My Story Lives

Come on, Just Write It Already!!

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

I am sitting here at the meditation table, staring into the never ending burning candle, and wondering why can't I just write it?

The ending to this Sister Mysteries story, that is.

Why am I procrastinating? Why can't I just write the scene where Sister Renata goes down the hill and faces her accusers? She is armed with proof -- the journal pages -- that she didn't kill Antonie. The journal will prove she should go free.

Are you kidding? You're procrastinating for good reason -- her proof is as solid as burning candle wax. And as soon as she gets there (to the court, a few steps from the gallows) she's going to get thrown back in jail. And maybe get hung from a rope.

True. But I've always known that the nun would go free, so it's time to discover how exactly that happens. (The candle just went out but I dumped the liquid wax out and relit the wick.)

The ending is tricky because something out of this world (as in magic realism) is going to happen and I'm not sure exactly what that magic is. I know one thing, it has something to do with the Virgin Mary.

I'm on the verge of writing it, but these things (chapters, scenes, novels, books, stories) can't be forced. For me, the best scenes emerge out of visions, vivid images in my head. In my first novel, Dreaming Maples, I didn't write any scene until I had seen it first in my mind! It was as if I had a movie going in my mind and all I had to do was write down what was happening.

A lot of this book emerged the same way.

So maybe the key here is simple: just sit at your meditation table and see if you're able to see something. And if you aren't, so be it, just sit outside and stare at the daffodils and get your work done and enjoy your day and sooner or later something will happen. And hopefully, Renata will go free.

It's About Time We All Helped to Free the Friedmans!!

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:04:00 +0000

Jesse Friedman, who served 13 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, is now awaiting a decision that could overturn the conviction. Please take a few minutes to acquaint yourself with this story and please consider visiting the website, Justice for Jesse, where you can sign a petition supporting Jesse's case. A video explaining the case is available on the Huffington Post.

My friend Elaine Friedman is a petite, sweet-tempered woman with a blunt pixie haircut and a rolling Long Island accent that spills over into delightful squeals now and then. She is soft spoken and kind-hearted and she's suffered terrible heartache.

Her first husband, Arnold, and her son, Jesse, went to prison in 1988 after authorities found them guilty of molesting children in an after-school computer class held in the family basement. The "crime" -- which never went to trial -- was a huge sensation in Long Island in the 1980s. Some time later, director Andrew Jarecki made a documentary film called "Capturing the Friedmans" which brought the family's dysfunction to the big screen. The film was nominated for an Oscar in 2003.

One night in July of 2003, Elaine and I drove to a theater up in Williamstown, Massachusetts to see the movie together. Until that night, Elaine had not had the courage to see the movie in a theater. To say that the movie was disturbing doesn’t begin to describe the whipsaw of emotions I felt that evening as Elaine and I watched the tragic and horrifying details of her family's misfortune splayed before us. The movie incorporates extensive video footage that Arnold shot of the family all through the years.

One of the main reasons that Jarecki made the film was to help Elaine's son Jesse. There was never a single bit of evidence to suggest that Jesse, who was a teenager at the time, molested anyone. He has maintained his innocence all along, and now Jarecki is leading the fight to have Jesse's verdict reversed.

A review of the case is underway by New York's Nassau County District Attorney, Kathleen Rice; as Jarecki points out in a piece on the Huffington Post, the current DA's review follows a 2010 ruling by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals that evidence in the case was "extraordinarily suspect," and that there was "a reasonable likelihood Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted." The DA convened a committee to review the case and included on that panel Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Project.

Jarecki has provided the DA's office a ton of new evidence supporting Jesse's innocence. Indeed, he tracked down and interviewed numerous individuals who were supposedly molested by Jesse and his father in the computer class. Now grown men, they deny ever having been touched by either of the Friedmans. In one case, Jarecki notes, a successful doctor in his 30s told him: "As God is my witness and on my children's lives, I was never raped or sodomized, and I never saw a kid sodomized or molested. And if I said it, it was not because it happened, it was because someone else put those words in my mouth."

It now appears as though overzealous authorities made it their duty to convince the boys to say that they had been molested.

Jesse is out of jail now, but he still lives with a fiercely negative stigma: under Megan's Law, he is classified as a Level III Violent Sexual Predator.

I've met Jesse and he is soft spoken and kind, much like his Mom. I hope you will visit Justice for Jesse, and sign the petition that could finally set him -- and his mother -- free.

Cain and Abel and the Boston Brothers

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0000

As I contemplated the events of the week this morning, I found my mind going to strange places.

First of all I kept seeing the face of the younger brother lying in some hospital bed in Boston. He has the face of "an angel," according to so many accounts by former friends and acquaintances, school chums and some of his family members. Or it's the face of a demonic fiend, a ruthless criminal, according to authorities and so many news reports and quotes from the deeply traumatized people of Boston.

And yet, on this Sunday morning, I realize that I am not thinking of this young man with hatred. I keep going to that hospital bed and seeing what amounts to a lost soul, a person, yes, who committed one of the worst atrocities our nation has known, but at the same time, a person who may have been unduly influenced by an even bigger lost soul, his older brother.

Perhaps I am finding myself in this ambiguous place because those first grainy video photos of him shocked me because for a couple of moments the young man vaguely reminded me of my own 23-year old son. Both young men are dark, handsome, tall. That connection evaporated quickly and like so many millions of others this week, I hated the younger brother to his core. I wanted more than anything in the world -- and perhaps more than for any crime I've ever heard about -- that the two men would be caught quickly and brought to the full weight of justice. My own daughter and son-in-law were in lockdown all day Friday in their new home on Beacon Street, days after witnessing the runners go past their front door.

But this morning I am finding it harder to hate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. My mind oddly enough crawls toward the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, and thanks in part to John Steinbeck -- and his novel, East of Eden -- to the story of Cain and Abel. East of Eden, the title, is taken directly from the Bible. Indeed at one point Steinbeck suggested to his publisher that the book should be entitled Cain Sign.

Steinbeck wrote an accompanying book to East of Eden, called Journal of a Novel: East of Eden, which documents his thoughts as he wrote the novel. Steinbeck's editor and long-time friend, Pat Covici, told Steinbeck that he wanted him to deliver the manuscript in a box, so Steinbeck went to great lengths to construct a mahogany box. On top of the box he engraved four Hebrew letters, which spell out the Hebrew word, "timshol," literally translated as "thou mayest," suggesting Steinbeck's core belief that human beings, endowed with free will after the fall from the Garden of Eden, are continually faced with moral responsibility in the form of choice between good and evil.

Indeed, as Terry R. Wright notes in his 2007 book Genesis of Fiction, the notion of choice "might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a [wo]man. For if 'Thou mayest' -- it is also true that 'Thou Mayest Not.'"

What has all this got to do with the Boston bomber?

Everything. Unequivocally, the bombers chose wickedly evil. But that leaves us asking how should we should choose to respond (aside from the full weight of criminal prosecution.) We leave it to police authorities and the courts to mete out his punishment, but how do we talk about him, how do we feel, what should we think?

I was drawn today to open the Torah, to reread Chapter Four, Verse Ten, the passage that lays out God's punishment of Cain for slaying his brother Abel.

"Then He [God] said, 'What have you done? Hark, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Therefore, you shall be more cursed than the ground which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand." God curses Cain to "become a ceaseless wanderer on earth."

Cain replies "My punishment is too great to bear! Since You have banished me this day from the soil, and I must avoid Your presence and become a restless wanderer on earth -- anyone who meets me may kill me!"

It is the Lord's reply to Cain that perhaps is most instructive: "The Lord said to him 'I promise, if anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance shall be taken on him.' And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest anyone who met him should kill him. Cain left the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden."

It is this notion that the world's first murderer, Cain, is marked, and in being marked, he is forever a lesson to us in the ultimate choice between good and evil. As one commentary notes, "his mark is not a curse, but a protective sign of God's enduring care.

Amidst our desire to punish him, and our curiosity about how this boy went so bad, there ought to be some thought that we should refrain from "killing" the bomber with each one of our thoughts. Rather the Bible's instruction would seem to be that we should just be reminded once again of what Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden, that "We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly re-spawn, while good, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."

Instead of hating the bomber, it's better that we focus our "lovingkindness" (a Buddhist concept of loving all living beings) on the many suffering families, the myriad heroes who came to the aid of bombing victims on the scene, and the authorities who waged an extraordinary search to catch the bombers before they could wreak any more destruction.

Rather than hating the bomber, it seems better to me that we should love the lesson about choice that he so painfully teaches.

Chapter 66: Sister Mysteries "Please Don't Let Me Hang"

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:41:00 +0000

When I open my eyes, Teresa is standing beside my bed in the convent. My mouth is as dry as the sheet that covers my straw mattress, the mattress that prickles the skin of my back.

Teresa is crying, her face as wet and pink as a ham.

Sniffling, she turns away so that I won't see her cry but of course I know full well because she is using the bottom half of her white apron to wipe her eyes.

"Will you come with me today?" I whisper out of my cottony mouth. My heart drums inside my chest.

Teresa nods. "Of course." She sets the back of one hand against my cheek. Her own cheeks are glistening in tears. "It's all his fault," she says, sniffling, wiping her eyes again with the apron. "If it weren't for Father Ruby, Mother Yolla would let you stay here she would protect you I just know sh..."

"Shhhhh," I lift my hand to stop her speaking. I shake my head. "It's too late for that. It's too late." I push the covers back, I stand

I stand convicted of a crime I didn't commit, I will hang

if I return but return I

I don't stand instead

I sit on the bed for a moment thinking I have no choice but to go back today

I stand up, my stomach quaking. Señora told me to take the missing pages of my journal to the authorities so I will

"I will fix you anything you like for breakfast," Teresa says. "I baked corn muffins but I'll make you..."

"Nothing, I couldn't possibly eat." I shudder. My eyes meet hers. "I am so..." I am about to say frightened but if I say the word, then it will just hang there in the air scaring me further. Instead I try to think what I want my last meal

"Fix me a cup of oatmeal please?"

She nods and leaves the room and I sit back down on the bed. Somehow I have to dress I have to
I must get in the wagon and go back to jail.

I slip the dress that Arthur bought me over my head. Soft calico little blue flowers red hearts soft cotton sleeves covering my elbows. Ever since I was arrested, I haven't been allowed to wear the habit I wore

just like Teresa wears today, the two of us once glued together

no more.

Soon I am in the kitchen where Teresa is stirring oatmeal on the wood stove. The corn muffins she baked earlier smell so pleasing that I lift one to my mouth and take a small bite. Teresa begins lifting the oatmeal into a bowl. I sit down at the table and stare into oatmeal this is more than a cup, this is a whole bowl, I feel I may throw up

Teresa sets a cup of coffee in front of me.

Arthur enters the kitchen, clutching the brim of his hat. "Good morning ma'am," he says, his dark eyes opened wide. "I was hoping I'd find you here in the kitchen."

I nod. "Yes," I say trying for a smile, but not succeeding.

Clearing his throat, Arthur drops his gaze to the floor. "You know that..." he starts, and stops and starts again, "that if you...I mean, if you have any inclination to....uh...go or leave without..." here he shrugs, nods. "God knows I would take you wherever you wanted to go, anywhere that..." His voice trails off.

"No," I say, emphatic. Again I try for a smile but nothing at all happens on my face. I push the bowl of oatmeal half-way across the table. "I must do what Mother Yolla says." And in that moment I realize that I am willing to go back to jail not because of what Mother Yolla has said -- that she cannot protect me --

[CHAPTER 63 lays it out bare]

but because of what Señora said when she woke up out of the coma last night

I KNOW SHE WOKE UP I KNOW SHE SPOKE TO ME I SWEAR SHE SQUEEZED MY HAND SHE WOKE UP

[READ IT FOR YOURSELF IN CHAPTER 64]

Arthur fingers his hat, the brim stained. His eyes are pools. He says nothing, but stares at the floor again.

