WHY NOT THIS PARADISE

I am happy to announce that I have started a new blog, which will be a place to post all the poems I have written over the years (some previously published, some not).

It is called
Why Not This Paradise

and it can be accessed at http//www.barbarariddle.blogspot.com/

I welcome your comments.

Is hope a wood stork?

Waiting for my bus, sitting on a bench in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Across the road, by the side of a pond, stands a grumpy-looking wood stork.
He is hunched into the unseasonable January chill. His large pink feet are hidden (but I know they are there). I feel drawn to him, his scary prehistoric beak, his stoic stillness.

He stands there, not quite waiting. He's got an atttude problem. Is that his weakness or his strength?

He is a teenage boy whose cell phone has just been confiscated by his English teacher.
He is a guy whose girlfriend has just dumped him outside a dive bar
on the Lower East Side at 3 a.m.
He is me, waiting for something Big to happen. (At my age!) Waiting for the bus,
in a new city, going to a new job, trying on a new life.

Sorry, Emily D, but Hope is not a small feathered bird, it is a huge wood stork with skinny pink feet, suddenly spreading its wings and scaring the fish right out of the water.

I board the bus and leave fear behind.

All Suffering Soon to End!

RECENTLY I was handed a small pamphlet, folded in triplicate, with a full color front page. I was with two British expat buddies, manning a table of assorted discards from our lives as part of an annual street sale in Greenwich Village.
Our goal was to clean out our closets, make a few bucks and enjoy ourselves under the broiling June sun, if possible. Suffering (on this day, anyway) was far from our minds.

Indeed, as the designer togs (a snappy Ralph Lauren military-style jacket, size 6), little porcelain pill boxes and brass candlestick holders changed hands, we grew more and more elated. This venture might actually be working. A quilted jacket I never wore (too boxy) was going to be a present for someone in the hospital; Gay's collection of lovingly broken-in Chanel heels was just the right size for a nurse from Queens. Maggie's odds and ends were being snapped up by other expat Brits only too happy to stop and chat with a live human being.

Out, out, past life!
Good-bye, crazy ex-husband!

And then: the Pamphlet, slipped into my hands by a shy woman who quickly melted into the crowd. I accepted it politely and only really looked at when I got home that night, bearing the Victorian card table I had purchased from Gay when I saw she wasn't going to get a decent offer. (Never mind that I used up essentially all my day's proceeds on it.) Admiring my find, I brushed off the only slightly damaged green felt surface and set it up to accomodate an overflow of books and papers in my little studio sublet.

Emptying my pockets, I found .....the Pamphlet.

ALL SUFFERING SOON TO END! the cover illustration proclaims in large black typeface, over a rendering of an attractive caramel-colored couple in their early 30's, sitting in the middle of a field of yellowing grass, on which a male and female moose are grazing just a few yards away. A large log cabin in the background is partially obscured by pine trees, and snow-covered mountains march into the far distance. On close inspection, on the right-hand side of the scene, a woman with long blonde hair on a white horse is galloping towards the couple, who are calmly smiling at me, showing off their perfect teeth. (Perhaps the blonde is going to warn them they are sitting dangerously close to the huge male moose? Or, Sara-Palin-esquely tell them to get the hell off her farm? Is that a rifle strapped to her saddle?)

Maple trees framing the scene have burst into flaming scarlet, and there are baskets of pumpkins and apples in the foreground. It seems to be October in a bizarre Vermont, except that the couple are wearing light summer clothes, and look too happy for people soon to be expecting winter frosts. (Not to mention the dearth of Hale Berry and Harry Belafonte look-alikes in Vermont.) I turn the document to the back page, and yes, if I need more information I can write to the Jehovah's Witnesses at the following locations: Australia, Barbados, Britain, Canada, Ghana, Hawaii, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Philippines, Rep of, South Africa, Trinidad AND Tobago, Rep. of, and also the USA (in Brooklyn!).

My guess is that the Jehovah's Witnesses in these locations know a smidge about suffering. (They don't seem to have an office in Paris, for example.)

And so I realize that the surrealistic Paradise depicted in such quirky detail is an all-purpose one, designed to elicit longings and emotion from denizens around the globe. A wise use of limited marketing funds.

And it's good news, for sure. I'm in. There seems to me absolutely no downside to the end of suffering. The sooner the better, I say.

Bring It On.

Marry Me Rat

Sometimes you chance upon a random morsel whose concise perfection leaves you almost breathless. So complete in its implications you must bow in respect.

This afternoon, taking in the first warm March sunshine on a brief escape to St. Petersburg, Florida, I left the scenic harbor pathways and was traversing the more gritty environs closer to where I was staying. My foot paused just I was about to step on a large heart scratched into the cement sidewalk, and I read the heartfelt command inscribed therein:

Marry Me Rat.

Which of us has not been there? And why do we instantly know the scrawler is female?

And why do we hope that the union did not take place? That she is now a sophomore somewhere, sitting up late into the night, reading Emily Dickinson or Dave Eggars, or inventing a solar battery that will fly 747's on perfume and air?

Alas, I fear not.

Did you Marry Her, Rat?

