My Labor Day became a true celebration, commemorating the enormous exhale, the breath long held, when you know you have finished something, and finished it the best you could. The non-festivities were marked by a visit from Gabriel Ferrer, the son of Rosemary Clooney and Jose Ferrer, and, until recently the minister for All Saints, the church I have been dropping in on-- I can't consider myself a true Attender-- since moving back here, sort of, my suitcase being ready for re-packing for the return to New York. Gabri, whom I had not met before, came by so I could say Hello and play him the wonderful recordings Rosie made for me of many of the songs from Sylvia WHO? There is honey in her voice, and some butter, so it was a rich event. The recordings are private-- she did them in a studio with no enhancement, so it would likely not be fair to her standard to release them--but it was very like she was in the room with us, which it would not surprise me to find out she really was.
It was a lovely experience. He was just returning from a trip to Greece and the mysterious islands of Scotland where many don't know there are mysterious islands, and is an impressive man, big, with more than a trace of his father in his physical presence and his voice, -- and it is a joyful thing to be able to give someone the unexpected gift of a vanished parent's gifts. She was a glorious human being, and I love her and will always be grateful for her generosity. He said that because she had such a rough time in her middle years, and saw who was there to help her, she resolved always to give back, and she certainly did.
As you may remember, and I have told and re-told, I was in a particularly low funk with my efforts to bring Sylvia to the light heavily thwarted, when, just before Christmas, Don picked me up from my Quaker Meeting in Westwood, and I,-- miffed because no place we went was playing Christmas Carols-- "Where are we living?" I asked him,-- told him to pull in to Food Giant, where, at long long last, they were playing Carols. I went in and heard someone singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," I turned a corner, and there on the other side of the aisle, pushing her cart and singing, was Rosie. I introduced myself to her, said "I want to talk to you about something." "Good," she said. "I think God sent me in here," I said. She said "I believe in that." A few days later she came to my house; I played her some of the songs. She laughed and cried and said all the right things: "People are waiting for this," she said, little knowing they still would be all these years later.
But now the wait could very likely be almost over. I would bite my tongue and spit three times for fear I was jinxing myself, except that last night on the news I saw that Diane Nyars, a 64-year-old woman, had finally, after decades of trying, made the swim from Cuba, without a shark cage; red-faced and swollen, with jellyfish stings around her lips, she said the secret was "Never Giving Up." Well, neither have I. And now with the support of a very brilliant friend who, happily, believes in me, I can actually see where it might be coming together. Spit spit spit.
So I am off for New York next week, free at last, free at last: Lord God Almighty I am free at last. This is, I believe, the first time in my adult life when I know for sure I have done exactly what I should have, throwing off the specters of all who do not wish me well, and though perhaps not having for all to see the white aura perceived by Dorothy, the psychic I met in the produce section of Pavillions-- after all, this IS Beverly Hills, -- I know I have completed some important steps. The musical is the best it can be at this point, ready for the reading we are going to do the end of the month, and I, having cast off the shackles of imagined relationships that weren't really, am the best I can be, having swum these shark-infested waters without a cage, as well.
As for Dorothy, she told me she would bring her crystals and cleanse my shakers, the ones that are somewhat blocked by those who, as writ above, "do not wish me well." She drove me home in her white Mercedes(it IS California, after all,) and said I could call her anytime if I needed to go anywhere-- as you may remember, I don't have a car, and am enjoying having to walk everywhere while I still can. I asked her how much the reading would cost me, and she said $300. Well, as Shirley MacLaine would be quick to tell you, that is a fair price for someone to cleanse your shakers. So I said "Why not?"
I have not heard from her since. I have left a message, and e-mailed her
@ClairvoyancetLa.com.(in case you want your shakers attended to.) So I must regard the appearance of my aura in a grocery store just another of those SouthernCal miracles. And as she told me I am a Messenger, I shall take her unofficial mystical perception this side of the papayas, as a gift from the Gods.
Maybe the same ones that Gabri connected with off Scotland, or maybe the ones Thoreau found in Walden. Though if he really heard from them they might have told him not to be so wordy.
Me either. Love to you all. Happy After-Labor Day.