I turn to Teresa at the sink. "I think we should go right now, because I can't stand it another minute." Poor Arthur just stands here, he would do anything to have me say that I would go somewhere anywhere with him I could never go I could never marry Arthur so how could I go anywhere but where

I have to go back and face it, the crime for which I'm not guilty

Teresa isn't sniffling but she when she speaks now her voice is raspy. "We must stop by the lawyer's office first, he should be there to escort you."

"I'm not sure that is necessary." I take another small bite of the corn muffin.

"Please Renata, you've got to listen to me on this." Teresa's expression is fierce.

I inhale. "It won't make any difference, he is so ineffectual I don't see..."

"PLEASE RENATA." Teresa steadies her gaze on me. "We've got to. We will need all the help we can get."

"And please if you would, let me take you in my wagon," Arthur says. "Please ma'am, I beg you just to let me do just this one thing."

I study his weathered face, his frown. This is a good face a good man one that I could never marry I am devoted to doing holy work no matter if the nun's life is over for me forever.

"Alright," I say, inhaling. "Alright. But let's just go."

Teresa unties her apron. "I'm ready, I'll be outside."

I stand and go to my room and kneel beside my bed. I carefully lift the straw mattress and dig deep into the straw where the missing journal pages lie, just where I hid them, so many months ago so that I could protect Señora because she wasn't going to get any trial at all, being a Mexican woman who could speak hardly any English

[READ THE MISSING PAGES IN CHAPTER 65 WHICH TELLS HOW ANTONIE DIED HE WASN'T MURDERED

WELL MAYBE TECHNICALLY HE WAS BECAUSE HE WAS ALIVE WHEN WE DISCOVERED HIM IN THIS WARM POOL OF BLOOD]

I would say that

he wished himself dead.

Señora begged me when she woke from the coma last night she said

[IN CHAPTER 64 ]

Señora spoke in Spanish

[and I cannot say it myself

sp I had to go on the Internet and get one of those English to Spanish translations:]

Tome la revista páginas tomar ellos les muestran a las autoridades por favor, Renata que todos conocemos, se me que terminó Antonie, he mantenido la hoja hice el final cut y él venció en un charco de sangre en mi regazo,

["Take the journal pages take them show them to the authorities please Renata let them show the whole world so they know that it was me who finished Antonie, I held the blade I made the final cut and he expired in a pool of blood in my lap]

As we prepare to leave, I see Mother Yolla standing in the courtyard. She seems frozen, a dozen feet away. As Arthur helps me up into the wagon, she is as still

as a statue, she looks so tired, so sad, her face is pale, she looks so much older than she

just stands there watching, she doesn't wave we don't wave back not

able to protect me, Father Ruby forbid her from letting me hide in the convent.

Arthur snaps the reins the horse bolts forward and the three of us, me in between Arthur and Teresa bounce on the rutted path leading to the dusty road.

We are headed back to the jail, to the courthouse to deliver me, to deliver the missing pages of the journal to try to convince them
some
HOW? SOME WAY
HOW I AM NOT SURE HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY
WHAT CAN ANYONE SAY TO CONVINCE THEM
=======

that I

don't deserve to hang.

The Mighty Milo Comes to Visit!

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:34:00 +0000

While my daughter Lindsay is traveling for the next two weeks, I am the lucky one who gets to care for her dog, MILO. What a dog he is!

Milo is a Havanese, a breed from Havana, Cuba (their national dog) trained to be circus dogs. Our little Milo runs in perfect figure eights in the backyard and stands on his hind legs for treats.

Wikipedia notes that the Havanese breed is "highly adaptable to almost any environment, and their only desire is to be with their human companions."

That's for sure. Milo adores Lindsay, but if she is not around, I will do as her caretaker.

Sweet and cuddly, sturdy, smart and devoted, he is the best dog in the world, or at least, in my world.

We love you Milo!

]

"Mom, what tune would you like me to play?"

At Christmas, he becomes a tiny reindeer!

Chapter 64, SISTER MYSTERIES "In Which I Turn Into Renata"

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:56:00 +0000

DEAR MARY U HEARD WHAT MOTHER YOLLA SHE SAID she is going TO YIELD ME UP TO THE AUTHORITIES SHE SAID SHE WILL TURN ME IN, NO MATTER THAT I WILL BE HANGED MOTHER YOLLA SAID SHE CANNOT PROTECT ME SHE HAS TO THINK ABOUT THE CONVENT MOTHER YOLLA DOESN'T LOVE ME ENOUGH TO SAVE ME

my mother loved me enough BUT her anxiety was so great that I MUST NOT HAVE FELT IT she never gave me the unconditional love that I craved Mary

Mary MARINO my therapist says that I have to give it to myself that I have to reparent my

MOTHER YOLLA SAYS SHE CANNOT RISK THE REPUTATION OF THE CONVENT MOTHER SAID IN SO FEW WORDS THAT SHE WOULD RATHER SEE ME DEAD HANGED HANGED HANGED HANGED THAN TAKE THE CHANCE TAKE THE CHANCE SO NOW

WHAT THE

What am I to do

WHEN YOU ARE AT THE END OF YOUR ROPE MARY WHEN YOU HAVE NO MORE HOPE MARY WHAT DO YOU DO YOU AAAAAASSSSSSKKKKKKK MARY, DIVINE MARY FOR HELP I DON'T WANT TO HANG I DON'T WANT TO DIE I WANT TO LIVE AND GIVE OF MYSELF TO GOD AND OTHERS AFTER ALL I AM A DEVOTEE I AM A a good nun A GOOD NUN, I HAVE GIVEN MYSELF HEART AND SOUL TO GOD, I HAVE BEEN A NUN FOR SO SO LONG AND NOW

No, it has not been long at all I have just become the nun, just now, just just just now I have turned

into

WHAT

WHO?

IF I RUN IF I RUN I CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM MYSELF AND MY DUTY ANYMORE I CANNOT CANNOT WHERE WOULD I GO SAN FRANCISCO? ARTHUR SAYS HE WILL TAKE ME BUT WHAT WOULD I DO MARRY ARTHUR MARRY MARY

HELP ME MARY SHALL I RUN AWAY MARRRRRRRY ARTHUR

GOD I WANT TO BE A NUN, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A NUN, DEAR MARRRRRRRY

NO, I WOULDN'T CONSIDER MARRYING ARTHUR HE IS A DEAR DEAR MAN A GOOD SOUL BUT NOT A PERSON NOT FOR ME

MARY MARY MARY MARY HELP ME HELP SEÑORA HELP HER OUT OF HER DEEP COMA COMA COMA COMA COMA PLEASE HELP ME NOW I WON'T LEAVE HER I WON'T EVER EVER EVER LEAVE YOU YOU UNDERSTAND THAT BABY C YOU UNDERSTAND ME, I LOVE YOU MARY YOU LOVE ME TOO,

My therapist Mary said I have to bring love to my fear and anxiety I have to envelope myself in love and when I do I will have Divine forces helping me to helping me helping

YOU HAVE TO LOVE AND CHERISH YOUR INNER CHILD, pick her up whenever she cries and cries and thinks you will abandon her you won't though you won't! I won't let you

MARY MARY MARY MARY YOU HAVE BEEN WITH ME UNITED WITH ALL THE ILLUMINATED SOULS HERE AT MY MEDITATION TABLE I HAVE FINALLY BEEN ABLE TO SPEAK TO SAY I WON'T EVER EVER EVER STOP LOVING YOU MARY MARY MARY MARY

I WON'T LEAVE SEÑORA

I am sitting here in the dark alone with her in the middle of the night holding her limp hand with one of my own and writing here in my journal with the other, weeping because I cannot leave I cannot run away anymore I must face the facts that I actually will die, I actually will hang I will die so maybe that is what Mary wants? Why Why DEAR GOD I did not kill my cousin I did not make my mother sick IT WASN'T MY FAULT THAT MY MOTHER WAS SO DEPRESSED AND ANXIOUS Dear Mary, I want to know what you want me to do WHERE DO I GO? what? I am finally listening finally hearing finally finally BUT YOU MUST SPEAK TO ME TELL ME WHETHER I SHOULD RUN? HOW? WHERE? DEAR MARY, THANK YOU FOR SPEAKING TO ME, YES, I HEARD YOU at the moment I thought I would die of the depression that it would just never end never NEVER I found Mary I found Mary the therapist and she spoke to me over the phone and she told me to love my depression, invite her in, tell her -- your inner child -- that you love her unconditionally, invite the depression right into your heart and soul right into your laptop where you are writing now and when you do you will have the whole of the Infinite you will be sad you will be happy but you will know how to respond to your deepest feelings you will have a partner in the NUN YOU WILL FINALLY UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE THAT YOU ARE HER AND SHE IS YOU AND BOTH OF YOU NEED TO GO FREE you thought you were going back in time to save the nun but along you were saving your own self you must understand you must write no matter what no matter who reads who reads you need just like you need to breathe you need to

WRITE I MUST WRITE THE ENDING OF SISTER MYSTERIES PLEASE MARY I NEED YOU I NEED YOU TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO WHERE DO I RUN WHAT DOES A NUN DO WHEN SHE HASN'T KILLED HER COUSIN BUT SHE IS DESTINED TO HANG IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED BACK IN 1884? DID I DIE DID SHE HANG NO NO NO NO NO PLEASE MARY SHOW ME THE WAY TO FREE HER FREE ME SHE SAYS TO HERSELF

"What?" Is that what I think it is it is it is

"What?" I WHISPER.

Señora squeezes my hand.

"SEÑORA...ARE YOU...ARE YOU AWAKE?" I DROP THE JOURNAL BUT I STILL HAVE THE LAPTOP HERE AT MY MEDITATION TABLE I STILL SHE

DROPS THE JOURNAL AND NOW SHE IS BENDING OVER HOLDING HER DEAR DEAR SEÑORA'S HAND IT IS DARK THERE IS NOTHING SHE CANNOT SEE THE OLD WOMAN'S COAL BLACK EYES BUT SHE HEARS HER SPEAK, WHISPER SOMETHING CAN THIS BE A DREAM DID RENATA FALL ASLEEP DID I? DID I ? IS SHE HEARING REALLY HEARING

Señora speaks now in Spanish and I cannot say it myself I have to go on the Internet and get one of those English to Spanish translations:

"Take the journal pages take them show them to the authorities please Renata let them LET ALL THE WORLD AND ITS ILLUMINATED BEINGS let all know it was me who finished Antonie, I held the blade I made the final cut and he expired in a pool of blood in my lap

my laptop. I am writing all of this at my meditation table where for 18 years i have been TRYING TO SOLVE THE SISTER MYSTERIES TRYING TO RESOLVE THE TIME TRAVEL NUN STORY

I am weeping now so delighted Señora is back, she is out of the coma, she is awake "YOU ARE AWAKE!" I hug her and my tears pour out onto her coffee and cream colored face, wrinkled and soft as a pillow.

"I will go get Mother Yolla and the others, I will get you some water, some tea, you must be so so thirsty," she doesn't answer but she squeezes my hand and when I turn I swear I see Mary the Virgen de Guadalupe, her sky baby blue veil where I tucked myself all those years ago when I had the chemo I had the cancer

I WILL BE WRITE BACK I squeeze her hand and she squeezes mine and I race out of the room and down the hall to Mother Yolla's room and knock once on the door and barge in because Señora is awake

SEÑORA SHE IS AWAKE I SCREAM I PULL ON MOTHER YOLLA'S SHOULDER

"What..what? huh?" Suddenly Mother Yolla is sitting up and out of the bed she and I race down the hall screaming SHE'S AWAKE SHE'S AWAKE SO ALL THE NUNS WILL HEAR and in seconds flat there are a dozen of us here in her room and it smells sour and fouled as if Señora has peed her bed but no matter she is awake

GO MAKE HER SOME TEA Mother Yolla screams and Teresa dear Teresa runs out of the room and Mother Yolla screams

LIGHT A CANDLE,

Mother Yolla has Señora's limp hand in hers and she must be feeling the squeeze

"She squeezed my hand, Mother Yolla, she squeezed my hand and then she spoke to me, she told me what to do she told me to take...."

