Listening to our Lives

We have to learn to listen to ourselves, recognizing our stories must be told.  I've moved through my life creating one tale after another in fact and fiction. I’ve held my stories close.  Now I’m beginning to see I’m more than the sum of my legends? Tales have become an anecdote. I’ve discovered  while expressing these tales, I’m not always conscious of the qualities of the balance I seek. I’ve learned life has changed. “The world is not always according to Dona” I still have a desire for a life that boggles my mind and a continual education of  self. Seeking knowledge and discovery  as I substantiate my internal hungry child. I am moving from the world of others while shifting memories to living my life within the immediate.  Effervescence has become a daily exercise. Is this my fear or wisdom touching me by grace? Illusions of control are found as I wait, confronting  feelings for affirmation.

 I needed my stories as if they were a drug of choice.  I wouldn’t stop my inquisitions until I had understanding... Whatever was occurring within each new chapter, I became the show, entertaining when possible. I took custody of whomever, when I didn’t have a perception of what to do, and this was my default performance. My evasive distracting activity found its understanding. I did it with great trepidation of thoughts, often over thinking which led to being paralyzed in my deliberations. If I couldn’t find an explanation, if something felt missing; my inner war began, looking for accounts to comfort, until they ceased. Never did I realize as I began story telling, there was healing occurring from my past psychological wounds. 

My amusing manner wasn’t always welcomed. I now know I could have recognized a new truth. I had to accept that waiting existed while my process continued in its discomfort.   I began learning in narrative there are no quick fixes in life. Life was my art form, with attitudes from my past changing.  Each vivid response reflects back on my lack of thought in  discomfort. I would get lost in chronicles, while my  dance with thoughts flowed only in poetry.  Caring about the legacy of my mother as well as her anger and blame. During her grieving, my childhood growth was left with a huge hole. Her narcissistic control promoted my continual looking for the buffer after my father’s loss in other men. 

I wanted to have the charm of being a little girl who had attention surrounding her in my father’s business and from his customer’s. He idolized me, and that love carried me after he died in ever searching; to be my own little Shirley Temple, Pollyanna, even Marilyn Monroe; making sure I loved everyone, in order not to experience another loss at the expense of my own self love and ego. I often gave up integrity as I fell into my need. Never looking for a way to care for myself and accept myself.  What seems to be offered now is my more positive containment to recognizing my gifts.

 I didn’t realize how courageous I have been in entertaining my wild child. My losses had become my strength. It carries me through while I entertain the world, searching for esteem. I now understand how my dynamic personality has developed. What I have to do in evolving my choices is erased or work with the wounds still lodged inside deterring me from living in reality, while accepting each day. This may not be possible, a searching tenacity from my childhood. Life is messy and I am not always a good housekeeper. This metaphor for my history has taken me to other people reciting and repeating trials till I get the truth in the lesson; if there is one?

Living an Learning

Michael will sleep in his new home tonight. So interesting. When will I get to see it. When will I get my book ?

Here’s an other page of waiting!

• I’m in the hands of someone else to keep me going. There is Facebook! Fun and easy. However Instagram I’m not sure how to manage. Then there is the Twitter populous which I once collected poetry on which might be lost forever to ”X". Thanks “X”

• Thanks Elon Musk for confusing me in a senior citizen population perhaps forever remaining with no #’s. Now I am on my forth Amazon proof. Needless to say I flung myself into a world I will force myself to discover. Research begins on Google and TikTok. Someone told me is would replace Google. Can’t believe it. Back to Amazon sales and books where you can find everything. This has become a devotion to the world of social media that I have been released into. Will I finally be released into the world of technology and social media. Look out here I come! Ha! Amazon find me a book for this and my book opening to life’s long lasting list. UGH

Let this be finished!

