and weird creators and visionaries; they’re my family…as long as they have some measure of self-control. It’s the ones who slice off their ears that I step away from. <br />
<br />
I checked my watch nervously: five o’clock. The park was now too empty and dark for my comfort; I wanted to leave. Thoth had paused to rest again. If there was more to come, I would have to miss it. And I still didn’t have my answer on the subject of his mental health. <br />
<br />
An old man with a cane shuffled into the Arcade. Thoth evidently knew him. The man stopped and they chatted quietly. Suddenly Thoth busted a laugh so big and loud the entire tunnel vibrated: a barnyard donkey laugh. Someone else, like you perhaps, might hear it as the kind of crazy bray common to the funny farm. But I went the other way. <br />
<br />
That’s it, I thought. He’s sane. <br />
<br />
Arriving home, I sent Thoth a message on his website: I was a filmmaker, wanted to make a short documentary about him, contact me if interested…. <br />
<br />
As I grew to know him over the seven months I shot the film, Thoth proved to be only slightly more wacky than I, and otherwise was as centered and responsible a person as one could hope, the opposite of a prima donna. He lived with his mother in Queens, though he kept as aloof and ascetic as a monk, striving to improve and purify himself as a receiver and transmitter of messages from unnamed sources. Unsure of his ethnic identity, as a mixed-race son, Thoth believed he was channeling the spirits of his ancestors, who had originated in every part of the world; accordingly his music sounded as if it came from many cultures, though so commingled they were no longer identifiable. He channeled the words as he played, later figuring out their meaning, as we pick up any foreign language in a strange land, and he was compiling a dictionary as he went. It was a neverending project because the spirit communications never stopped flowing. He was a fully open flume. <br />
<br />
This was his full-time work. He lived off contributions from audiences in the park. Some days they gave nothing. He didn’t know how long he could keep it up. Rather than become incapacitated by age, he hoped to die while prayforming. <br />
<br />
The subject of my first documentary, <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/07/at-home-with-ghost-61.html" target="_blank">Marjoe Gortner</a> was a prevaricator who kept much of himself hidden – even from himself. By contrast, Thoth was always striving to locate the truth that defined his being. This involved constant and rigorous introspection, a dismantling of walls within, so that in my interviews I was able to probe as deep as I liked. He was familiar with his own complexity. However, there was one wall that did not yield to my pressure, a mystery that he’d lost interest in solving, or so he said. Yet it was the very thing that drove him onto the path to mysticism. <br />
<br />
It was easier for Thoth’s sisters to identify as African-American because they were quite young when their white father divorced their black mother. The family never saw him again. On the other hand, Thoth (or Stephen Kaufman as he was then known) was older and had been very close to his dad. He took the sudden abandonment very hard, bewildered by it, and also left bewildered about his racial identity. Bewilderment led to depression, and depression to withdrawal. In college he stole sleeping pills and tried to commit suicide. Before he was found and revived from his coma, he experienced a voice telling him to go back: “You have more to do.” <br />
<br />
A long period of self-emancipation followed. Ethnically, and sexually as well, he found freedom in being ambiguous. He rediscovered his many creative gifts. Financially, he made do by playing Bach for handouts in San Francisco’s subway stations. And ever since the near-death voice sent him back to life, he sought to find out: what was the “more” he was meant to do? He took the time to be quiet, and listen for answers. The other-world revelations began; the art of prayformance was born. <br />
<br />
Thoth was 46 when I started filming him. He had long since put away the matter of his father’s disappearance; he rarely thought of him. I, however, was not satisfied to let it lie. A reunion of father and son would be so dramatic on film – if I could find Dr. Kaufman. I began with a simple internet search. What came up was a death notice. <br />
<br />
Thoth’s father had died only six months before. All along he had been practicing medicine in Rockville, Long Island, a mere half-hour’s drive from Queens where Thoth had grown up and was living now. And it was my duty to deliver the news. <br />
<br />
As I paused with my hand on the phone, I suddenly felt an inward urgency from an outward source, an insistence so strong that my own self seemed crowded aside. It was a message I didn’t understand, that was meant for Thoth. I recognized it as the same feeling that had overcome me when I delivered a message to my dad from his dead father (see <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/01/those-who-are-coming-to-this-serialized.html" target="_blank">Chapter 15</a>), a message that was not to be denied. <br />
<br />
When I reached Thoth, he received the word of his father’s death in neutral silence. Either he felt nothing or didn’t know how to feel. I tried to keep quiet out of respect but the inner crescendo forced me to stand down and let the message come out. “There’s something else,” I said, “and please forgive me for this, I don’t know what it means, but I’m supposed to say your father wants you to forgive him for something.” <br />
<br />
Another silence, a long one. Then Thoth spoke up: “I think I know what that is.” <br />
<br />
He had never told the story to anyone. In fact, he had utterly forgotten it, buried and blocked it, until this moment when his dad’s message broke through. As if shot from the depths, memory burst its secret, as fresh in detail as when the young boy Stephen had sealed it inside. <br />
<br />
For a little while following the divorce, Dr. Kaufman faithfully visited his children, sometimes taking his son out for a spin in his little red sportscar. He always drove too fast, and this particular day, with nine-year-old Thoth buckled into the passenger seat, was no exception. As his dad’s car approached an intersection, the traffic light was changing; he sped up, just as a boy stepped out on the crosswalk. “He hit the boy, and the boy bounced up and against the windshield and fell off to the right. It was horrifying, it was the worst thing…The boy died at the scene. <br />
<br />
“When the police questioned my father, he said the light was green. But I knew, and saw, that the light was yellow turning red. And it was a really hard thing because my father, being a doctor and the most moral person that I knew, he was lying, and I couldn’t believe it. I was not able to understand. <br />
<br />
“My father stopped contacting me after that and I never saw him again.” <br />
<br />
Opening up to grief was a difficult passage for Thoth. The tears simply weren’t there, until he saw the finished film and witnessed the scene where he visits his father’s grave, and speaks to him at last, and cleanses them both of the past. There in the editing room, he finally cried. <br />
<br />
Thoth seemed to never shy away from the truth, even if some of it came from invisible ancestral spirits. Whatever he held inside, he was addicted to putting it all out there. And I do believe that truth is rewarded, when we make the effort and sacrifice to find it. There may be no recompense but only reprisal in one’s lifetime here, but the eternal Elsewhere is all rejoicing. For Thoth, his reward was 39:58 minutes of fame, the length of our film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sjnd__isN0Y" target="_blank"><i>Thoth</i></a> – two seconds under the maximum length required for submission to the short documentary category of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. <br />
<br />
When we got the nomination, Cinemax bought the film. Between cable TV and YouTube, and his presence onstage at the Academy Awards ceremony where the film won, Thoth and his work would eventually be seen by over a million viewers. I’d told myself, <i>People have to see this.</i> I’d fulfilled my promise to the universe. As for my own reward, helping Thoth brought me more satisfaction than anything I’d ever created for my own ego. <br />
<br />
I must add, the Oscar did feel really, really good. Thirty years earlier, I’d shared the Feature Documentary award with my older male partner. Overlooked was the fact that I was the first woman director to win an Oscar, and it was further assumed that my partner had done all the work and that I was just the cute young tagalong. Thirty years later, winning a second award as a solo filmmaker told everyone, “Yes, I was always more than the girlfriend.” <br />
<br />
It almost didn’t happen, though. Making a good film was not the only hurdle to clear on the way to an Oscar. The other necessary was finding the right gown. <br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
Here's the full film:<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sjnd__isN0Y" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-48194820535009659922017-08-03T16:38:00.001-04:002017-08-10T15:59:50.103-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 62<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ4Pb8V_hTHghrLHxhQYlKxPeS-sEaqkxoB1xJLfNRXOn-KC7D2_6Hg-vGpAHvBGWNv47dn8v-vJdJ0FwSBgV1D6IoIvbhH0rNQx_Td9wWf5i-Ga4uCz8txOCLq-0SU98WNFsgsk6SyysC/s1600/Thoth3NUDE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1092" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ4Pb8V_hTHghrLHxhQYlKxPeS-sEaqkxoB1xJLfNRXOn-KC7D2_6Hg-vGpAHvBGWNv47dn8v-vJdJ0FwSBgV1D6IoIvbhH0rNQx_Td9wWf5i-Ga4uCz8txOCLq-0SU98WNFsgsk6SyysC/s640/Thoth3NUDE.jpg" width="436" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Artist Known As Thoth. Photo by Jennifer Leigh Sauer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
These days, whenever a social conversation lags, usually in the lacuna between entrée and dessert, someone asks “What shows are you binging on?” This is the dessert topic, and thank god for it; otherwise people would lapse into embarrassed silence. In a recent era, the question was, “Did you see [insert movie title]?”; and once upon an ancient time they asked “Have you read [insert book title]?” Folks turn gratefully to the topics of art and entertainment, even if they disagree; they compare and argue but remain friends; the same cannot be said for mine-filled subjects like politics or religion; and money is just plain ill-mannered. Art performs the invaluable service of keeping people talking. Artists don’t merely communicate, they fertilize communication. <br />
<br />
All the same, I view my profession as wankery. Mind you, I’ve never doubted that I was put on the planet to write. It felt like a perfect fit the moment I settled into that chair, the heart-shaped dent waiting for my ass, as if the cushion had been broken in by centuries of self-absorbed scribes before me. Nevertheless, over the years I felt I was enjoying myself too much, sitting alone and spinning stories and not contributing a jot toward world peace and understanding.<br />
<br />
“Use me,” I urged the universe. Show me a good thing to do, that will help. I waited for a sign. Meanwhile I wrote and directed a movie that I hoped would empower young women. It went straight to video. I took a few assignments I thought would make a difference, including a biopic about Alfred Nobel and the genesis of his Peace Prize. The films didn’t get made; the universe, indecipherable as ever, withdrew its backing. So much for lofty intentions. I stopped waiting for a sign. <br />
<br />
In 2000 I took on a project that had no redeeming value, yet would give good dessert topic. I pitched, sold, and wrote the script. It was fiction, based on the true experiences of a living individual, a madman who downloaded all his fury and psychosis on me, day after day, as I sat and took notes. At times I thought I was going crazy by osmosis, but I hung in there because it was too great a story. The studio agreed, and officially greenlit the picture. However, when they attempted to renew their rights agreement with the maniac, he refused. He’d read the script, and flew into a rage (his normal state). To placate him, I was fired off my own project. The green light went red, and remained red despite the efforts of many more writers. For the umpteenth time, my father said, “You should get out of that shitty business.” Now, this was odd advice, coming from a guy who taught entertainment law, and whose former students included several studio heads. But he had a point, namely “What’s the point?” <br />
<br />
In the end, the only point was the luchre. Stuffing the fat script fee in my bank account, I felt both demoralized and relieved. Now I was free of that madman’s negative force field, and free to figure out how I’d lost my way as a writer. What did the universe want? I renewed the request: “Use me.” <br />
<br />
On a Sunday autumn afternoon, when I was hurrying home from a quick walk in Central Park, I heard a distant strain of music on the air that intrigued me: a violin droning on open strings, serene and meditative, joined by a soaring soprano voice. There was no time to track down the source, but I paused anyway, turning my head to listen. Though unamplified, the violin-soprano duet cut through the chattering and noise of the park throngs, as if close to my ear. <br />
<br />
It was then I sensed a pressure like a hand between my shoulder blades, urging me to move toward the music, and, as I complied, I felt somewhat weightless, a sensation of being conveyed without effort. The music drew me down a flight of stairs and into a tunnel, the Bethesda Arcade, which passes under the 72nd Street transverse. There I found the soprano: a small tawny man of uncertain ethnicity, with waist-length dreadlocks, gold loincloth, chains across his bare chest, body covered in twinkling gold glitter, eyes lined black like a sphinx, a red plume stuck in the back of his hair. Singing in a high countertenor register, he accompanied himself on the violin, kneeling as if in prayer before a gathering crowd of tourists. <br />
<br />
Abruptly the man leapt to his feet and launched into a violent tarantella; his voice now a thundering baritone, he beat out the rhythm on a manhole cover with his sandals, the bells and shells tied to his ankles rattling for emphasis. And then he was dancing, twirling like a dervish – while playing and singing simultaneously. He had been soothing before; now he was fierce; the crowd recoiled a little. The music was both primitive and sophisticated, seeming to come from all cultures and none. The words gave no clue what language he was singing in; I couldn’t place his accent. <br />
<br />
The dervish dropped to his knees, returning to the long droned notes of the prayer, his voice low and quiet. As he ended, the audience applauded. A few people dropped crumpled bills and loose change into his violin case, which was propped open for contributions. Some paused to pick up one of the yellow brochures beside the case before moving on. He nodded silently as they passed, but no one dared talk to him, so he busied himself biting off some horse hairs that hung loose from his bow; he’d sawed the strings so hard during the dance that the strands broke. He appeared resigned to having frightened people. They had witnessed a kind of controlled madness. Even if controlled, it was madness all the same. <br />
<br />
Yet, madness wedded to extreme talent is spellbinding. And if this phenomenon was a busker, then he was the most extraordinary I’d ever seen.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N_8Ia6lCcBE" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
I grabbed a brochure and rushed home. I tried to recreate what I’d seen to my husband but gave up in frustration. It was like trying to describe last night’s dream; the experience was yours alone, in a private reality, and fast fading in the daylight as you turned to your morning chores. <br />
<br />
I glanced through the brochure before tossing it on my cluttered desk. The man called himself Thoth; he termed his act “solopera.” He didn’t perform, he “prayformed,” Tuesdays through Sundays in the Arcade. He was available for weddings and bar mitzvahs. He had a website. I had to make dinner. <br />
<br />
In the weeks that followed, the yellow brochure disappeared under piles of books and papers while I prepared for another studio assignment. When the time came to clear my desk, I discovered the brochure I’d forgotten. On the verge of throwing it out, I remembered the ghostly hand at my back, and the peculiar energy that suffused me when I watched Thoth prayform. I took a moment to check out his website, in case it would answer some of my lingering questions: Where was he from? Foreign, of course, but what nationality? What culture’s indigenous songs was he singing? <br />
<br />
The website was elegantly designed. The homepage invited visitors to click on a portal to enter the realm of Thoth. I went straight to his bio, where I found some surprises. He was born in the mid-50’s and raised in Queens, a biracial child back when mixed marriages were a lightning rod for hatred, even illegal in some states. His mother, Barbados-born, was a tympanist and the first black person to become a principal player in a major symphony orchestra. (This accounted for his classical training and foot percussion.) His father was a white Jewish doctor and civil rights activist. Their son eventually became a street musician in San Francisco, then moved to New York after changing his name to Thoth, after the ancient Egyptian messenger-god. <br />
<br />
The bio offered no explanation of what had transpired to cause a child of relative privilege, now a man in his forties, to embrace life as a nearly-naked busker – for what gain? <br />
<br />
His site did offer CDs for sale, of his self-composed three-act solo opera, “The Herma.” So the music was his own. What about the accent? The language? I read on. <br />
<br />
He had based his opera on the legends of a place called Festad. I’d never heard of it. Then it became clear that the land, its map, its tribes, its myths, its melodies, its customs and costumes and mother tongue, were all invented. Thoth had created an entire world from top to bottom, in such confident detail that, at first encounter, one would not suspect that the unknown words, the unplaceable accent, the weird clothes and alluring songs were from no country but his own mind. <br />
<br />
In a short statement Thoth claimed that, for him, “prayforming” was an essential spiritual practise that helped him to “be.” By helping himself, he hoped to help the universe. <br />
<br />
Then I knew what I was meant to do. I was going to help him. The universe had a job for me at last. <br />
<br />
But first, caution dictated that I must find out: was he a madman? I could not afford another one of those. <br />
<br />
(To be continued.) Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-9914615053055981342017-07-15T15:39:00.000-04:002017-07-16T15:04:12.416-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 61<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLXjgIxXt7ZuZt56qxGFfzHS9dp8-qL01LfduXjIkhQE9pPab7lvyJD3yDaBt1xnFR4m5w6kG6aK0flu9ZPEKPFIa6Fku4uEmrZgNwdwLp3UzyI3HZGA2hHwSaus4Yr4wKTG9TqoX8DWX/s1600/+Marjoe+pool+interview+copy.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivLXjgIxXt7ZuZt56qxGFfzHS9dp8-qL01LfduXjIkhQE9pPab7lvyJD3yDaBt1xnFR4m5w6kG6aK0flu9ZPEKPFIa6Fku4uEmrZgNwdwLp3UzyI3HZGA2hHwSaus4Yr4wKTG9TqoX8DWX/s640/+Marjoe+pool+interview+copy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On set of <i>Marjoe</i>. Photo by Jeanne Field.</td></tr>
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<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
I began this memoir by recounting my <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">first contact</a> with the spirit of my grandfather in 1974. Yet he was not my first ghost. Three years before, I had an unexpected run-in with the front office: the supreme all-infusing Holy Ghost. <br />
<br />
It was July 1971, a hot and humid night in Texas. Parishioners attending the evening service sat on folding seats and fanned their faces with paper paddles. A country-western band played their original composition “God I Love You”; the pedal steel swooned around the singer. What was I doing in a Pentecostal revival tent in Fort Worth? <br />
<br />
I had only attended Christian church services a few of times in my life, on the insistence of my mother. My dad, adamantly agnostic, used to claim with a straight face that he was a Druid, or “Druish.” Meanwhile Mom had four children to raise, with little energy remaining to drag us all to the local Episcopal church, which had no ramp for her wheelchair anyway. She let the matter slide. <br />
<br />
By the time I turned ten, I was in love with Greek mythology and showed every sign of becoming a pagan. Mom got the idea to turn me over to her mother, who was passing through New York, asking her to introduce me to the church experience. My grandmother’s religious affiliation was indeterminate, as she was always shopping for sects. I took the train in from Connecticut; Grandma scooped me up and plunked me down in the vast, packed Madison Square Garden to hear Billy Graham, her new crush. <br />
<br />
The ensuing yell-fest traumatized me. When my mother met my train afterwards, she picked up a quiet, cowed, unnervingly polite child. I was so afflicted with sin, and remorse for sin, that I went on a goodness binge for a week. Yet I knew so little about what defined a sin that it seemed I could make no move without committing one. Practice-kissing the mirror was vain and carnal. Stealing my brother’s <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/02/at-home-with-ghost-17.html" target="_blank">dirty books</a> and not returning them: lust and theft. And candy? It was discouraged in my home, on account of the dentist bills for my mouthful of silver fillings. I ate it in secret, which made it a lie. Gluttony, falsehood, and cavities. The noose of sin drew tighter. <br />
<br />
Eventually I began to suspect God wasn’t watching. The thought brought me great spiritual comfort. I stole my parents’ marriage manual; my tongue turned green from lime lollipops; my dark side, sensing the coast was clear, crept back from exile. <br />
<br />
Still, Mom felt guilty that she had not given her children a religious education. My two older brothers were teenagers and no longer meek enough. There was still hope, however, for my younger brother and me. Mom dressed us up and dropped us off at the nearest spire, St. Paul’s Church, along with a small sealed envelope containing a quarter for the collection plate. We knew no one in the congregation, and were too shy to ask for help deciphering the service, which was utterly bewildering. How did people know when to stand up, sit down, or kneel? We didn’t realize that the numbers posted on the bulletin board were hymn numbers and not page numbers; opening the hymnal at the wrong place, we could never find the songs everyone sang. Plus, even at one hour, the service was excruciatingly long. My brother and I were hungry. <br />
<br />
One morning at Holy Communion, whatever that was, I dared to go to the altar and kneel at the rail with some other people to get a snack. The body of Christ turned out to be a thin scrap of something that tasted like office paste (which, in larger quantity, was delicious, but in wafer form was just a cruel tease). The priest deliberately didn’t tip the chalice far enough for me to get even a drop of the blood of Christ. I think he knew pretty well I was not confirmed and shouldn’t be hanging there with my tongue out in the first place. <br />
<br />
So it came to pass that my little brother and I associated church with two things: hunger, and feeling like idiots. One Sunday, when we were deposited at St. Paul’s, instead of entering I tore open the offering envelope and extracted the quarter. About a half mile away, a brisk fifteen-minute walk, was a tiny convenience store the kids called The Louse House because it was run by a woman named Louise. Louise sold penny candy. A quarter bought twenty-five pieces, from a huge variety in her display case. Twelve pieces for me, twelve for little bro, and we could split the twenty-fifth, snapping the last raspberry licorice shoelace in half. Fifteen minutes to walk to the store, ten to buy the candy, and fifteen minutes to eat all of it on the way back to church, joining the congregation streaming out of the service just when my mother arrived to pick us up: it was a perfect plan. <br />
<br />
The Louse House orgy came to an end when Mom stopped Sunday deliveries without explanation. I think that chauffeuring kids to cello, piano, violin, oboe, and trumpet lessons, soccer practice, the allergist and, all too often, the dentist, Monday to Saturday, was punishment enough for her sins. She really did need a day of rest. <br />
<br />
My next exposure to Christian ritual came in prep school. Weekday mornings at Rosemary Hall began with chapel service. It was pleasant enough, and brief: ten minutes of mad singing and very little worshipping. I loved the music, so I joined the chapel choir to do some more of it. Thus I innocently committed to show up for Sunday services. The tedium of a full-length service was a revelation. I quit the choir. There was one particular image I took away, when at the climax of the service the minister approached the altar and raised the gold collection plate of cash to show Jesus the fruits of his sacrifice. It offended me that faith should be mixed up with money. <br />
<br />
In college, Religion 101 was a required freshman course. Here I honed my objections to Christianity. Like my father, I ticked off the items that strained credulity. For example, why did God the Father need to have a gender, which can only be determined by examining someone’s sex organs? Surely God was bigger than anatomy. Most important, why was it a Christian deal-breaker that we accept Jesus as divine? Why couldn’t he just be the son of Joseph and descendant of King David, as the apostle Luke claimed; why couldn’t we just recognize him as a great and wonderful teacher for the ages? Or was the Son of God a better plot device to lure people into the theater? And get their money. The whole enterprise felt fraudulent.<br />
<br />
I seemed to have a much higher opinion of God than the one that scripture described, and a lower concept of Jesus. Still, I was moved by flashes of beauty and wisdom in the text. And I would miss the music. <br />
<br />
Meeting Marjoe Gortner, when I was 23, brought the issue of fraud into full spotlight. At the time, I was a budding screenwriter; my boyfriend Howard Smith was a newspaper and radio journalist. One day Howard was approached for an on-air interview by a lanky, handsome, charismatic man with a scrapbook under his arm. The contents were staggering. Photos and news clippings from the 40’s and 50’s revealed this man’s early career as a child preacher. His parents, both Pentacostal preachers themselves, ordained him when he was three; promoting their son as the world’s youngest minister, they coached the bright little boy to perform a wedding ceremony at the age of four. Filmed by Paramount News, the stunt was shown in newsreels all over the country, and little Marjoe Gortner the holy-rolling phenomenon was launched. He told the press he received his sermons directly from God; he filled churches and revival tents throughout the Bible Belt, healed some of the sick, made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and earned his family a lot of cash in offerings over the years.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglMEuY0TXIYzcYwj9qVmCAiOO1hrq_nwWLGn42L1rxSOL5Ref02u7eTx5xh7uJwEwNlpD2roXeme67SAPmFVH9xKl4eqKFp3g0sp7pA-GtuxgUi4ykvkV5_LhzjTnHGVWds4uS3pv0FEbX/s1600/marjoe+little+preacher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="166" data-original-width="221" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglMEuY0TXIYzcYwj9qVmCAiOO1hrq_nwWLGn42L1rxSOL5Ref02u7eTx5xh7uJwEwNlpD2roXeme67SAPmFVH9xKl4eqKFp3g0sp7pA-GtuxgUi4ykvkV5_LhzjTnHGVWds4uS3pv0FEbX/s400/marjoe+little+preacher.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Gantry</td></tr>
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By the time Marjoe approached puberty, the “child of God” act was wearing thin; his father absconded with all the money, creating a simmering resentment toward his parents and mistrust of people in general that never left Marjoe. He ran away, knocked about on his own in California through most of his adolescence. Then, in his twenties, he went back on the evangelical circuit – for the money. Preaching was what he knew best how to do, and if he could keep up the man-of-God masquerade for six months, winning souls to the Lord, he could make enough money to chill with his hippie friends for the remaining six. Congregations welcomed grown-up Marjoe heartily. He cut a spectacular figure in foppish mod threads; he moved like a rock star; his sermons were riveting. They paid up. He did the same thing the next year. And then he found he couldn’t stop. <br />
<br />
In Marjoe’s entire life, he had never believed in God. On the other hand, the power he held over parishioners, the excitement and the adulation, bound him to the church as firmly as faith. He was, in his own words, “a religion addict.” <br />
<br />