Mother Yolla interrupts me. "Renata, her hand is limp."

"That can't be, she was just holding and squeezing and talking to me."

"Come here my dear," Mother Yolla is not angry, just tired very very tired. "Feel her hand my dear."

I do. I feel Señora's hand and it is warm and as limp as a dead fish.

"But she was awake, I swear it. I felt her squeeze my hand. I know I did I did I did," and then I am caving in, I am sobbing uncontrollably now everything is caving in on me I am going to hang and my dear dear Señora is not awake now

Teresa arrives with the mug of chamomile tea and I am sitting in the chair beside Señora's bed crying and trying to understand and after a while after Mother Yolla rubs my back and holds my hands in hers Teresa she is my dear dear friend just like Nina, just like my dear friend Nina for whom I wrote this story started writing it in 1995 when Nina had cancer and I wanted to write something to distract her from her misery the misery that is chemotherapy and there it was, the birth of Sister Mysteries.

Sister Teresa hands me the cup of warm tea and later she puts me to bed like the baby I want to be there for BABY C Mary my therapist told me, invite your depression in like a baby, nurture her pick her up, just like a newborn, every morning climb out of your dark cave, tell her you will be there for her no matter how sad she is no matter what she says no matter what you tell her you will be there for her forever and then the universe will partner with you and

YES MARY IT IS STARTING TO HAPPEN when I meditated this morning I felt it I felt the universe open up

I take the cup of tea from Teresa and sip it just a few times and I'm saying to Teresa, "Señora told me I have to turn in those two missing pages from my journal I must show them to the authorities..." I am heaving and hiccuping and Teresa takes the cup of tea from me

and sits

the

bed

and says, "Shhhhhh, Renata, you've got to rest now, you've been up all night with Señora, get some sleep now, we'll talk about it later my

hear me Teresa hear me? She wants me to turn the pages of the journal into the authorities she wants me to show them to the world

IT'S TIME I PUBLISHED THEM RIGHT HERE ON THE SISTER MYSTERIES BLOG TO SHOW THE WORLD HOW SEÑORA WAS THE ONE WHO HELPED ANTONIE TO FINISH HIS LIFE SHE WIELDED THE KNIFE NOT ME NOT ME

"You've got to sleep now Renata," and she forces me onto my stomach and she rubs my back in big gentle circles her hands so strong i have loved her so long, I have been WRITING SISTER MYSTERIES FOR EIGHTEEN FUCKING YEARS AND HERE NOW HERE NOW

Here is CHAPTER 65 -- FINALLY THE MISSING PAGES OF RENATA'S JOURNAL, THE MYSTERY OF ANTONIE'S DEATH IS FINALLY RESOLVED!! It's about time it's about timeless it is a timeless story of freedom, a liberation story that is exactly what it is

mine and Renata's together

Chapter 63: Sister Mysteries "IF YOU TURN ME IN I'LL HANG!!"

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 18:35:00 +0000

Dear Señora,

I shouldn't have waited so long to call Mother Yolla and the other nuns to your bedside.

I should have run at top speed to find someone who would get the doctor.

But I was afraid. That's a sorry thing to admit, Señora, but it's the truth. And by now, you know that's true of me. You know me so well. You know how fearful I am.

I finally ran downstairs and found Mother Yolla, who immediately sent Teresa to get the doctor. She took the horse and wagon that Arthur had brought me home to the convent in just a day and a half before.

It took more than two hours for Teresa and the doctor to return. And in the end, it took Dr. Thacker only a few minutes to examine you.

We all waited outside the closed door. Soon the doctor opened the door and stepped into the dim hallway of the convent.

"I'm afraid that she has suffered a stroke," Dr. Thacker declared, taking off his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbing his eyes. "It looks to me as though she has slipped into a coma."

A collective groan rose up from the group of us at the door.

"Can you do something?" I begged.

He shook his head. "I'm afraid there is nothing possible," he said. "She may wake up, or she may not. It's out of my hands. For now, I suggest that you keep her company around the clock. Sit with her, make her comfortable, sing to her, and pray that she may get better."

"But how do we feed her?" I said. I know that in a modern hospital, full of the latest equipment, Señora would have a feeding tube to provide her nourishment. And intravenous fluid to keep her hydrated. But this is 1884, and there is no hospital except in San Francisco, a three-day ride away. Even if we got her to the hospital they wouldn't have the equipment to feed her.

Dr. Thacker pressed his lips together and stared me straight in the eye. "She has to wake up to take fluids and food," he said quietly. "There is no other way to feed her." He turned to Mother Yolla, and set one hand on the older nun's elbow.

"I know very little about prayer," Dr. Thacker said, his face pale and sad. "But I would highly recommend it in this case. And I will be happy to return tomorrow to check in on her again."

He turned to face Teresa. "Would you be so kind as to drive me back to town?"

As the two of them went downstairs, Mother Yolla gathered us in the hallway. "We will take turns sitting by her side," she announced simply. "Who will be first?"

Five hands went up including my own. Mother Yolla chose two of the other nuns, who promptly opened the bedroom door and disappeared inside.

"Oh but please let me stay too," I begged, pressing my hands together over my chest. "I might as well be with Señora since I won't be able to stop thinking about her for even a moment."

"No my child," Mother Yolla replied. "You'll have your turn. But first, I need to speak to you in private." She eyed me carefully, and there was something so direct and piercing about her facial expression that it triggered a flush of anxiety in my stomach. I felt my mouth go cotton dry.

"Of course," I mumbled.

She motioned for me to follow her downstairs. We passed through the dining hall and out the door to the backyard. I thought we'd sit beside the hummingbird feeder, but she kept walking. We ended up in the very small chapel where the nuns are free to go for private meditation. I so loved this precious chapel, as it was built entirely of stone. Like the other nuns, I had helped to lay the floor, which was no more than California palm fronds covered over by heavy blankets. There was room for two small chairs but many of us chose to sit cross-legged in meditation.

Mother Yolla, a tiny woman, could enter the chapel without bending, but I had my father's height.

I followed her inside. She took the chair on the right. I sat in the left hand chair.

"Please my dear, face me if you will," she said quietly. As I lifted the chair and swiveled it around to face her, I felt my heart hammering in my chest. Our knees were almost touching. The air in the chapel was fragrant with a mixture of mint and sage, as we regularly brought those plants into the meditation space.

Mother Yolla looked into her lap where she had one hand resting on another. She cleared her throat and looked up at me.

"Renata you know that I couldn't be more pleased to see you. We were all so worried when you disappeared." I nodded, nervously squeezing my hands together. What was she about to say?

"I...I am so sorry I caused you and the others so much distress," I said, my voice shaky. "I didn't mean to make my escape, it just kind of happened. And then there was no way to reach you or the oth..."

"Please," Mother Yolla said. She held up one hand to quiet me. "I understand that you did what you had to do."

"Yes, that's true," I mumbled.

"Sometimes we are forced to do things that we would rather not do," she said, gazing at me steadily.

I blinked. What was she coming to? What was she trying to say?

Again she cleared her throat. "This isn't easy for me. But I am going to have to turn you into the authorities. I cannot jeopardize the rest of us here at the convent. If they were to find you here, we would stand guilty of harboring a known criminal."

I blinked again. My chin dropped to my chest. Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I sniffled.

"I am so sorry Renata, you know how I feel about each and every one of my novitiates. It kills me to do this but Father Ruby insists."

I lifted my head. My face bleached red. "So that's it, he's the one insisting." Mother Yolla stared into her hands.

"I should have known. He's the one who let Antonie take advantage of me. He's the one who insisted that Antonie was family, that I owed it to my cousin to do whatev..."

"PLEASE, no more!" Mother Yolla's voice was sharp and unforgiving. "I insist that you show respect for Father Ruby. He is simply abiding by the law of California."

I so desperately wanted to say more. But Mother Yolla was already standing. I stared into the large rosary beads hanging at her waist. "As you well know, Renata, I am not the final arbiter here. Father Ruby is in charge. And we must do what we must do, even if we are desperately unhappy doing it. So please please, please forgive me." She lifted one sleeve to cover her eyes. Her head fell forward and the edge of her veil brushed against my cheek. It had been almost a year since I'd felt the veil.

The next thing I knew Mother Yolla turned and rushed out of the chapel. I thought I heard her muffled cries as she fled.

My Mother's Orchid

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:34:00 +0000

Dear Mom,

Today is your 87th birthday.
When you turn 87, there aren't a whole lot of birthday presents

You want health and happiness for
Yourself and all of those

You love
Orchids.

The one I bought you a year

A few months ago
all the blossoms
had disappeared
and Dad said, let's
get rid of
that plant it's just three bare sticks.

But no, Mom,
despite your vision issues,
you saw something
tiny and green budding there
on one of those bare branches
something wonderful
four or five new pink blossoms appeared!

So eager you were to visit
the sun room
each morning
each week, on Tuesday,
you put two ice cubes in the pot
not a drop more water.

You were just adorable
caring for your orchid.

So today, your day, it
wasn't difficult to know
what to buy you
I ought to get my mother

another orchid I said
so
I did.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!
We Love You So Much,
Claud

Can You Believe It? A Poem

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:13:00 +0000

By Camincha

The            stomach hangs
            the gut retrieves
the            heart skips a beat
            the tongue still spills
the            words of yesteryears
            the message lost
the            now not what it was
            the young man not
the            man today in here
            the bags under the eyes
the            sadness lurks behind
            the glasses that cover
the            once bright blue eyes
            the woman also not the
the            girl he knew hidden by
            the thick waist
the            dry, pale skin
            the bags under the eyes
the            lines in skin that was
            the freshness, suppleness in
the            memory only
            the long years
the            body punished but
            the heart that now skips a beat
the            heart is young still
            the one that whispers
the            heart that, cries out
            the words of love that
the   lad caught and held
            the one who smiled with
the            fresh, moist lips
the one without grey or
the            lines that confuse
            the one she ran off with while
the   glasses hide his tears.

“...Camincha wants to take in continents and hemispheres. She is a woman of extraordinary vitality, passion and has a hunger for life. Read her, enjoy her.” Michael Krasny   KQED-FM

Camincha is a pen name for a writer living in California.

WHITE POEM

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:46:00 +0000

so white so snow
so softly so softly
snow falling as clean as fresh
as white as a sheet of paper the
flakes coming down,
down
down
steady steady
all of them slanted at the same angle
almost exactly the angle at which you would
hold a pen to write a poem about that clean
clean sheet that keeps coming
down
down
until the fallen snow becomes itself a white poem
its lines curved
its shape thick and sculpted
a landscape
billowing in
all directions, all edges rounded and so so white,
and so so soft
and no no sound except for the occasional whipsaw of
wind that blows fine powdery sheets wild every which way.

And inside, we remain in our
pajamas until after noon, warm, sipping hot drinks, thinking how
delighted we are by the winter scene out the window and by
the cozy warmth inside.

New Paintings

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:49:00 +0000

In January, I started an abstract painting class with a wonderful teacher, Arthur Yanoff. I was a little embarrassed to tell him about my painting technique. I apply paint (acrylic) and then I wash off part or all of the canvas, wipe it dry, and keep painting. Sometimes I think I might lose a good painting in this process. But for now, that is how I paint. I have this feeling that a painting knows what it wants to be and it's up to me to help give birth to that image. Crazy, perhaps, but fun, too.

The painting below is one I did in class. Beneath that painting is the version that emerged after I applied my "wash it off and keep painting" technique. My painting teacher, Arthur, whose work is stunning (he has had some 75 shows, including a one-person exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston) was very receptive to my technique. In fact, he told me that Matisse used to wash down his paintings each night with turpentine, and then resume painting in the morning.

It's reassuring to know I'm in good company.

It's wonderful to have such a wonderfully encouraging teacher.

The painting below was for Jocelyn and Evan, to honor their new home in Boston.

The painting below was the first version, which I did in class. The painting below that was the second (final) version. Finally, the last painting, is one I did in class yesterday. I have taken Arthur's advice and not washed it off. At least not so far.