As the day finishes and the night makes it way, once again I am waiting for my book to be published. Amazon doesn’t like picture, photos or art work for it seems to complicate their process as well as mine. They gave me my money back and a new format. My first lovely book was published by a private printer. I want to give it to the world. The prayer is only words and not pictures, paintings or photo’s. The first book was finished Oct. 2020. How things have changed in my process as I move through this world.

T

Still

Interests follow like a young child

Freighted by thunder and dark places

Belonging has found itself lost 

Corners of spaces remembered

Capturing extras within what is 

Found beyond a grasp 

Dawn’s touches explode

Knowing the beautiful truths thirst

Searching as fingers run across photos 

Looking where skins paintbrush forms truth...

Silently you were forever frozen

Time has become another number on a list.

The list of painting fantasies 

Still yet to be finished

Still not knowing 

What is mine and what is not?

Anna

       One brief moment

Was all I could give.

Time after time

I would pass

Never stopping

She would shout:

“Hello there”

Anna’s silken white hair

Lay curled on her shoulder

Her shared room

With only two possessions

A stark bookcase

An album and Kleenex on it

Frail and weak

The once famous dancer

Clutched rolled Kleenex

Held to her lips

While she chewed it

I introduced myself

Picking up her album

She whispered; “Mother who?”

Johnny Rockets

Hamburgers sizzle as my nostrils expand with sight and smell. A young man barely old enough to work, methodically flips eight burgers at the same time. He flips frying each disk, fries sliding grease into some secret vat below the griddle. An alarm beeps and the French fries are ready. Am I done? My head and senses scream and I am sure these clothes will reek of grease with lingering smoke. Johnny Rockets has come alive as I watch the whipped cream dispensers top struggles to top as pale almond shake. How can I resist as my mouth waters for a sweet satisfaction!

Being Consistent…Impossible!

I’m sitting at my laptop wondering if I can ever take these moments alone. Continuing the story I decided to write on a daily basis. Does it have any interest or energy to follow. I will dream to have some clever moments and art. Twists and turns in my life forward. Will my energy spark me forward. Who am I and who are you? y reader of many delights?

My Beginning

What does it mean to have strong Political beliefs? My thoughts were scattered with strong opinions without being followed in reason. Debates squandered in random passing conversations taught me a process for education that was never really being addressed in what it meant to have Democrats living on the corner. We were Republicans I supposed and what did that mean? What did it mean to be friends with the girls on the corner? Was being a Democrat bad by the tones of my mother’s voice in judgment. Could I have fun with the neighbor children or did I have to remain separate?  Was I surrounded by the voice of I can’t and judgments in all the labels I never understood. My husband is Catholic, Italian, and handicapped. The only concrete label was that he has a PhD, a rank he earned. This impressed my mother and brother. Handicap and Italian were not as welcomed.

Titles with a writer's love for people found me wondering? As I began facing education after filling the gaps in my primary school education.  I found dancing, listening to music, and friends were what I was good at. Art also mattered; it was my only A grade. I was off to claim my post High School education with family in England. When I flunked 2 courses in my senior year, I was still off to England to get an Art degree. Their system didn't care what my education was. I had four years of High School. I was accepted to Kingston upon Hull’s Regional College of Arts and Crafts,in England. My grandiosity was about to take me that far from home where the systems of a foreign country didn’t affect me. I was about to find out about living with a structured University family. I became a foreigner because of their manners. I only knew England's music with dancing and the love of music would continue. I didn’t know I couldn’t thrive without an internal structure to support me. 

My mother’s heartbreak didn’t matter to me. Mom stayed with my best friend Bonnie’s family for 2 weeks, crying, because I left. My spirit's fearless nature out weighed my mother’s needs. How she came up with the money for me to go to England I will never know.  Her lack of education could perhaps have given her motivation to get money and give me her need to surpass her childhood desire to learn which was lodged in her poverty childhood home and the times that didn’t allow girls to be educated. Unless the girl was from a wealthy family.

