TheBanyanTree: Life Stories more

[Tobie Shapiro]

September 27, 200000006


Dear Cast of Thousands,

	I want you all to know how very upset I am about a little 
private matter that is swimming around in my life.  My ex husband 
(who is now remarried to an ex friend of mine), has proferred his 
list of items he wishes to take from community property.  On this 
list he has requested that he take the stash of light bulbs from the 
basement, and he has an electric pencil sharpener on his list, plus a 
stapler that is sitting on his desk.  I am thrust into mourning for 
these very sentimental objects.   And really, can you spell PETTY? 
What planet is he living on?  An electric pencil sharpener?!  Light 
bulbs?  These are all new light bulbs that I've purchased.  The ones 
that were there in the stash before have all been used and blown out 
since his departure.  This guy gives me the creeps.  And he's a world 
class physicist.  You don't have to be a rocket scientist, do you!

	I have a story to tell you.

 
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Seeing Clearly

	The summer that Dweller and I split up, I found places to 
live by housesitting.  At the time I was becoming deeply involved 
with Harry Lum, the painting teacher at the University of California 
Extention.  See, it was like this.  I convinced my mother that she 
needed more things in her life than just my father.  He demanded she 
advise him, guide him, dress him, play interference for him.  They 
worked all day together at their business, and fought together all 
day and all night.  She was supposed to herd him, keep him out of 
trouble, translate for him when what came out of his mouth was 
insulting or bizarre.  Her whole life was wrapped up in dealing with 
Justin.  And I saw my life as needing some direction.  So I pursuaded 
her to take a painting class with me.  This was mostly for her 
benefit, or so I thought.  We went two evenings a week to Kroeber 
Hall at U.C. Berkeley, and were instructed, along with about a dozen 
others, by Harry Lum, a diminutive Chinese man who was the smartest 
person, certainly the most well read person, and the most cultured 
person I'd ever met.  His teaching methods were extraordinary.  He 
told us all, "If I walk by your canvasses and they all look alike, 
then I know I'm being a bad teacher.  Because what we want to do in 
here is bring out that sweet mysterious you."  I loved to hear that. 
I fantasized him bringing out that sweet mysterious me.  And it 
turned out that not a few of the women in the class had the same 
fantasy.  He was bringing out mysteries.

	By the end of the classes, my father had thrown a tantrum 
forcing my mother to pack up her paint brushes, and I was getting a 
divorce.  Ah, see how perceptive I was about who needed what, and 
what whoever it was was going to do about it!  So, seeing what an 
artist does and how an artist could live a life, I saw the divergence 
in my life, and left Dweller.  It wasn't abrupt.  I spent three weeks 
in a melt down stupor, sitting on the stairs in the house we bought, 
threading my life through every imaginable needle.  And I kept coming 
back to our not being the right people for each other.  So, we took 
two weeks off from us, to think, to find our centers, and all that 
other language for, "I'm leaving you; you're leaving me."

	I leaned away from Dweller's shoulder and fell onto Harry's 
shoulder.  I wanted an artist, someone who understood and respected a 
whole life in the arts.  And where would I stay?  Harry was at the 
hub of the spokes of a wheel of artists of all kinds.  Suddenly, I 
was surrounded by people who found me perfectly reasonable as I was, 
not difficult to fathom, or impractical in my choices.  And all these 
artists took off during the summer while Tobie house sat.

	I sat house for Mel Ramos.  He's the pop artist who did women 
and spark plugs, women emerging from candy wrappers.  He had no 
illusions about being a great artist.  He had chanced upon what was 
big at the time he was doing it, and he got rich.  So they went off 
to Spain where they were renovating an old olive mill.  While they 
were gone, I watered their plants, slept in their bed, collected 
their mail, watched over their walls and floors lest they wander off. 
While I was contemplating my life out of focus in Mel Ramos's house, 
my brother came by to visit, and Harry came by to visit, and Yvonne 
came by to visit.  It was a summer of philosophy and vision.

	My brother's vision was going off.  For the first time in his 
life, he needed glasses.  He brought the new glasses by to fret over 
issues of vanity.  How did he look with these glasses? Did he look 
older?  Wiser?  Bookish?  Stupid?  Sexy?  Anonymous?

	Yvonne was visiting when Daniel brought his glasses by. 
Yvonne grew up in poverty and all  the glasses she'd ever worn were 
those that she found in the bin at Saint Vincent du Paul.  She'd just 
keep picking them out and trying them on until one of them helped her 
vision and that would be the one she'd get.  So Daniel's new classy 
glasses were an oddity to her.  She picked up his glasses, put them 
on and looked out the window at the trees.

	"Oh my God!" she gasped, "I can see every branch!  I can see 
every twig on every branch!  I can see every leaf on every twig!  I 
can see the veins in the leaves!  I can see . . ."  She cut herself 
off suddenly, ripped the glasses off of her face and said, sagely, 
"The question is: does anybody really want to see this clearly?"

 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net