The Mother and the Night

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:36:00 +0000

By Camincha

The mother who calls for

her daughter in the

dead of night

will do well to let

her be: bless her to

release her to

her own destiny.

You can’t gather the

ocean in the

cup of your hands.

A dove has to fly away

if it’s ever to

return to you.

Camincha is a pen name for a California-based writer.

Chapter 62, Sister Mysteries: Hmmmm, Maybe this Should be Chapter One of the Novel?

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:20:00 +0000

FUNNY THING ABOUT WRITING A NOVEL. It hardly ever pours out onto paper in sequence. That is, you don't often find a writer starting with Chapter One and then proceeding neatly to Chapter 75 or whatever the conclusion is. I recall in my first novel, Dreaming Maples, the first 50 pages I wrote -- where a young woman nine months pregnant takes a long and risky ride on the back of her boyfriend's motorcyle -- ended up about three-quarters of the way through the book.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that here it is Chapter 62 of Sister Mysteries, and I'm finally getting around to writing some very critical material that probably belongs in Chapter One. This chapter also answers a question that my dear writer friend Peg has been asking for about 18 years: why is the narrator writing this story? What's at stake for the narrator?

Until writing this new chapter, I could never answer that question to Peg's satisfaction. No matter what I wrote, she didn't seem convinced that the narrator, i.e. me, had made it clear why she was the one chosen to tell Renata's tale. Well, so, now I am going to send this chapter to Peg to see what she thinks.

The nice thing about writing a novel on a blog is that it's such a deliciously fluid medium: you can link Chapter 62 with Chapter One and move easily between the two. The reader can skip and skate through the book exactly the way she wants to.

Still, that doesn't explain the contradictions between the events narrated in this chapter and those described in Chapter One. Clearly, one version of events has to be a lie. The question is, which one?

The author is happy to let the reader decide.

*********

Dear Señora:

And now, this morning, I find you lying there in your bed, not speaking, staring wide-eyed into the ceiling.

The sun has not yet cracked over the horizon. As soon as I awoke, I crept into the convent kitchen and boiled water for your tea. Walking very softly, I carried the cup up the stairs to your room. Your door is ajar and I knock softly and walk in. Your eyes are open and riveted on the ceiling, and so I know immediately that something is wrong. Your expression is fixed, your face a coffee-colored mask. I set the tea down on the night table and place one hand on your forehead. Warm. I pick up your hand, which lies limp on the sheet. It too is warm, and the skin of the back of your hand is soft but the palm has that dry papery feeling I know so well.

"Señora," I whisper, leaning over to put my lips close to your ear. "Can you hear me?"

Your lips are parted but frozen. You don't move a muscle. Only an occasional blink of your eyes and a faint breath when I put my finger beneath your nose tell me that you are still alive. I set my ear on your chest and there is a slow and steady beat. But what has happened to you? Is it a stroke? And if it is, what can I possibly do for you here? What can be done for a stroke victim in 1884?

I drop into the chair beside your bed. The other nuns will be up for morning prayers before long. What will they do? Bring the doctor I suppose. But for what purpose?

I sit here with tears gathering. I sit here thinking that you are nearing your end. We've had such a long history together. I don't want to let you go. And yet, I know better. I know that you came to me for one reason only, and that soon your mission will be accomplished. I just wish you could live forever.

But then I realize, you do live forever. Or at least, your spirit does. You exist beyond the convines of time and place. When you first came to me 18 years ago, I was living through hell. I had dropped so low that I saw no reason to get out of bed. I thought I would never emerge from that dark grey tunnel of despair. It was such a hellish time. I saw a series of doctors who didn't have much of a clue what to do. One or two of them wanted me to have electroshock treatment, or ECT. And I was petrified. I didn't want to have some machine sending shock waves through my brain, frying it from the inside out.

I remember two things about the morning you came: the snow outside the window was heaped in great mounds. We'd been having wicked winter weather that year, and it most certainly hadn't helped my mood. I remember too, me lying in bed staring into the ceiling, much like you are now. And of all things, I was listening to the flies. Flies in the middle of winter, crazed and buzzing around the light fixtures and against the window glass. Maybe their last desperate gasping to escape.

I remember getting up to pee. And seeing a rather large fly in the window of the bathroom. Quite unexpectedly, I reached over and very gently wedged it against the glass. I set my finger and thumb on one of its wings. There I was, I was actually holding a fly.

I carried it that way to the door that leads out to the balcony of my third floor bedroom. I opened the door and was greeted by a blast of cold air. And then I set the fly free. I watched as he (she?) zoomed off in a giant graceful arc and something shifted in me. How very strange, but somehow that gesture -- freeing the fly -- gave me hope. Put a small smile on my face.

Soon that became my purpose. I would get out of bed at least four or five times a day -- whenever I got up to pee or to eat something -- and I would set free three or four flies. One thing that mystified me, where were these flies coming from at this frigid moment in winter?

But no matter where they came from, they were there. And I got very good at catching them in my hands. Between my fingers. I was delicate but determined. I looked forward to catching them. I looked forward to liberating every fly that I heard buzzing in my bedroom.

When my husband happened to be in the room one morning, he asked me why I insisted on opening the door to release flies. Why, he wondered aloud, did I not just use the fly swatter? He was no lover of flies.

"Because I refuse to kill them," I said simply. But what I didn't say was, this act of freeing flies seemed to give my life some immediate purpose. It was after all, a kind of existential grip that had taken hold of me, that is, life had lost its meaning. I no longer felt that I was steering my life course in a direction that mattered. But here was something that if nothing else, was a satisfying distraction.

If I could do nothing else, I could release a few flies into the universe. Perhaps I couldn't relieve my own misery, but at least I could save these little black-winged creatures from their own misery.

My husband watched cautiously as I released another fly. Then he came up to me and gently folded his arms around me. "Just hold me," he said, his voice low and trembling. I felt so bad. I had become such a burden to my poor husband. He was so desperately worried about me. He had grown so frightened. But of course he had. For all intents and purposes, he had lost his wife.

I hadn't been out of a nightgown in weeks. I was surviving on a diet of soup and saltines, coffee and oatmeal and an occasional salad or an apple, sliced and smeared with peanut butter.

Worst of all, I had begun to say to my husband with some regularity, "I don't want to live another day."

I had also taken to praying to the Virgin Mary, asking for help from the divine feminine forces of the universe. Mary had never let me down before. When I had suffered cancer years before, and I was in the thick of misery with the chemo, I would pray to Mary, and something would always happen to relieve my pain. At the worst moments, I would envision myself protected -- tucked beneath her sky blue veil. That image comforted me so much. Now I needed comforting of a different kind. I needed her to help heal my troubled mind.

It wasn't long after I started catching and releasing the flies that you appeared Señora. I remember that morning so clearly. It was a Sunday and the sky was the crisp blue color you only get in the winter. My husband had to fly to DC for a meeting that afternoon and so he had left just after eight a.m. He was nervous at the thought of leaving me alone. "You must promise me you won't do..." and then he'd shake his head. He wouldn't finish the sentence.

"I'll be OK," I said, and then we kissed and he left, his forehead wrinkled in worry.

I had finished my morning coffee. I was waiting for my morning meds -- the ativan, the amphetamines, the noritryptiline -- to kick in. My neck and back felt really sore, and so I decided to pull myself out of bed to stretch my body a little. I lay on the braided rug on the floor, pulling one knee at a time up to my chest.

The rest of it is like a dream. An amazing and incredible dream. A dream that felt more real than real life. I lifted my leg a few inches and straightened it out and pointed my toe and suddenly there it was -- a low but persistent sound. Music. It started to grow louder and clearer. I could hear someone strumming a guitar. I looked over to the radio on my husband's side of the bed. Had I left it on? I know I hadn't. I hated NPR's Weekend Edition program so I would have kept the radio turned off.

But there it was -- guitar music, and it was growing so loud I could feel it right in the room with me. I didn't know it at the time, because I knew virtually nothing about flamenco, but that was a soleares I was hearing. Soleares a form considered the mother of all flamenco. The word solear derived from the Spanish word, "soledad" or sorrow.

I stopped exercising and sat up on the floor, cross-legged. I closed my eyes and just listened to the music for a minute or two. It was quite beautiful.

That's the moment you chose to speak. "Por favor, tu es Señora Ricci, sí?" My eyes flew open and my heart started banging in my chest like some kind of drum. Behind me, in the rocking chair across the room in the corner, I heard the chair squeak as it rocked forward. Slowly, I swiveled around. You were sitting there, filling up the chair with your portly form. You were dressed in black, and strumming a guitar. My arms and legs started shaking and it's a good thing I wasn't standing because I'm sure I would have lost my urine.

I didn't say a word. I just stared at you, with a million things flying through my head. The first thing I thought: you were the same color as the flies. You were completely in black, even your stockings, as if you were in mourning. The only color was the embroidery on your magnificent shawl.

I thought back to the question that the last doctor, the super expensive one in Manhattan had asked recently asked me. "Do you ever see things?"

"See things?" I asked.

"Yes, do you have visions?"

I remember thinking at the time that at least I was that sane. At least I wasn't psychotic, having visions. But now, what was this?

I covered my eyes with my hands, and shook my head back and forth, hoping to make you go away. But you continued strumming. I looked up. You were waiting for me to answer. You smiled and introduced yourself. "Yo soy Señora Maria Corazon de Ramos." You nodded your head once as if to give emphasis to the name.

I knew the word corazón meant heart in English. I wouldn't know until much later that ramos meant tree or branch.

"Wha...what do you want?" I croaked. In English of course. It never occurred to me to try Spanish.

You switched into broken English. "I am here to have your help if you please." It's embarrassing to admit this, Señora, but at first I thought you were offering me help, as in house help. I was just about to answer that I already had a house cleaner, when I realized my mistake. You wanted my help. SHE WANTED MY HELP? What?

"I ...I don't understand."

You nodded and stopped strumming. The guitar was a beauty by the way. Blonde wood. Just lovely. "Es importante," you began, but then you switched to English again. "Important, very important. You are a writer of stories, yes?"

I shrugged. By this point I was sitting up against the brass bed, my arms hugging my knees, as I was desperately trying to get my arms and legs to stop shaking. But I was still trembling and my mouth felt like it was full of cotton balls. The truthful answer to your question was, "No, I am not writing stories anymore." I had stopped writing just about the time I had started getting depressed. The reason I stopped writing had something to do with the fact that my last novel -- published in 2011 -- had sold so few copies.

My husband had tried time and again to convince me that the key to turning my depression around lay in finding the courage to start writing again. I hadn't found that courage.

"No stories anymore," I whispered. "I don't write anything more." I felt my throat grow thick. I felt tears gathering at the rims of my eyes. All these months, all these doctors, all these meds, and yet I still refused to label myself as, "MENTALLY ILL." But now, here, with this portly Latina woman sitting in front of me, in my fucking bedroom in my fucking rocking chair, how could I possibly resist that label? I was fucking crazy.

"Es important story that I need for you to write." She reached under her shawl and took out an old journal with a chiseled leather cover.

She opened the journal and in it were a stack of blue pages folded in half and tucked into the front cover.

By now I was feeling like I might need to throw up. I was so desperate for you to disappear. I wanted no part of your story or anything else. "PLEASE," I said, breathlessly. "Please go away," I pleaded. I started to sob. "I have been very very ill," I said, choking on my tears. "I have wanted to take my life. I cannot be cured. No one can help me. No one knows what to do for me and so...I really need you to...you must go."

But of course you didn't budge. You sat there and had such a calm look on your face. I found myself wanting to stare at your face, at its coffee color, at its sculptured flesh, at its slight sheen.

You stood up from the chair and walked over to me. You reached down and took my hand. And slowly you helped me up. I was shaking so badly that I had to let you put your arm around me. Your arm was strong and fleshy. I felt your bosom against my own skinny chest as we walked around the bed. I thought for a moment that you were going to put me back to bed. But instead, you helped me into the rocking chair. And then you made yourself comfortable taking a seat on my unmade bed, facing me.