Mom found a husband who was raised in Boston with a wealthy family.Her thoughts were to bring my Mom stability and charm. Then at the age of 45 my father died and with that her dreams. Dad and she had traveled the United States as he was a salesman as they enjoyed their start. Rochester NY was where they were to settle because I was to be the surprise of a child after losing two pregnancies. She couldn’t believe she was to have a child at 40 and my brother was 13 years older.

My Art and Age!

Born Donna Jean Westcott of Rochester, New York. Now in Buffalo Dona Jean Michelini I am owning many names, my Art and Age!

My Art started expressing itself in childhood when I would sit at the kitchen table or in school. At the age of about 8 years old I received scholarships to Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. One summer as I placed my heavy gray news print on my easel, outside of the Gallery on the law in the shade, I was surprised by the news wanting to take a photo of myself and my painting. (See photo to the left). The then Democrat and Chronicle published one of the first color photos. I must have been 11 or 12. When my mother saw the photo her first remark was your clothes don’t match. My mother had a great fashion sense. Childhood was filled with Art, Dance, and Music. As I entered my teens I sang a lot, some of the songs were mine or listening to Musicals at my God Parents. As I began High School it was a time of Beatles and experiencing an era of American Bandstand! Loved to dance and sing! Tonight I wished as I showed my Artistic life to experience some of all of that, although, I’m afraid my voice has shifted to poetry and not singing. Although it is on my list!

Always wanting to be in the center of attention and an actress, I decided my name was had to be change. I became D.J. West. My mother being a power force in childhood always told me I should have been Donna with one “N”. She didn’t have the ware hall to change it for she became a widow in 1951. She then became one of an uncommon reality of working mothers and Art was a wonderful way for me to support my mother’s need to relax after work. My mother a dynamic woman promoted my Art. When she died in 1998, as a tribute to her, I changed my name to Dona with one “N”.I have explored other names in my years, one: Donna Michaels.DBA as a Photographic Stylist for Stills and TV Commercials. My Art continued as I propped sets and created where I had to fill in the blanks for Advertising Agencies. Donna Michelini was not going to be receiving as I perceived. Commercial and advertising work needs to be short and memorable. Donna Michaels can be spelled easily as well.

I’d like to say this Art Show welcomes the life surrounding me with my various forms of medium. Enjoy my Show and presentation of Personality expressed through Art: From the 70’s to the 70’s a celebration expressed and given form. My home, husband and child have been a part of my Artistic form, while I never became a working artist except in my home and garden and forms during schooling. I have now expressed and honored my past as a focus and gift to me as I face my aging years and enter a new decade. This is a chapter (a lot of chapters) to proceed into whatever my path allows: perhaps through my Twitter account where another name expressed as DonaAmber where I write poetry and other writing venues. This is where I imagine I will continue is in writing.

Welcome!

The Great White

  What fun for me in my Domestic Goddess World. I carry your football Doctor with me and your healing effects in my memory of feeling These photographic visual recall.  I have a lot of memories hard wired already from our times together, that is a story in itself. I take your healing effects when shopping with me and shoveling...on the treadmill as well. Wonder if you have to shovel when you get home. Ah but the universe knows what it is doing to help or not.

I only ever got to watch the fourth quarter. Guess what, I have seen you a lot in the past two weeks games.I turned on the TV last week and there you were head and shoulder filling the screen.  I have gotten to see a full range of personality and postures. I got to see a profile of your physique.  Today your backside was in full view as I got to see you in action providing health care and later laughing on the field with a man who had quite the large stomach in a blue shirt,  surely you don't remember the color. Love to see your warmth. You had a lightweight black jacket on and there goes one of my photographic mind creats snapshots!

Well in the stress of the holiday I saw the universe has given me lots of support including the support of seeing you to keep me smiling. I won't see you till well past the holidays. I am graced once again with the fun of our passing in the hallway. I am coming to drop off my gifts. You could invite me to your office. Got to do the present thing. Another story of how I have to temper myself. Not really!