When he met us, he had just arrived in New York to take a whack at an acting career. If he could achieve stardom, it would replace the high he got from preaching. But he had no patience to start at the bottom. A radio interview with my partner Howard was just the exposure Marjoe needed to lift him above the crowded pool of anonymous actors struggling for recognition. <br />
<br />
I don’t know why I thought it was such a good idea to make a film about this two-faced preacher. Documentaries were not commercially viable then. There was really only one distributor who exhibited them. But Howard knew the guy. And I don’t know why this distributor and his millionaire partner thought it was such a good idea to finance the project, but they gave us the money immediately. From there everything went very fast. Looking back, it was as if a wind blew eerily at our backs, a wind that would blow us straight to the Oscars, where we accepted the feature documentary award for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068924/?ref_=nv_sr_2" target="_blank"><i>Marjoe</i></a> two years later.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrcy7_jfxAO4mZdxtw1TN90fsso29R_WAT6UggbWozNsD77XhJ1-JWY6vhx_hRKmMGe6Y4_q-v1DIvTtuQlvEAUkc-hzjuK4uPWnk2glO8E8ch6MCyVQfdzZKuDsqZ-TBvFdqz7AOhPOm/s1600/Howard+Sarah+SK+1973+Oscars+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="406" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdrcy7_jfxAO4mZdxtw1TN90fsso29R_WAT6UggbWozNsD77XhJ1-JWY6vhx_hRKmMGe6Y4_q-v1DIvTtuQlvEAUkc-hzjuK4uPWnk2glO8E8ch6MCyVQfdzZKuDsqZ-TBvFdqz7AOhPOm/s400/Howard+Sarah+SK+1973+Oscars+copy.jpg" width="341" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Howard and me with two bad boys</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Marjoe had agreed to let us shoot him on tour, cautioning us to be on our best behavior and blend in with the born-agains. “They already accept me as real, so, with me bringing you in, they’ve already accepted you, too. Just call everyone Brother this or Sister that, and they’ll be happy.” He also agreed to expose all the cons and tricks that ministers, radio and TV evangelists, and Marjoe himself employed to whip up a congregation and extract money for “ministries,” cash that was mostly used to line their own pockets. <br />
<br />
One of Marjoe’s gimmicks was the sale of “prayer cloths,” actually cheap red bandanas; if the believer really believed, and prayed hard over these schmattes, blessings and salvation might follow. For an additional sum, people could line up and Marjoe would personally “lay hands” on them; God’s grace would flow through his touch. If he laid on hands extra hard, some would be seized with joy and fall to the ground. And when the Holy Ghost was present, folks could experience the “infilling of the spirit,” to be set free from their troubles for a moment, an hour, a day, maybe ever after.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJPs5JSMD8N1amRtH7rR93niy-7F0v9uV7bkuFl5XgvkqEeeGU0_BPpHXZGx6pMwRirHs2cxmSb1UYQ1OMMvqACWCWLtq1EAaZQC3Ml7ZCZnWLvaG70jGceyK9beGcrXgjpS48Oh8gk4EN/s1600/marjoe+laying+hands+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJPs5JSMD8N1amRtH7rR93niy-7F0v9uV7bkuFl5XgvkqEeeGU0_BPpHXZGx6pMwRirHs2cxmSb1UYQ1OMMvqACWCWLtq1EAaZQC3Ml7ZCZnWLvaG70jGceyK9beGcrXgjpS48Oh8gk4EN/s640/marjoe+laying+hands+copy.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marjoe laying on hands</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We had already filmed revivals in Los Angeles and Anaheim, so we’d grown accustomed to the sight of evangelicals, overcome with ecstasy, writhing on the floor, speaking in tongues, weeping, beaming, after being harangued with threats of hell and damnation by crooked ministers who were blatantly manipulating them. (The minister in this particular church in Fort Worth was later arrested for running stolen cars across the Mexican border.) But on this Texas summer night, my cynicism faded. <br />
<br />
I became transfixed, instead, by the manifest beauty of the same sight: of people released, to dance, sing, quake and faint, giving themselves completely to a ghost, a vibe that permeated everyone. I envied their child-like porousness. It didn’t matter how they got to that state, or how much they’d paid: they were euphorically happy in these moments. The only time I’d felt like that was when I took LSD. These enraptured folks took pharmaceutical-grade Belief. I wished I had some. I wanted to be infilled by Spirit. <br />
<br />
Marjoe said, toward the end of our film, “If I could just do the faith number, and get up and say, ‘Okay, everybody, let’s really get loose this afternoon, get rid of our hang-ups and have nice group therapy,’ that would be great. But you can’t do it that way. I have to throw in the sin and damnation and ‘you’re all going to hell’ – it’s got to all be done under this façade of holiness.” <br />
<br />
Yet he was a gifted preacher, good enough to give folks a taste of pure Spirit – almost in spite of himself. A friend once asked him, “What if Jesus was working through you anyway?” What if a conman could still be a conduit? <br />
<br />
Marjoe looked wistful. He knew he was the very definition of a sinner. But could you lie, eat candy, fool everyone and hate your parents, and still be good? <br />
<br />
That film about a religion addict set me on the highway to find heaven, running through checkpoints and scattering traffic cones, to seek my own Belief. Ghosts lay ahead, all with something to teach. One day, I would be infilled by Spirit. But I’d be nowhere near a church. <br />
<br />
Thirty years after <i>Marjoe</i>, I made another documentary. A wind at my back propelled me toward another flamboyant subject, this time a dancing, singing, junkie for truth. <br />
<br />
(To be continued.) <br />
<br />
You may download, rent or buy <i>Marjoe</i> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Marjoe-Sarah-Kernochan/dp/B000WQRSKC/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1500146796&sr=1-1&keywords=marjoe+documentary" target="_blank">here</a>. Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-28460960747876105922017-07-06T15:50:00.001-04:002017-11-24T15:16:07.575-05:00At Home With a Ghost - 59-60<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcruUHh9DpBgZEoeaxbwk81cIokYwtMqRKzwKNqRIv3QXW6DEE1bQ1RdlzX9fsEbHRw2kltxQSYBDbyU4XDc1Spgl9sSeoP8DH6IE-XWbHMcuRS3LT_Q-Kdm7t3la8w3Lsny9FbKWzEqo-/s1600/Machu+Picchu+trail+up+w+mist.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcruUHh9DpBgZEoeaxbwk81cIokYwtMqRKzwKNqRIv3QXW6DEE1bQ1RdlzX9fsEbHRw2kltxQSYBDbyU4XDc1Spgl9sSeoP8DH6IE-XWbHMcuRS3LT_Q-Kdm7t3la8w3Lsny9FbKWzEqo-/s640/Machu+Picchu+trail+up+w+mist.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The trail to 13,000 ft. </span><br />
(All photos by Barb Doran, my tent-mate.)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'm too old for this,
I complained to no one. My hiking group had long since passed me and
disappeared into plumes of fog as I fell farther and farther behind. By
the afternoon of the second day's climb, my thighs were nearly useless;
my problem knee sent up flares. By now I was hauling my dead weight on a
pair of hiking poles. Behind me were all the steps I'd climbed since
morning, and before me lay more and more, leading endlessly upwards,
hemming the ridges of the Peruvian Andes. The stone stairs, 27 miles in
all, were constructed some 500 years ago by Incans who probably never
lived to the age of complaining they were too old for this. The careless
ones had slipped and plunged off the edge; their howls were in my ears
as the path narrowed to a few feet across, forcing me to press my body
to the side of the mountain, turning my back on the sheer drop, to inch
around blind corners on legs that shuddered violently.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I'd
accepted the invitation with great excitement and, in my folly, no
questions. Arthur Sulzberger was soliciting friends to take the four-day
hike up the ancient trail to Machu Picchu, the remote sacred compound
of Incan rulers. Surely the place would be crawling with pagan spirits,
and ghosts of a bygone race, with a shaman on every corner - and legal
coca! My kind of scene.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I didn't learn, until the date
was near and the money was due, that this was an Outward Bound
expedition. I knew all about that torment, because my brother had done
one in his twenties; he said it changed his life. My personal impression
was, they teach you self-reliance, fill you with pride of
accomplishment, introduce you to your true essence, but only after
breaking you down by privation, physical exhaustion, despair, and a
cruel lack of amenities.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I called Arthur to bow out,
saying I was physically unqualified and far too whiny for the Outward
Bound experience. He batted away my protests. Almost everyone on this
hike would be in their fifties, people like me who had lost any interest
in suffering. We could expect many comforts. We wouldn't have to hunt
for water or follow the stars. There would be regular meals and tents
with high thread count. Arthur himself expected to enjoy a martini and a
cigar at the end of each day.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But I have a bad back."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I'll carry your pack," he said.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I don't think my knee is up to a lot of climbing. I have this old tear in the meniscus that acts up - "</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"It's not like we're climbing rock face," he said. "The trail is very gradual."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"I have a drastic <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/02/at-home-with-ghost-57_63.html" target="_blank">fear of heights</a>."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
He paused. "Well...this is how you get over it."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I
put in some half-hearted time on the Stairmaster. I bought all the
hiking gear with the tags still attached so I could return it. My
husband was annoyingly supportive: "You'll get through it with flying
colors and then be so glad you did it," etc.; and when I left my
passport home (also known as a cry for help), he grabbed a taxi to JFK,
delivering it just minutes before check-in closed, alas. As I boarded
the flight to Peru, Arthur shot me a triumphant look, then disappeared
through the curtain into first class. I was left alone in coach with my
certain knowledge of failure.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I knew the limit of my capabilities. I was right to predict they would give out, and they did.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Now
Arthur and his nimble friends had disappeared through the curtain of
mist, leaving me alone on the trail, except for an Outward Bound guide
named Robert to spot me in case I fell or needed to be carried the rest
of the way.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Robert followed me closely, a few steps
behind, the way my father had learned to walk behind my mother in case
she fell, which started to happen more frequently in her mid-seventies.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
It
was a point of pride with Mom that she rarely needed her wheelchair,
ever since the unwieldy metal leg braces for polio victims had been
improved with plastic and cushioning. Then she moved faster on her
crutches, though still carefully, always testing her rubber crutch tips
on a surface - whether the ground was firm, uneven, or slippery (small
area rugs were her bane) - before she took the next step.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Nevertheless,
Mom wasn't able to maintain her stride indefinitely. Old age brings
fresh woes to polio survivors. Even with the help of new braces, her
legs had become so bowed from supporting her weight they almost looked
like a dog's hind legs. She never knew when they might falter and
wobble, and when she lost her balance, there was nothing to do except
fall.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Once, during her travels, she hoisted herself
onto the bottom step of a bus, was unable to right herself, and toppled
backward onto the road like a felled tree. Horrified, Dad rushed to
where she lay; she had survived a few falls before, but he didn't see
how she would get up from this one, and they were far from medical help.
Yet when they stood her up, she boarded the bus. She told me later that
the secret was, if you knew you were going to crash, to make yourself
utterly limp. Flailing to break your fall would increase your chance of
breaking bones. With her way, the worst you could get would be a
concussion and huge bruises that were no big deal to this tough-skinned
marvel of a woman.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Mom hated for anyone to walk close
behind her. It implied that she needed support, was weak or helpless,
dependent on others, all of which enraged and humiliated her. Hovering
people, no matter their good intentions, ruined her concentration, for
she had a task: of ascertaining where to place her rubber crutch tips,
then testing the surface, then locking her arms on the grips while she
swung herself forward, then scouting the next safe spot to plant the
crutches. When left alone to focus, she could travel at remarkable
speed. Thus she resented my Dad when, after the bus accident, he
insisted on following a few steps behind her - as Robert was doing for
me now on the Inca trail.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I felt the same humiliation,
as I shifted more and more of my weight from my spent legs to my poles. I
could not afford to look anywhere but the stones at my feet. Each step
presented a unique problem. Some were slippery, some uneven, some loose,
some just broken rubble. I had to locate a safe spot to plant the pole
tips, test the stability of the surface, then hoist myself up and assess
the next stair; a progress on repeat, over and over...until I realized I
was inside my mother.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Immediately I started to cry. I
tried to hide my tears from Robert, but he could hear me snorkeling
mucous. "It's not that much farther," he said. "Everyone's up there." I
looked up from the stones. He was pointing up at a mountain peak ahead
that was so shrouded in fog it might have been a hundred yards away or
ten miles for all I could tell.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
He added, "They're waiting in Warmiwañusqa - Dead Woman's Pass."</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Those
words stopped me cold. Inhabiting my mother, leaning on her crutches, I
was seized by the truth I'd resisted: that she was dying. Years before,
she had begin the long, slow decline into dementia, and it would claim
her soon. Every day, she was passing farther from reach. I could not
stop her fade nor break her fall.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I collapsed on a
boulder and sobbed. Robert shifted nervously nearby. He thought I was
throwing in the towel, and then what would he do with me?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I gestured with my hand that I only needed a minute to recover, but really I needed years, starting with the past.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
My
mother was hard to love. She wouldn't admit to needing it, but she did.
"I love you" wasn't in her lexicon - she had to be prompted; someone
had to say it first, forcing her to stammer the words in response. Just
to give her a hug was awkward; she always tensed up a bit, with a
nervous laugh, as if she hadn't been taught what to do. And maybe she
hadn't. Like my father, she had been raised by governesses, with a vague
set of parents on the periphery. Or maybe she hesitated to put her arms
around anyone because it meant lifting her crutches from the floor and
trusting her weight to another.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Her intensity was an
impediment, too. The same ferocious will that made her so unstoppable
was what kept her and me apart. She had given birth to my two older
brothers before coming down with the polio virus. I was the first child
born - and the first girl - after she'd been crippled. She turned her
intensity onto me, in the form of fierce hope. Though Mom would not have
put it this way, in fact would have denied it, I understood my job to
be that I would somehow avenge her impairment, by climbing out of "a
woman's place" on two good legs and taking power; by refusing to be
suppressed, whether by a crippling virus or low expectations; by
creating things of wonderment; and I should accomplish all this for both
of us.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I rebelled against this last assignment. I knew
the limit of my capabilities: I couldn't carry both her weight and
mine. I found her suffocating; inwardly, I kept my distance. If she was
hard to love, I made it harder.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Finally, at 85, she was
condemned to the hated wheelchair and needed other people's assistance
with everything, which was her nightmare. Far away, I wept on the Inca
Trail. I'd finally realized she would be dead in a few years. Now I
myself was paralyzed, by the wild intensity of the love I'd held back.
It hammered for release. I wanted to lift off the trail and fly home and
open my full heart to her.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I picked up my crutches, dried my eyes, and climbed the rest of the stairs to Dead Woman's Pass.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH0By457H7rzrq_ahjUxE76VHJe6kHB0YFZFFTl8ORlf7H8CKW4lsk893RKj2-26pBXaaM_GnQOD4QLJFNJ6J9CuJ1EwGYZTsF_2cRgvfN2-DQNrU4-WG2ZP5ulqst7SL6GHkbdLOxe5WF/s1600/Machu+Picchu+llama.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH0By457H7rzrq_ahjUxE76VHJe6kHB0YFZFFTl8ORlf7H8CKW4lsk893RKj2-26pBXaaM_GnQOD4QLJFNJ6J9CuJ1EwGYZTsF_2cRgvfN2-DQNrU4-WG2ZP5ulqst7SL6GHkbdLOxe5WF/s640/Machu+Picchu+llama.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
At
the top I found two llamas hunkered on the plateau, indifferent to the
clicking cameras of the hikers. My comrades cheered my arrival and
lavished hugs on me that, like my mother, I received awkwardly. I was a
tear-stained emotional mess, and I didn't want them to know the extent
of my exhaustion. Having wasted precious time on waiting for me, the
others were anxious to move on and reach camp before darkness fell.
Arthur longed for his martini. I would be holding the whole group back.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Go
without me, don't worry, I'll get there at my own speed, I insisted
with a confidence that was bogus. Relieved, they hurried over the lip of
the pass and out of sight, beginning the trek down the mountain. Robert
and a native guide stayed. The two men were going to walk ahead of me
this time, in case I keeled over forwards. Robert pointed out the camp
in the distance. One couldn't really see it because it lay behind two
more mountains we would have to traverse by nightfall. I mustered my
morale and followed them to the edge.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There my spirits
died. I was staring down the steps of an interminable stone staircase,
steeped in fog. There was no bottom. Climbing up I could ignore the
fearful drop, but not going down. My vertigo attacked, murdering the
pitiful last of my energy. Before you fall, I reminded myself, make
yourself utterly limp.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Unaware of my panic, the two men
climbed down twenty yards and paused expectantly. I was still at the
top, unmoving. Robert saw, to his frustration, that I had begun to cry
again. I was silently begging the wind, the mountain, the Dead Woman,
for help. Surely this place was crawling with spirits.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And then a little yellow dog appeared.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
(To be continued.)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Part 60</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEIpBFBvH-nyXDkqPfWSY4EDj9P8FGsykVjxJ7RXUPtJC7X35GOSHTEnLWTF1WL6MrJ57jg9SKlaNVcxcweUy3rAI8GuSULVi8iBEmsoYlcFngGPb5nQJCcLFKInQvF3ZxiquPnsiIlz0/s1600/Putucuci+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="315" data-original-width="472" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNEIpBFBvH-nyXDkqPfWSY4EDj9P8FGsykVjxJ7RXUPtJC7X35GOSHTEnLWTF1WL6MrJ57jg9SKlaNVcxcweUy3rAI8GuSULVi8iBEmsoYlcFngGPb5nQJCcLFKInQvF3ZxiquPnsiIlz0/s640/Putucuci+3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Putucuci Mountain and the secret door. All photos by Barbara Doran.</td></tr>
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<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
There was no reason for him to be here. The little yellow mutt sat beside my left hiking boot, gazing up at me. He must have crept up from behind, while I was standing at summit’s edge and panicking at the sight of the vertiginous plunge and the infinite stone stairs I’d have to stagger down if I was to reach camp before night fell. <br />
<br />
But how did the dog get here? To arrive at my feet on Dead Woman’s Pass, the highest point of the Inca Trail, he would have had to climb for a day and a half, just as I had done. Did he belong to a hiker from another group headed for Macchu Pichu, and had somehow gotten lost? Yet dogs were strictly prohibited on the ancient trail. <br />
<br />
Nor was he feral. He was not bony, dirty, hungry, tired, or fierce. Instead he was plump and clean, and as friendly as if he had met me on a previous occasion and, after sniffing me thoroughly, judged me to be okay. His brown eyes were sweet. I could have bent down to pet him, except my knees were shot and my legs gone rigid in the cold.<br />
<br />
Or was he a spirit? Had the little dog materialized out of the very thin air of the Peruvian Andes, right when I was begging the universe out loud for help to get down the mountain? After all, we were 12,000 feet above reason. <br />
<br />
And I did need help. I was the only one left of my group. By now the others were probably halfway to the next mountain, where the porters were setting up tents and cooking dinner. My Outward Bound guide Robert and one of the Peruvian guides remained behind to make sure I survived the long descent. The two men were waiting for me, some thirty steps below; an opaque mist was rising fast to envelop them. Still I couldn’t move. Even with the aid of my hiking poles I had no strength left. I was Dead Woman Not Walking.<br />
<br />
My insurance would cover a medivac rescue, if there was room on the pass for a copter to land, or if it could even fly this high. No matter, my friend Arthur had the satellite phone, and he was far away with the rest of the merry band. That left – what? Crawling down on my butt? <br />
<br />
The dog seemed to have other ideas. He jumped down to the next stair, turned, and regarded me with encouragement. “You can,” said the brown eyes. So I planted my poles on the step below, and painfully lowered myself to his level. But the animal had already moved on, this time two steps down, where he paused again, offering his faith, and a promise of safety. <br />
<br />
I simply couldn’t disappoint him. He’d gone through a lot of trouble to be real. <br />
<br />
And that was how we did it: together. Step by step, my knight in yellow fur escorted me down, coaxing me past my pain, giving me the heart to go on. We breached the fog to find Robert and the other guide, who were relieved to see me walking again but mystified by the dog’s presence. I introduced him: “This is Li’l Yeller.” Adding, “If you have any questions, I don’t know.”<br />
<br />
We hastened on. Li’l Yeller ran back and forth, romping around the men’s feet, then bounding back to me as I struggled to follow. He always tested the next step before I moved to it, finding the best spot to support my poles, then sending me a look of recommendation. Inky darkness overtook us; we turned on our headlamps. <br />
<br />
Then the camp lights came into view. Perhaps smelling the food from the cook tent, the dog raced ahead; this time he didn’t return. I was too exhausted to wonder where he’d gone. Thrusting the flap aside, I fell into my tent and burrowed inside the sleeping bag. My tentmate Barb brought me some food from dinner, but I fell asleep between the first two bites. <br />
<br />
Our tent was pitched on an incline. During the night, my sleeping bag gradually slipped downwards until, at dawn, I woke up at the bottom, curled in a fetal position and pressed against the flap. I could hear the breakfast pots clanging and the footsteps of my comrades heading for the makeshift johnny. As I sat up, to my surprise, my muscles obeyed without protest. It seemed that they had finally become habituated to abuse, and that the days of agonizing aches, the seizures and refusals, were behind me. <br />
<br />
Something appeared outside the tent opening, a blurred silhouette. I unzipped the flap and stuck my head through. There was my magical mystery mutt, seated on his haunches like a sentry. He turned his head and gave me the brown-eyed once-over. His glance said, “Ah! You’re all right now – good to go. My job’s done.” And he scampered off.<br />
<br />
I didn’t see Li’l Yeller again for the remaining two days of the hike. He went ahead with the porters, who had become enchanted with him, feeding him scraps and naming him Picchu (meaning “mountain,” from whence he’d come.) One porter decided to bring him home on the train back to Cusco, as a pet for his kids. <br />
<br />
On the fourth day, my group reached our destination, entered the Sun Gate, and beheld the marvels of Machu Picchu. We showered off four days of body mung in a hotel that seemed like a mirage. <br />
<br />
The following dawn, we convened to explore the sacred city before the trains of tourists arrived. Arthur decided, instead, to keep climbing. He was determined to scale Waynu Picchu, an even higher mountain nearby that overlooked the ruins.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waynu Picchu looms over the sacred city</td></tr>
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<br />
The top native guide recommended against the plan, warning that the path was too primitive and dangerous; only the year before, two people had fallen to their deaths; Arthur could proceed, but on his own and at his own risk. Incredibly, four others from our group leapt to join him. They all geared up and set off for the mountain.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the porters were ready to go home – but Picchu had disappeared. They searched everywhere for the little dog, but in the end they had to leave without him. <br />
<br />
After absorbing all I could of the stupendous Incan ruins, I paused to sit alone and meditate on a grass terrace facing Waynu Picchu. Faraway, one could see Arthur and his gang creeping like ants up the steep green flank of the mountain. I hoped they had some kind of divine protection. And I thought back to my little yellow companion who had appeared and vanished so eerily.<br />
<br />
If you are open to the idea of spirit animals, those creatures who act as guides throughout our lives, whether in real form or symbolically, then it becomes fun to identify them. Once, before going to sleep, I experimentally asked my unconscious to reveal my personal spirit animal in a dream. My unconscious obliged. I was shown a wooden rabbit perched like a signpost at the head of my driveway. I was unsurprised; I’ve always adored rabbits and owned many. They represent my soft and vulnerable side, needy of protection and love, that I prefer to hide from most people. Yes, it is true: I’m basically fluffy. <br />
<br />
People generally have more than one animal guide, so I asked to glimpse a second one in the next night’s dream. Accordingly, I was shown a painted snake with its jaw encased in a tin muzzle. This one came as a shock: I never imagined a spirit animal could be a creature that has always terrified me. Yet in my dream I was not afraid of the snake; being muzzled, it would not bite me. I grudgingly recognized that, like rabbits, snakes have been a constant throughout my life as well. They tend to show up when I need the message: to take my head out of its cloud hat and look where I’m going. I fear but also admire their stealth, their shape-shifting, their dynamism. If I can accept that the snake is actually on my side and not against me, then it’s a powerful defender for the bunny-self to have. <br />
<br />
Was there a third? This time I posed the question while meditating. Suddenly I found myself gazing down into the shallows of a limpid pool. I saw weeds wafting over colored pebbles, small fish flicking by. I stood utterly still on long legs, watching, analyzing...At length I raised up, spread my wings, and flew up into the sky. I was a crane. This was a perfectly apt metaphor for an artist. We stare intently into the secret world of the unconscious, pluck an idea or an image from the depths, and fly away to present our findings to the world. <br />
<br />
As I mused on animal guides, in the meantime Arthur and company had arrived successfully at Waynu Picchu’s peak. On top they found someone already there: a hiker, apparently Jewish because he wore a tallis shawl, who was seated on the ground in meditative prayer, eyes open and focused on an invisible point beyond. As Arthur looked on, a huge condor swooped down and alighted in front of the praying man. The bird folded its wings and stared straight into the man’s eyes. Neither moved. Minutes passed. At last the bird turned away and sailed back into the air. The man blinked, then rose and quietly gathered his things, not acknowledging the new arrivals as he passed them to begin the hike down. <br />
<br />