"Señora Ricci, you need something to help you, yes?"

I snorted, and suddenly my nose was flooding, and I was desperate for tissues. She reached over to the night table for my Kleenex and handed some to me. After I had finished blowing my nose, I sniffled an answer. "I need help, yes I most certainly do." I was about to say, but not from you. Only you continued talking.

"This story" -- and here you held up the leather journal -- "is for me, so so important. Life and death important."

I inhaled. I had absolutely no interest in your story. I had only one thought, that you should disappear, taking your guitar, your flowered shawl, your journal and all those blue pages too.

"I'm sorry, but....you really should go," I whispered. How I wished my husband hadn't had to go out of town. I couldn't even reach him by phone.

"I will go I will. But may I tell you just why I am here? It will only be a moment of your time." I was about to say no but you plowed forward. "I am a poor old woman who made a big big mistake." You said the words "beeg" and "meestake." You stopped talking. You reached over to the tissue box and took one for yourself and dabbed at your dark eyes. "I let a poor innocent woman die," you said, and now you were starting to cry. "You see, I could have stopped it. The hanging" -- here your face crumpled up -- "would never be happening."

Hanging? What hanging? In spite of my impatience, my desire to see you go, you now had snagged my attention. And something else: seeing a poor old woman sobbing into tissues on my bed had struck up a chord of compassion in me. I was distracted at least for the moment from my own worries.

I waited.

"After Renata got hanged," you continued, "I could not live. I could not sleep or eat. Nothing was inside me but worry and regret. I prayed. I only prayed. I prayed in daytime, I prayed at night when I am sleeping. I asked the Virgin for help. I told her I would be happy to die myself if she would bring back Renata."

I blinked. Suddenly I was thinking not about how crazy all of this was, but how real you seemed to be. I couldn't explain it, but I just knew that you were not an illusion. You were a flesh and blood person. You were a poor old soul who needed help.

"Who...who is Renata?" I whispered in a raspy voice.

Señora, at that moment, your face collapsed onto your chest. You raised a hand to either side of your head. And then you just cried and sobbed and said nothing. You looked so pitiful that I found myself getting up out of the rocking chair. I came and sat there right beside you on the bed. I put my arm around your shoulders and squeezed you and tried to comfort you. It helped. At least you stopped convulsing and crying.

"I need you please so so much your help is what the Virgin said I would get."

"What?" I couldn't understand a word you were saying, Señora, as you have never had a knack for English.

You sniffled and wiped your nose. "The Blessed Virgin. In the nighttime she came to me one time. I was awake all night, not sleeping. And then she was there, glowing in golden light. She was so beautiful." Here you smiled and I saw your missing teeth. Your face was glowing and I found myself drawn to it once again.

"I need you, to write the true story of Renata, and if you do, then the Virgin promised it would all be mended and Renata would be free and not die like she did hanging from that tree. Will you will you please Señora Ricci, will you take this journal of Renata's and just write the story, so the whole world knows that she never killed Antonie?"

"Antonie? But who is he?" I was struggling now. I wanted her to go, but I also wanted to know more, at least enough to satisfy my curiosity.

"Antonie is cousin to Renata," you said simply. "And he also jefe, hmmm..." here you were searching for the word. "The boss. I am keeper of his house."

I reached over to the night table for a drink of water. My head was dizzy. And I wanted something to eat. But curiously, this was the first morning in months that I actually felt like getting out of bed.

"Would you like some coffee?" I said.

You shook your head. "Tea."

And so I put on my blue bathrobe, and you followed me down two flights of stairs to the kitchen, where I made you a cup of tea and kept listening while you pieced together your story.

Such a long, long time ago all of this seems. How quickly the years we've known each other have gone by. And now you lie there Señora and your time is up. Except, you would remind me of something that you said so long ago, that very morning when we first sat together at the oak table in the kitchen, you drinking chamomile tea and me drinking a second cup of coffee. You said "time is always there the same way and at the same time moments on top of each other." I was completely puzzled. I thought I didn't understand you because of your broken English. And then you said something else that intrigued me. "No one dies for good and doesn't come back another day."

Of course I couldn't possibly understand what you meant. It has taken me 139 years to understand.

Sister Mysteries is a time travel novel being composed on a set of two blogs (the other blog is Castenata.) It follows the life of a nun, Sister Renata, who in 1883 was falsely accused of murdering her cousin, Antonie.

Chapter 61, Sister Mysteries: Renata Stubbornly Refuses to Turn Over the Missing Journal Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 13:29:00 +0000

An hour passed. Señora Ramos fell into a deep sleep -- snoring soundly -- after finishing her cup of tea. I played the three or four flamenco songs I know by heart -- including the beloved bulerias -- and then started working on scales.

Soon enough, though, it occurred to me that Renata had still not returned with the journal pages. I set the guitar against the wall and went out into the hallway. In my imagination, Renata's room was on the first floor, a room that faced the tiled courtyard. As I recall, it was three doors further down the hall from Teresa's room. I closed Señora's door and descended the staircase, keeping perfectly quiet in my white socks. I made my way through the dining room and the small parlor and into the wing where the nuns' rooms sat, one after another. By this time, evening prayers were over, and most of the nuns had retired for the night.

I stood in the narrow hallway, where a single candle burned inside a glass dish. The low adobe ceiling was only a few inches above my head. If I was right, the door on my right was Renata's. But what if I had remembered it wrong? I'd disturb one of the other nuns.

I decided I had to take the chance. I set two knuckles to the wooden door and tapped three times.

No answer.

I knocked again, a little louder this time. Then I positioned my lips into the crack where the door met the frame and I whispered.

"Renata? Please, are you in there?"

Nothing. I was beginning to think I did indeed have the wrong room. I turned around and leaned back on the door and looked up to the ceiling. I was beginning to feel like a very unwelcome visitor. It occurred to me that I could simply stop all of this, and return to my laptop, where I belonged.

At just that moment, the door swung open and I felt myself falling backwards into the room. Renata was stronger than she looked, because the next thing I knew, I was looking into dark eyes. She had caught me!

"I'm so sorry," I stammered. She helped me back to my feet. "I really am not trying to harrass you, Renata, I just want to do what Señora wishes."

"Come in," she said. I entered the tiny convent room, which was even smaller than I had pictured it when I described it in the book. The crucifix loomed large over the narrow bed of straw.

"I would invite you to sit down, but this bed is ..."

"No, no need for that," I said. "I simply need those journal pages. I'll be off as soon as I have them."

"Yes, well, that's exactly the problem. You see, I am very reluctant to part with those pages. I've heard all that Señora explained, about the supposed miracle and the Virgin rewriting history. I hope you will excuse my skepticism, but I am still not convinced."

My stomach tightened and my face flushed hot. I felt a flood of anxiety rush up and down my arms. Had I really created this character who was so impossibly stubborn? I cleared my throat.

"I understand your skepticism," I began, speakly slowly. "I respect you for that, Renata. I do. But the trouble is, you are really stuck. It's just a matter of time before the authorities find out that you're back here at the convent and they will, as Señora says, lose no time taking you to the gallows. So please, I will get down on my knees and beg you if I have to, just give those pages to me so that the true story can be told and you will go free."

Renata sighed and sat down on the bed. "Maybe I go free. From what I've seen in the courtroom so far, it's going be very difficult to use a few handwritten pages from my journal to convince anyone that my case should be reopened. God knows how hard it would be to overturn my conviction."

"What you say is true of course Renata, but my God, we've got to try, haven't we?" My voice got louder, prompting Renata to set one finger over her lips, cautioning me to speak more quietly.

At that moment, an idea struck me. I had a lawyer friend back in Spencertown who worked as a public defender. He would be able to fill me in on how new evidence could be introduced after a conviction. But the one sticking point remained: I couldn't do anything without that new evidence in hand.

"I want to sleep on it," Renata announced, rising from the bed. She was wearing a simple white gown, tied at the neck with a blue satin bow. "It's been a long and tiring day, and I just don't want to make this decision tonight." She paused. "So if you don't mind, I would like to go to back to bed now."

I stood there, amazed. Here Renata was being offered a gift -- a painless way out of her desperate situation -- and yet, she was so nonchalant, as if it didn't matter that the death penalty awaited her. Could she possibly be so indifferent to the danger she faced?

She held the door open for me. I said a soft good night and returned to Señora's room. The old woman was sleeping quietly, so I pulled up her extra blanket and I left. It wasn't until later that I realized I had left Renata's guitar leaning against Señora's wall.

And now that I'm back behind the laptop, I'm altogether amazed by this puzzling situation. What could possibly be holding Renata back from handing over the journal pages? What did she have to lose?

When Señora first approached me so many years ago about writing Renata's story, she brought with her the nun's chiseled leather journal. She also carried a box filled with a stack of thin blue pages, all neatly written in Antonie's looping hand.

I had only to copy out the entries and set them in the proper order, which I had done, faithfully. I set them up in a blog called "Castenata."

Now, as I sat in my pale yellow study, staring over my laptop at the abstract painting of a sunset that sits over my desk, it occurred to me that I could simply make up the two pages. I have had plenty of experience exercising my fiction writer's mind. And judging by things Renata had written, and a few things Señora insinuated, I had a pretty good inkling of what the pages said.

But wouldn't this violate the whole arrangement I had with Señora? I had after all promised to write the true story, exactly as she delivered it to me.

It was late, I was tired, and so I went to bed. I pasted a post-it on my laptop, reminding myself to phone my friend David, the public defender, to talk to him about the case.

I yawned and closed the laptop. Happy to be back in my own century, where mattresses aren't made of straw.

Little did I know what havoc and insanity would greet me in the morning.

Loving the Most Lovable People on Earth

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:44:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I started a volunteer job a couple days a week with an extraordinary not-for-profit organization in Great Barrington, MA. Called Community Access to the Arts, or CATA, the group provides an array of arts activities -- from painting and writing to dance, yoga and acting, to adults with disabilities. While CATA has been around for twenty years, I only learned about them through an ad they ran at the local movie theatre a year or so ago. I was intrigued. I adore art and music, and of course, writing -- which I've taught for years at the college level -- is like breathing to me. I really wanted to volunteer. But deep down, I had to admit to myself, I was a little bit nervous. Would I be a good match for this group? Would I have the patience and tolerance to work with people who were in some cases profoundly disabled?

It took one visit to dispel all of my fears. The moment I walked in the door, I was wrapped in a kind of loving glow that exudes from all of those who are involved in CATA. The truth of the matter: I fell totally in love with all of the adults that I met. There's a delightful young woman who was my partner rolling beads out of paper mache one day; then a couple days later, she and I sat side by side in the writing class composing a story about her clothes. There is another incredibly sweet older woman who remembered my name after only one introduction. And then there's a young woman who cannot speak. But boy oh boy can she laugh. One day when I walked in, she came running up to me and kissed my hand! I could go on and on: there's the woman who delighted everyone when she wrote about being a clothes "fashionista;" there's the man who always writes two stories during writing class. There's so many more people, so many people who just love coming together to enjoy the arts.

The staff and director of CATA are amazing too. The first day I walked into the CATA office, for my get-acquainted interview, I was greeted by Executive Director Sandy Newman, the woman who had the brilliant idea to start the organization 20 years ago. As we shook hands, I noticed her beaming smile: it was a genuinely happy smile. Curiously, though, the next person I shook hands with, Jeff Gagnon, CATA's program and marketing associate, was wearing the same exuberant smile. And so was the next person in the office. And the next. And the next. It's not often that you walk into an office where everybody just happens to smile as if they are truly in love with their jobs.

Last month, CATA won an award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council; the award recognizes groups and individuals in the Commonwealth state that have achieved outstanding accomplishments in the arts, humanities and sciences. CATA won for providing access to the arts. As it stands now, the group provides arts programming to some 500 disabled adults throughout Berkshire County. In the same week the group was recognized, they also had an art show in Lee, MA, featuring the wonderful artwork of many participants. It's inspiring to read about how volunteers pair up with participants -- some of whom cannot move their limbs -- to produce beautiful works of art.