Reinvention

Born Donna Jean Westcott of Rochester, New York. Now in Buffalo Dona Jean Michelini I am owning many names, my Art and Age!

My Art started expressing itself in childhood when I would sit at the kitchen table or in school. At the age of about 8 years old I received scholarships to Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. One summer as I placed my heavy gray news print on my easel, outside of the Gallery on the law in the shade, I was surprised by the news wanting to take a photo of myself and my painting. (See photo to the left). The then Democrat and Chronicle published one of the first color photos. I must have been 11 or 12. When my mother saw the photo her first remark was your clothes don’t match. My mother had a great fashion sense. Childhood was filled with Art, Dance, and Music. As I entered my teens I sang a lot, some of the songs were mine or listening to Musicals at my God Parents. As I began High School it was a time of Beatles and experiencing an era of American Bandstand! Loved to dance and sing! Tonight I wished as I showed my Artistic life to experience some of all of that, although, I’m afraid my voice has shifted to poetry and not singing. Although it is on my list!

Always wanting to be in the center of attention and an actress, I decided my name was had to be change. I became D.J. West. My mother being a power force in childhood always told me I should have been Donna with one “N”. She didn’t have the ware hall to change it for she became a widow in 1951. She then became one of an uncommon reality of working mothers and Art was a wonderful way for me to support my mother’s need to relax after work. My mother a dynamic woman promoted my Art. When she died in 1998, as a tribute to her, I changed my name to Dona with one “N”.I have explored other names in my years, one: Donna Michaels.DBA as a Photographic Stylist for Stills and TV Commercials. My Art continued as I propped sets and created where I had to fill in the blanks for Advertising Agencies. Donna Michelini was not going to be receiving as I perceived. Commercial and advertising work needs to be short and memorable. Donna Michaels can be spelled easily as well.

I’d like to say this Art Show welcomes the life surrounding me with my various forms of medium. Enjoy my Show and presentation of Personality expressed through Art: From the 70’s to the 70’s a celebration expressed and given form. My home, husband and child have been a part of my Artistic form, while I never became a working artist except in my home and garden and forms during schooling. I have now expressed and honored my past as a focus and gift to me as I face my aging years and enter a new decade. This is a chapter (a lot of chapters) to proceed into whatever my path allows: perhaps through my Twitter account where another name expressed as DonaAmber where I write poetry and other writing venues. This is where I imagine I will continue is in writing.

Welcome!

Face Lift? Face Light? Face Life?

Strutting and bouncing with purpose and excitement forms each of my steps. I find the earth supporting my actions in advancing goals, undefined, except in my fantastic dreams. My hair bounces, posture aliens in a direction waiting to know where I’m going.  Then there are the times when breath finds a weak slump pulling my feet with exhaustion and life seems as if weight has found itself tied and dragging my every step. When I strut I adore life, knowing who I am, asking eternal questions of myself, How can I keep the bounce that finds expressions I covet.

   My vault for living is counted on when I go away. I quickly knew there was an invitation for his talk that was more than I wanted. Encounters with male openness as he walked the audience and again in the hallway found me talking to him and as I often am intimidated by male face to face interaction, I brought up my age when I be came uncomfortable. I said I was 68 while he and I talked about my revelation during his talk. My revelation was that life would find me and I didn’t need to search with verve for experiences. No matter what the provocation. 

He said “you don’t look 68”. I left that part of the event with what does 68 look like spinning in my thoughts. Then we met again in the hallway and I just asked him “What does 68 look like ''? He said my skin was not that of a 68 year old. This was an affirmation I had been struggling with for a while in my Peter Pan existence and my high spirited self. Yet having a lot of years and self knowledge behind me, I knew I was in a struggle to love myself as I moved through the rest of my life?

