#with my sister i feel like just something she has to tske care of

[phoenix-before-the-flame]

Tfw ur immediate family that you've known all ur life treats u like a burden but the distant family you've literally only met yesterday treats u like a person

[janiklandre-blog]

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

9:50 a.m. - spring has arrived indeed. and this morning a bslmy 46 - tonight another arctic blast - and so it goes - every morning decisions what to wear. - Happy for things that hsve been working for a while - my mind, my energies, this here computer, some social life, no pains - always wondeering - how long will it last. Grateful for every day. Very angry with Martha H., have not been going to Catholic Worker - but C.B. has been coming keeping me abreast of their many problems. In the 60's I began following communes, voluntary communities, always hoping to join a congenial community, Paco telling me how ill suited I was to communal life, probably true - yet I tell C.B. the Catholic Worker is one of the longest surviving communities. I've written about being glad to find my way to it in the early 90's.

After, as I phrased it, Paco liberated me in the spring of 1988 and I had met Stephen W., who came to California after I had gone there and we drove together back - and also stopped at a well known commune in Sommerville, Tennessee, The Farm - whose history I had been following since it's beginningd in 1970 - and where Stephen with wife and children - all three born there - lived a good number of years and was called an "independent operator" - had trouble fitting in there. In 1988 we ended up on his beautiful farm in New Hampshire, where he also was not quite happy and came with me to New York. A friend, Cassandra, had used the squatters for her weed supply, and told me about them. Stephen on a visit to England with his parents had visited squats in London - in the 1960's they sprouted in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hamburg and also in France and Spain. It was a time when a lot of old housing was to be demolished and young people occupied it and lived there for many years. In Kopenhagen was a very famous one. Reader that I am, I always read about all these things - some 10 years too old to participate, also by my children bound to life in New York. I have in the external drive some 200 pages I called : Squatter days - where I describe Stephen and his oldest child, a daughter, he had her young, she was 15, becoming squatters - I helped therm find the squatters. Then I watched avidly - took a lot of snapshots, well organaised till the 2000 fire - and dreamed of writing a book - one of those many unrealized projects. Could not interest Stephen.

I marvelled at the skills displaced putting half destroyed houses back together again - also while mostly might made right and young men ruled - I watched themgetting more orgsnized and then of course there werethe big battles with police ordered to rout them from their illegsl, free housing. It was a fascinating scene and attracted many fascinating chsracters a number of whom becsme friends - a number also sadly died.

Still, when the scene was dying down - Stephen evicted at gun point - I gave him shelter for a while, then he cheaply put together a vehicle where he could live and begsn roaming the country - and I found my way to the Catholic Worker - Roger O'Neill had come to the squatter meetings - but never had mentioned the CW. I have written about how I found my way there - published in The Villager, How I became a Catholic Worker - on my website, Marianne Goldscheider (thank you, Gesine) - and it was C.B. who drew me in and now is apalled by this here blog. Many years have gone by, the Cstholic Worker community saved me from much loneliness - alas it was the truly abhorrent behavior of the granddaughter of Dorothy Day - that has made me feel there like a crazy old woman - and while C.B. is cooking todsy and invited me - I may head for the Polish church. Just don't feel like seeing Martha and her sister.

And so things go. I have lived many lives by now - first five years in Hitler's Koeln, then nine years in Prague in many schools, back to war ravaged Germany in 1946, couldn't wait to get away, 1951 to fancy Mount Holyoke College - meeting Robert G. - a year in Paris, a year in Califiornia, back to Robert - he breaking up with me - my mother loving me, urging me to marry him when he wanted to marry me - a son is born, five years in Geneva Switzerland, a second son born. in 1962 back to New York, her ever since - five more years as Robert"s wife, then not reading divorce papers, he taking advantage, from a Harvard Law grad lawyer's wife to show string poverty - struggling, passed Ph.D. exams at Columbia U., got a Masters of Philosophy, no jobs - painting walls after meeting Paco and living at last a bohemian life that suited me - he was fun but forever on the outlook for the heiress - in 1988 meeting Stephen W., the squatters, Catholic Worker - where at last I met people who consider poverty a virtue and not an abominable self inflicted condition of a bum. For thatI love them and will always be grateful to them - and may well rejoin them - but would like to find a way to bring Martha's abominable behavior to the surface - but lousy politician that I am - the only avenue I have found so far is this here blog. They have many great qualities - but no way of dealing with conflict., Conflict is not acknowledged and wiped under the table - I have no idea how to address it and C.B. is no help - she does not acknowledge it - just says: get over it.

Reading about Jimmy Breslin, a journalist, he said: rage is driving me. Rage, anger, can be a good propellent if used correctly - alas thst escapes so many of us, we stew in our juices and at worst express it in violence - or in ways harmful to ourselves. But boy, has she made me good snd angry - and - not me alone.

It's getting close to 11. The sun is shining. Yesterday Jimmy wished me a happy spring, I later met him at Tompkins Square park, he is a friend from squatter days and perhaps I will also write about him. We had some Chinese food and then went to the coop on East fourth to buy oats - I saw stell ground oats - thought those were the best, fi filled some for him, a big bag for me, paid $10 - at $1.65 a pound - came home - found something I never saw before, ran back, the young man would not take them - now they are sitting on my desk - my friend came, we laughed about it - I did get some of the oats I wanted, but they were almost out - I hope they get a delivery - tomorrow I'll go back and give returning them another try.

Doing my writing in email instead of word, at this point I've kind of filled what email fills and it gets odd - a good place to stop - I said she treated me like a crazy old woman, I guess that is the way she sees me - and I always do point to the story by Bert Brecht, many seem to have read it, titled something like the weird old woman - yes, society hasa concept how old women should behave - sweet and even tempered, as my sons put it - and many do and many taske pills to make them sweeter, mother's little helper, was a song - well - I have refused mother's little helper and at times may behave a bit out of chasracter for an old woman - cherished andappreciated by some - looked upon askance by others - and occasionally even getting me into trouble. I try to be as careful as I can to meet the expectations of me - all I did with Martha was to ask, could I join her and C.B. for a hamburger - every time C.B. has come to my house Marthas immediastely calls, comes, drinks, eats what I offer and tskes over - she is the age of my sons - what she has to say is of intferest - old women are to be silent. So - me asking could I join them was totally inappropriate - she said something rude to me I did not get and ran away - later when I addressed her, said - I'll talk to you when you are nice again.  And of course ran away - never giving me a chance to respond in any way. There is still more to the story - but now I'll run -- and eat at the church.  m.