One day as I was leaving CATA (and more often than not, I just don't want to leave!) I spoke to Sandy Newman. I told her that I was thrilled to have discovered this incredibly loving group of individuals. Working at CATA, I said, was a thoroughly affirming and inspiring activity. She smiled and nodded and acknowledged what everyone who works there already knows: that volunteering at CATA gives back way beyond imagination.

"It makes you appreciate every single thing," she said.

And it reminds you that every single person in the world is precious.

Thank you for this, CATA. Thank you to all the adults who participate, and thank you to all the volunteers too. It's been said countless times before, but volunteer work does wonders for the soul.

Visitors

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:55:00 +0000

The snow, fine as salt, is starting to fall, when all of a sudden three visitors appear.

They nibble around the trees and head across the yard and toward the forest.

One Step Deeper into the Breathing Love Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:34:00 +0000

If you tried the Breathing Love meditation I offered a few days ago, you know that the technique relies on bringing your breathing and your heartbeat into some kind of rhythmic connection.

But now, I've discovered a way to heighten the feeling of self-love generated during this meditation. Those of you who are familiar with Sharon Salzberg's extensive work with lovingkindness meditation know that it always starts with you extending love first to yourself, then to a sequence of other individuals in your life, until finally you are sending lovingkindness -- or metta -- to all living beings in the universe.

So this why I've been focusing on the Breathing Love meditation -- because it seems like a natural way of generating self love.

To start, place your right hand underneath your left breast, flat on your chest, so that you can feel your heartbeat. (Preferably place your hand onto your bare skin as it generates more sensation.) Then place your left hand over the right. Notice that with your hands in this position, you are cradling your heart.

Start to breathe in rhythm with your own heart beat. Find a rhythm that feels comfortable to you. My own rhythm is

Breathe in, beat beat,
Breathe out, beat beat,
Breathe in, beat beat,
Breathe out, beat beat

You may find three beats works better between breaths. Or perhaps just one breath. Play around with the breathing until you find a pattern that works for you.

Once you have a steady rhythm going, turn your attention to your cradled heart. Imagine for a moment that you are now cradling a newborn baby. Imagine this baby's tiny head, warm and soft, covered with downy fine hair; imagine how the baby's head would feel in your hand. Imagine the baby's body nestled up against your heart.

Instead of holding a baby, maybe you would rather imagine holding a soft and furry kitten, or a tiny puppy. Imagine how sleek the puppy's fur would feel under your hands. Imagine how reassuring the warm body of the kitten or the puppy would feel against your heart.

Feel the love you have for this very lovable baby, or this very adorable furry kitten or puppy.

And now, holding onto that love, see if you can turn the loving creature you are holding into your own self. Maybe you can picture yourself as a baby. Or maybe you just want to let your adult body fold around that of the baby or the kitten or the puppy that you are embracing in your imagination.

Remember to keep breathing, and feeling your heartbeat. Keep returning the loving breath back into your heart. Let the warm reassuring feelings circulate through your chest.

This meditation may bring a smile to your face. Or maybe you'll end up laughing at the notion that you are cradling your own baby self. That's fine. Just try to stay aware of the sensations of your hands on the skin of your chest, and the reassuring feel of the heartbeat.

Remember, this is an exercise in self-acceptance and self-love. It's your own way of saying to yourself, in a physical and tactile way, "I am a lovable creature just the way I am." With this exercise, you are demonstrating that you can love and accept yourself without doing anything more than breathing and feeling the beating heart that keeps you alive.

Feeding on Light

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 14:55:00 +0000

Maybe because so many winter days are white and overcast,
the dawn of a clear sunny morning brings a thrill.
No matter that the frigid air will bite your skin if you step outside.
No matter that the sun may not last past noon.
It's still a gift to open your eyes to see the pine-treed hillside outside the window
turning gold in long lazy winter rays.

Downstairs, the sun streams across the kitchen, bathing the
cabinets. The same rays cross the threshold into the laundry room and
leave a tiny square of spring green light on the washing machine.
I set my finger into that delightful green spot. It's got promise, that spot.

The fruitbowl, with its orange, green and yellow curves and shadows,
becomes a still life painting.

And in the dining room, the long strips of light spread across the rug beckon to me.
I stretch out flat in one, as if I'm lying in a chaise lounge on the beach.

I stare right into the flood of sunlight coming through the window
and I am delighted to be blinded. I smile. I think Florida, I think emerald waves
and long white beaches. Palm trees and the smell of ocean breezes.
Bathing suits. Flip flops and suntan lotion and the grainy touch of sand.

Maybe because this morning's light is so rare, and I know there is no holding onto it,
(just now the sun slipped behind the clouds and all turned shadow)

Every place my glances happens to land -- on deeply furrowed grey bark, on the white pond, on green pine needles,
I let my gaze dally.
The day becomes a meditation, eyes feeding on light.

Chapter 60, Sister Mysteries: After 18 Years of Writing, I Come Face to Face With Renata!!

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:55:00 +0000

Sister Mysteries, an on-line novel, tells the story of a nun, Sister Renata, who in 1883 was falsely accused and convicted of murdering her cousin. In this chapter, we see how she might finally go free.

Assisted by two of the other nuns, Bernice and Laura Lee, Teresa pulls Renata into the rocking chair. There she sits, slumped against one arm. Teresa runs for smelling salts, and Bernice boils water for chamomile tea. Laura Lee -- a delicate girl with dimples and great splotches of reddish-brown freckles -- holds Renata in a sitting position.

Kneeling in front of the chair, Teresa passes the salts under Renata's nose, until the smell of the ammonia starts Renata's head moving side to side. "Enough," she whispers. "Please no more."

Teresa pulls the salts away. "We have tea for you Renata, tea with gobs of honey. You must be so thirsty." She holds the cup up and takes a spoonful of the yellow tea. Blowing on it a few times, she lifts the spoon to Renata's open mouth. For the next few minutes, Teresa feeds Renata the warm tea. But soon Renata pushes Teresa's hand away.

"I must see Señora now," she whispers, wriggling out of Laura Lee's grip. "Please Teresa, please take me up to her."

"At least finish the tea, and put something solid in your stomach." Teresa bends closer and steadies a gaze at Renata head on. "I promise if you have a little of the rabbit stew we ate for dinner, and finish the tea, I will bring you to her."

Renata's face wrinkles up in disgust. "You know how I feel about rabbit stew. Just spoon me a few carrots and onions and some parsley and that will do."

Teresa rises, hands the mug to Renata. "You drink this up. And if you're still thirsty, Bernice will fix you a second cup."

After she has eaten half the vegetables that Teresa scooped into a bowl, and after she finishes most of a second cup of tea, Renata rises from the rocking chair. Teresa takes her arm and they pass through the convent's dining room and to the staircase. Soon they are in the second floor bedroom where Señora lies, her face small and almond-colored. Renata sits on one side of the bed, Teresa on the other.

Leaning forward, Renata whispers. "I'm here, my dear Señora. I am here beside you and I won't leave you."

Señora is lying in such perfect stillness that it isn't clear she is breathing. Teresa holds a finger below Señora's nose. After a few moments she takes her hand away.

"I have an idea," Renata says, getting up. "I'll be right back." She hurries to her old room, the straw mattress stiff and minus any sheets. Kneeling, Renata drags from beneath the bed the guitar she keeps wrapped in an old Indian blanket. She sinks to the floor and hums a low E, and quickly tunes the strings.

Soon she is hurrying back to the bedroom to Señora and Teresa, who smiles when she sees the guitar.

"It's worth a try, don't you agree?"

Guitar cradled in her lap, Renata plays the carcelero that Señora loves.

"In three days I've eaten

Only bread and tears:

That is the food

That my jailers give.

How do they expect me to live?"

She follows the carcelero with a soleares and a farrucca and finally, a rousing bulerías.

Señora is motionless, the music passing over her like a soft breeze. Renata puts the guitar down and takes Señora's hand and kisses it. "I know you can hear me," she says. "I just know you feel me here."

She takes out her beads and together with Teresa, they pray the rosary.

"It's late, Renata," Teresa says at the end of the prayers. "Tomorrow is another day. Please, I'll make your bed up for you. And I'll find a place for Arthur to rest downstairs. Come now. Let her be."

Renata wraps her rosary beads around Señora's hand, and places a kiss on the old woman's forehead. Teresa is out the door and Renata is just about to blow out the candle on the nighttable when she hears a soft groan.

Whipping around, she sees the rosary beads shaking in Señora's hand. "Teresa, Teresa, look!"

By now, Renata has Señora's hand in hers. "You're awake, you're awake!" It takes a few minutes before Señora's eyes open. She blinks. Her lips tremble, and Renata is sure she sees a smile on them.

"Oh my dear Señora you're back," Renata says in a hush. Señora opens her mouth but nothing comes out. "Don't try to speak. Don't."

Teresa and Renata stand there staring at Señora. The old woman opens her mouth. "Sietaté," she whispers in a hoarse tone. The nuns sit down. Renata takes both of Señora's hands in hers.

"Mi'ja," Señora begins. And then she whispers in Spanish. "It's my time. It's my time. I'm not long on God's good earth now."

"How do you know that Señora, you can't possibly know God's will."

Señora continues to speak to Renata in Spanish, in a hushed whisper. "There is no time for discussing this now. You must do for me what you have steadfastly refused to do all these months. You must find those missing pages of your journal and present them to the authorities. Please. Please, for me do this."

"No," Renata says, pulling back. "I won't do that. You know you can ask and you can beg, but I am not turning in those pages. Justice will be served and I remain in God's hands, with Mary to protect me too."

Teresa pipes up. "Señora is right. You've come back here now, Renata, and clearly there is no way we can protect you. Not for long can we hide you. The gallows is ready and waiting. The authorities will hang you as soon as word gets out. Please, abide by Señora's dying wish."

Renata rises, and turns toward the darkened window, her arms crossed. "I vowed I would never turn Señora in. I made myself a solemn promise. I can't turn back on that now."

Señora struggles to one elbow. And out of her comes a voice that I know so well. The voice in which she has spoken to me for the past 18 years. The voice that has pulled me back to Renata's world, time and again.

"Por favor Claudia," Señora cries out. "Ahora es muy importante que tu vienes aquí. Por favor!"

And as I sit here, typing, my laptop disappears and I let go of this world and move to the sound of Señora's voice. Suddenly I am in the room with the three characters whose lives I have entwined so tightly with my own.

Teresa and Renata stare at me. I'm wearing my blue bathrobe and white sox, and my hair must look like an awful fright. I haven't showered and I've got the sour breath one has after a night's sleep and a cup of coffee.

"Hola, Señora," I say and she reaches a hand out to me. Slowly I approach the bed. Renata's eyes are wide and forbidding and Teresa looks like she's seen a lizard crawl across the bed covers. I clear my throat and don't come any closer. "You don't know me of course," I say, my voice shaking. "But I am Claudia Ricci, a writer, and I love Señora as much as both of you."

"How could you possibly?" Renata asks, her voice shaking. "I've never seen you, nor has Teresa. Where did you come from?" Renata scans me head to toe and Teresa shakes her head vigorously.

"I understand completely," I say. "I've been working with Señora from afar. You would not believe me if I told you how far," I say. "It's much too hard to explain."

Señora sits up. She asks for her shawl and Teresa brings it to her and wraps it around her shoulders. Teresa and Renata stand beside her like protective soldiers. And then she begins to speak. Thankfully, she speaks in a slow Spanish that I can understand.

"This woman is writing your story, Renata. She's been writing it for 18 years."

I pipe up. "Actually it's exactly 18 years. Yesterday. January 25, 1995 is the day I started this book."

"What? What are you saying?" Renata takes a step toward me. Funny that I never thought her to be the least bit threatening before. "What book are you referring to? And what is this about 1995? And how could you possibly know me or my story?"

Señora smiles. "I'll ask you to be patient Renata. What you are witnessing here my dear is the work of the Virgin Mary. Her miracles, as you know, we can never explain. Miracles of Mary's making. This is one of those miracles."

