reaching out

What is the New Year without reaching out... without trying to connect with someone or something. Tonight i feel remarkably isolated, yet some dear friends just came around and changed that for me by bringing us a new house-guest in the way of a beautiful, as yet, nameless black cat with high-beam yellow-eyes and a beautiful triangular face.

Having lost a cat not too long ago, i thought it would be perhaps too early, but it's never too early to rescue a cat that had been previously abused or dumped rather because she is black and bought or adopted only for a party, as an "object" for one evening of fun and then as a thing to be disregarded.

How sickening we can be at such times, and how wonderful as well that there are those like my friends and even myself on this front that would take in this poor beast without question.

No, i'm not the crazy cat lady of the neighborhood or some other stereotype that perhaps pops to mind; just an ordinary citizen, or resident alien, trying to do my bit both for my family and for anyone else that i can because that's the right thing to do. I just wish more people felt the same way. That they felt the right thing to do is to reach out and to be fair and equitable. I admit, i've had some poor luck with that this year - nasty politics, back-talking, one particular gossipy bitch (pardon me but no other word would do and any other i can think of is far stronger so i'll leave it there.) The year has been a boon in some ways - i've seen more work in less time than imagined, had the 'when it rains...' issue more than once, and also ended a contract earlier than expected. Life changes and we change with it. I want to say something really profound on New Year's Eve and as a writer, i ought to be able, but the problem, as Bendricks put it in The End of The Affair is that "happiness has so little fictional value."

I ask myself why i struggle to write these days and know that herein lies the answer. I am happy, i am not a tortured artist. I am not a suicidal poetess, a la Plath and yet somehow i am still creating perhaps now more than ever and, if i am to believe those around me, work that is more meaningful as well than when i was writing in the upswing of mania - those late night, early morning essays and poems that seemed to come so easily and so brilliantly were perhaps not so brilliant after all.

What i have now is far better: a husband who loves me, a new cat who has taken to me and already has found her place on my bed where i write and has curled up like an apostrophe alongside the computer, and has, sadly, already decided she can easily jump to my high desk, and who can take this hand and wrap it around her to get all the love she could ever want.

This is what i offer beast: a home in which to purr; some safety and reassurance, all the things that i need as well, she will find here.

I lit candles today to scent the house of rose - i've come to associate the smell of rose with the cat, so perhaps her name will be Rose, i'm not quite sure yet and won't be until i get a sense of her personality; she may well be an Astrophe. We'll just have to wait it out.

For now, i extend my hand to anyone who has extended theirs to mine; to old friends and new friends i greet you and say, let the past be in the past. The future holds such promise.

s.r.p.
sat. dec. 31. 2005

to be is to be perceived

To be is to be perceived. Or so they say, and i find myself perceived and misperceived. A few days ago i came across a reference, or list of references to an article that i had penned and found myself much maligned.

Don't misunderstand, as someone who has long written about pornography and other tough and thorny issues, this was no surprise and i'm pretty thick-skinned, yet this latest lob seemed to be coming from the home quarters so to speak. From those i felt would understsand the situation and yet all i had was misperception and accusation.

One, but one person in this place could see that i wasn't some, how did this one (no legal name used, bien sur, put it), Oh, i know, "Middle-classed whining WASP" who had been "born with a silver spoon in her teeth."

How do i write of the ways in which you have it all wrong, cheri. Of the ways in which you do not know me. My own husband, and he's right, says Why do you care. God i wish i could be him; not caring what people think. Not giving one shit and just walking away from the all of it because it hurts when people blow their darts at you and while you know they are just sitting around bored, or jobless, or with a job and blowing it off or whatever the case, obviously have nothing better to do than to talk about you (unlike this, a time usually reserved for articles but on this day, used to respond in some public way because a public response is called for.)

I have a life; i live it. I, for the most part, could give a shit what anyone says about me but talk to me about what it took to get into this country, to keep my status here, talk to me about A-11s and I-90s then we are speaking the same language and no, i never received the little ribbon-tied press-release that you did. Ignorance is no excuse and i don't claim ignorance. The article was clear - my green card expired pure and simple, and it should have been pure and simple as that. That it was not is not only NOT my fault but is something that i truly blame on the inefficiency of big government - yes, the same government that delivered Mohammed Atta's Green Card six months after 9/11.