What does love mean to me? What has love meant to me?  An alarm system  rings as love retreats from whoever my focus is; a hard wiring in me wanting attention from everyone. Even when a person’s interest shows an obvious disinterest.I can’t resolve from some playful actions. I have been graced with more than I could have ever imagined, still my struggle exists, I now face the waning of my beauty and I have just recognized I was beautiful inside. Feeling my authentic self and owning my beauty was just cemented, I had pushed it away much like love, living in a denial of just knowing I liked men to look at me but they were never allowed to get close in anything but imagination or what I thought was friendly play. My inner voice was one of self criticism: as it echoed: it can’t be true that I am beautiful; a proclamation of continual can’t. The voice can't continually whisper and sometimes shouts at me. Am I beautiful? Am I still beautiful? I am beautiful!

Existential Dilemma

As I sit in the evening thinking of my Day and how messy my life can be, I will let go of most of my harsh disturbances! I have allowed my creativity to be expressed with an external love and a wide net cast on the world to embrace it all! Now as I work in such a small amount of time; I see how I have cast my web which expresses my art! Abstractions in my poetry are found as I express my work. I know what is seen or read or heard depends on the eyes of those who look! There are many meanings to even one sentence, one brush stroke, for me. Clarity finds words spread in circles stretching across the canvas of my life. I am the artist open to be seen by the eyes of who perceives my words. I release without expectations only hope! I do love the whimsy of my life and work! Yet now I will define it!

William

There have been different kinds of Shaman’s in my life and I am paraphrasing Elizabeth Lesser from her book “Broken Open”.

Here is what Lesser’s says; The Shaman Lover is a man or woman whose destiny is to heal the heartsick with the sweetness of love, and to give the gift of fire to those whose passion is frozen. Some call the Shaman Lover a temptress or a cad, a siren or a snake. Sometimes this is true; sometimes the Shaman Lover has bad medicine to offer. Sometimes the smartest response to the allure is to run away. But sometimes the Shaman Lover has been sent by fate to blast us open, to awaken the dead parts of our body, to deliver the kiss of life. And we succumb, we are changed forever.

sha·man  (shämn, sh-)

s.n.

A member of certain tribal societies who acts as a medium between the visible world and an invisible spirit world and who practices magic or sorcery for purposes of healing, divination, and control over natural event

William came to break me open for 50 years!

The Surrogate Wish

I have had the privilege of being with a handful of people just before they made ready to pass from this world. Being with the dying is an honor as far as I am concerned because when it meets my minds ideal; it is the moment when truth from the person is most ignited.  I seem to have seen these people do what is known as “rallying” to dance just once before they let go. My girlfriends husband (Lou) had the admiration that allowed him friends and family that wanted every minute with him. Some of those friends were Doctors. These Doctors were able to keep him out of pain without losing his passionate spirit and personality that spoke to these men. One of the men who were there to support him was a Doctor an Oncologist and Lou was dying of Cancer at age 54.  To his credit I watched him rally one last day to be doing his fantasy football and eat his favorite sandwich even though his body had already started shutting down. The ability to eat in the mist of dying for me speaks to the power of the human spirit. He also got to read my last written words to him.  He told my his wife; that I was a poet. Lou’s words were: “Why Dona is a Poet”.  I think coming from a man who was dying; his words I took on a whole new meaning for me. I was able to say I am a Poet with a bit more confidence.

This is how I feel about my sexuality; the rallying of my own spirit as a sensual woman has been ignited. Not to say I am dying but I feel I am hanging on to my sensual self by a thread. To experience all the beauty, I never allowed myself to feel or know. In my childhood experiences as a young woman and child, who moved through life with a love for men as I searched for my father in all men. Now as the torment of some of my nights and having my husband has gone out of town. I wanted one last rally. I wanted to tell one more story of a fantasy that I have only partly told. She told me of her X who is a Doctor with some interesting sexual proclivities; her story inspired me further.  How could this notion in mind have crazed me by thinking of  how I could even bring my wild imagination I have because I am dying for male attention.

