Dr. Ni's Notes & Nibbles--10

Welcome to Dr. Ni's Notes & Nibbles--10, a gathering place of news, notes, words and wisdom bulldozing its way into your workday.

On the news front:  Dr. Emari DiGiorgio has invited me to read at the 2nd Annual Women's History Month Poetry and Prose Reading at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Wednesday, March 12th, 2008, from 5:30-7:30 pm.

Because this is a celebration of women's writing, Dr. DiGiorgio has invited twenty (20) readers. This means that everyone has five (5) minutes to read her writing (two short poems, one long poem, one shorter short story, or one short novel excerpt). She will open the reading with few brief introductory comments, and then each reader will have the floor. She is printing flyers with participants' bios for the audience. Coffee, tea, and light snacks will be served.

Four W's...

Who: You and your entourage of fans
What: A celebration of women's writing
Where: The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Room F111 (directly across from the library)
When: Wednesday, March 12, 2008, 5:30-7:30 pm

What's next:

1) For directions to the campus, please check out the college's homepage at www2.stockton.edu.

2) Once you arrive on campus, park in Lot 3 and enter F-Wing. The reading will be held in F111, directly across from the library. For a campus map, copy and paste this address http://intraweb.stockton.edu/campusmap/.

3) The reading starts at 5:30. Please arrive by 5:15. We will start promptly.

6.) Enjoy each other's work (and the coffee, tea, and snacks) and stick around: Creative Non-fiction writer Mimi Schwartz is reading from her new book Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Echoes of My Father's German Village (March 2008) in the same room at 8:00 pm.

As for the radio show:  Technical difficulties (sound issues that BlogTalkRadio was not able to resolve in time for the show) precluded last week’s show on Friday at 2 p.m. EST.  This week we hope the switchboard will be clear and that we can hear from the illustrious Sol Luckman of Beginner’s Luke.  Mr. Luke’s previous appearance was also precluded by technical difficulties and we sincerely hope that will not be the case this time.

Look for Dr. Ni:  once again at the Mad Poets’ Society Open Mic at Taylor’s at the Olde Mill on the fourth Thursday, March 27th, 2008.  7:00 p.m. with the inimitable Joseph Dorazio hosting; be there or be square!

Speaking of Taylor’s:  don’t forget to RSVP for their inimitable wine-tasting event on March 15th.  I hear tell that the chef outdoes himself with the full course dinners so thoroughly at these wine-tastings that people now come for the food and not the wine!  $50/person.  200 W. Marshall Street, Norristown, PA, 610/272-2011.  Don’t miss out!!!!

Y ahora, el primer ensayo (And now, the first essay ……):

COMMUNICATION
Niama Leslie Williams
Copyright March 2008


                                3-6-2008
                                1something a.m.

Dear Rev. Massey:
   

Nights like this I am thrown back into what it means to grow up in a home in which one is not loved or nurtured healthily.  It is equally hard to remember that my brothers weren’t either.  I know you can hear my pen scratching and you are probably wondering why I am not yet asleep.
   

Can’t.  Too much weighing me down.
   

I know being cussed at seems a small thing, and maybe my period is coming on late and I’m premenstrual, but tonight was difficult and tense.  I do most days let the children’s insolence roll off my back, but today was a crossroads for me.
   

I have to go job-hunting again, and I am not happy about that.  This morning, as I wrote so brilliantly about Donald Hall’s work, it cut to the quick that I wanted to spend the day sharing myself and my work with these cantankerous students I care so much about but … my work is too erotic and they don’t even understand words like “persevere.”  How can I share my erudition with them?  We don’t even speak the same language.  And I want to, I so want to be bilingual and pull them into my world to show them its richness, fineness, its gold.
   

They already tell themselves they don’t care without knowing what is on the other side of the wall.  And that cuts deepest—the richnesses they belligerently cut themselves off from.
   

I probably care too much, but d****t, someone has to.
   

