why doesn't she leave him?

update: my essay in the huffington post here is a story about domestic violence in the  home of someone people very well might hope would protect them--ross mirkarimi, the newly appointed sheriff of san francisco county.  

his wife, eliana lopez, was once a telenovela star in venezuela.

abuse can happen to anyone--even a famous, adored, talented woman--and the abuser might be the last person anyone would suspect.  my mother had a phrase she used about someone we knew: "house devil, street angel."  smiles and a way with words can hide a lot.  what goes on behind closed doors is known only by the family.  if you've got a secret that's hurting you, please ask for help.

the national domestic violence hotline is one really good place to start.

little night takes place in new york city, amid the magical and unexpected wild places in central park.  it also deals with abuse and family secrets.  the question that comes up, so often, is, "why doesn't she leave him?"  the answer, as anyone who's ever been there knows, is: it's hard, so hard.  and the reasons for staying are as varied as the women involved.

it can take a very long time to trust yourself enough and, and to decide to get out.  but when it's time, it's time.  listen to yourself, that little voice inside.  believe what he does, not what he says.  actions speak louder than words.

know that you are brave.

Spring News: My new novel is out now!

here's the cover of my new novel, LITTLE NIGHT.  it came out june 5 2012.  here's a link.  isn't the cover lovely and mysterious?  it's an image of poets walk, in new york's central park.  i'll be posting more about the novel soon... [edited june 5, 2012]

Little Night is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound

changing light

   

the landscape stays the same, but the light changes.

constantly.

 

twilight can be blue

 

 

 

 

 

or rose

 

 

 

 

 

or blue and rose

 

 

 

 

 

sometimes there's a dramatic sunset

 

 

 

 

 

the full moon sets just before dawn

 

 

 

 

 

fog rolls in and then it rolls out

 

 

 

 

 

storms come

 

 

 

 

 

and some days it looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

paradise

   

i wrote a novel called what matters most, and once again i've been putting a question mark at the end of the title, asking myself the question.    i guess you'd say i'm an emotional sort, and i really want to understand what i feel. writing helps me with this.  the most wonderful things, the most painful things, all of life touches my heart, and i bring it to my desk. characters come to me, and through them i tell the stories that tear me apart and put me back together.  when i was younger i was motivated by need and desire--full-out, pedal to the metal, have to have it kind of thing.  believe me, i still have my moments, but now the feelings are tempered by, i hope, some degree of self-awareness.  that comes from writing.

my early novels told what i knew as a young woman.  as time goes on, and life hands me more experience, they reflect what i have learned--not just factually, but emotionally.  shades of marian the librarian in "the music man", sadder-but-wiser-girl that she was.  am i saying too much here?  i'm in the mood to tell you everything.

last night i took a ride along the coast with a friend.  there was moonlight on the sea.  lots of new houses had been built in the once-open space.  nature is so staggeringly beautiful, and we were saying how sometimes we don't appreciate what we've got till it's gone.  at which point i began to sing joni mitchell's big yellow taxi -- i couldn't help myself.  "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot..."  (poor friend, having to hear me sing.)

you know me well enough to know that seeing habitat destroyed and creatures killed makes me cry.  (it really does...i actually hug trees.)  but life has many metaphorical parking lots.  you can pave over relationships, too.  i know, because in the past i've done it.  such a human tendency to want resolution--i'm right, you're wrong, i'm bad, you're good.  or, maybe you're bad, i'm good.  no in between, no grey area, no room for the maybes that come with taking a more compassionate, realistic, look at life.  (see above: sadder but wiser.)

i may be falling in love--with the world as it is, not as i would have it.  to put it another way, i'm finding it easier to look at what is true than to pretend something else.  yesterday someone told me that things happen if they're supposed to--no amount of forcing or denying or hiding will change what is.   so why not practice radical acceptance, and lovingkindness for where we are right here, right now?

so what matters to me is love, family, friends, honesty, this broken paradise, moonlight on the sea and knowing it won't last forever but will come back again, gratitude for what i've been given, and the awareness that comes through living life one day at a time.

 

garden

   

joy in the garden:

white roses, blue lobelia,

agapanthus, alyssum.

hummingbirds, phoebes,

gnatcatchers.

hiding cat.

beyond the borders of my yard--

a creek, the sea,

a hillside where raptors hunt.

everywhere, no matter where i look,

the sky.

[if you love to garden, will you consider reading about ways organic gardening can benefit the environment and your health?]