Yes indeed I am a desperate old woman with a very young mind and spirit that wants to rally to the embrace of being loved with the passion of a once young beautiful woman. I have just begun owning my beauty; I want to be with a man who is younger. Much like the ownership of my being a poet with a new confidence, I feel the beauty of who I am and have nowhere to engage it. Where did this desperation come from and where will it go? I am going to breathe through this and hold my actions and thoughts as much as possible. What I think doesn’t have to be real but I want it to be. Yet in my past thoughts I have seen what I focus on I attract.  Ah but the notion is just so pleasurable to have one last fling. What will the universe allow? Would it complicate or appease?  These thoughts were all inspired by the movie “Sessions” where I went into the theater's bathroom after seeing it and cried. I knew in my heart I needed someone to walk me through what I had never known. The enlivening of all the pleasures I had accepted in an unconscious response to whomever. Is there someone who could teach me how to feel my physical body, which has been shut down little by little in all the sex I have had with unconscious reactions. Perhaps in reality I have had all the feelings just not in one man. That itself is a dangerous thought for me. I don’t want to think my life has been enough even though I am grateful for what I have learned. In my experience so far life has led me with wonder and grace.

The beginning of Sales

It took me almost an hour to put on my makeup. I had given up my twiggy painted eyelashes for a fake Geraldine Chaplin’s black beauty marks. For her they were real moles under her eyes. I wanted a different look and style. In the salon a lot of women accepted my flow. Everyday I would greet one woman who came into the salon to put her makeup on. She acknowledged my make-up and moved on to have hers done. Six days a week, at an exorbitant price, she came. Sundays she faked it on her own. I can’t imagine not washing my makeup off  for a day. How could she?  Miss Ette, a french professional makeup artist, called in sick one day. The salon manager Miss Lanye looked at me and said, “you do makeup Go!” That was the day I became the woman’s daily makeup stylist. No licensing was required, only talent. I had talent: The daily client also walked out with a huge bag of makeup by Kenneth Battele also known as Mr.Kenneth. He was the makeup artist for Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn among his famous women patrons. He was the hair stylist who defined a generational style: stiff coiffures and teased hair with what look like a rat's nest ball to support their sprayed and sparkly bun style.  After that experience I was dubbed the woman who could probably sell the Brooklyn Bridge. “Wow! What fun” as I watched wealth and elegance appear before me.

I really was so honest and sweet as a young woman I didn’t recognize when they told me to tell clients that my tight curly hair was a permanent wave, to sell more treatments.  I had cut my hair by myself with a razor and my curls were natural; any mistake didn’t matter. Expensive stylists had no time for me to get a cut. Occasionally, when the manager tried to sell my cut and style to build clientele for permanent waves: I agreed with her; however I was going to change my hair so as not to feel dishonest, to drop their lie. I then created a new style by slapping gel to straighten my hair, looking more like a flapper. 

Still harboring wishes for  glamor, the magic which I grasp at in my dreams began in  the salon. I told my adopted mother figure and friend in NY City that I wanted to be rich and famous. She said,” Oh Donna, you would be far too dangerous”. I can see now how my life has evolved, how true that was. There were lies everywhere as I grew into being a woman in New York City. The power of the City started becoming too much for me. But the City remained a part of my spirit:

Eventually I decided to go home to Rochester, NY. My brother tried to fix me up with a local well known lawyer, he was a friend of my older brother. Tony Leonardo was a very handsome and striking man. I don’t know if he knew that and my mothers sported those wishes. Later

 I settled down and moved to Buffalo, Tony came from Rochester to defend David Bowey on an illegal marijana charge. Tony was closer to my age and I remembered our time socializing with my brother.  Then years later the headlines read he was being charged and tried for his association to the murder and robbery of Brinks truck driver, where the guard was killed. Life changed for him, he was now in a different place, prison and disbarred. Memories and lies of another kind showed me when I had sat in a dark and dimly lit bar and restaurant which I felt was wrong, my being frightened of him was a good thing. Tony probably knew I was not for him and I was  saved from the dark life of dating a man who sat with me at the Blue Gardenia. I was free of any of that attachment to illegal relationships and more lies. My instinct handled it, fear knew Tony was wrong. I was to be my brother's younger sister only.