It was then that Arthur and his friends saw another animal was present. It was Picchu. How he got to the top of the peak, no one could imagine. This time, the dog was completely exhausted, with nothing left in him to go down. This time, he was the one rescued. One of the group carried Picchu all the way to the bottom in his arms, and, in the process, fell so deeply in love with the little mutt that he resolved to take him back to U.S., no matter what it took to get him out.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGgaHOz6qCfNC6FcowdzXJiBIDINn3mkJrDjfybBrbHErBc4jjyekCi33pVjRN8v9HwjjAa5amyAIoLHc7BTRp8qEMeuEwNpGc6qWen8e9PnhJ8FO7nqEO4EjbdwG9nt96ggyQwxRrlXjm/s1600/Macchu+Picchu+dog+in+arms.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGgaHOz6qCfNC6FcowdzXJiBIDINn3mkJrDjfybBrbHErBc4jjyekCi33pVjRN8v9HwjjAa5amyAIoLHc7BTRp8qEMeuEwNpGc6qWen8e9PnhJ8FO7nqEO4EjbdwG9nt96ggyQwxRrlXjm/s640/Macchu+Picchu+dog+in+arms.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The divine Picchu, saved</td></tr>
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<br />
After moving heaven and hell, hacking at red tape and offering bribes, Picchu’s savior had to admit failure. The dog remained in Peru, and the expedition cook took charge of him, intending to keep him as a family pet. I’ve often wondered if, as the cook approached his house with Picchu at his heels, the man turned around to find the pup gone. <br />
<br />
Picchu was a gift of the mountain, after all, to which he returned. <br />
<br />
I had one more encounter with the cosmic before leaving the sacred city. On my way out I took a last glance at Putucuci, a third mountain thrusting up between Waynu and Machu Picchu, like a green-mittened hand with the thumb folded in. As I stared, I felt an immense pressure pulling me toward the mountain – so potent that I had to grip the railing to keep from being swept off the edge. The fold in the mountainside opened, showing a triangular entrance. The urge to fly overwhelmed me. If I succumbed, if I let go of the rail, if I trusted the power that both compelled and paralyzed me, if I took a few deliberate steps forward, I would leave the parapet and soar over the depthless chasm, through the mountain door and into the mother ship. <br />
<br />
Eyes locked on this portal, I could not turn my head. “You’re going to die! Look away! Look away!” I hollered at myself inside. Tourists streamed by, unaware of my battle with reason. Someone jostled me, and broke the trance. I ripped my gaze away from Putucuci, hurrying from the site. <br />
<br />
Later I pulled one of the native guides aside to tell him about the experience, asking if this had occurred to anyone else. He allowed that one year, someone stole onto the site during the night and stepped off the edge to his death. “There’s nothing strange that can’t happen up in these mountains,” he added, with an odd faraway look that implied both fear and respect. “Things you can’t even name.”<br />
<br />
I had felt that same unseen pressure a few years before, pulling me to a fateful encounter with an unusual man.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
To Picchu with thanks:<br />
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Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-26750848194324541722017-04-02T13:50:00.001-04:002017-04-29T21:43:55.102-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 58(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
Harry's ghost requested it. I refused. I fought it. In the end I wrote it: the story of two musicians trying to write one song, groping desperately through a fog of drugs and alcohol. By contrast, creating the script about them took no effort, took no time at all, and I had a bewildering amount of fun. This was so unusual, in my long experience as a screenwriter, that I had to wonder, was it really I who had written it?<br />
<br />
What does it really mean when we writers say that something "wrote itself"? It has happened to most of us at least once, unpredictably, and it's a wicked ride. All of a sudden the work gushes out; riding the giant surge of inspiration, we're barely able to type fast enough, forgetting to eat, sleep or pee. The exhausted writer will say afterward, in a happy daze, "I don't know where that came from."<br />
<br />
Writers crave this mysterious and violent visitation, which feels like being mauled by your muse. But you can't order up a delivery if you don't know where it comes from.<br />
<br />
Thus we are drawn to the treacherous lure of ju-ju, the magic substances and talismans that bargain with the brain to synthetically recreate that ride. It's like hiring a hooker or buying an inflatable doll when your true object of desire is out of town. We pretend she's our muse, an artificial version of what we're seeking but that has been known to get the job done. You tell yourself the trick will work - until one day, it doesn't.<br />
<br />
The menu of paid companions is long and diverse, because selecting a writer's helper from the catalog is a very personal choice. There are the hallucinogens, the opiates, the stimulants, everything from absinthe to Adderall. Complications may include dizziness, shortness of breath, sudden rage, loss of equilibrium, cardiac arrest, kidney failure, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts and, in some cases, death - but hey. It's for the work.<br />
<br />
In the <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2017/02/at-home-with-ghost-57_63.html">previous chapter</a> I described Harry Nilsson and John Lennon trawling Palm Springs for mind-altering materials, so that they could get to work on some music. The search absorbed so much time and energy that the writing never even began. I was no different; I too believed that my best work only manifested if I was artificially plugged into an exalted state. Like Harry and John, I needed to override the pain.<br />
<br />
I refer to the painful difficulty of writing itself. <br />
<br />
Yet when I was a child discovering how much I loved to write, it was easy, all play and no work. After all, why would any kid choose to do something painful? Or ask where the ideas came from? They simply tumbled into your imagination, and the fun began. You felt good about yourself when you made something from nothing; and if you were a child who generally didn’t feel good about herself, you became willingly addicted to the pleasures of creating. <br />
<br />
So when did it become painful? <br />
<br />
I decided to be a writer when I was 14. My boyfriend, who was five years older, dropped out of Princeton to write a novel. He wrote every day, or tried. It had never occurred to me that I could write as a profession, until I observed the simplicity of his choice: first decide you’ll do it, and then just do it. Even on days you don’t want to. This is your work. <br />
<br />
I started practicing right away. That was when anxiety first crept into what was once playtime, now called work. As the professional I imagined myself to be, I was no longer courting only the praise of parents and teachers, whose support I could always count on, but also exposing myself to the judgment of strangers. I felt the pain of expectations – my own, and those of nameless numberless readers to come. <br />
<br />
I needed help to quiet the jitters. I noticed my boyfriend drank beer and bourbon, and smoked cigarettes. It lodged in my mind that this, too, was professional. I didn’t much like smoking but I manned up and inhaled. It more often made me want to take a shit than write. Alcohol was better. Although my parents didn’t drink, there were a few liqueurs like Dubonnet in the sideboard for guests. The trouble with alcohol was, after the first giddy page zipped off the typewriter carriage, the mind started to leak fuel. Incoherence was only a half a page away. Still, that first page was a winner, and I could start all over the next day, with Marlboros and some horrible aperitif helping me to nail page two. <br />
<br />
Once I’d polished off all the guest liquor, and was busted for it, I turned to caffeine. By this time I was writing my first novelette, and wildly menstruating. Midol became my boughten friend. Since I was pretty sensitive to drugs, a single Midol tablet was the equivalent of a cup of strong coffee. My mother dutifully purchased Midol for me at the pharmacy, while my manuscript pages piled up: sixty pages, and no cramps. <br />
<br />
To double my supply, I exaggerated the quantity of my periods. As far as Mom knew, my menses were titanic. In my high school senior year, she took me to a gynecologist, who prescribed Daprisal. Oh, the rapture of Daprisal: dexedrine and aspirin, for gals on the rag, Baby’s first speedball. In college, taking Daprisal and staying up all night to write a paper in a single session was like a sacred ritual. I presented my mind on drugs as a kind of burnt offering to the muse. In return I could reasonably expect to finish the paper by dawn, at twice the page length required and in passionate prose that had deteriorated to blabber by the time I came to write my conclusion.<br />
<br />
Halfway through my junior year at Sarah Lawrence, I followed my boyfriend’s example of dropping out of college to write fiction. While holding down a job at the Village Voice, I wrote in my spare time. By then, pot, mescaline and acid were also available for muse-chasing, but proved too unpredictable. I might just as easily wind up on the roof, cackling at the stars, as hunched over the typewriter. Marijuana tore me from my desk and sent me out for ice cream. Daprisal, alas, was discontinued (as was my boyfriend). <br />
<br />
As I became a true professional hired to write screenplays, I sought anything with an upward tilt. Uppers brought not only energy but grandeur: words came intercut with imagined applause, awards accepted, revenges accomplished, certain select people eating crow, and approval from both parents plus God. When I took uppers, I didn’t merely feel good about myself; I thought I was a flaming genius. Still, I was too tense with ambition to tolerate straight amphetamines; they made me hypomanic. I needed that yin/yang upper/downer speedball combination, like cocaine with wine, a treasured formula when I could afford it. This mixture saw me through a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Erotic-American-Classics-Vol-Hustle-ebook/dp/B0048ELKOY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491154544&sr=1-1&keywords=dry+hustle" target="_blank">novel</a> and its script adaptation. Whenever inspiration flagged, I’d stumble up the Pacific Coast Highway to the bar at Moonshadows, still dressed in my nightgown, which I wore with boots, hoping people would think it was a granny dress but really not caring if they didn’t. There I would chug a legal speedball: <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-13.html" target="_blank">Irish coffee</a>, the Tao of caffeine and bad whiskey with Reddi-Wip and a cherry. <br />
<br />
I always wrote at night, but had to change my habits when I got married and had a baby. Then my work window shrank to four hours in the daytime. Drugs and wine were inappropriate for breakfast, especially while I was breastfeeding, since I’d be transferring my jones to my daughter via the nipple. I settled for a weak juju of Darjeeling with milk, and redoubled my entreaties to whatever was passing by – deity, angel, ghost, muse – to help me meet studio deadlines. I asked for easy inspiration to do work in which I took small pleasure, except when I got the checks. <br />
<br />
By the time <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-55.html" target="_blank">Harry Nilsson’s ghost appeared</a> in 1994 I was down to green tea, Chupa Chup lollipops, and anti-depressants: not much in the way of mind-altering drugs, but I still believed you had to pay some kind of fee, anything, to receive brilliant ideas from wherever they came from. Hell, once I’d even slaughtered a sheep to that end (see <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/03/at-home-with-ghost-26.html" target="_blank">Chapter 26</a> and <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/03/at-home-with-ghost-27.html" target="_blank">27</a>) Writing is hard, I would tell anyone aspiring to push words. And, I should have added, expensive. Because ever since adolescence I’d been treating my muse as coin-operated.<br />
<br />
That changed on the day I sat down at my desk, early one morning before I’d even made tea or unwrapped a lollipop, and began writing a script I had no intention of writing. I was idly noodling around, dreading another day of unemployment. It was so baffling not to have a job, when for years I’d had my pick of offers. Why now, at my peak? Just write anything, I told myself. See what happens. I opened a blank script document and typed “EXT. – DESERT – DAY”. And so began the saga of Harry and John Lennon and May Pang and me on our <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-55.html" target="_blank">lost weekend</a> in Palm Springs. <br />
<br />
Five hours later found me still writing. I could have gone on, except it was time to make dinner for my family. As I fried fish, I pondered what had just happened. The tidal swell of inspiration, the hot rush and rapids of ideas, the obsessive focus to the exclusion of all else, the feeling of being wrung dry afterwards – in short, the headlong ride that writers crave – none of that had occurred. <br />
<br />
I had been calm, patient, entirely free of anxiety. The flow of words, scenes, imagery was gentle and constant. The characters had been simply <i>there</i>. It was as natural as stepping into a shower already running. <br />
<br />
And every day afterward was the same: the water waiting for me, generous, regenerating, until the script was done. <br />
<br />
I thought back to the <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/09/at-home-with-ghost-54.html" target="_blank">vision </a>I’d been shown in my meditation trance a few months before: an image of creation as a ladle pouring forth sheer radiance, a shower I had merely to step into whenever I felt ready to join the flux. It had no location. It was just <i>there</i>. <br />
<br />
Muses and ghosts, grandfathers and <a href="http://jinns/" target="_blank">jinns</a> might act as sherpas to the source, but I was astonished to realize I didn’t need them anymore to find the shimmering falls. I had only to drop my towel and get naked before wading in, and that small action was called…trust. <br />
<br />
Trust was the one and true juju, my offering to that effulgence of spirit: if I trusted that inspiration was eternally there, a gracious unending flow, then creation would grant me my portion.<br />
<br />
It didn’t matter that the script, called Karma Kamikazes, was never produced (although it remains one of my favorites). It appeared heaven intended that no paid employment would come my way until I completed this one project, a divinely scheduled lesson wherein I would learn, finally, how to write. <br />
<br />
From that time on, I have written in this way. I know where the words come from, and I trust that the water is always on. I’m back in playtime, in the fun. <br />
<br />
Further, it was a kind of goodbye to all the spooky that had gone before. At long last, I had outgrown my need for the dead and disembodied, a need that had occupied my life since my first contact with my deceased grandfather. <br />
<br />
The day after the script was finished, I got a call offering a job. The producer claimed to have been unable to reach me for weeks, unaware she was using a wrong number. Never mind, I said. Even if you’d had the right one, I was unreachable. <br />
<br />
The universe had hardly ceased doling out lessons, though. The hardest one seized me high in the Andes, on the second day of a 2005 hike up the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. What lay before me was Dead Woman’s Pass, and another goodbye.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.)Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-63872126243301176232017-02-12T19:10:00.001-05:002017-03-17T21:18:54.752-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 57<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2ijba1FZXCNhr-QJrymOk7lYga6BNF9kPmyIX0yMAna-fiQxElIcm7l_SF90elYGNbPQXYRzWH6dyVLF-5QWur8xQRxWhxrpx-isxTYA3djHtSYvBpIWDqhUTxko65cxuJ7tRKpvFoDP/s1600/Beat+Around+the+Bush+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ2ijba1FZXCNhr-QJrymOk7lYga6BNF9kPmyIX0yMAna-fiQxElIcm7l_SF90elYGNbPQXYRzWH6dyVLF-5QWur8xQRxWhxrpx-isxTYA3djHtSYvBpIWDqhUTxko65cxuJ7tRKpvFoDP/s400/Beat+Around+the+Bush+cover.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Yep, hot pants.<br />
(Bad scan of photo by Norman Seeff for my album cover) <br />
<br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
I love writing on planes. I find my voice easily at great altitude, along with focus, inspiration, and the odd sensation of being assisted. One could say that, if help comes from heaven, then we are closer to heaven inside that speeding silver bullet, aloft in the outer atmosphere. (Except I don’t believe the afterlife is high in the sky, or even in a separate place. I prefer to think of fellow spirits as living in the next room, and we share a wall that doesn’t actually exist.)<br />
<br />
On this particular flight from LA to New York, the last thing I expected to be writing was song lyrics. I was no stranger to <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">channeling music</a>, though it hadn’t happened in a very long time – more than a couple of decades before boarding this plane. In my twenties, when I was a recording artist, I used to receive snatches of songs from my late grandfather in the lull between dreaming and waking. I would be fed an idea, an image, a phrase, a melody. In the morning, I would finish the song, in the manner of a collaborator. These episodes were uninvited and ultimately frightening. Thankfully, they ended once I had completed the assignment: a <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2012/12/at-home-with-ghost-44_13.html" target="_blank">one-act musical</a> that was produced in 1981, after which I stopped writing songs entirely. <br />
<br />
Channeling is not for me. I’ve never liked working with another writer. As a collaborator, I do not play well with others – I can blow on my own soup. Neither am I a candidate for “<a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-4.html">automatic writing</a>,” which my mother’s father did after his mother’s death, allowing her spirit to guide his pencil on paper as his hand traced her words of advice and comfort.<br />
But when I suddenly started jotting the words for a song on that plane, there was no ghostly pressure pushing my pen. And yet, the voice wasn’t mine. For one thing, I was alive, whereas the person writing the song was deceased and thought being dead was funny.<br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I’m over</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Over and out</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>What was that</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>All about?</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I’m over</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Over and done</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Sorry to </i><br />
<i><br />
</i><i>Miss the fun</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Hanging in the air like a fading star</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I’m just a breath away, yet so far</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I’m over</i><br />
<br />
That was all. The moment passed, the voice withdrew, and I looked at what I’d just written. The wordplay, the humor, the touch of wistful nostalgia…<br />
<br />
I smiled. Hi, Harry.<br />
<br />
Also: I’ll take it from here, thanks.<br />
<br />
I completed the song and recorded it on MIDI equipment I set up, to my husband’s displeasure, in our dining room. Though I wrote the rest of the verses as well as the music, I considered the whole of “I’m Over” so suffused with Harry Nilsson’s sensibility that it felt weird to claim sole credit. I couldn’t discuss the song’s provenance with anyone, since my reputation as a rational person was already frayed.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="no" height="300" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/133245172&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
<br />
With the song finished, I felt I had done what Harry had asked when <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-56.html" target="_blank">he visited me</a> after his death. I was grateful for the nudge that got me composing again, which enlivened the tedious months of waiting for my next script job.<br />
<br />
Time passed; no ship came in. My mind wandered back to the idea of writing a script about my dissolute “<a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-55.html" target="_blank">lost weekend</a>” with Harry, John Lennon and May Pang in Palm Springs. The logline would be easy: “A world-famous pair of pop stars attempt to dry out and compose songs for an upcoming recording session on which their careers depend. Bringing a couple of female companions for sustenance, the musicians book into a stolid Palm Springs hotel. From that moment, our heroes proceed to do everything possible not to succeed.”<br />
<br />
That sounded like a movie I, for one, would want to see. I’d have to change the names, set it in the present, and delete myself from the story, since my own behavior made me sick to remember. Owing to the buckets of alcohol consumed, there was plenty I didn’t remember, too: holes in the narrative. I assumed my behavior was sickening there, too. By fictionalizing, though, I could paper over the holes. And some scenes would be wicked fun to write. For example, the tram incident! I recalled that escapade in detail because I was not drunk when it took place. It began like this:<br />
<br />
Harry and John woke up in the late afternoon as usual. The “Do Not Disturb” sign was undisturbed. Palm Springs was quiet on any day, but Sundays, at least in 1975, didn’t even have a heartbeat. Yet the clock insisted this was the happy hour. The lads were out of drugs, which was providential because they were supposed to detox and had been putting it off. On the other hand, songwriting was out of the question until one’s consciousness was altered or askew. Liquor seemed both attractive and appropriate.<br />
<br />
None of us liked the idea of hanging around the hotel bar, where all these terminally sedate guests were giving us the hairy eyeball. May’s denims and mine were cut off an inch below the pubes, for easy access, and between us we didn’t own a single bra. Harry and John looked seedy and uncouth in their patchwork denims, porkpie caps, and famous-person shades. I doubt if any of those clueless fossils recognized there was a Beatle on the premises, except maybe the concierge, who was all for getting us off the premises.<br />
<br />
Harry asked the concierge if there was a bar that was out of the way and relatively uninhabited. (The boys were supposed to stay out of the public eye, since their misadventures in L.A. had been all over the press recently.) The concierge recommended a mountaintop cocktail lounge in the area. During the day, people took a scenic tram up to the summit, to eat lunch in the restaurant and admire the spectacular view, but at this late afternoon hour almost everyone would’ve gone back down the mountain.<br />
<br />
Our driver (of the same limo that delivered us to Palm Springs) was Mal Evans, the road manager who had been with the Beatles since the early days of mania, a burly, sweet-tempered man who had seen too much of everything. Mal dropped us off at the tram and parked the limo nearby to wait for our return.<br />
<br />
We had the tram to ourselves, a welcome sign that the day traffic was done and the lounge would be quiet. As we began our ascent, rocking on the cable, I glanced out the wraparound windows and fell into a panic. No one had informed us that we would climb to 8000-plus feet above sea level over a two-and-a half-mile vertical drop. Because of my vertigo, I’d never so much as been to the top of the Empire State building. I spent the endless 15-minute trip with my eyes squeezed shut and my face buried in Harry’s shoulder, praying not to blow my lunch, which, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten. My knees wobbled so badly he had to help me off the tram when we arrived. Feeling the solid floor under my wedge platforms, I made straight for the bar. For once, I needed a drink more than the boys did. And I wondered how the hell I was going to get back down the mountain again without full-on primal screaming.<br />
<br />
Only about twenty visitors remained in the lounge, an older crowd, couples at intimate tables, a few dancing to music from a jukebox, no loners or barflys. The ambience was quietly convivial. We parked at the bar with our backs to the people to make sure no one recognized Lennon. I sank my muzzle in a beer, and Harry ordered four double Brandy Alexanders for himself and John. I don’t remember what May drank, or if she had anything; of the four of us, she was the designated grown-up.<br />
<br />
The sun dipped behind the mountain, the sky faded to black, and the small crowd got a little rowdier as closing time neared. We realized we had wandered into a nest of single (or cheatin’) geezers, all looking to hook up in a discreet romantic setting. The bartender announced last call. We bought ourselves a round for the road.<br />
<br />
And then the jukebox played the opening bars of Yesterday. That’s how John knew he’d been made. “Someone sees me and thinks it’s cute to play ‘Yesterday’ and I hate it. Or ‘Let It Be’ or ‘Hey Jude.’ They’re Paul’s songs.”<br />
<br />
A few emboldened people approached the bar to talk to him. Time to get away: we abandoned our drinks, moving out to the tram platform – but not before John went over to the jukebox, located some of his songs, then plugged in enough quarters so that ‘I Am the Walrus’ and ‘You Know My Name, Look Up the Number’ would play repeatedly. Let the fuckers try to dance to that.<br />
<br />
We were first onto the tram when it arrived, but it didn’t take off immediately as we hoped. People streamed out of the lounge: it turned out to be the last tram of the day; everyone was headed home. Surrounding us, the geezers packed in tight, until there was barely room to breathe. Harry, John, May and I were mashed into the middle, turning protectively inward to face each other. The door slid shut; the tram swung away from the platform and proceeded downward. <br />
<br />
I didn’t have to wrestle with vertigo this time because it was dark out; the night obscured the steep drop; only the lights of Palm Springs sparkled through the ink, growing closer as we descended. There was silence in the car, but for communal breathing.<br />
<br />
Then some wag started to hum “Yesterday.” We heard suppressed laughter. I felt a hand on my butt. I looked at Harry but his arms were pinned to his side. It wasn’t his hand. May gave a little yelp and turned to John: “Is that you?” – “Me what?” Then I felt another set of fingers sliding up my leg. May’s eyes bugged; she whispered, “They’re feeling me up!” -– “Me too,” I said. “Me, too,” said Harry, said John.<br />
<br />
We were trapped, unable to move as people groped and prodded our bodies. The crowd’s hilarity overflowed. They were in command, and they were horny. “John!” One grandma fought her way through the crush, jamming her boobs against his back. “John! Bite my tit!”<br />
<br />
Clearly Beatle frenzy wasn’t just for teenyboppers. It can happen that in advanced age, we grow unruly and shameless all over again. I am a fogey now, so I know.<br />
<br />
The tram touched ground. The people who had been pressed to the door spilled out when it slid open, the crowd parting just enough for us to make a break for freedom. We all four sprinted toward the parking lot, with a pack of rabid, frothing seniors in pursuit. Mal Evans, trained by Beatles’ tours, instantly appeared with the limo, jumped out and opened the door. We piled inside as he thrust the crowd back.<br />
<br />
The limo peeled out. After we recovered our breath, with the too-quiet streets of Palm Springs sliding past our windows, Harry suggested we look for another place to get a drink. And that led to the next adventure….<br />
<br />
That scene would be fun to write, too. If I wrote the script that I’d refused to write for so long. Oh just do it, I told myself. You’re bored. Write the first page and see what happens.<br />
<br />
I opened a blank script file.<br />
<br />
What happened next was of far greater moment than my little tale of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll; of channeling and Schmilsson’s ghost. By the end of three weeks I had lifted a little closer to heaven.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
For those requesting, here are the complete lyrics for "I'm Over":<br />
<br />
<i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over and out</i><br />
<i>What was that all about?</i><br />
<i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over and done</i><br />
<i>Sorry to miss the fun</i><br />
<i>Hanging in the air</i><br />
<i>Like a fading star</i><br />
<i>I'm just a breath away</i><br />
<i>Yet so far</i><br />
<i>I'm over, over, ah…</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over the falls</i><br />
<i>No one writes, no one calls</i><br />
<i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over the hill</i><br />
<i>Hardly time to drink my fill</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Stranded in the space</i><br />
<i>Between here and now</i><br />
<i>Seems I lost my place</i><br />
<i>Don't know how</i><br />