And in the back of it all today were thoughts of James, would he be there tonight, with the bookstore literally around the corner.  And he was not and I was relieved.  I am still too fat, my hair wasn’t done, my facial hair wasn’t removed, and I just wasn’t ready.  How long is this wanting to drag on?  Plus the tension and worry of almost no audience; our big reading, Papa, and only two people at 7:32 p.m.  So much today and the spirits toggling back and forth with “you’re not ready” “neither one of you is ready” and I want to be ready, I want to be ready to walk into his arms, self-possessed and confident, because his stunning handsomeness will demand nothing less.  I have to believe I’m good enough for him, feel good enough for him, or the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
   

Sorry to be so sensitive.  But with all this, “and then the cat died,” being cussed at pushed me into those old feelings of I’ve done something horrible and it’s all my fault.  I think we’ve both been working to distraction and there have been deep changes for both of us.  Have we paused to acknowledge?  Are we still happy?  Days like this, old feelings like this, I feel confident about nothing.
   

Tomorrow.  I would like to not go in.  I decided this when I looked at the clock and it was 1:15 a.m. and I wasn’t in bed yet.  I will tell Ms. Slater I had a big event tonight and I need tomorrow to recover.
   

I’d like to get up, take the train to Warminster (or Philly) and deposit the remaining pension funds in my account so they will be there with my district pay to cover the car payment.  Remember we set it up to come out of my Freedom account.  I’ll happily take the train.  I think we need a day away from each other and you need some breathing space to study and NOT DRIVE.  You need to rest, Papa, and I have some wounds to lick.
   

I will also confess to feeling chastised when you said there was nothing in the PNC account.  Although we joke about Atlantic City, I do admit to having a spending problem.  That’s why I am so open about the bills and what I’ve spent on what.  That’s why I gave you copies of everything.  I wanted you to know what I’d done because secrets breed hate, contempt, and fear, and I’m already, all on my own, feeling the fear.
   

I’m not happy about having to look for work again, and I want more than anything to control my own damn schedule.  I will ask Constance if I can talk to her friend who does consulting; I need to be smart about how I job hunt this time.
   

Well, my hand has begun to hurt and so I should stop writing.  Just so much on my mind, weighing me down.  So scared.  So much change.  How hard it was to face Dan, First Person Arts Incorporated, and all that he represents with facial hair, too many pounds and my hair undone.  Got to pay more attention to these things.  My self-esteem is starting to sink.
   

Sorry to unload, but I choose honesty with someone I hope I haven’t chased away as opposed to hiding in the dark, stuffed full of feelings and afraid.
   

I pray I can be forgiven and that you understand some small part of what I’ve said here.  I have no right to ask or hope but I’m a poet; Plato wanted us out of the State for a reason …..


IN DEFIANCE OF FATHER TIME

(Comfort For My Beloved Friend, "Dr. Ni")
Wednesday 3/5/08


As Father Time,
with his restless, wretched, pressing finger,
traces his irrevocable lines upon your tearful, troubled countenance,
let not anything I say
because of what I may see in front of me,
make you fearful, fretful, doubtful,
at the profusion of unseemly words 
I may spew out in frustration against them.

You must, by no stretch of your vivid imagination,
allow your doubt to stem the tide
or be the companion
of our growing and godly relationship.

The things God has wrought between us
must never become unwrought
by your recently troubled spirit,
spawned by the late trials that gave them birth
within your mind.

 Seek, my true and troubled friend, seek to be
"… transformed by the renewal of your mind."

Find that "still small voice,"
chiding, prodding, steadily plodding
faithfully within your ailing thoughts,
like healing waters flowing,
like a waterfall upon you,
his words of comfort,
finally overriding the loud,
voracious attempts of our adversary
to unsettle your faith, our friendship!

"God has not given us a spirit of fear,
but of power, of love and of a sound mind."
Let these eternal words find themselves
embedded on the tables of your heart.

Oh yes, Father Time may indeed continue to etch
with cumbersome, endless finger, his lines of age,
of trial upon your face.
He may even trace them there indelibly.
But we must not allow the enemy to even start,
by inward thought or outward circumstances,
and by so doing, plow,
or incite you to conceive
that he must conjoin with Father Time,
be the irrepressible companion to his sordid calculations.

Not so!
His plot cannot endure!
Although the devil's endless scheme
Is "to kill, to steal, to destroy,"
we will, with our loving friendship,
faithfully employ the Word of God to always defeat him!
We will rest in the Lord,
wait patiently for Him,
and with his protecting angels soaring above us
from the seraphim,
find ourselves safe and secure,
all the whims of Father Time and the enemy notwithstanding!