Language Extenders

In Anne Sexton’s Pulitzer Prize for poetry book, Transformations, she asked Kurt Vonnegut to write the foreword.

His foreword: 

                    “I asked a poet friend one time what it was that poets did, and he thought awhile, and then he told me, “They extend the language.”  I thought that was neat, but it didn’t make me grateful in my bones for poets.  Language extenders I can take or leave alone.”  By Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Asking myself when reading this quote, this has been my flow, my drama, my struggle with words flowing onto paper. More poetic without structure. A stream of consciousness found in me in phrases and random inaccessible thoughts looking for meaning.  Writing was my second love, men with power were my first, “daddy” figures. I extended myself in my own world of Art forms which were abstract. I spent almost 3 months on a painting in Minnesota at University of Minnesota Duluth.  I sat in concentrated effort in those days.  Other students would look at the painting and wanted labels or visualized forms to make sense of the painting. They saw a river, a dog, whatever. I saw and felt flow while scraping paint, hiding colors under layers of white and black. This large painting expressed power and understanding I longed for. I was wanting to figure it out myself, wanting them to figure me out as an abstraction. 

We left the beautiful city of Duluth resting on hills overlooking Lake Superior. There was no time to stay and understand this city. I had a standing joke: While living in San Francisco, I thought nowhere could exist with snow and such hills.  In Duluth, temperatures fell where oil would freeze in cars if left outside in the winter.  A heating coil had to be inserted into the oil pan for this reason. During snow storms, cars slid down the hill through intersections.  On the cross streets traffic stopped automatically. Life had made a liar of me for there were the hills of San Francisco in Duluth. 

The Art Department in Duluth supported my style as it was Avant Garde.  One professor from Chicago was into sound sculpture and hung musical wires from trees. Another professor cast pork chops in resin as a sculptural type of painting.  I spent hours painting and experimenting on carving out my style.  Once I draped a young lady in reflective fabric and bathed her with flashing lights and photographic images.  I wanted power and UMD allowed me to major in Art Administration and Politics.  The Art Department had become family to me but we were too far from our real family and old friends. 

Ron looked for other opportunities closer to home. We moved to the city known for snow, Buffalo, NY.  After the cold of Duluth, I told people we had to move to Buffalo for the weather. I went to University of Buffalo and Ron, a professor, was in another college.  We went to separate Universities. I wanted to finish my Bachelors which was taking far too long in all our moves.  Art administration was no longer possible. I was able to get a degree in Political Science by default. Ultimately very laughable. Politics in Minnesota seemed clear to me. It wasn't that way for me in New York. In Duluth if they said they would do something, they did. This was a concept I needed.   I did take an elective in Creative Writing that stirred me. I began word painting on paper as I worked at City Hall. Abstractions flowed with words creating a poetic flow.  I was finding myself.

A professor in Buffalo and I became friends.  It was the late 70’s and I was an older student by that time. I got invited to a party thrown for Alan Ginsburg's birthday. A tall man later walked in and I was nudged by another student telling me: “It’s Kurt Vonnegut, he came to wish Alan a happy birthday.” Magic was following me again I thought.

Reasons

-Do we really need reasons to explain our moods

-I am starting to believe I don’t need words

-I want words

- my mind trying to stay busy

- Is offering explanations in my words

- It is so freeing this stopping

-Just live Debbie

-this is what I am starting to own

-Just live Dona

- Be whoever shows up today

-without judgment or suppression in explanation

-I’m here again talking to you