<i>I'm over, over, ah…</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I been underprivileged undermined Undersold undersigned</i><br />
<i>Underrated</i><br />
<i>Overlooked overthrown</i><br />
<i>Overcooked overblown</i><br />
<i>Overmedicated</i><br />
<i>Overtaxed underpaid</i><br />
<i>Oversexed underlaid</i><br />
<i>Underprepared</i><br />
<i>Overloaded overdosed</i><br />
<i>Over easy over toast</i><br />
<i>Overscared</i><br />
<i>Whee-hoo-hoo…</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Overhunted overrated overcomplicated</i><br />
<i>Oversaturated overstimulated</i><br />
<i>Overrun overdone</i><br />
<i>Over knocked over raked over fucked over</i><br />
<i>Run over hung over warmed over leftover</i><br />
<i>Overruled overused overheated overshoes</i><br />
<i>Overwhelmed overfed overbred overspent over</i><br />
<i>Bent over keeled over reeled over</i><br />
<i>Head over heels over dead oh</i><br />
<i>Whee-hoo-hoo…</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over the moon</i><br />
<i>Out of sight, out of tune</i><br />
<i>I'm over</i><br />
<i>Over and above</i><br />
<i>Is it too late to show you my love?</i><br />
<i>My love, my love…</i>Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-77840046859140168242016-10-31T16:00:00.001-04:002017-04-03T11:06:56.312-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 56<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmLBLMZnRptkM_n3li7_5IZEMCnHvkN4zBLfxBbP3o_xZ2LfCfATv9hxMo63I4Efb6DbX8hjall_yVtoliXulpomSCvT8rtWkuj5-uUTHsYcFiVkWxYW5hx04jKF-CCRT2Hv1IPkMs1Q-/s1600/harrynilsson_photo11-313x196.jpg"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbmLBLMZnRptkM_n3li7_5IZEMCnHvkN4zBLfxBbP3o_xZ2LfCfATv9hxMo63I4Efb6DbX8hjall_yVtoliXulpomSCvT8rtWkuj5-uUTHsYcFiVkWxYW5hx04jKF-CCRT2Hv1IPkMs1Q-/s400/harrynilsson_photo11-313x196.jpg" width="400" /></a> <br />
A touch of Schmilsson in the night <br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
He sat looking at me with a neutral expression. He was in a white room with blurred corners, and I couldn’t discern what he was sitting on: possibly just atmosphere. When I woke up I told my husband, “Harry Nilsson just visited me.”<br />
<br />
My husband assumed I meant that I’d had a dream about Harry, who had died a few months before, in January of 1994. But I’ve come to know the difference between a dream and a visitation. A dream has a plot, and dead people whom we knew when they were alive sometimes make surprise appearances in these phantasmagoric dramas; their presence can be so vivid that the dream haunts us for days.<br />
<br />
A visit is another matter. It seems that the departed, once they’ve adjusted to the eternal, may take the trouble to salute the people they’ve loved or who were important to them, before moving on to their next job. The visitation can take place soon after they pass, or a much longer time if they weren’t expecting immortality, as in my dad’s case.<br />
<br />
My father was an atheist until his death, so it must have been fairly confusing when he met his end and the lights didn’t go out. Almost a year passed before I got a visit from him, and I had been waiting with some impatience. After all, he had promised me that after he woke up in the ether and realized he was wrong (as I was positive he was) he would let me know I was right (as he was positive I wasn't.)<br />
<br />
Instead, he was a no-show. It was like sending your kid off to college and he doesn’t call or write and then acts irritated when you finally get him on the phone because don’t you realize how busy he is? Between orientation, classes, new friends – he’s getting a life, for God’s sake.<br />
<br />
At last, just when I’d given up, Dad visited me one morning in the few seconds before I woke up. He didn’t look anything like he did when I knew him. He appeared to be about eighteen, wearing knickerbockers and saddle shoes and a college sweater, young, vital and handsome with a full head of hair. He seemed impatient, too. He gave me a hurried nod; unspeaking, he delivered his message directly into my mind, to the effect of, “Okay, you’ve seen me, now can I get back to class?”<br />
<br />
When spirits of recently dead friends or family come to me in those moments before waking, there is no story going on: my dreams are done for the night. The person is simply and suddenly there, in an idealized form. He appears as he did when he looked the best in his life, at the peak of vitality. And there is something else: he is lambent, suffused with an uncanny glow that enriches his colors, like the beautiful intense light that grass and trees take on just before a thunderstorm. Communication is clear but subtle. The spirit doesn’t move his lips to speak. You don’t hear his words; you know them.<br />
<br />
But Harry Nilsson had nothing to say; he merely gazed at me. He was a few years younger than I’d seen him back in 1974. When we began dating, he was already puffy-faced due to drug and alcohol abuse, and expanding in the waist due to heavy cream overdose in the Brandy Alexanders he gulped in quantity. Now, post mortem, sitting on air, he was slim and radiant, lit from within, each blond hair on his head and in his beard limned with gold.<br />
<br />
I was surprised and somewhat flattered by his visit. Our pairing had only lasted about seven months, hardly a wink in his fifty-two years of life, and we’d had no contact since. Still, there had been mutual admiration, even love on his part, so perhaps he was acknowledging that. Then again, he’d been a social creature; maybe he was running through his Rolodex to visit as many people as possible, even minor players, on his way out.<br />
<br />
Except he came back the following night. I’d finished dreaming, rose toward consciousness, and then there he was again, seated and staring, downright lovely in the afterlife glow.<br />
<br />
The third and last night he appeared, I was finally able to intuit his message. I woke up and told my husband, “He wants me to write about him.”<br />
<br />
I pondered what that might be. Really, the only incident that made a story worth writing was that berserk and <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2016/10/at-home-with-ghost-55.html" target="_blank">depraved weekend</a> I’d spent with Harry, John Lennon, and May Pang in Palm Springs. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to write about that. I’d told only a few people about the details of those two days, mainly because I was ashamed of my own behavior, or what I could remember of it. Even May had blocked out the worst memories, like an attempted strangulation in a jacuzzi. These guys were two dead icons, best left preserved in public reverence. I certainly lost my awe of them in the course of those seven months. Why on earth would Harry want me to write about him, when I would inevitably be casting him and John in a bad light?<br />
<br />
Still, if I fictionalized the account…but no, I didn’t want to write it. Not at all. Harry’s ghost was asking too much. Those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning will recall my <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">musical collaborations with a dead composer</a>, whose advice and imperatives I felt free to reject if I didn't like them. So I ignored Harry’s posthumous request.<br />
<br />
I was extremely busy, anyway. My screenwriting career was at its height. I had my pick of job offers, working for famous folks and ripe money. This streak culminated in my directing my own screenplay, a teen comedy titled The Hairy Bird. The film was an homage to my prep school days at an all-female academy, Rosemary Hall. With a cast of mostly adolescent girls, it was a weak prospect according to industry wisdom; the project took seven years to get its financing, $5 million, from the Canadian company Alliance Films. The summer of ’97 saw me shooting in Toronto, with Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffman, and Lynn Redgrave in the leads: some of the most joyous months of my life. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipj51qXzQ2ksvt5XCVI6TxwehxwsdKicrhrMucRikXvWvMev3BmcvUXpWr6Z4qGj3Thg3nlPbhxqcV8QEtvqUJ8qQUAVAQOJQ4IFrgT4h4wY1su8yKFpEc6WdA6A1J_4MJgEs8mnsjbJfj/s1600/SK+Redgrave+Hoffman+set+of+Hairy+Bird.jpg"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipj51qXzQ2ksvt5XCVI6TxwehxwsdKicrhrMucRikXvWvMev3BmcvUXpWr6Z4qGj3Thg3nlPbhxqcV8QEtvqUJ8qQUAVAQOJQ4IFrgT4h4wY1su8yKFpEc6WdA6A1J_4MJgEs8mnsjbJfj/s400/SK+Redgrave+Hoffman+set+of+Hairy+Bird.jpg" width="400" /></a> <br />
On the set of The Hairy Bird aka Strike! aka All I Wanna Do with Lynn Redgrave and Gaby Hoffman, 1997 <br />
<br />
And then Harvey Weinstein happened. He purchased the U.S. distribution rights for his company Miramax for $3.5 million. I thought this was fantastic news. With foreign sales from other territories already in the bank, my picture was in the black before I’d even finished editing. However, my producers Ira Deutchman and Peter Newman had a different reaction: dread. They knew what I did not yet: that Harvey was likely to crunch the film between his molars and subject everyone involved to humiliation and torment. <br />
<br />
Not many know that there is a tenth circle of hell, deeper than the deepest dungeon; go any deeper in the earth and you’re at magma. And Harvey Weinstein owns it. <br />
<br />
I had final cut, but Harvey threatened not to release the picture unless I re-edited it. He changed the title twice (which causes confusion to this day), had the film cut and re-cut and tested – all at the producers’ expense. At last he announced that there was no way to market movies to teenage girls. He put his own editors on the job of re-cutting the movie for young males. The test numbers didn’t budge. He demanded more cuts, when the producers finally pushed back, telling him the orgy was over. <br />
<br />
I delivered the finished film. Harvey threw it into a Seattle theater for a week to fulfill his contractual obligations to Alliance, and then tossed it on the shelf. I waited, as the picture opened in foreign territories to good notices and decent profits, for him to get over his snit so my film could at last play to its natural audience, American girls. <br />
<br />
Eventually, three years after I shot the film, Harvey gave permission for a New York release – if I paid for it. Emptying my savings, I was able to afford to open my movie, now titled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strike-AKA-All-Wanna-Do/dp/B00COOT6YQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1489776452&sr=1-1&keywords=all+i+wanna+do" target="_blank">All I Wanna Do</a>, for one week in one theater. Nonetheless, I got some good reviews and blurbs for the VHS box, as the film went immediately to video.<br />
<br />
During the time I was waiting for Harvey to take the film off the shelf, I looked for a writing job. This should not have been difficult. Although I’d been off the radar for more than a year, my cred had not diminished. Even so, nothing materialized. I tried harder, accepting assignments I had no interest in, only to have them fall through. I seemed to be under a curse, plus I was wallowing in ennui. I needed to write something, anything, yet my Miramax experience had cost me my confidence, and I was bereft of ideas. I thought of tackling that story of running amok in Palm Springs with wild and desperate popstars, in script form. Once again, I recoiled.<br />
<br />
To hold the panic of unemployment at bay, I meditated daily. In my altered state, I said to the Great What-Have-You: I give up, you take over. Your will, not my will. Use me. <br />
<br />
On a flight back to New York, after another dispiriting business trip to LA, I took a break from writing notes on a script, closing my eyes to meditate. That was when a phrase suddenly popped into my head. My eyelids flew open; I grabbed the pen and began scribbling on the script cover, my hand seeming to race ahead of the words swarming in my mind. <br />
<br />
Lyrics. When I had not written a song in twenty years. <br />
<br />
It appeared Harry would have his way. <br />
<br />
(To be continued.) <br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-85088776974069107102016-10-23T14:02:00.001-04:002017-03-17T14:39:33.536-04:00A Personal Remembrance of John Lennon<br /><br /><br /> <br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqZH90Xk8RRNPgY1TyNtEhy4sOKSl3u3O-naNKi1W2mfEhNrt8M89h7E6-sxaxO_tnnFEKjRamrNL5IsaksKrgj566lwP01v4dkcIzjrNmoUcWw3-FOSwDcZqUeclvJEvqwFHD4Kgapqs/s1600/johnlennon.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqZH90Xk8RRNPgY1TyNtEhy4sOKSl3u3O-naNKi1W2mfEhNrt8M89h7E6-sxaxO_tnnFEKjRamrNL5IsaksKrgj566lwP01v4dkcIzjrNmoUcWw3-FOSwDcZqUeclvJEvqwFHD4Kgapqs/s320/johnlennon.jpg" /></a> <br /> <br /> <br /> John Lennon’s birthday passed recently. At readers' requests, I am re-posting a personal reminiscence I wrote five years ago for this blog. The story relates, in a woo-woo way, to the paranormal memoir I’ve been unfurling over time, "At Home With a Ghost," 55 chapters in all by now. (Those who are coming to this serialized memoir for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br /> <br /> Regular readers of this saga will remember that in 1974, when I was 27, I visited a psychic named Frank Andrews (see chapters <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost.html">One</a>, <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-2.html">Two</a> and <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-3.html">Three</a>). I was being troubled by a spirit presence in my parents’ house, and Frank helped me learn more about the ghost’s identity.<br /> <br /> It was in this same year that I was dating singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, off and on. John Lennon was in his “Lost Weekend” period, and also producing Harry’s “Pussy Cats” album. I’d met John before, when he and Yoko moved to New York, so I already knew him. John and Harry were stoned to the eyeballs whenever I saw them. The L.A. recording sessions were reportedly a zoo with the cages open. <br /> <br /> They both came to New York to mix the record, checking into a two-bedroom suite at the Pierre Hotel. To clear his head for the work, John was trying to get a handle on his over-indulgence, and even Harry went on a fast (which he ended after 24 hours by ordering up a double Brandy Alexander). John was also trying to get back with Yoko. He was on his best, subdued behavior when she came over to the Pierre and the four of us sat down to a room-service dinner. <br /> <br /> John and Yoko seemed rather tentative around each other, so I tried to fill a silence by telling a story that had taken place only a few nights before. I’d been eating at a sushi bar next to an exquisite young Japanese woman by the name of Maiko who struck up a conversation with me. For some reason she confided in me that she was Mayor John Lindsay’s mistress.She described their trysts at her apartment, whose high picture windows looked down on the glittering Manhattan nightscape. Lindsay would stand at the window and tap-dance, stark naked except for hat and cane, laughing with glee at the city he owned. <br /> <br /> At one point Maiko suddenly remarked, “Sometimes I am psychic, and I have a feeling that you will be famous.” <br /> <br /> I responded: “That’s funny, because a professional psychic just said the same thing to me.”<br /> <br /> “Oh yes,” she said, with a weird confidence. “You mean Frank.”<br /> <br /> How could she have known that? I wondered to Harry, John, and Yoko, then continued to describe my visit to Maiko's apartment, when Yoko interrupted to demand the name of the psychic. She wanted to see him. Immediately. (She was addicted to soothsayers.)<br /> <br /> So I put her in touch with Frank. Yoko went to see him alone; John was too afraid to go (he went later, though). The next time we all had dinner, she reported that Frank had impressed her hugely with his predictions. The one that struck her the most was a cryptic statement about John: “He sleeps in blood.”<br /> <br /> She and John had discussed the meaning of Frank’s words, and both decided he was seeing something from the past, not the future: the blood referred to the miscarriages Yoko had suffered when they'd been trying in vain for a baby.<br /> <br /> The image returned to me six years later, when I heard that John had been shot and killed. I pictured him the way Frank must have seen him: lying in his own blood, as if asleep. <br /> <br /> ‘Night, sweet prince. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.<br /> Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-64065554233230426522016-10-12T18:43:00.000-04:002019-12-09T21:12:57.161-05:00At Home With a Ghost - 55<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaaeYr2l2zG84Fwta6X-TrQflJ10ymTk9fpr1a8VYKk-tZuPOQ4Gybeb9m2HYAqJc0C9NtJAPRdA6bvA18LymAPsR8o97lwvxOBWujBJP5kzXSqE1vM5h1S8dmmCddl-EPZgMFiDjcAFlr/s1600/sk+RCA+publicity.jpg"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaaeYr2l2zG84Fwta6X-TrQflJ10ymTk9fpr1a8VYKk-tZuPOQ4Gybeb9m2HYAqJc0C9NtJAPRdA6bvA18LymAPsR8o97lwvxOBWujBJP5kzXSqE1vM5h1S8dmmCddl-EPZgMFiDjcAFlr/s400/sk+RCA+publicity.jpg" width="364" /></a> <br />
1974 RCA publicity photo with clean hair <br />
<br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
<br />
1974 was the year RCA released <i>House of Pain</i>, my first album as a singer-songwriter. It was the year I loved and lost a man, so my songs poured out the sweet and the bitter in equal measure. Once I was done recording, I rolled up my sleeves to begin my new project: self-pitying wine-soaked self-destruction. I had gotten off to an impressive start when I met Harry Nilsson.<br />
<br />
The album’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nveP-I8P9p4">title song</a> came from the Charles Laughton horror classic <i>Island of Lost Souls</i>. Laughton played a mad scientist grafting men to animals in his lab, which his unfortunate victims – now “manimals” – called “the House of Pain.” I spent my record advance making a weird short film to accompany the title track, including animation and clips from the horror film. This was before music videos. I urged RCA to use their newly developed video players to show the film in record stores, to see if it had any effect on my sales. They failed to see the point. However, the video did result in my meeting a long-adored idol.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oXW2RGL7Q0o" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
I was fresh to art of songwriting, and my early efforts didn’t fit any genre or show any other artist’s influence. They were what they were: my insides turned out. (I had not yet begun my later collaboration with a <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank">dead composer</a> – my grandfather – whereupon my songs took a turn towards the musical theater genre.) However, if there was any singer-songwriter I worshiped, it was Harry Nilsson. He suited me right down to the ground: his antic humor, his insouciance, his entwining of musical styles both quaint and contemporary, his impeccable taste in arrangements, brilliantly layered background vocals and, above all, his gliding <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bQGRRolrg0" target="_blank">golden voice</a>.<br />
<br />
RCA was Nilsson’s longtime label. One late winter afternoon, on a visit from LA, Harry popped into the office of his product manager, who showed him my strange video. I happened to be next door with my product manager when I was told Harry wanted to meet me.<br />
<br />
The following dawn, I remembered nothing. I had probably been out of body. Clearly my body had gone ahead and celebrated without me. My idol was standing by the hotel room window, smoking, and gazing at me sort of wistfully. He said he’d recently become enchanted with a young waitress from Ireland, who had gone back home but would rejoin him in LA in the spring. Now that he’d met me, he was feeling confused. I told him he didn’t actually have a problem, because I was going home, too. (My clothes smelled like the floor behind a bar.)<br />
<br />
I didn’t expect to see Harry again, assuming that I had behaved badly as I often did during blackouts, which were common enough for me in those days of wine and bloody noses. But it was a shame to have no memories to savor of my one night with Nilsson. I hadn’t even grabbed a hotel matchbook to prove to myself I’d been there. The RCA product managers knew more about what happened than I did. They were the ones to tell Harry, a few months later, that I was in LA. They gave him my number.<br />
<br />
At 5 a.m., I was sleeping soundly on a bare mattress, the one piece of furniture in my West Hollywood sublet except for a phone, which rang. In the blue light of this second dawn, I arrived at Harry’s La Cienega apartment, where I found him on the phone in hoarse conversation with his attorney. Flopped in an armchair was John Lennon. Harry was discussing the text of an apology to be delivered to someone, while John peered at him myopically because his glasses had been lost in a fistfight. Harry instructed his lawyer to send flowers with the apology, and hung up. It seems I had come on the scene right after Harry and John were thrown out of the Troubadour for brawling with the Smothers Brothers.<br />
<br />
John repaired to the guest bedroom. Harry downed a quart of milk and a couple of repulsive hoagies from the 7/11, and then fell asleep with his foot hanging off the bed and jiggling, still animated by all the cocaine and brandy he had ingested earlier. (“Ole Coke-foot,” I used to call him.) He favored Brandy Alexanders because the cream lined his stomach; thus the alcohol wasn’t absorbed, allowing him to drink more double Brandy Alexanders until the dawn like this one.<br />
<br />
Harry had introduced John to this noxious drink, which was also Ringo’s favorite. Now, Harry could hold his mud. No matter how much he drank, he seemed fine, mind sharp and words unslurred, ever primed with witty banter. Essentially he had a sweet nature, with a side of sadness; but, as I was soon to learn, he was a raging alcoholic. And he was spurring John to commit brandy-kiri alongside him. John, for his part, was terrible at booze. Two drinks, and the darkness fell; you never knew what demon was going to ride out of the murk.<br />
<br />
By now their escapades had hit the press. RCA was understandably anxious. John was supposed to produce Harry’s new album Pussy Cats, with recording sessions to begin in two weeks. The word came down from the higher-ups: get out of LA, spend a weekend at a spa in Palm Springs, and dry out.<br />
<br />
Women were allowed on board. RCA must have thought we would act as nannies. This was not my strong suit. May Pang, on the other hand, didn’t mind being a minder. She was John’s new love, in the wake of his split with Yoko. She and I packed our weekend bags, jumped into our hot pants, and rode down to Palm Springs with our patients.<br />
<br />
I will not go into detail about that long and disorderly weekend. Suffice it to say, the boys took “dry out” to mean: no alcohol. Nothing wet. That left drugs. And Palm Springs was dead boring. The sun was too bright. The shades got pulled down; calls to locate a dealer went out. Some white powder was scored. Perhaps it was coke. If so, it had been stepped on so many times, trampled you might say, that it was mostly suitable for babies with diaper rash. Whatever it was, Harry became more than usually loquacious. Hoarse to begin with, he talked, and talked, and talked until he was down to a rasp. A trip to the hospital ensued. He was handed some antibiotics, and told very sternly not to smoke and to go on a complete voice rest for the remainder of the weekend.<br />
<br />
Harry tried the pantomime thing for about four hours before he caved. Alcohol was restored to the menu. Swallowing the pills with cognac, he lit up a cigarette, and proceeded to talk. With a vengeance. He wouldn’t shut up. The rasp now sounded like he was gargling blood. Yet he talked on.<br />
<br />
And so I was present to witness the tragedy of Harry Nilsson willfully murdering that beautiful voice I loved so much. It never really came back.<br />
<br />
I was back in New York when he and John arrived to finish Pussy Cats. I was horrified to hear Harry’s vocals. There was no trace of the swooping heaven-kissed tenor he was born with. He sounded like he was being flayed alive. The album was one big drugged-out gangfuck of the ears.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile I was pulling away, for my own preservation. I lost my nerve, recognizing I had neither the stamina nor the capacity to keep up with his tireless, unending binge. Harry scared me. His self-destruction made my own attempts look feeble.<br />
<br />
Besides, I had my second album to record, and Harry’s waitress was flying in shortly. What should he do? Harry asked. He was in love with two women. I told him he didn’t actually have a problem, because I was going home.<br />
<br />
I knew if I stayed with him, I was going to die. Instead, he died – twenty years later, in 1994. By then I was happily married (as was he, to his waitress) with one child (to his six). He hadn’t been sober for most of those years, so the news of his death from heart failure, while sad, came as no surprise to me.<br />
<br />
I hadn’t loved him, though I’d tried because he was a genius and I am partial to them. Nonetheless I was still and forever in love with his music. I mourned Nilsson’s death by playing his poignant “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anRClqE9cZQ" target="_blank">Turn On Your Radio</a>”:<br />
<br />
<i>I don’t know where I’m goin’</i><br />
<br />
<i>Now that I am gone</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>I hope the wind that’s blowin’</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Helps me carry on</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Turn on your radio, baby</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Baby listen to my song</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Turn on your night light baby</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> <i>Baby I’m gone</i><br />
<br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gu6wN0k5c3Q" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
I’d said goodbye to him many years before, and fate had not arranged for us to run into each other since. This time I knew for certain I’d never see him again.<br />
<br />
But I did.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.) <br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-35876655209726926292016-09-17T18:34:00.002-04:002016-10-04T15:43:50.110-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 54<style>
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<div class="Body">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span> <br />
<br />
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikwQvcU_pRlfpINJCRfaeK74k4r2CY5PBkX67TmEQ3pqS9wHfe8r2VhTJouQC-dzx-m7P4RtudWh9Aj_tZ8xZYwCiebhvR_DUyfjt1uC8Fphz9YtW_eKCFFXIkgUWNHPO80sNTvKYHNl45/s1600/SK+%2540+piano+Bank+St.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikwQvcU_pRlfpINJCRfaeK74k4r2CY5PBkX67TmEQ3pqS9wHfe8r2VhTJouQC-dzx-m7P4RtudWh9Aj_tZ8xZYwCiebhvR_DUyfjt1uC8Fphz9YtW_eKCFFXIkgUWNHPO80sNTvKYHNl45/s400/SK+%2540+piano+Bank+St.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me in 1994</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
The year: 1994. Location: bed. Propped up on pillows, eyes closed,
I was in a trance, and I was bored. Meditation seemed like flying coach from
New York to Guam with an hour’s layover in Tahiti: that is, a few minutes of
halcyon mindlessness hardly seemed worth all the effort of getting there. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Letting go of mind shouldn’t have been so hard for me. I blamed
my mantra. I’ll tell it to you right now. I figure this is no longer verboten, since
I’m not using it anymore. It was “hirim.” It was pronounced “ee-reem,” with the
‘h’ silent and a wet guttural ‘r’, on account of being purchased<span lang="DE" style="mso-ansi-language: DE;"> in France. </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Now, a mantra is supposed to be a shred of nonsense that has no
associations whatever, to lure the mind away from its usual perch which is
lording it over consciousness. However, every time I’d begin inwardly reciting
my mantra, the frog accent sucked my mind into a whirl of associations:
remembering that one winter in Paris, 1990; the room where for six sessions I
met with my French<span lang="FR" style="mso-ansi-language: FR;"> TM instructor</span>,
who was uninspiring, mechanical, and smug. The bastard made me give up smoking
grass before he would sell me my mantra; what's more, the mantra was wildly
overpriced, given the exchange rate…</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
…And so on. So much for quieting the mind. To get through the
snarled traffic caused by my French mantra, I wound up having to break up the
mayhem by head-butting my mind out of the way. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
One cool thing happened while meditating in my instructor’s
presence. In trance, I was transported to a beautiful pavilion, where his guru
appeared and huffed on my third eye. Afterwards, I assumed that my 20-minute twice-a-day
meditation practice would feature more thrills of this kind. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Sadly, no. Twice a day I flew to Guam with no movies on board.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Still, I needed those layovers, however brief, in Tahiti. With my
thoughts finally quelled, I would suddenly be lifted up, as if by elevator, to a
plane where my head filled up with sunlight. But the moment was too brief. Too
soon, thoughts returned and blocked the light; I would feel the elevator descending.