"What do you mean?"

"The virgin appeared in a vision one night, right after you were hung."

"HUNG?"

Señora shakes her head. Her face is solemn. "You see Renata, time has come unhinged. After you died, I so regretted letting you sacrifice yourself on my behalf that I prayed continually to Mary for forgiveness. She came to me one night and said that together, we were going to rewrite history."

"Excuse me, Señora, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. Are you telling me you erased events that already took place."

Señora shakes her head slowly.

I decide to take a step forward. Renata tenses and steps back. "I am not here to hurt you," I say. "Please understand that's the last thing you have to fear."

Señora continues. "So why is Claudia here? Because I called for her. With Mary's help, I found Claudia, a woman who was willing to write the true story of Antonie's death. This woman you see here lives far into the future on the other side of the continent."

Renata collapses into the chair. "Surely you don't expect me to believe this," she says. She turns to Teresa who is just as dumbfounded.

"What Señora says is absolutely true," I say. "I come from a moment in history when we have such things as cars with engines and computers and mobile telephones and electricity and airplanes that fly."

"I don't believe it," Renata says. "I don't buy any of this silliness."

"You must listen," Señora commands. "You must listen Renata. If you fail to listen, you will most certainly hang, as you did the first time. The gallows is waiting and they will string you up in the hot sun in the courtyard without the slightest hesitation."

"I don't understand," Renata says. "How can this woman from the future help me escape? Does she takes me with her?"

The thought of transporting the nun back to Albany, New York, or to the little hamlet of Spencertown, where I live, makes me smile.

"No, Renata," I say. "I just write the story. It's up to me to make you see the wisdom of releasing those two pages from your journal. Those pages that cannot hurt Señora anymore. You were right when you first decided to hold them back, because the authorities would have hung Señora, a Mexican woman, without even a trial. A Mexican woman killing a white American man. But now Señora's time is up."

"How do you know that? How could you possibly know anyth..."

"Silencio!" Señora shouts. She lifts her pillow and takes out a piece of yellowed newspaper. She unfolds it. The headline reads in big block letters, "NUN FINALLY HUNG FOR THE MURDER OF HER COUSIN." Two columns of writing appear and in the center of the page is a very clear drawing of the nun swinging from a rope.

Renata gasps. Teresa cries out. "My God!"

"I hope you see now that the gallows is real," Señora says. "I hope you understand why the Virgin has interceded here. This is what happened the first time around. You did hang for Antonie's murder. You refused to produce those pages of the journal that tell the true story."

"Let me see that newspaper," Renata says snatching it away from Señora with a shaking hand. Sweat sprouts on her brow. "I don't know how this is possible. This is not ....this is...out of this world. This is impossible. This is ..."

"Un milagro," Señora says, finishing her sentence. "Yes, Renata, this is a miracle. That we are here, today, the three of us, with this woman writer from the future. This woman who in fact can save you. Give you the freedom you have so long deserved. Let her do her work. Give her those journal pages. Let her write them down. Let the authorities see the truth. Nothing can hurt me now. They won't touch me now. Not when I am this close to my hour of death."

Teresa speaks. "I am not sure I believe what I am hearing and seeing, Renata, but by God, this is indeed a miracle of some kind. I think this is your lifeboat Renata. You've got to cooperate. You've always told me that I would be the one to tell the true story after your death. It would be me who would reveal at the proper time -- after Señora's death -- what actually happened to Antonie. But now I see there is no reason to wait. No reason at all for you to die. And every reason for you to go free. You must do as she says Renata. You must trust this woman in the blue robe, because it is exactly the same blue color as the Virgin's veil."

Renata turns slowly to face me. I see her finely chiseled features, made sharper by the fact that she is so thin. Her hair is standing in a wispy black brush. She is as pale as cotton and even has some premature grey hairs. There has been so much happening to her since that chapter I wrote so long ago, when she supposedly turned into a flamenco dancer and danced on the table.

She reaches out one hand and I don't hesitate to take it. Renata's fingers are cool and slim and delicate. "It is a pleasure to meet you ma'am," she begins, "and even though I am still not inclined to believe that you are from the future, I have to say, Señora is rather persuasive with this newspaper she somehow managed to find."

I smile. "You know, it would have been up to me to produce that newspaper account," I say, "seeing as though I am writing the story. But more than anything in the world Renata, I wanted you to live. I never wanted to write the story of your hanging. Suffice to say it's quite nice that the Virgin Mary somehow made it possible for Señora to get that clipping -- without me having to do a thing -- to help convince you of my good intentions in writing your story."

Teresa is sitting down now. And shaking her head. "Amazing. Somehow the Virgin is helping to change history," she whispers. She opens her hands one to each side. "This is too much to take in all at once."

Señora turns. "Renata, find the missing journal pages please. Let Claudia have them for her story."

"No, Señora," I interrupt. "It's not my story. It's your story. And most especially it's Renata's."

"In any case, bring the journal pages to me," Señora says, slipping down under the covers. "And then, if you wouldn't mind, I would love a cup of tea."

And so Renata leaves the room to retrieve the missing journal pages. And Teresa goes downstairs to make tea.

And me? I pick up Renata's guitar and play for Señora one of my favorite flamenco tunes, a bulerías that my teacher Maria Z. taught me many years ago.

Breathing Love

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:02:00 +0000

On a day when the thermometer is barely able to reach five degrees outside, a very heart-warming meditation exercise has emerged inside.

I had heard about meditation practices that involve breathing love into your heart, or breathing in rhythm with your heart, but today for some reason I decided to experiment with it.

I sat there at the meditation table, candles burning. I had a very soft blanket covering my head to keep warm. I slipped my right hand into my nightshirt and placed it against my bare chest, right over my heart. I took my left hand and laid it over the right hand. Feeling the skin of my hand against the skin of my breast was very reassuring. Feeling my two hands covering my heart was also resassuring.

Feeling the steady beating of my heart brought a smile to my face and comfort to my mind.

I began to breathe in and out, in rhythm with my heartbeat:
breathe in, beat beat,
breathe out, beat beat,
breathe in, beat beat,
breathe out, beat beat.

As I inhaled, I imagined the love from my heart mixing with the air in my lungs and making a circle in my chest. Over and over again the love and air -- light, free and clear -- passed around and around my heart. This circular pattern felt so comforting, and so warm and energizing, as if I was reminding myself, or perhaps teaching myself in a new way, that it's OK, indeed, it's important, to feel a profound love for oneself. Sharon Salzberg reminds us of this principle in her lovingkindness -- or metta -- meditation. In that meditation practice, which ultimately involves sending lovingkindness to all beings everywhere, we start by sending lovingkindness to ourselves, saying:

May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be filled with lovingkindness.
May I be free from suffering and fear.
May I live with ease.

In order to be loving towards others, we must first love ourselves. We must accept who we are, with all of our strengths and good traits, as well as our weaknesses. We must be comfortable in our own skin and hopefully, delight in our own company. What better way to remind ourselves of this than by engaging two of our most basic life functions:

heartbeat and
breathing.

Those of you who already meditate might want to give this one a try. And for those of you who say you can't meditate because your mind wanders, you may find it easier to concentrate on your breathing when you focus on synchronizing your heart beat with the in and out of your breathing.

I would love to hear from anyone who tries this exercise. Please feel free to write with feedback to claudiajricci@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, have a good day and stay warm!

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be filled with lovingkindness.
May you be free from suffering and fear.
May you live with ease.

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be healthy.
May all beings be filled with lovingkindness.
May all beings be free from suffering and fear.
May all beings live with ease.

Thanks once more to Sharon Salzberg for bringing me the gift of her lovingkindness meditation.

Two Inaugurals, Two Messages: This One a Clear, Progressive Vision

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:39:00 +0000

By Richard Kirsch

Four years ago, I stood in the cold listening to President Obama’s first inaugural address. I remember it leaving me cold. This year, in the warmth of my den, the president’s clear projection of progressive values as core American values warmed my heart.

I just looked back at Obama’s first inaugural address to see why I found it so disappointing. The speech starts by acknowledging the crisis of 2008, with the economy collapsing and war raging. As required, the president says that America is up to the challenge. The address includes a short list of progressive points on the economy, climate change, and the role of government. But these are interspersed with acknowledgments of the validity of conservative arguments. There is no unifying, values-based narrative or vision.

What a difference from yesterday's address, which starts with the promise of the Declaration of Independence – we are created equal in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness – and then unabashedly extends that to the struggle for civil rights, which Obama has often shied away from being seen as championing. He grounds our 200-year history “through blood drawn by lash, and blood drawn by sword," reminding us that "no union…could survive half-slave, and half-free.”

From there, the president charges directly to the historic role of government in building our physical and human capital. And unlike four years ago – when he first trumpeted the role of free markets and then noted the need for regulation – he says unambiguously, “Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play” and that “a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect people from life’s worst hazards and misfortunes.”

Even when the president recognizes values shared by progressives and conservatives – skepticism that about central authority and the importance of initiative and personal responsibility – he quickly affirms that “preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” To meet the future, the president says, will take the kind of things government does – educate children, invest in infrastructure – declaring, “Now more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people.”

From there he makes it clear that our economic success is undermined when “a few do very well and growing many barely make it.” Instead, "America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work, when the wages of honest labor will liberate families from the brink of hardship.”

Obama then begins to build a bridge linking the dignity of the individual with the collective, which he expands as his address progresses. The first span of the bridge is to connect the prospects of a “little girl born into the bleakest poverty” with freedom and equality “not just in the eyes of God, but also in our own.” He continues to build the bridge, insisting that in updating government programs, we should aim to “reward the effort and determination of every single American.” He then makes it clear that this includes keeping the “commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security,” which “strengthen us” and “do not make us a nation of takers. They free us to take the risks that make this nation great.”

The president then puts forth a values-based linkage of government's role in tackling climate change, refuting climate deniers and linking addressing climate change to our “economic vitality” and natural “national treasure.”

Reaching to a preacher’s eloquence, the president affirms that he is not leaving anyone behind in our national journey. The cadences of “our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts," “our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” “no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote,” “immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity,” and “children from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown” resound with the voice and spirit of Dr. King. The president has built a bridge that links individual initiative and responsibility to oneself and each other with a values-driven role of government that unites our diversity on the American journey.

Progressives need to pay close attention to another bridge Barack Obama has built here. He has integrated often separate strains: identity politics and the politics of government playing a key role in building an economy based on equal opportunity. The more we link those, the more we will create a story about America that commands a lasting majority.

No progressive story of America would be complete without putting movement at its core, which the president does forcefully in his alliterative embracing of “Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.” Notably, these reminders come at the end of his discussion of our role in the world, as he links American movements to Dr. King’s proclamation that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on earth.

He doesn’t leave the call for action in the past. His concluding paragraphs clarify that “You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.”

The president will need lots of help setting that course over the next four years; surely he’ll be tested to keep to it himself. Our job is to do everything we can to assist him.

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a Senior Adviser to USAction, and the author of Fighting for Our Health. He was National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now during the legislative battle to pass reform. This piece appeared first on Next New Deal, the Roosevelt Institute's blog.

Rejoicing an Icy Pond

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:14:00 +0000

I sit here pondering

my pond.
I sit here trying to
find just the right words
to describe
the precise shade of its
icy grey surface.
Not silvery,
except for spots,
at certain angles.
Not pewter,
except now and then

when the light disappears
pewter fits a large patch.

I could say the ice is the
color of an elephant's
hide but then I'd have
to say that doesn't
capture the way the sunlight
plays, skating
across the absolutely
smooth and frozen crust of water.

Why am I so hell bent
on communicating the color
of the pond? Why
am I compelled to freeze into words
the warm excitement I feel staring
out the window at this sight? It
has everything to do with
the light.

Still, I ought to stop trying
to find the right words
and just let my eyes settle
and fill with the beautiful ice.
I move my
mind to the bench and there,
I pull my bathrobe tight and
breathe in
the arctic wind and rejoice
in the pond and the glowing sunlight
which suddenly

turns the surface white
and slightly mirrored.

