Oct 18, 2015: Reading and writing via a transformed sisterhood

Hi Carole,

Lots of recent media about Narcos series re Netflix, a streaming video company, and upcoming movies about the Medellin drug lord years.  Netflix before your time and I am not watching the series, way too painful, the recall of our cocaine addicted father tossing the daughter whom he would later claim to have loved the most: his youngest daughter flipped to hide his habit. All his grit and scum because you were on to him, had worried about the father who would pitch you like an old pair of shoes.  God, how I miss you.

PS: Danny = Key West tomorrow, a fine kindred spirit. Truly lovely even as he may not believe or see it yet.

PSS: Josh says our book has a King Lear theme but no way like that.  Think time bounce, we as kids between Mother's tomatoes and what comes later. Mom's sections are hilarious! You'd be pleased, would do a much better job ....

FBI Tea Party. Is a few few days before Oct 19 ... 2002 - 2015

Hi Carole, always with you, imagining how much fuller our lives would have been. Must be grateful for what we had, still have in a changed sense, mostly tears. Other have it worse is what I tell myself.

Just getting back into us, have spent all summer with Pinecrest Floods. Last two floods were last two weeks of October. Getting treated by Pinecrest the way our father treated us, screwed. FUCKED. Should be used to it.

Hurts.

Found a Senate report from 1988 referred to as  Kerry report. Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy. Pages beginning around 42 eye poppers, stuff I'd forgotten or never knew, relates to the Barbara Trent movie we saw ... will work some into our story.

Boys are doing OK, at least they have a place that needs a new roof!

Love and miss you.

XXOOXXX

Ubiquity

Hi Carole, 

I didn’t post this to an NYT article,  a grief so deep it won’t die,  but am so overdue in writing, my thoughts here:

It has been 13 years since my sister died, she 52, I theoretically 18 months older but in reality we sloshed in the same womb blood, sharing.  There isn’t a day that goes by that my longing for her is greater than anyone understands. No one does, my extended bereavement isn’t normal a close friend says but who is she to judge? 

I had died the year before during a horrific surgery and perceived timelessness, the space that isn’t actually time because there is no beginning or end, rather a magnificence — a unison wisping into and out of, the void as we join the universe.  Void isn’t the correct descriptive either because within it there is movement and sound, an intangible flimsiness solid in its being. In scientifc terms, maybe the entanglement physicists refer to, and in that way we are tethered and shall always be.

Your poem: eloquent. 

Before Stars

Before there were stars night was an eyeless staring
with nowhere to look leading into, unmapped by any chart

and always losing itself. Because of this, women were born,
formed from the faces of candles, gasoline lanterns, or

kerosene lights, with nothing to see looking onto,
and which night knew nothing about from its distance.

Then came their flames rising like points from their
blind spots, forming stars, which night looking out of was seen

seeing women.

Carole Leslie Marcus

Books and Books

Hi Schwestie,  Elizabeth Alexander streamed live from Books and Books, and after listening, hearing — I dreamed of you all night, touched you, we touched, with children, ours.  Were outside, lots of tree leaves, very green.

Alexander was nominated for Pulitzer in Poetry, her language superb.  You'd appreciate too, am sure. In her mindstate of sudden loss, her husband, she talked about Rilke. I am so occupied with Pinecrest Floods crap, haven't had time for us. Amazing what big shots can get away with, as if we didn't know!

Did I mention Pinecrest Bans Sumpland?  Oh Carole, the sheer idiocy of denial, here there and everywhere.  Wrote a prose piece and submitted. The Water and Its Clout.  If not published, will post.

Love you always and beyond.

Route 65/66, January 3, 2015

Missing you dearly .... crawling to 1992 FBI Tea Party, ohhhhhhhh Carole

Thumbprints, skyward ... January 2, 2015

Carole, a theoretical tomorrow, tomorrow itself,
we would have been a year apart in age.
You 65, me 66, how we'd laughed and giggled,
imagining, those thumbprints
but not ours as dust.

http://extralove.com/carole.html

Tender Hanukkah from Craig with Carole

Hi Craggie,

Finally found the Currier and Ives print you said you'd given us and I could not find, had no recall of.  Sunday, two days ago, in my bottom drawer along with white tissue wrapping paper that I'd thought to use but pitched, too old, musty old.

And underneath, or to the side of, something bulky, wrapped in plastic and then with a glass overlay. Emailed the company yesterday and after images, they verified.

A lovely gift from you with Carole, a litho all these years later,  our dear Carole and you, Craig, on this first night of Hanukkah with its candles, the glowflame of the past with its love, as well as the anguish of loss.

No Second Guessing

Excerpt: Three Attention Deficit Sisters and the Mafia

... It didn’t dawn on me to me to ask why she'd kept quiet all these years, her story so mesmerizing who’d care!  ‘Are you sure, positive?’ I’d asked rhetorically, knowing full well, having been there myself. 

Not long after Carolee told me about her dream, I had one of my own, one of those confusing jumbled visions. I was eighteen, Carolee seventeen as I said; she was seventeen when she told me. My sister Carolee had not doubted for one measly minute, she adamant about those colors underneath and the way we entangled.  Hers so vivid that mine seemed iffy and inconsequential by comparison.

(skip)

In retrospect, I came to realize that Carolee retained only a brief glimpse of our past, confirmed by what she missed.  She never mentioned Darren, or Myrna for that matter. Our past was about us, our shared protoplasm sparked into being.  My sister set the stage, imbedded our story like a genetic code, its secret for me to hear and remember since she wouldn’t be with me to tell it. She sensed before my dream, hers first: water and revival. Mine a dry dusty patch behind a wagon train. 


Now here’s the truth.  No second-guessing. Whether Carolee’s breathing next to me or not is a moot point. Writing solo way beyond my reach: not a remote possibility without my sister guiding me. 

Air brushed sky ...

Ten days from now, 12 years ago, smoke signals, what you could do.

Distance. Time. Beyond.

Shanah Tovah withou you ...

Hi Carole, so missing you. Had the kids over last night, was sweet, I didn't get all ruffled as usual, just let it be .... has taken a long while to reach this point. Lit candles for all who came before: you and you and you.

I'd made cards for Pinecrest Floods, Danny was only one who got it —  the spunkiness of activism passed to your youngest.

I'll be back to us in the next few days, still and forever tweaking, time jumping helps.