My Self clamped back on and started whining that mindfulness is actually kind
of boring.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
One day, just as I began my descent, I asked no one in
particular: is that all? Where’s the cool stuff? Where’s the guru?</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
To my surprise, I got an answer. Not a voice, but rather a
thought, instantly imbedded in my mind, and translated into words for my
benefit. Weirdly, it was in French. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span class="MsoPageNumber"><i><span lang="FR">Vous avez oublié de
composer le ‘un’.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
<span class="MsoPageNumber"><i><span lang="FR">You forgot to dial the
1.</span></i></span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
I burst out laughing, breaking trance. Eyes open, I knew what the
guru meant. I’d been reminded to connect with the One. Not God. The ‘1’ was
Unity, the Flux to which all souls and spirits belong, the Everything, the
Great What-Have-You. That’s where the cool stuff is.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
It’s not somewhere else. No elevator necessary. We’re already
there. It’s like waking up in your bedroom, which your sleep momentarily erased.
You’ve traveled in your dreams, and forgotten where you came from, but upon
waking you realize that all along you’ve been lying in your bed. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Henceforth I would begin my sessions by dialing the One, to wake
up in the Flux. The idea was to breathe, since breath itself is fluctuation. Different
from reflexive breathing, I breathed with purpose, putting my full consciousness
into it, as if to say <span class="MsoPageNumber"><i><span lang="FR">Here I Am.</span></i></span><span lang="FR"> </span>Awareness dawned, and I’d wake in the true <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here</i>. Our real home, empty of furniture, blazing with blank light.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
It also became my habit, on my way back from that place, to pause
for a lesson from my guru, to ask questions and receive answers. Clearly the teacher
was not some Indian guy. It was I, with my little third eye. I had held these
answers all along, was born with them, and was now learning how to access them,
as if a locked drawer had suddenly become unsprung. I suppose this source is
what’s called our Higher Self by some. In any case, it was inseparable from my
being. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
For example, in one session I asked how to handle my persistent
digestive problems. In answer, I was shown a bar of soap on a shelf. I was told
to wash every part of my body with it – inside as well as outside. I reached it
down from the shelf. The wrapper said <span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">Appomattox Soap. This I took to mean: in order to end the Civil War in my
body, I would have to surrender to the Union (the ‘1’ again), and maintain
peace by faithful physical and spiritual cleansing.</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
But<span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;"> the lesson wasn’t
over. I felt suddenly invaded by a heavy paralysis. I couldn’t move a limb. And
then some presence took hold and lifted me free, to observe my body from above.
The splendor was dazzling. It shimmered like a palace, richly appointed, to be
lovingly maintained. I had never truly felt the beauty of our mortal housing,
and when I was gently placed back inside my body, I was able to revel in it for
the first time. I emerged from this meditation with tears flowing down my face.
</span></div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
Another time, the message I got was: “<span lang="DE" style="mso-ansi-language: DE;">Food dies.</span>” I wrote the interpretation in
my journal: “To fill up the stomach is to feed life that dies. To fill up with
Spirit is to feed the life that lives.”</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
The most memorable of all my lessons came when I was shown a park
scene. A light wash of green and blue suggested trees and sky. Vague calliope
music played in the distance; amusement rides, horses and ponies, chattering
people were sketched in pencil, like a rough draft for an animation sequence.
That’s what this life is, I was told, a beguiling sketch that will lead, in the
end, to a majestic finished creation – or Creation itself.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
After I emerged from this meditation, I went for a walk in
Central Park. The carousel music was playing, passersby chattered, love was
everywhere, and my nostrils filled with the aroma of flowers that weren’t
there. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
The last experience I’ll relate here was also on the subject of
creation. In one of my trances, it was depicted as a luminous shower, as if a
ladle of pure radiance had overturned. I was shown that to be a creator
oneself, a single step sufficed: simply step under the shower and be a part of
it. Stand still and receive. True creation is co-creation. </div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
While I noted this lesson in my journal. I understood it, but not
how to apply it. That would come later, with the death of Harry Nilsson.</div>
<div class="Body">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body">
(To be continued.)</div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-10823602694351804672016-02-15T18:25:00.000-05:002017-02-26T18:07:37.704-05:00At Home With a Ghost - 53<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I felt his fingers on my shoulder, tapping. “Sarah.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br />
</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I stubbornly kept my eyes shut. He was interrupting my fun. I was busy behind my eyelids. Honestly, having jet fuel pour out of every cell in your body as you shoot into the stratosphere, where you make crazy loop-de-loops with supersonic ease, almost but not quite exploding from the immensity of this freedom, this weightless flight, with your cape flapping behind you, is not the moment when you want to be nudged. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sarah!</i>” He tapped me again.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I opened my eyes. His head lay on the pillow beside me. He was looking at me and I didn’t know who the hell he was, and besides, his eyes were swimming all over his face like trapped tadpoles. I glanced down at our two bodies on the bed, and they were running away too. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">We were in his dorm room on a yellow spring afternoon at Sarah Lawrence, where I double-majored in music and promiscuity. My bedmate had transferred from Princeton, one of a handful of male students being inducted experimentally to this single-slut institution of higher learning. The fox entered the henhouse; the hens made mincemeat of the fox. Some of my schoolmates openly resented my bogarting the best guy, forcing them to queue up for the inferior ones. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">He and I had whiled away many such afternoons, prone on sex-scented sheets and taking mescaline. But on this day, when I opened my eyes, I had no knowledge of him, or, for that matter, my own identity. I had no knowledge, period. I was reduced to a state of pure instinct. And my instinct told me that things were going hideously wrong. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">He moved his lips with difficulty, as if speaking underwater: “This isn’t mescaline we took. It’s acid.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I stared at him uncomprehendingly. A second ago, I was flying around the heavens. Now I was dying. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">“That fucking shithead sold me acid instead of mescaline,” he continued. “This is going to take a while longer than we planned. You’ll have to cut your harmony class.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Not one word he spoke had any meaning. What was acid? His tone was serious. So “acid” had to be something…fearful. Terrifying. It explained why the walls slithered, the ceiling bulged, and everything, everything was rushing away so fast, beyond the reach of understanding: my flesh and bones, my name and address, my mind and its contents. Anything of significance no longer signified anything. Which left nothing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I felt whirled away in a mad current. Panic took hold and I began to gulp for air. With nothing left to define me, I hurtled headlong toward the falls, to extinction. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I could hear his low voice speaking, its mild cadence, and while the words had no meaning they seemed meant to calm me. The tide carrying me away slowed. Fear gave way just enough so I could breathe. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Then breath itself fascinated me. This simple in and out, rise and fall, accept and deliver, buoyed me out of my body, and I emerged in a place of simplicity. For what could be simpler? than to be. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I have sometimes been, in my life, so happy I couldn’t stand it. This, though, was happiness I could stand because there was no I anymore to contain it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">The ineffable, without words to describe, can only be met with laughter. I laughed a long time, until my ribs began to ache. I’d forgotten about ribs: those hard hoops for restraining breath and laughter and heart from leaping completely free. I felt them now, and little by little I shrank back into my body. Back too came the walls, the ceiling, the bed and the sophomore beside me, whatshisname. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Later we remembered to put on clothes before leaving the room. The rest of the eight-hour trip we spent in a hammock, exclaiming with that coming-off-acid smug certainty, wow, I’m one with the universe, I can see through my hand. We admired fluorescent flashes in the shrubbery, and then I yammered on about Ken Kesey until my companion told me to shut up. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I only took LSD a few more times, but in minor dosage. Short commutes. The last time was a bare four years later, on the opening weekend of my documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marjoe</i> in New York. I stood with a hippie friend across the street from the theater, watching the line form for the 7:00 show, and when the “Sold Out” sign went up we both cheered and split a tab of acid. Eventually I wound up alone in my hotel room, flat on my back, watching the ceiling bulge with colors, and I thought, this has gotten old. Bored, I took a Quaalude and slept through the rest of the trip.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I never sought to repeat the bliss of my first. That afternoon was too precious to me, the time my soul blotted out everything including my self. It became my touchstone: whenever I got too knotted up in my earthly so-called sufferings, I would remember the simplicity place. I’d recall that the answer in the back of the book is a blank page.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I figured I’d get back there permanently when, at the end, death would replay the moment, like a long-lost reel discovered in attic dust. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait that long. It came again, without drugs, in middle age, on another bed. I’d encountered ghosts and poltergeists; now the time had come for Spirit.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">(To be continued.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span>Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-68609133020506633302015-03-17T22:33:00.000-04:002017-02-26T18:15:02.788-05:00At Home With a Ghost - 52<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiryHHWOXo35op7SqAZSMGWcBqOCAHr9-RR2geWLvfvq9pXVqTyKzgugmZJk2xt-ZSE4LaXFRyfV9JOE2ocBGnexqufccROpo05Tgn8qFV7RAEnCNIAQ0iZQullD99trbq72WG8GKM9p_WW/s1600/MV5BMTI5NjkwNDMwN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMzY2Nzg4._V1_SY317_CR6,0,214,317_AL_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiryHHWOXo35op7SqAZSMGWcBqOCAHr9-RR2geWLvfvq9pXVqTyKzgugmZJk2xt-ZSE4LaXFRyfV9JOE2ocBGnexqufccROpo05Tgn8qFV7RAEnCNIAQ0iZQullD99trbq72WG8GKM9p_WW/s400/MV5BMTI5NjkwNDMwN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMzY2Nzg4._V1_SY317_CR6,0,214,317_AL_.jpg" width="270" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.) <br />
<br />
<br />
Spielberg had a one-line idea for a movie: a mother, who’s struggling with loneliness after her kids’ departure for college, suspects there is a ghost in her house. To flesh out his story, Steven brainstormed with production heads Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald for several days. Nina faxed me a transcript of the meetings, so I could get a sense of what they wanted. <br />
<br />
It was a fun read. There was clearly a lot of excitement in the room as these three movie machers spitballed ideas. (I’d love to quote some of the dialogue, but this was 1995, when fax machines used that quaint roller paper where the printed text vanishes like disappearing ink after a few years.) Notably, they wanted to defy horror movie convention by designing a ghost that was not threatening or murderous or tragic. Instead, this ghost used to be an ordinary housewife in life, who continued to go about her chores after her death. Her manifestations would take the form of, for example, the house filling up with the smell of cinnamon cookies baking, even though there was nothing in the oven. Bathwater taps turning on by themselves. Rugs rolling up. (Trash taken out?) <br />
<br />
Further, no one believes the mother character when she insists there’s a ghost haunting the place; even her husband thinks she’s merely suffering from empty-nest syndrome. Nevertheless her relationship with the ghost deepens, as the dead housewife reveals herself to the living mother more and more openly. The two women touch across the dimensional divide, and help each other to let go and move on.<br />
<br />
Steven was intent on making the ghost glimpses as realistic as possible. This would not be Poltergeist but rather Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to convey the awe and wonder of contact with the other side. He believed in ghosts himself but had never had any personal experiences with them, though he’d always wanted to. It was time to bring in a writer to convey that right balance of sweet and spooky onto the page. <br />
<br />
I told Nina it wasn’t a stretch for me, because I’d had plenty of experience with ghosts. “Fantastic,” she said. “I’m going to run down the hall right now and tell Steven! He’ll be so jealous.” I was hired immediately and flew out to LA to meet everybody. In the single confab I had with Steven and the DreamWorks, they kept saying what they loved most about the story was it was so unexpectedly small and intimate. <br />
<br />
This was October. Steven wondered if I could turn out a script in two months, because if it was good he’d like to shoot the film in February. I’d been warned by an A-list screenwriter friend that Spielberg always had a gazillion projects in development and ended by filming only one or two (and he typically didn’t release the other scripts to any buyers because if he wasn’t going to direct those films he didn’t want anyone else to, either). Still, even though eight weeks was going to be a marathon, I wanted to come through for him. <br />
<br />
Only one thing mitigated my enthusiasm. I worried that if I began writing about ghosts I would attract them back into my life, which I’d established as a no-fly zone since my marriage. Then I’d be back in the supernatural soup, which was a lot to manage when you have responsibilities like a husband and a child and a deadline. So I sent a silent request via the ether: any spirits intending to trespass were not welcome, unless they had ideas to contribute for plot and dialogue.<br />
<br />
For two months I was a nervous wreck, holed up in my office, deaf to my family; my daughter left claw marks on the locked door. I chain-devoured family-size bags of Werthers butterscotch, courting both cavities and gas. And though I stuck to the story concept as explained by Steven, Laurie and Walter, a thought kept nagging at me: This doesn’t feel like a Steven Spielberg movie. This was no theme park ride. It was gently spooky, a lovely lyrical entente unfolding between a needy human and a housebound ghost. Would he really abandon his usual MO to make a very small film, a miniature instead of a mega-epic?<br />
<br />
I turned the script in on time. Initially it was greeted with congratulations and a complimentary fax from Steven (which I would also love to quote, but that paper too turned blank in a year). Then we all got on the phone together for his notes. His big problem was that the film felt kind of…small. He missed the climbing graph of fear and tension. The ghost should be more frightening. (Like, a scary housewife.) <br />
<br />
I got to work on revisions, throwing in some gaspy moments, like an unseen hand suddenly roiling the bathwater as the mother lies soaking in the tub, a fire spontaneously erupting, a door opening onto thin air, and the reveal of a horrific trauma in the ghost’s past. But it still didn’t feel like a Spielberg movie.<br />
<br />
In the end, it wasn’t. I waited for notes so I could complete the polish on the script. The word came back that they didn’t know what they wanted. I had done exactly what they thought they wanted. It turned out they wanted the wrong thing. Laurie and Walter wondered if the basic story could be sexier. But sexy wasn’t Steven’s thing, and he moved on to Jurassic Park. I had to move on as well. I was juggling two other script jobs, and a film I’d written and would direct (The Hairy Bird aka All I Wanna Do) had gotten its financing. I asked DreamWorks for, and received, an honorable discharge. <br />
<br />
(Years later, I ran into Steven at the sixth grade graduation of our kids from the Ethical Culture School. “By the way,” he grinned, “we’re making your movie.” I phoned my agent: was this true? – “Oh, he’s just saying that. I haven’t heard anything.” Three years after that, What Lies Beneath was released, with Robert Zemeckis directing; it had been rewritten as a sexy ghost story with a scary husband.)<br />
<br />
Back to 1996: my breakneck writing marathon was over. As I re-entered the atmosphere and splashed down in my life, my nerves were a tangled mess. For one thing, I badly needed to withdraw from Werthers. And I had no idea how to create calm for myself, in the moments when I wasn’t working or mothering. Unless…<br />
<br />
Suddenly I remembered that I had a mantra. My family and I had lived in Paris back in 1990 while making the film Impromptu, when I decided to take up meditation. I received private lessons at the local Transcendental Meditation center. I loathed my teacher, who delivered his instruction robotically (in French of course) with a sneer and eyes half-closed; they flew open whenever I interrupted with a question, as if he had received an unpleasant jolt. I felt he was much better suited to be a waiter than a spiritual teacher. But I was committed to six lessons before he would give me my mantra. <br />
<br />
Finally the day came, and I arrived at his office for the induction ceremony, bearing the symbolic offerings of some oranges and a white silk cloth. We were seated on the rug together half-lotus style (an excruciating position for my knees), when he leaned over and whispered two syllables in my ear. I am pledged never to tell anyone my mantra, but I will say that it has a guttural French r in it. <br />
<br />
He announced we would end the ceremony by meditating together. I closed my eyes, feeling impatient to leave and be rid of him, and started silently chanting my new and personalized mantra. And then, suddenly, my thoughts fell away and I found myself seated on the wide wooden floor of an open-air temple. Hanging from the columns, gossamer yellow drapes wavered in the breeze. A cobra came toward me, sliding over the floorboards in silken undulations and pausing in front of me. Though I was terrified of snakes, this one’s presence seemed perfectly natural and in the order of things. As the cobra lifted its head, a man’s face appeared inches away from mine, blotting out the snake: a long-haired, bearded Indian man; he smiled, opened his mouth, and blew lightly between my eyes.<br />
<br />
And with that, the temple disappeared. I was back on the rug with my waiter-teacher, who was looking at me inquiringly. “Alors,” he said, “was that agreeable for you?” I told him what had happened, describing the Indian man and how he huffed on my “third eye.” My teacher’s expression changed to something human like surprise. He got up, fetched a framed photo from a desk drawer, and wordlessly showed it to me. “That’s the man,” I said in amazement. The longhaired gentle-faced Indian man in the photo was my teacher’s guru. <br />
<br />
At home, twenty minutes twice a day, I began my meditation practice with great optimism. I felt singled out for specialness by a guru I’d never met, and consequently I expected mucho magical mystery tours whenever I went into trance. Nothing much happened, however. My two daily sessions dwindled to one after a while, and then I stopped altogether, for the same reason so many do: after a while, calm is boring. <br />
<br />
But then came Spielberg and the “Untitled Ghost Story” saga: now, in my crazed state, I needed nothingness like nothing else. I dusted off my French mantra, cranked my knees into half a lotus, closed my eyes…. And so began the greatest spiritual adventure of my life.<br />
<br />
Unless you count my first acid trip.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-82376175074679942542014-09-01T17:07:00.000-04:002015-03-13T15:49:03.472-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 51<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXT_g2pWO-08iUTUBiySyYdxqY6KHhsK6jnb57prrong6PuREdzqH26NK9ZNCw9pDAmR2GATOpD3hM4tn0cpcRG39Ih43B6Wzg86ARC4_K31jp7wNueLpAYUI6MZS4ccCen4DPG8oeyIuH/s1600/MRK+w+Dad+lifting+CHK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXT_g2pWO-08iUTUBiySyYdxqY6KHhsK6jnb57prrong6PuREdzqH26NK9ZNCw9pDAmR2GATOpD3hM4tn0cpcRG39Ih43B6Wzg86ARC4_K31jp7wNueLpAYUI6MZS4ccCen4DPG8oeyIuH/s1600/MRK+w+Dad+lifting+CHK.jpg" height="640" width="444" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dad with his parents: hoisting Carrie as Marshall looks on. Note the cigarette in her hand: small wonder she had a "graveyard cough." </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
My long-departed grandfather wasn’t done spilling the beans
through this Montreal medium. Across the dimensional divide, Monsieur <a href="http://www.gisabelspiritualmedium.com/" target="_blank">Guy Isabel</a>’s
spirit guide continued to compel his hand as he covered another page with
automatic writing, in a script that appeared both elegant and awkward. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I waited, still recovering from the news that my grandmother
Carrie, through all thirty-five years of her marriage, conducted an affair with
her doctor, and with Grandpa’s full knowledge.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I knew all about Dr. Taylor from my father’s memoir, and
from the letters Carrie wrote to her family from France during World War I. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the height of the war, Dr. Kenneth Taylor, a New York
pathologist, volunteered his services to an American military hospital in
Paris. While there, he developed a successful treatment for gas gangrene, for
which he later received the Légion d’Honneur. In 1915 he returned to New York. The
following year he was summoned back to Paris to take over as hospital chief. He
boarded an ocean liner with his wife Ann and a volunteer nurse named Caroline
Hatch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The three had become friendly in New York. I surmise that
Ken Taylor encouraged Carrie Hatch to come along and serve in the war effort. Maybe
their attraction had already begun. He put her to work in the wards, where she
found her calling as angel to the wounded. He found her placements at other
hospitals; he made house visits when she was ill, which was often. (It wouldn’t
have aroused any suspicion when she had a man in her room at her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pension</i>, if that man was her doctor.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What I should do without him I cannot imagine,” she wrote
her sister. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She didn’t have to do without Dr. Taylor, as it turned out.
Along came Lieutenant Marshall Kernochan with a marriage proposal, along with his
assurance that, if she said yes, he wouldn’t “pluck one feather out of that
cherished independence” of hers. She would be free to do whatever she wanted. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even adultery?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Carrie put off accepting Grandpa’s proposal. She sailed back
to New York without giving him an answer; she needed more time, “to try to put
certain things out of my mind.” Likely she believed her affair with Ken Taylor
was hopeless. Continuing as the backdoor woman of a married man was an
unthinkable demotion; she was too proud for that. But what if she too was
married? Marshall’s wealth and social position guaranteed her respectability
and, if he kept his promise, the freedom to pursue her heart. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So she said yes to all that. Her return passage and visa
were arranged by Ken Taylor. The Taylors were witnesses at Carrie and Marshall’s
wedding. At the end of the war, the four reassembled their weird ménage in New
York. Marshall and Carrie Kernochan had a son named Jack (my dad). Ken and Ann
Taylor had a daughter. Carrie instated Ken as the family physician; if little
Jackie Kernochan had a sniffle, Dr. Taylor would instantly appear. Marshall bought
a studio for Carrie where she could enjoy some privacy; the apartment was
practically next door to the Taylors. The four got together sometimes for
evening musicales or theater outings, but more often Marshall was off at the
Freemasons or his mens’ clubs, and Carrie and Ken were off doing…something or
other together.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When he got older Dad became aware that something in this
picture wasn’t right. He started teasing his mother about it. Whenever she
announced she was going to sunny Florida (for her lungs), with the good doctor in
attendance (for her lungs), Dad would start rotating his pelvis and singing a
current pop song, “Hear that savage serenade/ Down there in the Everglade/ Goes
boom-a-diddy booma-diddy booma-diddy-boom.” Later he took to referring to Dr.
Taylor simply as “Booma-Diddy.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“She would be embarrassed,” he wrote, “blushing and giggling
uncomfortably, but in no way daunted.” Finally Dad asked his father “point-blank,
how he felt about my mother’s absences and her obvious inclinations toward the
doctor. His response was: ‘When I look around and see some of the women my
friends have married, I consider myself a lucky man.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grandpa was probably referring to Mrs. Booma-Diddy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Marshall first met the Taylors in Paris, he wrote
Carrie that “Mrs. T seemed a bit difficult. Dr. T scarcely opened his head.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their act never changed. My dad observed that
whenever the T’s came a-calling on the K’s, Ann Taylor invariably showered
contempt on her husband, and she didn’t seem to care who was witnessing. While
she loudly berated him, the doctor shrank a few sizes and said nothing. She was
also rumored to be having an affair with a Columbia professor. Carrie’s studio increasingly
became Dr. Taylor’s home away from home as he escaped his ballbusting wife’s
company.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And what better companion for Carrie than a doctor? “She was
both morbidly obsessed with illness and prone to it,” my father wrote. From his
earliest years Dad found that a surefire way to get his mother to pay any
attention to him at all was to fake alarming symptoms, for she loved nothing
better than to play nurse. The woman herself was a dartboard for afflictions. A
partial list of her chronic ailments would include: hay fever, bronchitis,
pneumonia, brucellosis, back pain and agonizing periods. Even the World War I
courtship letters between Carrie and Marshall often jokingly referred to her
“g.y.c.,” which stood for “graveyard cough.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With the dear doctor, she had someone who took her every
ache seriously, and was only too willing to talk symptoms and treatments. (Though
she might have lived longer if he had made her stop smoking.) He was hopeless
company when it came to her other interests, like music and painting; Dr.