This is who you defend. I am who you attack. You remind me of the woman i used to see most days at immigration. The woman who, much like you, whoever you are behind your false name, had made up her mind about me and who i was. To her, i was some blonde WASP. I was not the girl who grew up in Tottenham, with cousins in Islington and a second home in the, oh sigh, swank Finsbury Park. Yep. You got it. Ain't life grand. I am the girl of Ambler Road School and of Saint Anne's Elementary. I am the girl whose biggest offense was stealing The Book of Nonsense from the school library. I am the girl who was pushed off a second-story balcony of the projects because i was different from the other kids (I was the one white kid in a black community. The truth is, i never saw a difference between us, not until that day.) This is how i grew up. I don't complain about it or claim that this part of it was so hard. In fact, i withhold a great deal because it does not belong here and is mine and mine alone to deal with.

I've said enough. I can't care about what you say. Frankly, i really don't know what i would say to tell you just what it is that i think of you. Of the ways in which you've judged.

Sorry, but i'm not the girl you thought you knew. Boo-hoo. Go play that shit someplace else. This bitch just ain't buyin.

never let em see you cry

i had to take a photograph and i chose this one because it was a hot July day and the sun was full on and i had just returned for the nth time from immigration where i must go to get a greencard.

Now, don't misunderstand, they ought be tought (even though Mohammed Atta's Green Card arrived six months after 9/11, but we'll ignore that fact for now) i, for whatever reason, had an incredibly difficult time getting my perfectly legal and by rights greencard. I've been here long enough, married an american, have paid my dues, know the words to the national anthem, america the beautiful and the pledge of allegiance - how can i not count as an almost citizen, i wondered. More, there waas one woan who seemed to have it in for me because whenever i turned up, she would find this or that problem and one day, even began to cut up my old greencard, which i need to get my new greencard, forcing me to practically (or actually, rather) beg that she please not do this fo r the obvious reasons - which, btw, she damn well knew.

It has taken two years and thousands of dollars in legal fees for me to get to the point where i could turn in an application with some semi-reasonable hope of getting a green card. One day, i was shaking in line, and who wouldn't be, men with guns on their hips. Department of Homeland Security thugs with rifles and various army men and while i know that logically i should feel more secure, the probem is that i only felt more nervous. I felt, becaues of past immigration experience (it's a nerve-wracking ordeal if you've done it), that i was doing something wrong. More, i have a nervous condition that makes me shake anyway.

To make matters a thousand times worse, i was pulled out of line, told to spread my arms and legs and searched with a wand and a pat-down. All of this only contrived to make me yet more humiliated and worried and yet i persevered.

A few days ago, a rather blank looking envelope arrived in the post and i would have assumed it junk mail. It looks too official, my husband said, and so he opened it, and there shining brightly was my green card.... new with the gold back, with a not half bad photograph of myself and more. I was or am official. I am legal to work, to live and here. What a concept. ONe would assume if you marry an American that you are instantly legal but this is not the case. You must go through many hoops before this happens and we still haven't reached the end of that road yet but we will. For now, i just thank god it's all done.

This picture, i hope, captures the mood of that hot summer day when i returned home and felt defeated. Nothing but pure defeat. The heat of the day, my already snipped and now useless green card with its missing corner. To me, this photographs says "respite" yes, but more than this is says defeat. It says i have taken off my suit, unloosed my long auburn hair, i have given up. it is a picture not of repose but again of defeat and in this way, i have always regarded this as a rather sad photograph - the opposite of what one may think, nobody could ever change my mind as to its meaning. I know all too well because i was there on that hot-hot day.

I wonder.., this summer, what will my husband and i do without our bimonthly visits to immigration. How odd it will seem to simply enjoy the day, but how much we will miss the routine of being searched and humiliated by DHS, by customs officers and the like. By waiting in shabby green faded rooms waiting for our number to pop up on the screen.

What then will be our defeat? Or will we triumph? I choose triumph. Never let 'em see you cry, my grandmother says. Even on that day, i never did.

passion and aging gracefully

Lately, i've been thinking a lot about passion , because i see so many couples - married, unmarried, - seated at restaurants, with an uncomfortable silence between them as though there is nothing left to say anymore; that the resentments have set in and all that could have been said is said and it is over and done for. Yet they remain together - living almost in a kind of hermetic silence.