Everything U Always Wanted to Know About Sex (on the L train)

So it's a few days before Valentine's Day and I am riding on the L train on the way home, minding my own business (not really, I am eavesdropping as usual....Note to Self: look up origin of "eavesdropping") when I spy a young woman across the aisle from me, sitting down, with a HUGE stuffed animal on her lap. I am talking the size of a St. Bernard puppy.....and she is ostentatiously reading a hardback copy (with torn dust jacket, circa 1971) of Dr. David Reuben's best seller, "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (but were afraid to ask)". Now, she looks at first glance about 12, and I am thinking she swiped this book from her grandmother's library of dusty tomes from the Seventies. But she is wearing eye make-up, and chipped black nail polish. On second glance she looks closer to 30. An unkempt 30, to be sure.

Everyone once in a while she snickers, or grins or laughs out loud. She catches me staring, and flashes a bemused smile. I suddenly think that maybe she is a Brooklyn performance artist, testing out the reaction of numbed subway riders to her whole Gestalt. I mean, her peers are Tweeting and texting and hooking up, and she's reading a hard-back copy of Dr. Reuben? And that stuffed animal essentially takes up three seats, it's on her lap, but it poofs out on both sides of her and practically hides her face.
When I get home, I check out Dr. Reuben on Amazon. The last person who viewed his book also viewed "Contact" by Carl Sagan, about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life....you get the picture. Not the hippest fanbase.
But we probably all owe Dr. Reuben an effusive thank you for writing the right book at the right time....... (Maybe even our very existences....) So. Thank you.
But, really, thank YOU, Stuffed Animal Girl, for adding mystery and humor to my soggy, day-after-the-almost-blizzard-of-2010 subway ride on a late February afternoon. I hope you get an agent.

Two Italian Boys

First, I don't know for sure they are Italian. Or how old they are. They could be 15, they could be 25.

But I thought I recognized a certain Italian fierceness in the way his mother walked ahead of him as he lagged behind, that first boy. It was on the corner of Sixth Ave and West 8th, near Go Sushi, and I had seen them before. (I might have glanced quickly away, in pity.) This time I really looked.
His mother had a head of perfectly curled and blow-dried gray hair and she was about 5'2" in her stocking feet; compact of body, in a belted black dress and sensible walking shoes. She was leaning forward, at a tilt, as she towed her son through the waves of summer heat that roiled up from the sticky asphalt. He, not in any kind of hurry, let his too-large head dangle this way and that as he surveyed the crowd, his protruding eyeballs taking in everything he would never get to eat or drink or touch or kiss. His body had more angles than I could count at a glance- crooked back, twisted hips, knees knocking together. He shambled behind her, fierce tugboat that she was, secure in the knowledge that she was taking him someplace safe and known. Which she was. She truly was. He was her son, and she would take care of him if it killed her. I felt a sudden stab of envy for their bond. This was unconditional love, right in the dead center of Greenwich Village.
The second boy/man I spotted a few days later, in the early evening. I was returning slowly home along West 4th Street, thinking of nothing at all, when they rushed past, the dark-haired boy and his companion, who seemed to be his sister. It was only a glimpse, but I almost fainted. His complexion was a perfect pale porcelain, his features like a Greek statue's. He was laughing at something he had just said, looking back to his companion, and his thick dark hair was plastered back like an actor in a Bertolucci film set in the 1920's. He seemed unaware of his otherworldly beauty in his animation; he wasn't posing for anyone. But as I passed on, I wondered: Quasimodo boy, or Bertolucci boy: who will suffer more in this life?
Which one will be told he has been loved for himself, for who he is, and actually believe it?
Or, even better- just know, without needing to be told.

Dog Days in NYC or Zen and the Art of Fridge Defrosting

Okay, I said to myself yesterday, it's time to man-up and....defrost the icebox, the under-the-counter half-size object we so gaily refer to as "the refrigerator," evoking visions of a vast Eurostyle appliance, a Sub-zero thingie (why does anyone need something colder than zero degrees? ) bursting with organic watercress and runny French cheeses.... Mais non, ma petite fridge (as we so lovingly call her chez nous) she is full only of 7 kinds of moutarde and 3 or so varieties of berry jam, as well as some VERY ancienne unsalted butter. All of which will survive lack of refrigeration for 24 hours. (And anyway a little mold is good for you once in a while, n'est-ce pas?)

So here's my (soon to be patented) technique:
1- Turn off freezer control. Take a deep breath. Do not turn back now. Commit.
2- Jam clean bath towel into iced-over freezer compartment. (Trust me.)
3- Put large plastic bowl (on top of protective layer of garbage bags) against fridge to protect the charmingly warped oak floors from becoming more charming.
4- Put end of towel neatly into plastic bowl so melting water runs from freezer along towel to bowl. (Osmosis, don'cha know.)
5- Pour self a glass of wine (color optional).
6- Occasionally wring out towel. Surf Web. Watch Jon Stewart on YouTube.
7. Take bath.
8- Repeat 5, 6 and 7 until asleep or otherwise immobile.

If you are an AMATEUR in a HURRY, you can speed things up by using a hair dryer.

But WHY?

Slow down, cowgirl. Enjoy.

Savor the (drippy) hours. It's summer in New York City.