Taylor was “unmusical to his fingertips, and as a painter he would have flunked
a Rorschach test.” They did have bird watching in common; they embarked on
their hikes alone and often in Martha’s Vineyard, where the Taylors were
frequent guests. When not hunting herons, Carrie and her medicine man could
always repair to her little house on the bluff, far from the madding wife and
the unfazed husband. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dad wondered, “Was there a sexual relation between my mother
and the doctor? I will never know. Perhaps at this point in life she was
entitled to yield to inclinations that made her one and only life happy and
bearable.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I believed the ghostwritten messages conveyed by this clairvoyant
medium by Skype, my Dad’s question was now answered. And there was more to
come. I watched Monsieur Isabel onscreen as he put down his pencil. He then
read aloud what the spirits had just written through his hand: “Marshall says
he tolerated her affair because he wasn’t always there, and he felt guilty
about the life he led and he wanted Carrie to be happy…”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He says ‘I myself saw other people. I too had sexual
affairs, though not with women.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Guy Isabel was the third medium to mention my grandfather
was gay, which I had suspected for some time. As my Skype session wore on, I
learned that Marshall had loved a fellow Freemason, someone from Europe whom he
must have met in his travels. The Masonic temple, a brotherhood shrouded in
secrecy, provided the perfect camouflage for their affair. Sixty years after
his death, Marshall wrote his confession on the medium’s page: “I discovered my
soul could join with another soul in love, even if that soul was in the body of
a man.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This, then, was the essence of my grandparents’ marriage.
Carrie put up with his homosexuality, and he looked away from her adultery. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I consider this bizarre minuet between the T’s and
K’s, I think of a photo I found among Marshall’s effects. The occasion shown is
the annual Tuxedo Park costume ball. We inherited a trunk full of disguises
from this fabled affair, which Grandpa adored dressing for, ordering
custom-made outfits for himself and Carrie every year. We kids used to try on
the stuff, swimming in silks and velvet brocade: there was a Revolutionary War
soldier getup, a toreador, a sheik, a harem girl, Queen of the Night. There was
also an oversize white satin smock with huge buttons of real mink. No one knew
what that was about until I found this photo. The men are clad as lovelorn Pierrots
in fools’ hats and satin nightshirts. On bended knee, they court their wives
dressed as alluring Columbines. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55-FDKZ-dSPnB5f5otWUwBpDCqBLyHisaAD_61BTlq1FYtOwaHjFh6TioNRrovW_SBdw_uZu0bIzHVxubqMJOJWdVUpYI1hA0Tzu0780d4_WiiLA6LpXv0Xj2tYu-uuzLgl43IjYMlW-Y/s1600/Pierrot+Tuxedo+ball.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55-FDKZ-dSPnB5f5otWUwBpDCqBLyHisaAD_61BTlq1FYtOwaHjFh6TioNRrovW_SBdw_uZu0bIzHVxubqMJOJWdVUpYI1hA0Tzu0780d4_WiiLA6LpXv0Xj2tYu-uuzLgl43IjYMlW-Y/s1600/Pierrot+Tuxedo+ball.jpg" height="490" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tuxedo Park costume ball, or, go figure the rich</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once we get done laughing our asses off at this spectacle,
we can open our ears and hear the chamber orchestra playing; we can see the
dancers change partners. We can ponder, how many aristos in that ballroom were conducting
secret affairs, like Marshall and Carrie? Meanwhile they keep step with high
society’s twirl; keep up appearances in custom disguises.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had no more questions for Monsieur Isabel or any medium
after that. The last pieces of the puzzle, thought to be lost, had been retrieved
and pressed into place. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may well wonder how any sane person could accept as
truth the ad-libs of clairvoyants and mediums (I consulted five in all). But I
am not sane. I’m something worse: a fiction writer. I’d inherited an unfinished
history, with massive plot holes and cloudy characters. I needed to understand
my grandfather, who I believe has been with me in spirit form since his death. Frustrated,
I wanted to fix the story and restore its flow, and I really didn’t care where
the missing answers came from, so long as loose ends got tied and one could put
the book down with a sigh of satisfaction. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so my tale is done.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My attachment to spirits, and Grandpa’s ghost in particular,
was not continuous throughout my life.
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">When I got married in 1985, I gave up ghosts. It
was time to dial it down the wack and get back to my day job: to be a
presentable wife and mother, a person of sound reasoning </span>
– though if someone
prodded me I might tell a ghost story or two. For ten years I concentrated on
putting hot meals on the table and achieving success as a screenwriter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day I got a call from Nina Jacobson, who had just gone
to work at a brand new studio called DreamWorks. I’d done a script for her
before, when she was a development executive at Universal; the script had been
about a satanic college fraternity, so she knew I was fluent in paranormal.
Would I, she asked, be interested in writing a script for Steven Spielberg,
one of DreamWorks’ three partners? The project was then being referred to as “Untitled
Ghost Story.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(To be continued.)</div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-70856351855138478102014-08-07T15:08:00.000-04:002015-04-13T19:16:02.448-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 50<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVivIVmEJE0WBcZrKnRq2urrhsudkJh7DBdKdJATcAC0NMUvtvpnz7BThyphenhyphenj8kmfebF7y1F-Ay8HN4gyftbGM9J3f6vGP7ucXhv8L0nGR8bdQp64ebaXzW8biY10yoNDwDq2wNKsPZf4DM/s1600/CRH+adolescent+portrait+edit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVivIVmEJE0WBcZrKnRq2urrhsudkJh7DBdKdJATcAC0NMUvtvpnz7BThyphenhyphenj8kmfebF7y1F-Ay8HN4gyftbGM9J3f6vGP7ucXhv8L0nGR8bdQp64ebaXzW8biY10yoNDwDq2wNKsPZf4DM/s1600/CRH+adolescent+portrait+edit.jpg" height="640" width="363" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carrie in her teens, not yet heartbroken</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">
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</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It nagged at me, that missing piece. My grandmother Carrie
had a secret: one that prevented her from marrying my grandfather Marshall, or anyone
for that matter. On the face of it, Carrie had steadfastly avoided marriage out
of principle, reluctant to give up her independence to any man. That was her
public position, at any rate. This would have been an unusual stance in those
pre-feminist days, and if an unmarried woman of 32 trumpeted about her freedom,
people could assume she was just masking her humiliation at being a spinster. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grandpa wasn’t deterred, promising, “<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I won’t pluck one feather out of that cherished independence
of yours.” Still she eluded him. She returned to New York, writing him that she
needed to go home to find out “how completely I’ve been able to put certain
things out of my mind.” What things?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">And then, suddenly and unaccountably,
she accepted his proposal. What made her change her tune? According to <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2013/05/at-home-with-ghost-48.html" target="_blank">the medium I’d first visited</a>, </span>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">she
knew or suspected that Marshall covertly preferred men.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Th</span>ere was no one left alive to ask. The memoir about his
parents that Dad left when he died furnished no clue. Like me, my father
remained perplexed about the nature of their marriage because, even though they
seemed quite fond of each other, they spent so much time apart. Dad never figured
it out, and he wasn’t the type to consult a clairvoyant medium. The idea of
contacting his mother’s spirit, so that she could fill in the blanks, was
laughable – and frightening as well, since it implied an afterlife that he was
dead certain didn’t exist.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He must have done a double take after he died. I imagine it’s
particularly hard for atheists to adapt to eternity when they wake up in its
echoing expanse. Imagine, too, their fearful confusion: what am I here for? A
picnic, or perdition? On the other hand, they must feel pretty happy that they’d
been dead wrong about that death-is-the-end thing. I know Dad was grateful for
his new and refreshed life as a spirit; he enjoyed getting on with the business
of evolving. He told me so, through another medium. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After that first encounter with a clairvoyant, I’d sampled
three others, curious to see if there was any discrepancy in the spirit messages
they transmitted. The results were astounding in two out of three séances,
which took place over the telephone. To contact my grandmother Carrie, I
decided to go back to the very first medium I’d seen in Massachusetts, but this
time we’d be conducting our session by phone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My belief that Carrie carried a secret wasn’t based on much,
mainly a few passing lines I’d come across in a letter she wrote to her sister
from war-torn France in 1917: <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No
more married lovers for me. At least that’s what I say now. You never know.” Grandpa
was a confirmed bachelor, who had avoided marriage for even longer than she. And
while he declared his love ardently, nowhere in her wartime letters did she
tell him, or anyone else she wrote to, that she loved Marshall in return. So
who were the “married lovers”? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My
phone session with Medium #1 went well at first. Carrie showed up front and
center. The medium correctly described her and identified the cause of her
death (Carrie</span> underwent a double mastectomy but in the end succumbed to
lung cancer). More details followed that I knew to be true. The time came to
pose my question: “Why did you avoid marriage for so long?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium transmitted the question, listened to the
response, and relayed my grandmother’s answer. Carrie had had her heart broken
in her twenties, and consequently lost her appetite for love. The man had been
married – or perhaps he had to leave Carrie to marry someone else? There was a
child. Perhaps he’d gotten the other woman pregnant. Or perhaps Carrie had been
pregnant, and had to give the child up because her lover was married.
Perhaps…perhaps?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I realized, with discomfort, that the medium had strayed
into conjecture, was vamping instead of reporting what my grandmother’s spirit
said. I had every reason to expect unequivocal answers from the dead: of course
Carrie knew what she did and why – it was her life, after all. Disappointed, I
concluded the séance early.</div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">I
put the mystery aside for a year; my <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3062976/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">film work</a></span>
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-</style><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">had
increased, and I had a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Decades-Demos-Explicit-Sarah-Kernochan/dp/B00IDPUK2W/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1407347912&sr=1-1&keywords=decades+of+demos" target="_blank">new album</a> to release. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Then,
last month, I happened to hear of a French-Canadian medium, <a href="http://www.gisabelspiritualmedium.com/" target="_blank">Guy Isabel</a>,
who conveyed messages from the departed through automatic writing. I was
already familiar with this form of channeling, since my maternal grandfather
had practiced it for a time (I’ve written about his experiences in <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-4.html" target="_blank">Part 4</a>
and <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2013/04/at-home-with-ghost-47.html" target="_blank">Part 47</a>
of this memoir). I thought “ghost-writing” would be an interesting approach,
another way to have that conversation with my elusive grandmother.</span>
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">
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</style></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Monsieur
Isabel and I exchanged emails and arranged a date for a Skype session. A day
before our appointment, he sent me the following note:</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“While
I was doing an automatic writing session yesterday, a spirit name Marshall came
to me and gave that message: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA;">“Marshall says, ‘I
learn to evolve doing lots of activities based on love and the impact of
developing love in the relationship between minds. This prepares us to choose
our next incarnations. From these teachings, the mind learns the importance of
raising his consciousness through the practice of love with his neighbor. The
human experience is an experience that marks the soul deeply and allows it to
grow significantly in higher levels of vibration. Tell her she is a beautiful
soul and we love her work.’”</span></i><span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">I always welcome compliments on my work. I totally preen – on the
inside of course. And I don’t much care where they come from. (Except once,
when I cared very much. A magazine asked former presidential candidate and Southern
Baptist anti-Semite Reverend Pat Robertson what his favorite movies were. My
film <i>Impromptu</i> was on his list. This was ironic, considering my
documentary <i>Marjoe</i> was an exposé of evangelical preachers.) Nevertheless,
the email made me suspicious of Isabel. The text was boilerplate New Age cant,
even if I agreed with every word. And the name Marshall is easily obtained by
reading this very blog.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">My suspicions eased as our session commenced. Monsieur Isabel seemed a
very sweet, openhearted man, and my charlatan alarm (cf. <i>Marjoe, </i>above)
didn’t go off. Each time I posed a question to a spirit, I was able to watch
Isabel onscreen as he paused to write the answer in lovely looping script, his
hand never leaving the page but rather connecting words as if they came in a
continuous undifferentiated stream. I asked him to send me the actual pages.
The script was difficult to read: </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFsovnfVMsJElA2QKvyJhM4haFm_XhwGQ-QffMY99rv47q4tkhlj1c95hRo8B6qvaByzXjgrEP4ZvBP_y9nWrP3TwvKN-jAlsctW9fZu_NgFOCOJO-AzlnKaJtrJVuf7P1MZeWOTHi_K3U/s1600/Guy+Isabel+p1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFsovnfVMsJElA2QKvyJhM4haFm_XhwGQ-QffMY99rv47q4tkhlj1c95hRo8B6qvaByzXjgrEP4ZvBP_y9nWrP3TwvKN-jAlsctW9fZu_NgFOCOJO-AzlnKaJtrJVuf7P1MZeWOTHi_K3U/s1600/Guy+Isabel+p1.JPG" height="278" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Hint: the first word is Marshall and the rest is in French)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Answers were relayed through Isabel’s various spirit guides, whose
names sounded like medications. What they said was sometimes awkwardly phrased,
as if translated from another language by a less than proficient translator. At
one point I asked Isabel if the messages came to his hand in French or English,
in case he was the one translating what he’d written. Both, he said; he had no
control over the choice. Since my French is fairly good, I asked him to read me
answers in whatever language appeared on the page. Even after he complied, the
spirits’ diction remained that of a foreigner (they do, in a sense, come from
afar). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">As our session began, right away Grandpa barrelled in, always first to
arrive at a party. I decided to direct my question to him instead of Carrie. I
asked, “Did you know her secret?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span lang="EN-CA" style="font-family: Times; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Yes, he knew her secrets. They concerned a person whom Carrie had met,
an affair that continued over the course of their marriage. Marshall was
speaking in French now (he was fluent in his lifetime). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cette
liaison s'est déroulée avec un médecin.”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A doctor!? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Suddenly I
knew exactly who that was.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember nothing of my grandmother, who died when I was
five. But I have a distinct memory of visiting her Martha’s Vineyard cottage.
Not the big summer house in Edgartown, which she shared with husband, son,
guests and servants. Marshall bought the little cottage for her as a refuge
where she could be alone to paint and muse. It was perched on a bluff in
Katama, overlooking the Atlantic, and everything about it was fascinatingly
tiny. Grandma Carrie was a wee woman. The rooms were close and cozy, and,
because I was a child, I loved the diminutive slipcovered furniture:
Goldilocks-size, the chairs were just right for a child’s bottom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But now I thought, she wasn’t always alone. And I wondered
how the estimable Dr. Taylor squeezed his ass into one of those armchairs. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(To
be continued.)</span></div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-57477633633224970612013-06-22T18:18:00.000-04:002013-06-23T12:10:28.553-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 49<style>
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<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_3KZWpO7eq2U6CHbJy_Ke5jyw6aJmxi8Ej9VrwSrPcBPZ5gTZFyFSGAsp8a9f4WttnaMzFEptBwzNSCWliB4r2Hh9PjIXC6XL3-ySNyuw9zDVKlBpUitUhgcTHg7M1gMETGZcJqmnvP9/s1600/MRK+kid+soldier+profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn_3KZWpO7eq2U6CHbJy_Ke5jyw6aJmxi8Ej9VrwSrPcBPZ5gTZFyFSGAsp8a9f4WttnaMzFEptBwzNSCWliB4r2Hh9PjIXC6XL3-ySNyuw9zDVKlBpUitUhgcTHg7M1gMETGZcJqmnvP9/s640/MRK+kid+soldier+profile.jpg" width="457" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grandpa in the kiddie kavalry, 1889</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The clairvoyant medium seemed a little disconcerted by my
blunt question. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In truth, I was a little ashamed to ask. It was merely reductive
stereotyping that made me wonder if Grandpa had been gay. I added up what I
knew: he’d lived contentedly with his mother until he was 38, and only married
when she pressured him to. He loved opera, concerts, theater, photography. He
loved clothes. He wrote songs. And then there were all those private men’s
clubs….</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It had taken Grandpa a scant nine months to woo and wed
Carrie. Most of those months they were only in contact through letters. (Both
had gone to France to serve in the war effort, but were separated by their jobs
or by her persistent ill health.) In total, they saw each other face-to-face
for a few weeks before Carrie accepted him. How well did she really know this
wealthy bachelor? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the newlyweds returned to the U.S., leaving the heady excitement
of their wartime adventures behind, my grandfather led his bride over the
threshold of his manse in Tuxedo Park. In fact he delivered her into boredom.
She soon found herself alone, except for an army of servants. Every day he
would leave for some men-only powwow – golf, tennis, poker; booze and badinage
– at one of the several clubs to which he belonged; or at highly secretive
meetings with the Freemasons, where he was already a lodge master.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Carrie was expected to fill her time socializing with the
other wives, but she didn’t care so much for female company. (In her youth she’d
enrolled in Bryn Mawr College and left after one day, complaining, “There were
too many women.”) After giving excruciating birth to my father, Carrie demanded
that their future winters be spent in New York City, where she could consort
with “lively minds” to make up for her husband’s constant clubbing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The son grew up wondering about his father’s thing for male cliques.
Dad wrote in his memoir, “It seemed as though he urgently needed constant
reassurance of his own masculinity provided by the company of men and their
ongoing acceptance of him as one of them.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why did he doubt his masculinity? Unless he knew that,
secretly, he came up short. I arrived once again at my suspicion, which had seemed
unanswerable – until here, now, when I had his spirit in the room and a medium
paid to translate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I asked him: “Were you gay?” And held my breath.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes,” came the answer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium paused, apparently listening to him. “But he
didn’t act on it. There were flirtations, but he kept it way underground. There
was no possibility of going further, except maybe when he went abroad. France,
Italy, Germany…” Yes, those were all the countries where I knew he traveled. Paris,
Rome, Berlin, libertine-friendly places where he would have felt freer to leave
the closet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium added, “His wife came to know about it. She
decided to keep quiet.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So Carrie knew. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another puzzle piece plopped into place. This one would have
answered one of my father’s most pressing questions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All his life Dad pondered why, growing up in his parents’
house, there was such an obsessive concern to “make a man of me, as they put
it. This theme, harped on for years, often dictated their attitude toward me in
childhood.” Carrie seemed especially paranoid that their son would become a
mama’s boy. After all, her husband had grown up inseparable from his own
mother, and look at the result. His feminine side became overnourished,
producing the girlie man she’d gone and married. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so Carrie guarded my father from a like fate. “To be
sure I would not be ‘coddled’ or tied to my mother’s apron strings or dominated
by her, my mother purposely absented herself when I came home from school. She
was always on guard to avoid being demonstrative. Hugging, kissing, or other
expressions of warmth were rare.” Even his father joined the project to butch
up the son. “In those days I was called ‘Jackie,’ but if I wept or whined my
father would call me ‘Jacqueline.’” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To drive the point further, his parents enrolled
Jackie-Jacqueline in the Knickerbocker Greys, a paramilitary cadre of boy
soldiers that drilled and paraded up and down Park Avenue to their parents’
satisfaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Grandpa himself had
belonged to the Greys when he was a lad. Always fond of dress-up, he must have
loved the uniform, though Dad always thought he looked more like a bellhop with
a musket.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next came the boys’ boarding school (St. Mark’s), where
Jackie’s lessons in manhood entered realms of boy-on-boy cruelty whose memory
embittered and disgusted him for the rest of his days. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, in the end, Carrie got what she wanted: a man’s man
for a son, and her husband’s wretched gay gene stomped into dust. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile Grandpa kept to his ways, pursuing fraternal camaraderie
anywhere he could find it. In the masonic lodges were men he could call
Brother. (A fervent follower, he eventually became Most Wise Master, Grand
Marshall, Sovereign of the Red Cross of Constantine Chapter and New York Court
of Jesters.) (Really.)<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHMyt-2MNGGR7yvF-TOkZx9YIzEpnPt4Ay2pUfnF1eA1thtnLHbxljhRi-occBSkeGvLEZFBYe9KAnCXKc9wBNV0ilej9AcmZfTyIhc7s_XJHQaRE5l3Sc0KuhA98XF3so4fLsaYcJUfB4/s1600/MRK+Masonic+gear.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHMyt-2MNGGR7yvF-TOkZx9YIzEpnPt4Ay2pUfnF1eA1thtnLHbxljhRi-occBSkeGvLEZFBYe9KAnCXKc9wBNV0ilej9AcmZfTyIhc7s_XJHQaRE5l3Sc0KuhA98XF3so4fLsaYcJUfB4/s400/MRK+Masonic+gear.jpg" width="302" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grandpa in full Masonic gear</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The last males-only club he was headed to, when he died, was
the dockside Edgartown Reading Room in Martha’s Vineyard. A club he helped found
and bankroll, this was no literary gathering. The only book in the building was
the telephone directory. But the bartender could reach down any bottle you
wanted from the shelf. It wasn’t easy to become a member. You had to be
wealthy, and you had to get with the program: booze and badinage and secrets. Their
climactic annual rite was a nude clambake.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ6pv-NQPodMuHOqINyqdc0K_HuJqtjuJrLKuN7yERrnivEPdnx93NS4Oj6IfbUEHwT26SupIdwIMkSNuY6kp1w3SjoCllxbVTwUbPf8qfy3I_SzqCPMPKRwdg9a1OKfKwQGYDYgmLLwuy/s1600/reading+room+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ6pv-NQPodMuHOqINyqdc0K_HuJqtjuJrLKuN7yERrnivEPdnx93NS4Oj6IfbUEHwT26SupIdwIMkSNuY6kp1w3SjoCllxbVTwUbPf8qfy3I_SzqCPMPKRwdg9a1OKfKwQGYDYgmLLwuy/s640/reading+room+moon.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Edgartown Reading Room annual moonfest </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Even now, on the summer nights when I walk by the Reading
Room, I will hear the good old rich guys within, eruptions of laughter booming
over the water: masculinity certified and embalmed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He had long ago given up composing songs. This was the music
he’d wanted to hear, the night he died.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you have any regrets?” I asked Grandpa’s ghost.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium reported, “He says he didn’t put into his marriage
what he could have. He was ambivalent about it. He harmed her emotionally by
his lack of attention.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Suddenly I wanted to hear Carrie’s side. But our session was
up, and I had a train to catch. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandmother’s mysteries would come clear another time –
and through another medium. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(To be continued.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Note to followers and fans: I’m sorry my chapters have been
so infrequently posted these past months. My day job in screenwriting has
intervened, with several projects with deadlines needing my attention. But
stick with me: I have lots more to tell! If you subscribe by email (above,
right) you’ll get the new posts automatically in your Inbox rather than having
to visit the site.</div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-6372558883049178822013-05-12T13:32:00.001-04:002013-06-23T12:16:17.579-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 48<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pplHHGbcU5l7aBw36KpmV_ZBBKaZszMNDTxRpXtUorLGcEn0Kdr6I5Cdiz-XC-sK85mBdJgS9e3zfsz5tsA3F95bB3UkffAsnvCM9T-dx-Nbp3aSgyJ8PUiMF9dnCmmstYFnJXe8drpc/s1600/Mom+debutante+staircase+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7pplHHGbcU5l7aBw36KpmV_ZBBKaZszMNDTxRpXtUorLGcEn0Kdr6I5Cdiz-XC-sK85mBdJgS9e3zfsz5tsA3F95bB3UkffAsnvCM9T-dx-Nbp3aSgyJ8PUiMF9dnCmmstYFnJXe8drpc/s640/Mom+debutante+staircase+copy.jpg" width="398" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom before polio</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html" target="_blank"><u>clicking here</u></a>.)</span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I opened the door and, as I braved the champaca fumes and
tinkling wind chimes, I thought: fire the art director for crimes of cliché. It
was way too obvious to have a medium operating out of the back room of a New
Age tchotchke shop. Lurking around the crystals, rune stones, wands and massage
rollers were the customers, mainly women who wore a lot of velour and displayed
snaggly toenails, probably from all the running with wolves. I am not one of
them, I told myself. Then again, I had a closetful of velvet back in New York,
and I had taken the train all the way to Andover to consult a medium, carrying
a notepad full of questions for dead people. So, like it or not, I was part of
this crackpot Aquarian tribe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The back room was carpeted and mostly bare. I took my seat
opposite a 40-ish woman (in velour) who sat six feet away. I’d made the
appointment in the spirit of an escapade, something madcap and probably idiotic.