"Our faithful witness," Christ Jesus,
residing within our hearts,
his spiritual energy increasing the pace of every heart beat, 
confiding with his assurance, knowing
He is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
interceding on our behalf,
His rod, his staff comforting us
on this often perilous journey,
we remain ever sure of his promises, his word.

And as "the sweetest sound we've ever heard"
joins the eternal light and power of the Holy Spirit
and surges through our bellies,
reverberating in our lungs,
bringing us His holiness,
by which we, in every coming hour,
prove ourselves in him.

We then defy even Father Time in our spirit,
and soundly set aside the wiles of the devil,
his slings and arrows falling uselessly to the ground.
As we hide our hearts, our souls in Him.

And so, my beloved friend, "Dr. Ni"
even as Father Time traces with timeless finger,
his lines of trial and circumstances
etching them, making them linger
indelibly upon your steadily aging frame and countenance,
remember this:
God is changeless, ageless, omnipotent.

And as we join in His Spirit
as instruments of his divine purpose,
as the "light of the world"
even they will hear it.

And, as "the trumpet shall sound,"
that of His love for all the world to see,
we, with the love of Jesus, will go on in victory
until he propels us into our final goal,
that of joining him in eternity!
 
- Joseph William Massey –

3-10-2008
2:32 a.m.

   I wrote, once, about breathing.  About life breath, love breath.  About turning 37 and having never inhaled love breath, the wondering mix of spit and mist and consciousness pressed into my mouth by the one I love.  A tragedy it seemed, no love breath 'til 37, but here I am 45, still waiting, certain he is around the corner.  Certain, but with an eye on God.
   

It has ceased to matter greatly, this love breath, because God has seen fit to distract me with something far more powerful.  Love, present and accounted for, that seems unending, the string attached to it disappearing into the clouds.  The man with whom I live, the father my inner self looked for since age 5, has materialized front and center and in need.  I happily meet some of his needs, to the best of my ability, and strangely, oddly, he loves me in return.
   

His verbally abusive mother—now in the home of a cousin.  His kitchen which hadn’t been cleaned since the last century—shining and filled with his favorites:  Baker’s Inn bread (he’d never tasted it before), oatmeal raisin cookies (he can’t have chocolate), soy milk (no dairy), cupcakes (no icing for him, upsets his stomach).  He seems to like whatever I cook as long as it is not too peppery for his once upon a time ulcer, and has made it up to 150 1/2 from his lifelong 128 lbs.  When I met him in 2004 he was always on the road, never at home, hating to spend time imprisoned with his wheelchair-bound mother.  Now he finds reasons to stay home:  to rest, sleep, write at odd hours, when he feels like it.  He smiles, he laughs, isn’t hungry all of the time like the man who used to show up at my door.  He saved me, taking me in when I lost my apartment, and I think I have managed the Pretty Woman feat of “saving him right back.”  He says I may stay until I am full-time, fat and satisfied.
   

I was premenstrual it turns out that night of our reading at the Big Blue Marble, but he is the type of man to read my pain-filled plaint and softly, intently, once I am finally able to sleep, spend his wee hours of the night writing me a poem to let me know, once again, I am loved.  When I do awake the next morning I am unaware of what he is working on and afraid to exit my bedroom.  Gripped by the tentacles of guilt feelings reaching for me straight from 2511, the scene of the horror movie childhood, I stay in my darkened room, neither raising the one shade nor turning on the big light.  I work tentatively and quiet, every fiber of my terrified, sad being attuned to the room next door.  Hours pass.  I wilt, then finally emerge.  He continues to work, focused.  I creep around the apartment, ashamed and afraid.  Will this be what gets me thrown out?
   

He finally enters my room after a polite knock apologizing for disturbing me.  My heart leaps; he doesn’t look angry, but scared, afraid.  His printer has stopped working and he can’t figure out why, every inch the exasperated 76-year-old Luddite.  Needed, relieved to be needed, I run to the printer, proceed to check this and that.
   

“I was trying to print this thing for you; I worked all night on this message of encouragement ….”  His words fade off into exasperated helplessness and anxiety.
   