I am fortunate to have so much passion in my marriage, and after twelve years, we remain even more in love than we were from teh first kiss (though i must admit, that first kiss was delicious and awfully nice and nothing we do now could ever recapture that moment on July 24th, Monday, 1994. Nothing can even come close, and yet our love and desire for each other has only grown. So, we are blessed. At least, i think we are. To share this is risky because it is so personal, and yet i share because i wonder how many people keep that passion alive in their marriage or relationship. Do they know it takes work to do this, or do they simply not care, or is it that they don't have a clue about how to go abuot keeping that passion alive. I can't answer these questions, i can only say that marriage, like anything worthwhile, is work. That some things do not come easy and although we are both naturally passionate people, i can say with certainty that it is never an easy thing.

Most years, we go to Paris and it is there that we find each other again - if ever we lost each other, it is Paris that renews that spirit. We do not go as tourists, but as natives; my own European-ness that feels at home at last or again, and my husband's all Italian blood and though he was born in America, he was raised by first generation Italians and more, had lived himself in Paris for several years. He is then, to me, not really American . Not that here is anything wrong with being American - obviously there is not. I have made this my home for many years now and feel as though i am stuck somewhere in the Midatlantic - between my birthland and the land i live now..

One need not be European to feel passion. Yet as Europeans i wonder if we grow up wiht more passion. I see it in the way he stands, hips thrust forward as if made for making love, my own come-hither pout, bow-lipped and ready for the kissing. Our langauge so full of refernces that remain secret yet overtly and boldy sexual or sensual. The way i always keep myself dressed as a woman, careful to put my perfume on daily, to look as a woman ought look, or my own version of what a woman should look like. I notice in Paris that i never see a woman walking about in sweatpants and sneakers. It is unheard of. Women dress each day, silk and cashmere scarves abound, and the hips sashay as they walk, as i walk, feeling the weight of my own curves as i move, catlike, down the pavement, chin held high, neck thrust forward. In short, confident and proud.

I wish i saw more of this in America. Perhaps we get too caught up in the practicalities - the children, the housework and so on, yet don't these same things exist elsewhere? I tell myelf it is a different aesthetic. That this is not a perjorative issue - that one is no better than the other because it is not, only that there is difference and that difference shouts at me and then i see why these couples fall apart, wordlessly dining together. I tell myself, I never want to be this, and my husband reassures me that we never will and he is right.

I look to Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronin as the model of a perfect marriage, still teasing each ohther and playful in their later years. Now there's a couple who never forgot or lost that sense of newness. That remained together without ever falling silent and the two aged gracefully - no botox, no surgery, no makeup, just Jessica with her long grey hair coiled into a neat bun on her head, and Hume looking lovingly on. I pray that i can keep up with this; tha my own life will be as such and while i don't know what the future holds, I light my candles all over Paris - Notredame, St. Sulpice, Montparnasse and pray that it always be the way it is now.

december 28, sadi ranson-polizzotti, Fl.

handle with care

I always feel so fragile around the holidays. I can't blame my family because I'm too old for the blame game and long ago learned to take responsibility for my own actions. What I've learned is that I can be fragile even within my strength, even within a core of strength there can lie a certain fragility - a deer in the headlights doe-eyed stare. We live with it. Sometimes it is even appealing to certain people, not because they wish to hurt or take advantage, though certainly I've encountered those as well, but because they wish to nurture and take care and this is what I find in marriage.
To me, the holidays are not only a time to celebrate all things religious, but they are perhaps even more, a time to celebrate all things familial, matrimonial. I have to tell myself these days I am still young, not old by any standard but my own stupid one. That as my husband said, Christ, you have a great fucking body, and though perhaps not eloquent, coming from a man who is usually very eloquent and well spoken and known for his work as such, I found the comment reassuring and strangely rousing in certain ways; it woke me up, in fact, and I realized that all this worrying about age was or is only forcing my youth further and further back. And so it is then that on this holiday, this Chanukah, this Christmas, this kwanza this whatever, this solstice, yes solstice is the word I am looking for, that I am blessed. That I am blessed in so many ways, including, and this is important, to be the person that I am and not someone else, because all things considered, I rather like me. I'm not being arrogant here - don't misunderstand, but if I have to be someone, then I'm glad that it's me because I'm kind, I'm loving and hey, I'm good enough looking or as the Amish would say, and this is a great compliment among them, I am "plain" which means good-looking. So, You're looking very plain today is a great compliment and one an old friend uses with me all the time.