I didn’t really expect this woman to succeed in convoking my grandparents,
both of whom died in the 1950’s. She herself assured me that she had no control
over which spirits would come forward. Some of them might have no relation to
me, she said, but they were hanging about in case some conduit opened up
whereby they could get a message through. I shrugged inwardly and opened my
notebook: let the shams begin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Staring slightly to the side of me, she announced that
someone from the afterlife was present. “A younger person in his 20’s. Sandy
blond hair, tall, close to six feet, tan pants with a nice shirt. I have a
sense of someone who took his own life. I can’t breathe, I’m having a hard time
swallowing. Like, I choked to death. Does this mean anything to you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I can’t think of anyone.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He wants to say that his suicide was impulsive, not thought
out. Never mind.” She paused as if to shift gears. “Someone with a motherly
energy just walked in. Has your mother passed?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“She had a degenerative illness. She’s pointing to the
brain. Parts of her memory were lost. You were the decision maker at that
time.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was instantly disconcerted. Yes, my mother had dementia
the last years of her life. Yes, I held the medical proxy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Without waiting for my confirmation, the medium went on, “Now
she’s holding onto the doorway, and she says, ‘I needed help to stand up.’” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And with that, suddenly, Mom was there in the room. For as
long as I’d known her, she had needed crutches to stand and walk, owing to the
polio that crippled her at age 25.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This was the part of the session called “proving,” which I
learned from my great-great-aunt’s book on séances (<a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2013/04/at-home-with-ghost-47.html" target="_blank">see Part 47</a>). The medium transmits a spirit’s identifying details until the client, who may
at first resist believing in the ghost’s presence, is worn down by the preponderance
of evidence, the intimate details that even the most cunning medium couldn’t
invent. The proofs piled up as I sat there listening in amazement. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Your mother says, ‘Dorothy.’ Now she’s showing me some Oz
books.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We had inherited a complete set of Oz books, which Mom read aloud to me. I was obsessed with them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“She says, ‘Ping-Pong.’ Does this make any sense to you?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ping-Pong was the one game that all seven members of my
family came together to play, round-robin style. Even Mom played from her
wheelchair. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“She’s showing a set of china, white and gold, that she was
proud of.” I still possess her lovely wedding service, white and gold.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And on it went. At the point I was completely convinced that
my mother was present, her messages began. Among them were her thanks to me for
helping her to die. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I burst into tears. Bed-ridden, incapable, and lost in the
backroads of dementia, Mom had summoned the will to stubbornly refuse food and
liquid. I had administered morphine, read her children’s books, played Fred
Astaire and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Messiah</i> that she
adored, and sat vigil for the eight days it took her to wane and die. I’d felt
her gratitude at the time; but to hear it now, expressed through a stranger, in
this nondescript room off a crystal-and-candles shop, filled up my heart to the
seams. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium asked if it was indeed my mother I’d come here to
speak with. Actually, I hadn’t thought of Mom at all beforehand. There was no
mystery there I wanted to solve, no unfinished business, no unbearable grief or
inability to let go. We had closed the book, she and I. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My sole interest had been in contacting my father’s parents,
which I’d assumed to be an improbable venture – like shooting an arrow into the
air and expecting it to land in the bull’s eye of a target hidden in deep woods.
Yet now, after my mother’s appearance, it seemed possible. “I came for someone
else,” I told the medium.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Give me the first name of the departed, and I’ll see what I
can do.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I said, “Marshall.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It didn’t take long before Grandpa arrived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium started by laughing. “Oh, he’s so funny. This man
– I assume this is a man’s name – has such humor. A twinkle in his eye. He was
handsome, mischievous – a teaser – but sweet.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandfather certainly was a known wit, the life of the
party. Could this be he? I waited for more “proving.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m seeing the Masonic symbol.” I was fully alert now. My
grandfather was a staunch Freemason.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The medium continued, “He was independently wealthy…but…”
She paused to listen. “He’s protesting – he wants you to know, ‘I wasn’t
lazy!’” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I laughed: busted. I had written in <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-5.html" target="_blank">Part 5</a>
of this very blog that my grandparents, at least according to my father, were
“indolent.” Apparently he was annoyed by that, in an afterlife sort of way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He left this world quickly. There were no warning signs. The
problem was the heart. He was getting set to go to a party – the way he wanted
to go, the perfect death. He liked cocktails and the finer whiskies and other
alcohol, so he might have had a snifter in his hand before going.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And there he was, as incontrovertibly present in the room as
my mother. It was all accurate: Grandpa had died of a massive stroke, suddenly,
in Martha’s Vineyard as he was getting dressed for an evening with his pals at
the Reading Room, a men’s club on the waterfront pier. I could picture the
snifter shattering on the floor when he fell, the expensive cognac pooling. How many of
those bottles had I opened and swilled, from the racks and racks of his liquor,
stored in my parents’ garage after his death? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes,” I said. “This is my grandfather.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hSjwWuZxU6_8hQpNGSXPAjfnBmV1AbXHndWpy1_XSMeheHP1C0_9OUff9CCDrsA0JGd4kMH4FahGBjTt8_rkav_sLiXjOrLXYva6cJeehvbzbmbqNzaEUE_oaQE3d1UPEx1r4ubxsKWD/s1600/MRK+@ReadingRoom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7hSjwWuZxU6_8hQpNGSXPAjfnBmV1AbXHndWpy1_XSMeheHP1C0_9OUff9CCDrsA0JGd4kMH4FahGBjTt8_rkav_sLiXjOrLXYva6cJeehvbzbmbqNzaEUE_oaQE3d1UPEx1r4ubxsKWD/s400/MRK+@ReadingRoom.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grandpa (left) with his Reading Room cronies</td></tr>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
She said, “You only had a limited time together when you
were both alive, but he noticed you at an early age. He connected with you, saw
your potential.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He died when I was eight. Up until now I’d had next to no
memory of him, but all at once I remembered playing him a piece I’d made up on
the piano, perched on a stool at his mahogany Steinway grand, in his Sutton
Place townhouse. I was about six. My composition was called “The Ocean” and
consisted of my rolling my knuckles on all the black keys. In my fragment of
memory, he listened quite respectfully from the couch, hands propped on his
cane. Maybe he saw my songwriting potential then, assuming I would master the white keys.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I snapped back to the present, scribbling notes to catch up
with the medium who was saying, “He seems more like a father than a grandfather
to you. He protects you. You are his co-worker – he sees you doing what he
prepared you for, though what he gave you was changed by what you brought to
it. He has great respect for you. A sense of you two being equals. He says to
you, ‘I admire and trust you.’…He was a muse to you. Does that make sense?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I merely nodded, overcome by all this validation. It all
came back, the music he fed me from across the cosmic divide when I lay in a
kind of waking sleep, and the pressure to finish these pieces on my own. I
glanced at the list of questions I’d prepared before arriving. “Please ask him,
‘Why did you stop composing?’” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After a second she chuckled, “Oh, he’s getting haughty now.
He says, ‘I didn’t have to!’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thinking that this sounded pretty lazy, I pressed him, “Was
it because of the war? Or getting married?” (Grandpa’s output of music had dwindled
to nothing in the years after he returned from his World War I service in
France, where he’d married my grandmother Carrie.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It wasn’t the war, but he had a depression – he got blocked
artistically. And the marriage was a challenge. She was a decent woman but he
didn’t have a true connection there. It wasn’t a marriage of desire but because
he was expected to marry.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We were getting to the heart of it now. Everything so far
had been borne out by the letters Grandpa had left behind, and by the
recollections of my father in his 1990’s memoir. But there was one big question
that had gone unanswered. If I had posed it to my father while he was alive, he
wouldn’t have known the answer, and might have been offended as well. So here
was my chance, with Grandpa floating in the room…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I asked, “Were you gay?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(To be continued.)</div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-30410397434525862352013-04-02T16:39:00.000-04:002017-04-05T17:01:09.333-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 47<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CW4cvk3dBQ2jxk46xiEMOkl5ccagOuFb21zxzz_OYdUDdPz09ag_qZHk2n1cVX30LhFyfiNnfb8FvqpcYalhZB4VeeDyc8ex80GVs1MQUoOjDD1-wdJy73XhgpLXine5RQpz_pmLQbUo/s1600/Rose+Farwell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6CW4cvk3dBQ2jxk46xiEMOkl5ccagOuFb21zxzz_OYdUDdPz09ag_qZHk2n1cVX30LhFyfiNnfb8FvqpcYalhZB4VeeDyc8ex80GVs1MQUoOjDD1-wdJy73XhgpLXine5RQpz_pmLQbUo/s640/Rose+Farwell.jpg" width="472" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">BEAUTIFUL SPIRIT: Rose Chatfield-Taylor</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNue7pc5lNEjHs3jvjMsap_tBk837k8qjHOFUa5T_owHmMj-aQztJb6h0YOIO-Dik_1EXhTgq-5wdCiJhcRIPz_4dKZV6mb2UbiLf7tnXOezZIcWmQdGndjOP4Lr7Mc7n73FzW51Yx1fr/s1600/Anna+De+Koven1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHNue7pc5lNEjHs3jvjMsap_tBk837k8qjHOFUa5T_owHmMj-aQztJb6h0YOIO-Dik_1EXhTgq-5wdCiJhcRIPz_4dKZV6mb2UbiLf7tnXOezZIcWmQdGndjOP4Lr7Mc7n73FzW51Yx1fr/s640/Anna+De+Koven1.jpg" width="590" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">HER INTERVIEWER: Anna De Koven </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
<br />
Why not a medium? It should have been an obvious step long ago, when I was in my twenties and running around to all those psychics. I suppose I didn’t know many dead people I was interested in. I only wanted to know about boyfriends. And I was already in communication with my ghostly Grandpa Kernochan on my own. But now, preparing this memoir, I found I had some burning questions about his marriage to Carrie.<br />
<br />
Another ancestor of mine had consulted a clairvoyant medium, and quite publicly. <br />
<br />
Anna De Koven was my great-great aunt on my mother’s side. In 1920, when she was already a well-known journalist and biographer, Anna published A Cloud of Witnesses, the chronicle of her conversations with her dead sister through a medium. <br />
<br />
Anna and her sister Rose were daughters of US Senator Charles Farwell from Illinois. By 19th century standards the girls were educated beyond expectation, and made for scintillating company at dinners and balls. Rose was also famously beautiful. A Chicago millionaire snapped her up and she became Rose Chatfield-Taylor. (Anna credited Rose’s husband with bringing golf to the Midwest in 1892, when he sank tomato cans in their lawn and turned it into a golf link.) Meanwhile Anna married the composer Reginald De Koven, who penned operettas as well as that warhorse wedding song “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_5KsfYt8MM">O Promise Me</a>.”<br />
<br />
From all reports Rose was warm and wise and adored by everyone, most especially by Anna. Thus it came as a terrible shock when Rose died suddenly, at the age of 48, in the course of a minor surgery gone wrong. Anna couldn’t adjust to her loss and so, only a few months after the funeral, she leapt at the chance of making contact with Rose’s spirit. <br />
<br />
As a journalist, Anna dealt in facts and fastidious research, which seemed at odds with her adventure into the unknowable ether. But hope overwhelmed her: it might just be possible to conjure Rose from the dead! Still, she could not entirely abandon her scientific scruples. She drew encouragement from the fact that it was a noted physicist, who had become interested in psychic phenomena, who referred her to a medium he knew. He had consulted this Mrs. Vernon after his son died in the war in Europe, and felt solaced by the experience of talking to his boy. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgG8iyOEiBK_Xasx5ge5E0AjePXusoMkdbydhIVS_fwfBJF10V1S45-de7T8ciblvnushRB-GheTySz4vWFpBNVdjjOThsJDsdRoWEIr3KzwkGG5a62QDwfji9eNwTaNC_BwlPef8ibbU5/s1600/Anna+De+Koven3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgG8iyOEiBK_Xasx5ge5E0AjePXusoMkdbydhIVS_fwfBJF10V1S45-de7T8ciblvnushRB-GheTySz4vWFpBNVdjjOThsJDsdRoWEIr3KzwkGG5a62QDwfji9eNwTaNC_BwlPef8ibbU5/s640/Anna+De+Koven3.jpg" width="288" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Grieving Anna at the time of the séances </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Anna arrived at Mrs. Vernon’s house in New York prepared to take notes; to transcribe everything that occurred and was said. At first the medium had difficulty bringing the sister’s spirit into the foreground. Words and images came through in confusing fragments, like a cellphone connection breaking up. Apparently Rose was “still in perplexity” following her death – as who wouldn’t be? Seen from the other side, to find yourself both dead and taking a call from your sister might be difficult to handle. Rose was pretty green at this. <br />
<br />
However, the medium rallied to the task. She appealed to her helpers: four gentlemen who were themselves eager to make this interview succeed. <br />
<br />
The men were members of the American Society for Psychical Research. They had made some studies of Mrs. Vernon and her extraordinary abilities, and were in a state of great excitement to present their reports to the London branch of the Society when, in 1915, they boarded a transatlantic ship headed for England. The boat was called the <i>RMS Lusitania</i>. <br />
<br />
After they drowned, the scientists got back in touch with Mrs. Vernon. They wanted her to find someone living to present their material to the public. Enter Anna De Koven, a writer.<br />
<br />
The gentlemen’s deal was implicit: Write about our work, and we will enable your sister to come forward. We’ll give her a speed course in immortal-to-mortal interface. <br />
<br />
The bargain might as well have come from Mrs. Vernon herself, who stood to get a lot of attention from anything Anna De Koven wrote – attention she was thwarted from receiving when those misfortunate scientists hit the ocean floor. That would be the cynical interpretation. But skepticism is the clairvoyant’s daily portion. The medium’s answer to critics comes in the “proving.”<br />
<br />
“Proving” is the early part of a session, when spirits are first summoned. Using the medium as translator, they try to convince the client of their identity. They prove who they are to the point that all disbelief vanishes, everyone is on board, and the séance can proceed without misgiving. <br />
<br />
Rose, coming through more clearly now, started talking about a table cover she was making when she died. It was still in pieces, but she wanted Anna to have it. Anna was flabbergasted. It was true: Rose had left behind a half-completed tablecloth of lace and linen strips. Then Rose talked about a sly trick she and Anna had pulled once, in order to win a golf match. Then she described the hats she’d had made for the coming fashion season, which were still at the milliner’s. Rose was also worried about Anna’s husband’s health, citing “a limited amount of endurance.” (Indeed he was ill, and not long after would die.) <br />
<br />
The evidence piled up, of private matters between the two sisters, information Mrs. Vernon could not possibly have acquired. Anna was not only on board, she was hooked. Over six months she returned to Mrs. Vernon again and again. The verbatim transcripts make up most of the book. <br />
<br />
<i>A Cloud of Witnesses</i> made quite a sensation, coming as it did from a respected writer and member of high society. I’d never heard of the book until my brother mentioned it last year. I had no trouble finding an old copy online. (It’s also a <a href="https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=VmQAAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-VmQAAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1">free download</a> on Google Books.) The opening chapter is tough going – a scientific treatise on "the survival of the personality after death.” Anna wanted readers to have all the evidence supporting psychic phenomena before reading the session transcripts, or they might dismiss her report as delusional. Once the Rose conversations start, the book becomes fascinating and at times lovely and lyrical. <br />
<br />
In short, Rose took Anna on a tour of the afterlife. She described how, after she died, she revived in the ethereal world where she was met by “a man with a gray beard in a white garment. He chose to assume this venerable appearance because it was more comforting.” Still she resisted him, horrified to find herself in the discarnate state, until her mother and twin brother (who was killed by a falling branch when he was two) arrived to console her. “They had assumed their earthly appearances or I would not have recognized them.” She also noticed they didn’t pronounce words but rather implanted thoughts in her head.<br />
<br />
Rose then entered the soul system, where the dead go through “probation to initiation to fulfillment.” Basically Rose was in school, learning to detach from her previous lifetime and reach a higher spirituality. (For a time she studied how to create symbols to appear as messages in human dreams.) She and the other souls in her class hung around “congenial” landscapes they created mutually through telepathic vibration. “We create things here as we want them, and we frequently look back on the things we have once desired [on earth] as children look back upon their dolls.”<br />
<br />
Their mother made a few cameo appearances. A puritanical devout in her lifetime, she now said, “I have learned that religion is not of serious necessity. The only real uplift is charity towards mankind. If charity and mentality go not hand and hand, it profits the soul nothing.”<br />
<br />
Sometimes the <i>Lusitania</i> victims chimed in with passages like “The universe holds. But the appurtenances vanish like foam in the wake of the ship.” <br />
<br />
Rose contributed her own metaphor, asking Anna to “picture a man walking down a sunlit road. The ethereal world is a shadow of the material. They are inseparable as shadow and figure.” (I would add that humans typically pay no attention to their shadows.)<br />
<br />
Trained by the scientists, Rose turned into quite the chatty ghost. Those who have read <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/11/at-home-with-ghost-4.html">Chapter 4</a> of this memoir remember that as a young man my maternal grandfather communicated with his dead mother through automatic writing. His mother (and my great-grandmother) was Rose.<br />
<br />
Reading <i>A Cloud of Witnesses</i> encouraged me to seek out my own Mrs. Vernon. I wanted to talk to my longtime ghost Marshall and his wife Carrie, both of whom died in the 1950’s. And while I was at it, I wanted to say hey to Anna De Koven.<br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
I leave you with the gooey lyrics to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_5KsfYt8MM">O Promise Me</a>, by Anna’s husband:<br />
<br />
<i>Oh promise me that you will take my hand,</i><br />
<i>The most unworthy in this lonely land,</i><br />
<i>And let me sit beside you, in your eyes</i><br />
<i>Seeing the vision of our paradise,</i><br />
<i>Hearing God’s message while the organ rolls,</i><br />
<i>Its mighty music to our very souls,</i><br />
<i>No love less perfect than a life with thee;</i><br />
<i>Oh promise me, oh promise me! </i><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hqw7-yLuN-8" width="560"></iframe> Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-91963835388687998572013-03-19T14:15:00.000-04:002017-04-05T16:25:14.434-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 46<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The adventurers in Paris</span></td></tr>
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<br />(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br /><br /><br />He met her at a friend’s get-together in 1913. They fell into conversation next to the icebox in the kitchen. Carrie was as petite as a child; almost cute and almost plain; witty, anxious, and intense. Although they had interests in common – music, art, and literature – there were impediments you might call Hide and Prejudice: for my grandfather hid from binding relationships with women, and Carrie was prejudiced against wealthy men. <br /><br />There was a certain resentment in her attitude. Carrie’s family occupied the same upper reaches of society, but her father periodically and ignominiously suffered business reverses. With her parents and sisters Carrie danced the riches-to-rags-back-to-riches rag. Because she often had to do without, she decided that those who had more than enough, like Grandpa, were selfish, spoiled and oblivious to the hardship of others. Being down on one’s luck made one more enlightened than, and thus superior to, the pampered rich. At any rate, this was how Carrie preserved her pride.<br /><br />Preserving her independence was her other obsession. Women didn’t have the vote yet, but Carrie proclaimed her freedom anyway by smoking like a chimney and avoiding the manacles of marriage. At age 29, she was an old maid and fine with it. On the other hand, insecurity plagued her. She felt she never followed through with anything, was of no use in the world. <br /><br />But opportunity was on its way. <br /><br />By 1914 Carrie’s family was headed for rags once again. That was the same year my grandfather got in the news for suing his demented aunt’s estate, going after her money when he was already quite rich. Carrie and her kin shared the prevailing opinion that he was a layabout and a parasite. <br /><br />It was high time for Grandpa to heed his beloved mother’s pleas and to buckle down publicly. He was the sole descendant of his father’s line. He needed a male heir to carry the name forward. A wife was in order. <br /><br />But women made him nervous; he tended to be overpolite and formal around them. So he looked around for a “gal” with whom he could relax, who shared his interests, and who wouldn’t change his life overmuch. Carrie was single, with a lively mind, into the arts…and she went her own way. That left him free for fraternizing in men’s clubs, where he spent a great deal of his time. <br /><br />You wouldn’t be surprised that Carrie initially found him a bit of a bore. He sent her flowers, loaned her books. Her thank-you notes were warm but brief, without encouragement. <br /><br />The New York papers were filled with horror stories and the appalling body count coming from Europe, where war raged. America had not yet entered the conflict. Carrie suddenly announced she was going to France to volunteer as an auxiliary nurse, to any hospital that would have her, as near as possible to the Western front. <br /><br />It was a testament to her determination that her family couldn’t stop her. In February of 1916, she sailed alone for Europe. She had never been to France before, her health was forever fragile, and she had neither certification nor experience at nursing. She declared, “I feel that I have never in my life stuck at anything so I am going to see this through.”<br /><br />She found work immediately in a hospital in Paris. The doctors discovered the American volunteer to be intelligent, cheerful, quick to learn, difficult to horrify, and industrious to the point of collapse. They gave her more to do. Soon she had her own ward. The wounded poured in from the front; she threw herself into the care of soldiers and aviators, whom she called her “blessées.” She wrote her sister, “You would die to see me pumping dope into drains in open wounds & tying up heads with the brains sticking out in the back.”<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CbjZnInPkUVNeSgwbGNqUVfVAToxaWjfUWTEh3NELVPQ81sVmmpMWsZmgVysyRBe_-CbNtELy6pz8I2c7yvvbRqMJev9sAn-NQ0xzZ-e3rxs6skokMtw7pFHbEjbY3g23piySv_M1miZ/s1600/CRH+nurse+clipping+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6CbjZnInPkUVNeSgwbGNqUVfVAToxaWjfUWTEh3NELVPQ81sVmmpMWsZmgVysyRBe_-CbNtELy6pz8I2c7yvvbRqMJev9sAn-NQ0xzZ-e3rxs6skokMtw7pFHbEjbY3g23piySv_M1miZ/s400/CRH+nurse+clipping+copy.jpg" width="357" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carrie with one of her “blessées” </td></tr>
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<br />My grandfather was so impressed by Carrie’s bold and selfless act that he enlisted in the army. As he departed for field artillery training in upstate New York, he wrote to her: “Dear Carrie, the die is cast now. I am well aware what the consequences must be to us all in blood & misery, but one would far rather bring one’s earthly career to a premature close than feel that one comes from a country which failed to make good when faced by the choice between the honorable thing and the yellow thing. I’m quitting my own work now & starting to study for the army, in whatever capacity I can serve. Wish me luck. If you do, I know it’ll bring me some. I need it.” He would show Carrie and the world that he was good for something.<br /><br />The news took Carrie by surprise. “I had a long letter from Marshall Kernochan,” she reported to her mother, “just as he was leaving for Plattsburg! I wonder what it will do for him? Kill or cure?” <br /><br />From the time he reported for duty their correspondence began in earnest: letters flew across the ocean between them. Though they were 3000 miles apart, they felt they were comrades in action – two sheltered bluebloods plunging into a great cause and experiencing their own bravery for the first time. Soon Carrie was writing to her folks, “It certainly does show people up, a time like this, & you may call him a freak – but how many of the boys we know are making good that way?”<br /><br />She had promised her family she’d return after six months. The Paris damp, the grueling stress and the unhealthy conditions at the hospital brought back her chronic bronchitis. She fell into a pattern of working her heart out, getting ill, and becoming a patient herself. Still, fourteen months later she was still there. It was unthinkable to leave: she was needed. <br /><br />Grandpa shipped out to France in the fall of 1917. A second lieutenant, he was transferred to the intelligence corps. His letters couldn’t reveal his whereabouts or his activities, but they were full of frustration and eagerness to see her. He demanded that she take him on a tour of Paris (though he already knew the city very well) “or I shall order up my platoon & put you under arrest.” <br /><br />Finally at Christmas he got two days’ leave. And that’s all it took: a day and a night. Whatever happened to put the match to his ardor, he came away crazy to marry her. <br /><br />Carrie, on the other hand, held back. She called him “short-sighted,” which stung. He wrote: “Dear, you know you must ‘take a shot at it’! I care more than I ever could tell you. That I can take care of you I am sure, and I won’t pluck one feather out of that cherished independence of yours. If I had my pick of every woman who ever lived and you were an invalid in a wheelchair, I’d far rather spend my life with you. We’re not little kids, and if we want to live there’s but one way – jump! You said last night that I’m short sighted. I doubt it. And I know the Big Need is with me, and only you can take it away.”<br /><br />She didn’t reply. He waited one agonizing week, firing off more letters. The New Year came and went. <br /><br />Finally a letter from Carrie arrived.<br /><br />She: “You ask if I think of you. Of course I do – lots – much too much for my peace of mind. But tho’ I cannot yet ‘say the good word’ you want me to, if it’s any help for you to feel there is something more than an ordinary friendship between us – why please do. Whether or not it will grow is something only the future can decide.”<br /><br />He: “What else can I say, except that I love you? If, as you say, you like to be told that, why, I like to tell it, still more…You say, ‘if you only dared let yourself go’! Well – who’s holding you back?...Don’t think that I’m such a crazy optimist as to say that married life would be all a bed of roses! Of course there are concessions and little sacrifices, but it seems to me that making those is the best part of all. I know I’d like to give up anything to get you.” Meanwhile, he wrote his mother about Carrie, to assure her that his mission was almost accomplished: “She is such a sweet little girl. I think she would suit me splendidly.”<br /><br />Carrie rejoined: “Yes, I did tell you, in a rash moment, that I like to be made love to – but please next time we meet don’t do anything of the kind, because we’ve got to talk & talk & talk, and nothing kills conversation so.” (“Making love” in those days could mean nothing more than snogging.)<br /><br />They got together one more time in Paris, a single day of walking around the city and talking and talking and talking, capped off by an air raid that both found quite “thrilling.” But he returned to camp believing she didn’t return his feelings enough to marry him.<br /><br />Doctors advised Carrie not to spend another winter in Paris. She sailed home for three months. Before leaving, she sent Grandpa an ambiguous note: “I want so much to be fair & square & honest & aboveboard with you! I’ve decided I can’t be that until I’ve been home & found out if & how completely I’ve been able to put certain things out of my mind…”<br /><br />She must have gotten quite an earful from her parents. Hello? You’re 32 and alone, not rich or beautiful, you’re living off your hard-up parents, and now one of the wealthiest bachelors in New York is begging to marry you, and you’re hesitating? Are you insane?!<br /><br />Whether she bowed to pressure or something else happened, she changed her mind. Her next letter to Grandpa showed her backtracking almost frantically: “You have no idea how much I miss you. I hate it. How perfectly horrid I was to you most of the time. What must you think of me?...If you don’t really want to marry me, you had better not ask me again!”<br /><br />Upon her return to Paris they were married. He wrote his mother, “Thank God I have a wife who is not helpless, and who has enough initiative to be able and not to be afraid to do things. I tell you, Ma, this life here changes one’s point of view in everything and shows up people’s character as nothing else could. This war, even if it is horrible and cruel, has certainly separated the wheat from the chaff.” (He added, “Be sure & get all the wine you can, for very soon it will no longer be possible, when we have prohibition. What a nuisance it will be!”)<br /><br />A year later their only child, my father, was born. <br /><br />The World War I letters, tied up in bundles with frayed kitchen string, were discovered 75 years later in a trunk in Grandpa’s house in Martha’s Vineyard. As I read them, handling with caution the brittle ink-blotched pages, I was haunted by several questions. What held Carrie back? What did she mean, that she had to find out “if & how completely I’ve been able to put certain things out of my mind”? Were those “certain things” someone else? Someone she loved? Why really was she still unwed at 32? <br /><br />The letters were out of sequence, so the last ones I read were from Carrie to her sister, written soon after Carrie first arrived in Paris. Her voice changed on these pages; became whispered girl-talk. Suddenly two passages leapt out at me. <br /><br />“No more married lovers for me,” Carrie wrote. “At least that’s what I say now. You never know.” And: “Do let me know if the darling goes to see you – I bet his wife doesn’t miss me so she suffers - !” <br /><br />I was sure now: there was a secret here. But I had come to the bottom of the family papers, with no more clues or answers. No one – parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles – was alive for me to question. <br /><br />But the dead were another matter. Only one thing remained for me to do: make an appointment with a medium.<br /><br />(To be continued.)Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-17151111080358589422013-02-01T16:07:00.000-05:002017-04-05T16:13:52.979-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 45<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNF987DDhACxOSj1JUOBa4knTno072kMU-NpZ4unUbsbvYmigxsjk1upX0V4OQ6IQTig3hsbbj1grQNHJceuNTiz62a9p3-o5KGkfYu0JbCr-hJTsZeDpDE4WOhNJUlOocmU8YwtCOJS5k/s1600/MRK+the+fop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNF987DDhACxOSj1JUOBa4knTno072kMU-NpZ4unUbsbvYmigxsjk1upX0V4OQ6IQTig3hsbbj1grQNHJceuNTiz62a9p3-o5KGkfYu0JbCr-hJTsZeDpDE4WOhNJUlOocmU8YwtCOJS5k/s640/MRK+the+fop.jpg" width="410" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">Grandpa as unserious fop</span></span></td></tr>