I tear up.  Who has cared about me this much?  This deeply?  What father?
   

The printer problem turns out to be a simple matter of turning the system completely off, leaving it off, and letting it clear itself.  When I read the poem, I see through tears that gather without falling that nothing, nothing is simple about the depth or complexity we, adopted father and adopted daughter, share.  He says I don’t have to ask him about whether or not I go to work.  I share my plan of a minimum of 5 days worked per pay period.  I share my dream of the both of us at home full-time, writing.  He says, you have a dream, go for it.  I have the Simon Says “freeze” reaction I had months ago when he responded to a query of mine about a household matter with:  “I will never have a problem with any decision you make.”  That moment I almost dropped a dish I was washing.  This, I merely look at him and thank God.
   

Thus the birth of The Two-House Project which you will be hearing about in the next weeks.  For now, know that I have been given my head and, a happy horse, I am at the water pond, drinking.

Whew!  Heavy, eh?  Well, guess what, due to the intervention of my good friend and good Christian Mr. Fisher, the jokes section is back!!!!!  And boy, do we have some goodies for you!!!!:

Master Card Wedding:

You got to love this guy... This is a true story about a recent wedding that took place at Clemson University. It was in the local newspaper and even Jay Leno mentioned it.

It was a huge wedding with about 300 guests.

After the wedding, at the reception, the groom got up on stage with a microphone to talk to the crowd. He said he wanted to thank everyone for coming, many from long distances, to support them at their wedding.

He especially wanted to thank the bride's and his family and to thank his new father-in-law for providing such a lavish reception.

As a token of his deep appreciation, he said he wanted to give everyone a special gift just from him.

So taped to the bottom of everyone's chair, including the wedding party was an envelope.

He said this was his gift to everyone, and asked them to open their envelope.

Inside each manila envelope was an 8x10 glossy of his bride having sex with the best man.

The groom had gotten suspicious of them weeks earlier and had hired a private detective to tail them.

After just standing there, just watching the guests' reactions for a couple of minutes, he turned to the best man and said, 'F---you!' Then he turned to his bride and said, 'F--- you!'

Then he turned to the dumbfounded crowd and said, 'I'm outta here.'

He had the marriage annulled first thing in the morning.

While most people would have canceled the wedding immediately after finding out about the affair, this guy goes through with the charade, as if nothing were wrong.

His revenge--making the bride's parents pay over $32,000 for a 300-guest wedding and reception, and best of all, trashing the bride's and best man's reputations in front of 300 friends and family members.

This guy has balls the size of church bells.

Do you think we might get a MasterCard 'priceless' commercial out of this?

® Elegant wedding reception for 300 family members and friends: $32,000.

® Wedding photographs commemorating the occasion: $3,000

® Deluxe two-week honeymoon accommodations in Maui: $8,500.

® The look on everyone's face when they see the 8x10 glossy of the bride humping the best man: Priceless.
   
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's MASTERCARD.

###

Subject: THE NUN

    A cabbie picks up a Nun.

    She gets into the cab, and notices that the VERY handsome
    Cab driver won't stop staring at her.

    She asks him why he is staring.

    He replies:
    "I have a question to ask you, but I don't want to offend you."

    She answers,
    "My son, you cannot offend me. When you're as old as I am
    And have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and
    Hear just about everything. I'm sure that there's nothing you could
    Say or ask that I would find offensive."

    "Well, I've always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me."

    She responds,
    "Well, let's see what we can do about that: #1, you have
    To be single and #2, you must be Catholic."

    The cab driver is very excited and says,
    "Yes, I'm single and Catholic!"

    "OK," the nun says. "Pull into the next alley."

    The nun fulfills his fantasy, with a kiss that would
    Make a hooker blush.

    But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.

    "My dear child," says the nun, "why are you crying?"

    "Forgive me but I've sinned. I lied and I must confess:
    I'm married and I'm Jewish."

    The nun says, "That's OK.
    My name is Kevin and I'm going to a Halloween party.”

Please, my LGBT friends, find no offense!!!!  If you do, please send your letters to the editor and I will print them.  I, for one, sort of like the way “Kevin” flouts all expectations and makes his point.

See you in a week or two.  Be well, be prosperous, be happy!

Love and blessings,

Dr. Ni