Maybe I’m just a lazy blob of passive acceptance but audience questions during a presentation make me crazy. Interrupting a speaker or tour guide or docent mid-talk with questions like “What year was that?” or with a story about how her father did it differently is not about elucidation. It’s about obfuscation. It’s about the questioner heaving himself on stage.
 
In my most impatient moments, I want to mutter “Shut the fuck up. We don’t interrupt actors on stage. Let it flow. Trust the storyteller.”
 
But that’s just the angry controller in me. Just because I prefer a sense of contemplative study to a sense of relentless query, doesn’t mean everyone must.
 
But, really, no one cares about your father.
 
Art: Apollo the Python-Slayer. c. 350 BC. Part of a set. Attributed to Praxiteles. (Greek, c. 400BC-c. 330BC). Greece, Athens, mid fourth century BC. Bronze, copper and stone inlay. The Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access Collection.

So honored to be in the "She Persisted" issue of Earth's Daughters. Here's the poem that appeared. I started this poem nearly 30 years ago and finished it just in time to meet Earth's Daughters deadline.



Immortality
 
Even in the absence
of my footsteps,
this oak floor
sighs and creaks --
 
as if she still elbows
her sisters in the forest
and heaves boulders aside
with her muscled roots;    
 
as if white-throated fungus
and snarls of moss
still mount
her pleated bark;
 
as if her limbs
still sprout ruffled fronds
to snag the perfect
suitor’s pollen;
 
as if she still prays
at least one of her young
escapes the squirrel’s
lethal pantry.
 
 

My iPhone started generating a report on Sundays outlining how much time I’ve spent that week with it. Nearly 3 hours a day! That’s a lot of research, news, shopping and general farting around.
 
Thumbing that soft warm home button was more of a preoccupation than I thought. And I had other things to do. For real.
 
So I became more mindful of my use. I didn’t take it on walks. I delayed opening it until later in the morning. And the first week my screen time was down 34%. The next it was down 11%. I read more. I cleaned up the kitchen before dirty dishes inhibited sink use. I cooked. I day dreamed. I’m down to two hours a day.
 
I wonder if using it as an actual device to talk with someone counts as screen time. Or listening to audible books.
 
 

For the first time in my life, I’m not sure what New York City means to me.
 
Before I lived there, it was a “Marlo Thomas: That Girl” goal, a sky’s-the-limit kind of life. On my first visit, the sheets were discolored but the Rockettes were awesome.
 
When I lived there, it was half ecstasy and half torture. On a day when I felt adventuresome, I sat in Washington Square Park, chatted up butchers, braved the subway. On lonely shy days, I stitched satin and tulle bridesmaids’ dresses for friends’ weddings in my sunless apartment. 
 
When I left, I visited at least once a year. With my husband. With my husband and kid. With just my kid. With friends. I curated each visit to meet my travel companions’ needs. Bead and fabric stores. Restaurants. Central Park playgrounds. Ping pong in Bryant Park. Countless Broadway shows. One time my son and I taxied directly from the airport to a Monday Night Magic Show in the Village.
 
Then I went alone. To be alone. Three or four times a year. Museums. Literary events. Science lectures. I even did poetry readings there. I even made friends there. I loved it and lived for it and probably used it to escape something at home that I could not yet name.
 
The day after my divorce, I visited for the New Yorker Festival and by some strange circumstances found myself homeless for a night. The only available room was $2,000 a night. I found a quiet place in that luxury hotel lobby and sobbed. And longed to phone my husband, my not-husband.
 
But then I found myself on a friend’s sofa. And she helped me settle.
 
So now I’m not sure what’s next for me and New York City.
 
Maybe Brooklyn.