 

guitar practice

   

the month of september

has inspired a lot of music;

here's one song i really love:

september, when it comes

by rosanne cash (featuring johnny cash)

rosanne sang it with her father, then sang it at his memorial.

the lyrics really touch me, and the music is beautiful.

i'm practicing it on my guitar for a very select audience.

white roses

   

 

two cats sit inside the screen door, watching and vigilant as white roses rustle in the breeze, waiting for who-knows-what to happen.  they live in a constant state of anticipation, except, of course, when it exhausts them and they are forced, as happens with cats, to nap.

summer lasts another week, but fall migration is underway.  new warblers heading south, are posted to nyc e-birds every day, and there's much excitement about a lark sparrow in the north end.  autumn is my favorite season.

i've been sad lately, and i thank you for your kindness and comments.  the tendency is to say i'm fine now, all is well, i'm going to be happy from now on.  i think many of us do that, try to hurry unwished-for emotions along, reassure everyone that things are fine fine fine.  the truth is happiness and sadness ebb and flow, they're the tide of life.

grief echoes love in the deepest way.  to be able to feel that kind of love makes me think of the velveteen rabbit, what it means to be real.  what it means to be human.  still, and all, there is beauty in everything, even grief.  in the words of a very wise young woman: "when life hands you a lemon tree, make lemonade."  

phases of the moon

   

 

the crescent moon

cut deep this month.  she died the day

the waxing crescent swung low

through the cedars.

i must have grieved through the half moon

i don't  remember.

mourning erases memory, sweeps it into clouds.

she lives in my dreams

or whenever my eyes are closed.

tonight the moon is full

let it bring her back to me.

every new thing i see without her

a milestone beyond bearing.

september full moon

bring her back to me.

 

 

 

 

new york, blue sky

blue sky.   the morning of september 11, 2001 i met my editor tracy devine and bantam deputy publisher nita taublib for breakfast at charlotte, just across the street from the random house offices.  it was one of our many wonderful meetings, talking about books and life--a colleague of ours had just gotten married, and we were catching up on that when we heard a plane had hit one of the world trade towers.

a small plane i thought, it had to be, but how terrible no matter the size, how shocking.  but it wasn't a small plane, and then the second jet hit, and nita and tracy and i hugged goodbye and hurried away into our lives to plan and make sense or no-sense and be in new york city--all three of us lived there--that had already changed forever, only we just didn't know it yet.

impressions: the blue sky everyone still talks about; plume of smoke visible from midtown, constant sirens, walking downtown and seeing people on cell phones--i didn't have one yet.  an hour later, after the towers fell, seeing people in business suits covered with ash.  the next nights: below 14th street, a dust cloud that glowed red after dark, as thick as the foggiest london night. the posters hung by families, their missing loved ones, on the wall by famous ray's pizza across from st. vincent's hospital.  going to the cathedral of st. john the divine, didn't matter what religion you were or were not, just a place to gather and pray and mourn.

the city smelled of smoke and ghosts.  people were kind to each other but also lost it on a frequent basis.  i remember those early days, tuning into local tv news, pre-theme music.  do you know what i mean?  the moment when a tragedy acquires a combination of familiarity and production values, and the tv producers give it solemn theme music and a name.  it takes away the raw.  i hated when that happened a day or two after 9/11.

heading to the west side highway many nights--closed to traffic, it was kept open for search and rescue workers.  people lined the streets, watching pickup trucks, fire trucks, many with out of state plates, drive south toward the world trade center.  i was in the midst of leaving a worse than bad marriage, but the tragedy bound us together for a few more months, and those first nights after the towers collapsed we'd go to the west side highway, watch those rescue trucks in the surreal riverside light.  i couldn't bear for anything else to collapse.

during the early days after the attack, friends helped at the site.  the poet-nun sister leslie went to st. paul's with other sisters from her community, to offer spiritual comfort to the rescue workers.  poet-naturalist e.j. mcadams, then an urban park ranger, spent days in and around the rubble, going into apartments to rescue animals abandoned in the evacuation.   interesting that my two closest poet friends had reason to be there--the city needed poets more than ever.

the week after the towers fell i stood on park avenue south and watched a woman in a yellow dress commit suicide, jumping from a ledge and landing at my feet.  the grief in the city was unimaginable.  had she lost someone in the towers?  or was the city's collective sorrow just too much to bear?

in december my friend, poet, writer, and radio personality colin mcenroe came to the city from hartford and he is a sensitive soul as we all know so we went downtown but mostly we went to the cathedral to watch paul winter prepare for his solstice concert and a few days later there was a fire in the cathedral and everything seemed touched by sorrow, mystical beauty, blue stained glass, and the unpredictability of life.

ten years have passed.  the anniversary unbearable at first, but time dulls, if not heals, the shock and pain.  for years the cats and i have looked out my south-facing chelsea windows to see the towers of light rising up from where the twin towers once stood.  they appear beautiful, mystical, but i love nature, and i couldn't and can't deny that they're magnets to birds that fly by night, fall migrants heading south for the winter--the birds get trapped in the light columns, and at dawn fall to the ground.  after a while i couldn't stand seeing those light towers--they reminded me of death, not hope.  so i stopped looking out my window the last years of this decade of september 11's.

i'm not in ny this year.  i want to be far away, and i am.  the sky is blue, the way it was that day.  there are no speeches or memorials or flags.  there are no columns of light.  but there is peace and prayer and memory, and there are poems, and there is love.  nita and tracy, we were together that morning.  i'm holding your hands, wherever you are.

 

A Summer Note from Luanne

Summer was the closest we came to pure joy when we were young. Freedom from school, being set loose on the beach, with adventures so plentiful we didn’t even have to go looking for them. We had a group of close “summer friends” who we’d see every year from June till September, and we’d be together from first light till we were too exhausted to do anymore.

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