Human Ways

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:15:00 +0000

By Camincha

Domino, he is barely ten weeks old. Vera has been told those weeks equal the age of a teenager, but still, to her, he is only a baby kitten. That’s why when she heard his long, howling meows, she immediately thought, he is in danger. Full of concern, she ran to the window.

There he was, stretched out on the backyard chair enjoying the sunshine, blue skies, roaming clouds. There was Domino, green eyes round as quarters, which made a great contrast with his snow white and charcoal fur. And that smile! If a kitten could smile, he was. Smiling, being friendly, trying to make friends. Not far, the object of his attention was cruising the backyard, a fat, furry cat, nose up in the air.

Just like a human, she laughed out loud. That fat snob wouldn’t even look at you, ha? Little ten week old! That’s all right, Domino. You’ll learn to recognize them, those human ways.

Meow, meow, meowwwwwwwwww.

Camincha is a pen name for a California-based writer.

The Refugee I Rely On, Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:35:00 +0000

By Alexander "Sandy" Prisant

My heart and kidney are failing. I may be near the end of the road. And for all the prestigious men of medicine who’ve tended me in six countries over 60 years, it now comes down to this:

The last man who can save my life does not come from a long line of fine physicians, nor generations of Ivy League laureates.

The last man who can save my life is, of all things, one of the resourceful Vietnamese Boat People. One of the harried thousands fleeing by sea to save themselves when the North Vietnamese Army overran South Vietnam in 1975.

If you’re old enough, you’ll recall this short and furious wave of immigration. TV images of frantic Vietnamese vying with the US Embassy staff for an inch of space on the last helicopters leaving the Embassy roof in Saigon. It was a graphic, distressing vision of the final hours in the first war we’d lost in America’s entire history.

But there was a silver lining. Few reached those helicopters, but many of the best and brightest down below scrambled toward the open sea and jumped on anything that would float.

We didn’t know it at first, but these resourceful victims of war, with their brains and skills would turn out be one of the most valuable waves of immigration for America’s life and economy in the last 100 years. From rice farmers transported to new paddies in the Sacramento Delta to a future heart transplant surgeon named Si Mai Pham. By the 1980’s, Vietnamese Americans had higher average incomes than all other major ethnic groups—black, white and Hispanic.

But on that April day in 1975, Si Mai Pham was simply a second-year student at the pharmacy school in Saigon, near the US Embassy. With the North Vietnamese Army beginning to enter the city, he saw first-hand the American helicopters hovering above and his countrymen desperately trying to claw up the Embassy’s fortified walls. He quickly understood that in the chaos of war, his liberty would depend on his wits.

Pham fled toward downtown and wound up at Saigon’s harbor where there was only a single South Vietnamese coast guard vessel docked. He clambered aboard with scores of other civilians. But there was a hitch. The boat wouldn’t start-- the reason the Vietnamese Navy had left it behind. The more dexterous of the escapees began working to make repairs with their bare hands. Over the next six hours, with soldiers and tanks from the North crisscrossing the area, the work on the patrol boat continued. “There was so much chaos everywhere that even in daylight, the invading soldiers did not understand we were a bunch of Southerners trying to escape,” Pham recalls.

As dusk fell, the engine finally cranked over and the vessel limped out of Saigon harbor with all navigations lights extinguished to avoid capture. All through the night, it continued aimlessly out into the South China Sea.

And then the craft slowly began to sink. After a 24-hour nightmare on the open sea, the hungry, thirsty and frightened passengers were saved again, when a South Vietnamese battleship saw the craft and organized a high-risk transfer at sea of all the exhausted escapees.

Without provisions for them, the battleship continued on its own escape from the North Vietnamese, into US hands. Two days later they reached the US base at Subic Bay in the Philippines.

But for the civilians, the odyssey lasted at least three days more, as they were shuttled into a huge converted American merchant ship that took them to the island of Guam and a US Air Force base. In all, 5,000 Vietnamese were brought to a simple refugee camp with tents and basic sanitation that had been hastily set up for the wave.

It had taken almost a week to flee across the South China Sea and into the Pacific, but Si Mai Pham without English or family or anything more than the clothes on his back, had become a survivor. For Pham, the adventure was only beginning, but he remembers now, “There was nothing else to do. I had to survive.”

It was still nearly four decades before our paths would cross, but half a world away, I, too, was learning what survival was all about.

Sandy Prisant is a writer living in Florida with his wife Susan. For almost two years now, he has been chronicling his battle with a life-threatening kidney disease in a series called, "The Journey We Take Alone." To read earlier installments of this very compelling story, use the search function below and type in his name. His wife, Susan, has written her own series of equally-compelling stories under the title, "The Journey We Take Together."

Sister Mysteries, Chapter 59: Renata Risks Everything and Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Claudia R) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:09:00 +0000

Note to readers: Sister Mysteries is an on-line novel about a nun falsely accused of killing her cousin. She managed to escape hanging by running away. So why in this chapter is she is risking everything to come back?

Renata prays the rosary the whole way. The prayers relax her as she keeps Sister Teresa front and center in her mind. What will she find when they arrive at the convent? Will Teresa still be alive?

Arthur pushes the horse as fast as the old road will allow. But the going is slow, the surface of the road rutted and pocked by holes and sharp rock.

They stop once to water the horse, and a second time, to eat some of the lunch that Renata packed. But soon they are back to the road, and the endless red dust, rising up in clouds. It's a long and jolting ride.

As the sun starts to approach the horizon, the road narrows and starts to descend into the golden valley. Arthur stops and massages the back of his neck with one hand. "I'm feeling a might weary ma'am, so I propose we stop here, take a little rest before we push down into the valley."

"Oh must we?" Renata cries. "We're so close now. And I have such a terrible premonition, I keep fearing that I am going to walk into the convent just after Teresa has...has ...." she shakes her head, sets her forehead against the rosary beads wrapped around her fingers.

"I won't linger, ma'am, I just feel like I need a little nap. It won't be a long sleep I promise."

Renata's eyes brighten. "I know. I can drive the wagon while you rest in back, I've handled a rig this big before." As Renata glances forward to the horse, she tells herself that this is more or less true, she once drove a smallish cart pulled by a donkey.

"I wish you wouldn't," Arthur replies. "I'd be worrying about you the whole time. The road gets even more narrow from here on descending into this valley."

"Yes, yes, I know very well this road, and this valley, I've walked it so many times. We aren't more than five or six miles from the convent now, I will be fine, I promise you." Her voice is calm and strong as she slips the rosary beads into her side pocket and reaches for the reins.

"I won't sleep for long," Arthur says, climbing over the seat into the back and pulling the blanket over him.

Renata squares herself on the wagon seat and pulls up the reins. Then she snaps them sharply, just as she had seen Arthur do so many times. The horse doesn't move. She snaps the reins again, and a third time.

"He can sense the new driver," Arthur says from the back. "And he can tell we're starting to descend."

Renata gets out of the wagon and approaches the horse. She strokes his ears and whispers lovingly. "We will take good care of you, and feed you carrots and apples when we get to the convent." She rubs his nose and spends a few moments with her arms around his neck. "We've got to get there," she whispers. "It's ever so important."

She climbs back to the wagon seat and this time when she snaps the reins the horse stalls for a moment but then moves forward, picking his way through ruts and rock. The light is still good, so Renata relaxes. Her mood rises the further they descend toward the convent. At one bend, she realizes that in the far distance is the line of live oaks where she and Teresa would bring their lemonade and blankets after chores were finished. Her heart begins to race and her face tightens as she wonders what she will find when they get there.

Arthur is snoring from the back of the wagon. Renata pulls herself up on the seat as the road begins a particularly steep decline. The horse slows. She snaps the reins but with little effect. The horse is going his pace and that is as fast as they will go.

The sky is now a steely grey blue, the sun melting into the blue hills across the valley. There are pink and orange remnants of sunset in the clouds overhead. Renata has always loved the convent setting, and now she gets a rush of nostalgia for this place that she has missed so deeply these last months while confined to jail. Her heart beats faster, and she is filled almost to tears thinking of the love she has for all of the sisters, and even for Mother Yolla, despite her often ornery temper.

Arthur is sound asleep as the wagon passes through the final steep portion of the road. By now, Renata is so excited to get there, and so close, that she is tempted to stop the wagon and run the rest of the way, as no matter how much she snaps the reins the horse goes his own slow pace.

The sky overhead is redder than before, the sunset throwing a wondrous show as she sees the adobe steeple of the chapel. She cannot make out the bell, but she can see the dark cross at the top of the steeple. She can't keep herself contained.

She pulls the reins to a halt and jumps down from the wagon before the horse comes to a full halt. She shakes Arthur awake. "We're here, we're here, I'm going in," she cries, but doesn't wait for a reply. She is racing toward the convent picking her way around the gardens, and the apple trees, and soon she is standing on the back tiled patio where the fountain, absent of water, stands.

And in a moment, she is inside the convent, breathing hard. What she hears first is the clatter of forks and knives against plates. It hadn't occurred to her that she was arriving just in time for dinner.

Trembling, sweaty, out of breath, and still wearing the hat that Arthur loaned her for the trip, she walks slowly into the dining room. Her legs wobble as she raises one hand in greeting.

Eighteen faces, including Teresa's, stare back at her, in varying states of shock.

Teresa rises from her place, her hands on either side of her face. She paces unsteadily around the table to greet Renata. The two embrace and simultaneously descend to their knees, their hands clasped in prayer. The rest of the nuns gather around the two, questions shooting from all directions.

"Where have you been? How did you get back? Why are you here? Don't you fear they'll find you..."

Mother Yolla set her hand on Renata's hat and lifts it off her head. Her hair is a short bristly cut, matted and dirty. But that doesn't stop Mother Yolla from planting a kiss on Renata's crown. "God Bless you my child, God will protect you now that you are here."

Renata, with Teresa's help, stands and lets herself be hugged and kissed by the excited nuns. Soon she's seated at the table, in her old spot, and a plate and utensils are before her. She holds up her hands.

"I'm in no condition to eat," she says, "not yet." And then she pauses and turns to Mother Yolla. "And I have a friend to get from outside. The man, Arthur, who found me half dead in the high chaparral and let me stay at his cabin. A perfect gentleman who rode me on his wagon to get here."

At that moment, Arthur appears at the door, hat held in two hands. "Good evening, sisters," he says, a tentative smile on his face. Mother Yolla approaches him and extends a hand.

"God bless you sir, God bless you."

"We'll set another place," Teresa says, disappearing into the kitchen. Renata rises from her seat and follows her. "My dear dear Teresa you are well, you are alive, you are well." Teresa looks confused.

"Yes, of course, why wouldn't I be?" Teresa is puzzled but lets Renata embrace her again.

"I had a dream, a terrible terrible dream, but it seems like it wasn't the sign I thought it was. I was convinced that you were so ill, so ill, that the doctors feared you were dying, I saw all the nuns gathered around you kneeling, and you in the bed, thrashing. I was convinced I would never see you again."

Teresa releases Renata. "My poor sister, I'm so so sorry for your dream. But I am so glad you are here." Teresa's face looks ashen. She looks down to the floor and then engages Renata's gaze once more.

She squeezes Renata's hand and pulls Renata closer. "It's Señora I'm afraid."

"What?"

"Your dream had me being ill. But it is Señora who suffers. I will take you to her first thing in the morning."

"She is sick, Señora is ill?"

Teresa nodded her head gravely. "I have been with her for the past seven days. She suffered a terrible fever the week before and she was thrashing about and in seizure. Then she fell unconscious. The doctor says it's a coma and she..."Teresa pauses. Inhales. "I'm afraid he's convinced that she may never emerge."

Renata's insides drop. Suddenly she is so tired, so overwhelmed by fatigue that she feels she might collapse right there in the kitchen. She swings around and aims unsteadily for the rocking chair in the corner. But she only makes it half-way before she dissolves onto the floor.