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<br /> (Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br /><br /><br />I married for love at age 37, bailing on my most cherished principles since the time, as a 14-year-old would-be writer, I’d vowed to remain solo, childless, and unlicensed in love. If I wed, I stood to lose my independence, starting with the TV remote. Nevertheless, by my mid-thirties I changed my mind and wanted a child – badly. <br /><br />The offer was on the table: I could have a baby if I stood under a hoopah, mouthed a few platitudes, and signed some papers, thus conferring legitimacy on the child. Suddenly independence seemed like an easy trade. I’d had my fill of freedom anyway. In the dark, you could sometimes mistake it for loneliness.<br /><br />My grandfather’s ghost must have nodded in recognition. When he was alive, he got married at exactly the same age, and the need for a baby had everything to do with it. <br /><br />When he was 6, his father died unexpectedly. An only child, he could look forward, after the death of his mother, to a small fortune amassed from iron importation, investments, and a sugar plantation in New Orleans. In the meantime, he drew close to his mother, who encouraged him in his love of the arts and his wish to become a composer.<br /><br />Thus when he embarked on a career that was unlikely to pay much, his mother contributed a hefty allowance. It wasn’t quite enough, though, for a young man about town. He had wardrobe expenses. If he didn’t find another source of income, he would have to sell his automobile and resign his memberships at the Brook Club, the Union Club, the Knickerbocker Club, the Racquet Club, the Tuxedo Club, the Lenox Club, the Century Club, the Automobile Club of America, and the Grolier and West Side Tennis Clubs. He also wanted to get married eventually. Or so he told the court.<br /><br />In 1914 he presented a petition to a New York State Supreme Court justice, asking for an additional stipend from his aunt’s estate. He might have applied to her directly, except that she was insane and confined to a sanitarium. She was worth $3 million, which just sat in an account earning interest. So why shouldn’t he have it? It might further his career as a composer.<br /><br />This had to be the single most humiliating event in my grandfather’s life. The case hit all the papers, even as far as Texas. It makes for amusing reading now. In short, the judge ripped him a new one. I quote from the New York Times article: <br /><br />“Mr. Kernochan said he had written some songs, but that he had only earned $30 a year in this way, and that to advertise the songs cost him six times what they brought in…The Justice said, ‘the application is unusual and extraordinary…It shows a young man, 33 years of age, who has lived an idle and luxurious life, now attempting, on the plea that he desired a further taste for music, to increase his income by obtaining an allowance out of his aunt’s estate at the rate of $12,000 a year…He resides with his mother, contributes nothing to the household expenses, and derives from his own property an income of about $3,750 a year. <br /><br />“‘He has followed no other occupation other than his diversion for music.’” You can practically hear the judge’s sneering contempt for songwriting. “I do not value the increase of musical renown as being the substantial reason for this application. It is a mere pretext, that this young man may have additional means to maintain or accentuate his luxurious living…It matters not that his aunt is incurable, 65 years of age, without issue, never having been married, and has been insane since 1872, that her surplus income annually amounts to $100,000. The mere fact that an incompetent has an ample fortune, that her income is large, and greatly exceeds her requirements, affords per se, no ground to give away her property.”<br /><br />Grandpa’s attorneys did an end run around the justice and he got his crazy aunt’s money. But his mother must have been embarrassed by the shaming publicity, which revealed her son as, well, not serious. At the very least he should get married. As his father’s sole progeny, he had an obligation to carry on the family name, by producing a male child. <br /><br />He had been engaged once, to a violinist. Then he found out that he was supposed to use his money to further her career. Exit violinist. No matter: he preferred to hang with his homeys at clubs, or with fellow artists like Stieglitz and company; he was happy to have his mother be the only woman in his life. Bachelorhood suited him, and anyway, according to my dad’s memoir, Grandpa was noticeably ill at ease with other women. <br /><br />But the pressure was on. He had to start looking for a spouse. Meanwhile, as if to proclaim the age of seriousness, war broke out in Europe.<br /><br />(To be continued.) Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-21530821706882476412012-12-13T10:05:00.001-05:002017-03-28T16:36:10.679-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 44(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.) <br />
<br />
Tom Hulce received the go-ahead to direct a workshop of my musical Sleeparound Town. Artistic director Andre Bishop gave his blessing, in his distinctive echoing-in-the-crypt bass voice. Playwrights Horizon was a hothouse of talents who would go on to rule the New York theater for decades to come. I should have been ecstatic. <br />
<br />
Instead, I felt queasy. Following the New York Public Theater debacle, I had amputated my songwriting arm and buried the limb in deep soil, along with the show I’d secretly written with the help of a dead composer. There was the chance, in re-attaching the appendage, it might never work properly, and it would always carry the faint odor of past failure. If the show hadn’t worked back then, why would it work now? <br />
<br />
While we auditioned prepubescent kids for the five roles, I had to write new material. I moved a rented spinet into my tiny apartment, poised my hands on the keys, and…<br />
<br />
I couldn’t remember how to do it. <br />
<br />
I’d always prided myself on venturing outside the pop norm to come up with unexpected harmonic changes. I used to let my fingers do the wandering. Now they didn’t want to go anywhere. <br />
<br />
What to do? I thought of John Lennon, whom I’d known when he was at his creative nadir. He admitted that his process had sunk to copying chords from someone else’s song he liked, playing them over and over while groping for a new melody. (He even pilfered lyrics from a song I was working on: pretty low, if you ask me.) <br />
<br />
I thought of another time, when I was at singer-songwriter J.D. Souther’s house in LA; I noticed his piano stand was empty save for a hymnal. “Cribbing chord changes?” I teased him – which I could see, from his expression, was true. <br />
<br />
Now I sat at my spinet, swallowed my pride, opened a hymnal, and started stealing. I even stole from myself, putting new lyrics to songs I’d already recorded, back when I was afire with ideas. <br />
<br />
Thankfully, nobody noticed I was running on empty. The workshop played well to an invited audience. Andre gave us a small budget to mount a workshop production in their little black-box theater, which was the next step before a full production in the big theater with critics invited. While Tom Hulce struggled with set problems, playwright Peter Parnell was brought in as dramaturge, to help me create a story through-line to connect the songs. We never found one. <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcCGRFVKXTREtShKhSBtqflMxalsWWYgs7limYBW4UWHuJAGgT3hmNnAjnXmbfgNtnCLjGi4JWmAG5GYge5BNXRmJCNUa7799u7CuW_L4fgTQJkQxSLc7susE8KFHEfCrl3pqPSqtP74er/s1600/sleeparound.jpg__960x480_q85_crop_upscale.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcCGRFVKXTREtShKhSBtqflMxalsWWYgs7limYBW4UWHuJAGgT3hmNnAjnXmbfgNtnCLjGi4JWmAG5GYge5BNXRmJCNUa7799u7CuW_L4fgTQJkQxSLc7susE8KFHEfCrl3pqPSqtP74er/s1600/sleeparound.jpg__960x480_q85_crop_upscale.jpg" /></a> <br />
Cast of Sleeparound Town <br />
<br />
With persistent flaws intact, Sleeparound Town ran for a month to subscriber audiences. (the theater had no elevator: it broke my mother’s heart that she couldn’t see the show, unable to get up and down four steep flights with her crutches). Still, the response was good enough that Andre decided the show merited a full production if a new director could be found, since Tom was off to shoot Amadeus. And he had just the guy, a Playwrights Horizons favorite son, who had just co-written and directed a hit musical for them. This paragon had seen my show and was interested. He loved working with kids. As a writer, he could help me shape a book for the piece. Cute, too. Probably gay. Oh, he wasn’t gay? Even more fun. <br />
<br />
However, he had commitments that might take a year or two. Andre was convinced that no one else could make Sleeparound Town shine at last. We would wait. <br />
<br />
I rolled my eyes. This was exactly the situation I’d landed in at the New York Public Theater with Joe Papp. Joe wanted one director only, who was enthusiastic but constantly waylaid by other projects. I’d waited three years, but he never got around to my musical. <br />
<br />
By my calculation, it has been almost thirty years that I’ve waited for Andre’s golden boy to direct my show. But the guy keeps being too busy. <br />
<br />
In the meantime, I married him. <br />
<br />
I never worked in the theater again. Indeed I’d never have gone near the theater at all if my grandfather had not disturbed my sleep with urgent music from the afterlife, prompting me to create the series of songs that became Sleeparound Town. Before then, I wasn’t even a theatergoer. <br />
<br />
“What was it for?” I asked Grandpa, pestering him with this question whenever I thought back to all the madness and labor that went into the show – a waste of time, since it never got before the public. I didn’t actually expect an answer; everyone’s life has its portion of failures. But the answer did come.<br />
<br />
In 2005 I went on a grueling four-day trek on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Each night my friend Barb and I would confide deepest secrets in our tent (it was pitched on a slope, so we woke up huddled at the bottom every morning from sliding down in our sleep). I told her the story of Grandpa’s insistent presence in my life, guiding me where I didn’t always want to go. “I never could figure out what, in the end, he wanted – why I had to go there,” I said when I finished. Then it came to me.<br />
<br />
That trip through the Andes was full of eerie epiphanies and magical manifestations. There, on giddy high ground, I suddenly realized that my grandfather had not just been feeding me music; he also made a big poltergeist to-do whenever I took up with the wrong man. The music was meant for getting me to the theater on time, where the right man trod the boards. The show Grandpa prodded me to compose was the only way I’d ever meet my husband. <br />
<br />
“Pretty neat trick,” I whispered to the ether as I continued up the trail. Then I uttered the two little words my grandfather had waited twenty years to hear: “Thank you.” <br />
<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
<br />
For anyone interested, here are two songs from Sleeparound Town.<br />
<br />
This demo of “Bonnie Boudreau” was a home recording circa 1982. The first few bars came from the hymnal. In the show, Jason Underwood performed it along with a piteous clarinet solo. <br />
<br />
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<i><br /></i>
<i>Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She’s so…so…</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Oh</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I don’t know</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She’s just Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Pointing her toe</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Floating away like a scrap of snow</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>If she ever thinks about me</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wonders who I really am</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Of course she will ask her friend</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Natalie Nan</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Who will say, he’s a pain</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>A stupid jerk</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>A little rat</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And that will be</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The end of that</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>No hope, no hope no hope for</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Walking under my window</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I watch her below</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Like Quasimodo</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She says hello</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And my eyes overflow</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Through my tears she seems to glow</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Bonnie Boudreau</i><br />
<br />
“Wonderful Dog” is from the original five song suite. I recently re-recorded it. My dad always liked the music because it sounded like he wrote it. <br />
<br />
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<br />
<i>Good dog </i><br />
<br />
<i>Dumb dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wonderful dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Always waiting here after school</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Never late or breaking the rule</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Since you were a twinkle in your mom’s eye</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You were my</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Good dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You can also be lazy and dull</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Don’t have to live up to your potential</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>When I was a little thorn in my mom’s side</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She said she cried</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I don’t know</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Why you love me so</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Good dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Dumb dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wonderful dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>My teachers think I’m stupid</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>From banging my head against the wall</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>They’d be overwhelmed if they knew what I know</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>From what I saw</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Grandpa was took away in a zipper bag</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Tuesdays they pick up the dirties</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Fridays they deliver the cleans</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Benedict Arnold was a traitor</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>He was buried in a garbage can</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Don’t cross your eyes or</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>They will stay that way forever</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You see now how I am cunning</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I pretend I am a dummy</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I think that is smart, don’t you?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Sure you do</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You dumb dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Once you learn to count you learn to beg</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Go fetch a stick, go fetch somebody’s leg</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I can light your ears and smoke your tail</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And inhale</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You dumb dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Soon you will be old and biting babies</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You’ll have bad breath and a limp and rabies</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And when you get the electric chair</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I will be there</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>You must say to God that you just did</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>What you were told</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I don’t know</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Why you love me so</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Good dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Dumb dog</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wonderful dog</i>Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-59397649189988617552012-10-08T16:57:00.000-04:002017-03-28T16:20:26.554-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 43<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIeISqyvZrMszglmIcmqUtzmPD-Bldwaq-VLjZQlmlQEz1SngHYLUSS2mUTBzmjmdTZmgRwTwh0ib8ve_wHS-Hnuc3ZO72FDevzXa4kjtQbDIvFYM5_7thI5fx55B_2gurMg43Cm66QhAc/s1600/cognac+bottle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIeISqyvZrMszglmIcmqUtzmPD-Bldwaq-VLjZQlmlQEz1SngHYLUSS2mUTBzmjmdTZmgRwTwh0ib8ve_wHS-Hnuc3ZO72FDevzXa4kjtQbDIvFYM5_7thI5fx55B_2gurMg43Cm66QhAc/s400/cognac+bottle.jpg" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bottle of cognac, with pile of books to indicate size. Note the ectoplasm surrounding it.</span></td></tr>
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<br /> When I was in my twenties and researching a book, I studied the dark art of fleecing men. This technique, and the con women who taught it to me, were the subjects of my novel, Dry Hustle. Promising or implying sexual favors, a dry hustler would take a guy’s money and then vanish without delivering the goods. In other words, I could play the ho without crossing the thin pink line into actual whoredom. <br /><br />By the time I entered my thirties, however, I could forestall the inevitable no longer. I stepped across the line and became a prostitute.<br /><br />The competition was stiff, the marketplace crowded: I stood elbow to elbow with fellow whores. It was the movie business, and we were screenwriters available for hire. <br /><br />My new supine position was kind of restful. I didn’t find the writing all that hard. There was no pressure to be original. I wrote whatever someone wanted, and received indecently good pay for my services. The transaction wasn’t public usually (relatively few people will ever read a script). And like most floozies, I became numb to the degradation of it all. My emotions, my inner pain, which had fueled my work before, were wrung out and weary from overuse; they could now go to Club Med. Whatever I wrote belonged to someone else, anyway, so I didn’t have to care about it as much. <br /><br />Writers often refer to their works as their “children,” which they carry to birth; then nurture, revise, and shape the little ones through the development process, fretting over their kids’ path to success or rejection. <br /><br />I felt no more for my scripts than I would depositing my eggs in a bank.<br /><br />My bank account, in fact, was my child. I enjoyed watching it grow. Once I even did a script rewrite for a couch. My agent had loaned me a sofa for years, then suddenly reclaimed it. I had nothing in my living room to get supine on. <br /><br />By happenstance, a producer friend had lost a screenwriter right before a big deadline. He called me on a Friday; the finished script was due at the studio on Monday. He had two other drafts by previous writers. The director didn’t like either as a whole but liked bits of both. They paid me some money under the table to cobble the best bits together, writing new material to paper over the seams. For two days straight the guys sat in one hotel room with scissors (this was before word processing) cutting up scripts while, in the adjacent room, I sat with a typewriter, whiteout, and paste. <br /><br />On Monday I came out from under the table and bought a couch. <br /><br />(I stayed on the project through numerous more rewrites, paid by the studio. My baby bank account outgrew three pairs of shoes. The script turned into Nine And a Half Weeks.) <br /><br />A whore to the core, I avoided thinking about the children I’d left at home. Abandoned were the book manuscripts, song sheets, and the 1910 Steinway grand I’d stored in my parents’ house in Connecticut. The one thing I brought along with me was my eternal companion, my invisible mentor, my dearly departed Grandpa Kernochan. Actually I took one more thing: rummaging through the collection of fine wines and spirits left after his death, I came away with a huge bottle of cognac the size of my torso. (It took me two years to empty it.)<br /><br />Ghost and spirits were both excellent company; ever tactful, they never commented on my fall from art, never joining those other voices in the shadows of my conscience who whispered that my new profession was somewhat less than respectable. <br /><br />Sometimes the liquor would encourage me to wallow in nostalgia for the past. I would hoist a glass to my grandfather and ask, “What was it all for?” I was remembering our feverish collaboration on songs, the fragments of music and lyrics Grandpa had fed me through dreams. It had been four years since my musical about puberty, Sleeparound Town, had died stillborn at the New York Public Theater. “What we did was good. But nobody ever saw it.” I added petulantly, “You could have helped more, you know.”<br /><br />I was hanging out with some film folk in Montreal when I got a surprise call from Tom Hulce. I hadn’t been in contact with him since he was eighteen; I’d cast him in an early workshop version of Sleeparound Town. Since then he had leapt to recognition as the lead in Animal House. He was hot, and already restless to expand. Playwrights Horizons theater had offered him a chance to direct, if he could come up with an interesting project.<br /><br />“So I thought –,” he stuttered in that charming way of his, “I mean, the music – it always stuck in my mind – if you’re not doing anything with it – I’d like to – would you let me – I thought – I want to do that.”<br /><br />(To be continued.)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1116568828721884077.post-47369410513696342212012-09-11T16:44:00.000-04:002017-03-28T16:09:58.771-04:00At Home With a Ghost - 42(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by <a href="http://sarahkernochan.blogspot.com/2011/12/at-home-with-ghost-story-so-far-parts-1.html">clicking here</a>.)<br /><br /><br />After a year spent in the Third World, everything at home seemed strange: food, TV, supermarket, smells, weather, piano, and home itself, the studio on my parents’ property. But nothing was as strange as the man before me.<br /><br />Upon arriving from Haiti, I fell immediately to retyping my book. I didn’t contact friends. I wasn’t ready for New York yet. Nevertheless New York came to me, as my formerly-married lover stepped off the train and got in my car. <br /><br />I was reminded of those Haitian zombies wandering the back roads. He had the twitchy off-keel look of the re-animated, like a dead man surprised to find himself in motion.<br /><br />His marriage had collapsed beyond repair after a year of trying to court back his wife, after she discovered his affair. No amount of apology, self-recrimination and groveling worked; even though he swore to her he’d broken it off for good, she was obsessed with finding out who the other woman was. His friends closed ranks and kept omerta. In the end, she went a little crazy and he couldn’t deal with her anymore. An acrimonious divorce was underway, the wheels of law and property grinding them both up. And then I came back.<br /><br />I had long prayed for this moment, when we could finally, openly, be together. He was free, he said.<br /><br />But it was hard to believe. He was free like a fugitive – eyes darting about, ears pricked for the baying of hounds. He certainly was in no shape for love. <br /><br />Soon it became clear that he wanted to date me. <br /><br />I pointed out, rather mildly, that it would be kind of bogus for us to go all the way back to flirting. Really, though, I was in my own kind of shock. <br /><br />For over a year we’d had no contact. Without renewal, love inevitably becomes the memory of love, and thus takes up residence in the imagination. When face to face with my lover again, I groped for the old feeling inside, only to locate it in the home of illusions. I simply couldn’t remember if it was real, because for so long I had been reduced to imagining it. <br /><br />I still loved him. Iron removed from the flame is still iron. But it is cool to the touch. <br /><br />I tried to play along and go back to frolicking, but after one such date I wrote him a letter laying out my terms. When he was ready to give the whole heart and nothing but the heart he could tug on the rope and I’d pull him up. Until then I’d go my merry way.<br /><br />By merry way I meant I’d go back into hiding. I said to my agent, sell the book; I’m off to Thailand to write another.<br /><br />I got as far as Hawaii, where I lingered for a month of writing. Then I got a pair of calls that changed my plans. My agent reported that he was unable to sell my book. My accountant telephoned to say my money would run out completely before the year was up. “You’ll have to get a job like everyone else,” he told me bluntly.<br /><br />Thus ended my life as a novelist, another in a growing list of short-lived careers. I flew back to my studio in the Connecticut suburbs and gazed around at my options. How could I make a living through writing that I hadn’t already tried? Books, no. Songs, no. Theater, no. Documentary filmmaking, no. Journalism, feh. <br /><br />I hadn’t tried screenwriting. I did have an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, which I’d won at the tender age of 26. Surely that could still get me into someone’s office. I concocted a dark little story about a young woman, a professional psychic, who falls in love with one of her clients and pursues him obsessively. My agent got me a meeting at MGM. They bought my pitch. I now had a new profession, one that I couldn’t afford to fuck up.<br /><br />Something else would have to change. The time had come to stop hiding. It was no longer healthy for me to live with my parents. I sublet an apartment in New York, leaving my Grandpa’s grand piano behind in the empty studio in Connecticut, the place where I’d churned out so much music, lyrics and prose. I never moved back.<br /><br />Where was my grandfather during all this? After all, this is a ghost story. <br /><br />After I moved away, my mother called to tell me that something peculiar had happened in my old studio. One of the sliding glass doors was found completely shattered, yet completely intact. An intricate web of cracks covered the entire surface. There was no center to the design, no locus of impact. No dead bird or fallen branch outside. If you pushed on the glass, it didn’t collapse but rather remained as sturdy as ever, up to any weather. Fractured and abandoned, but ever protective. Message received.<br /><br />Anyone else would have replaced the pane. But my mother declared it was beautiful. The door stayed shattered until she became elderly, descended into dementia, and forgot she ever lived in the house.<br /><br />(To be continued.)Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15557451101867739615noreply@blogger.com0