More, today I am missing home - I am missing Europe more than ever. I am missing France because although it isn't home I desperately want it to be home and while we visit for a good amount of time every year, it is not enough to sustain. It sustains for a brief while and then it is gone, or almost gone. An ember that I wish to fan and keep going so that I never forget. So that I always keep my dream alive because it is the one thing in this life I really want - to return to France and live there as we live here, only better, because I will be among my own people, Celtic and pale and hazel-eyed and freckled, and what could be better than that...

And so, I leave you with that dream. For now, I must take care of family - but never give up hope, never let anyone tell you who you are or what you are and never be afraid to be either strong or fragile. Both have their virtues and I should know. I am often swinging wildly between them but there is always some equilibrium reached, some middle ground that makes me me.

As I write this I think of Nelson Mandela who said, in his inaugural speech, "It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us...."

How right he is. How rich and how blessed we have been.

s.r.p.

leaving home |

photo: window view, Pressingy, France


i'm dreaming of Europe again - of my Europe that is, or as i call it. Of being home and kissing the soil and the chalk in the Jardin Luxembourg that always makes my boots so dusty and the conkers we pick up and throw at each other like school children and even though it is or has been a holiday (once) it has become a place to scope out now. A place to say, Let's go back, because we are both European (he Italian, me Scottish) and France beckons, both of us having spent a great deal of time there.

Don't get me wrong. I love America and it has done much for me and i like to think i've done much for it as well - that it's been a two way street, but the time has long come that i can't stay here for much longer. That i need to return home before i lose all that i am.

Last time or every time that plane lifts off the French soil, i feel as if i am betraying all that i am again and again. That i am leaving behind my country, the place where i feel so much more inspired than anywhere else. One begins to understand why so many writers moved to Paris and became ex-pats and stayed to write or paint. Why Henry Miller wrote Quiet Days in Cliche and you begin to see yourself in that life. Perhaps not Miller's a bit-too-exciting-for-me life, but a life of one's own, just as i have built a good nest here, no doubt i would build a good nest there as well. The question though is how does one find a decent job. There are no papers and flying for a "maybe" interview is incredibly difficult. What you need is an American company with a French bureau and a boss who sees that you are the obvious choice to send. Look, i would gladly support my family single handedly, take the weight off of my husband and although this would be a huge responsibility and stressful, isn't it for him as well? Sure, perhaps he feels that this is his husbandly duty, but what about me as a woman - don't i too have some financial obligation.

Yes, i work and i work a lot, but somehow it's never enough or long enough to count on. By it's very nature, my work is by definition, unstable. As a writer it will always be so, unless i write a big bestseller and the truth is, i'm not the type of writer who wires big bestsellers because, as they tell me, 'You write too European." Perhaps in Paris then, where my book did well, then i would do far better. Perhaps instead of American publishers i should be focusing my writing efforts on European publishers who 'get' my work and the people too - less gens- who seem to understand. Yet still i connect a great deal with so many Americans so i wonder what they mean when they say You write too European. What does that even mean? It means nothing...It is a label without cause, unjust and unfair. Writing is either good or bad and so far, there is enough interest in my newest book that i am optimistic and hopeful about this. Already one publisher has asked to see it and my agent hasn't even begun to try to sell it. How can i complain, or will they too eventually decide this is "too European."

For other venues for which i write, i try to stick to American punctuation, American spelling and yet i find it difficult because no matter how long one has been here, the European remains and i have to make a concerted effort for the punctuation and spelling do not come naturally. Yet when i write for one British company (left unnamed), they tell me i am "too American." One woman was even so nasty about a recent article on the site that i pulled it in the interest of keeping the peace. Oh, i had done my research and there were conflicting stories about this incident, but i got my news from reputable sources and still... still no matter how much i tried to explain and to smooth her ruffled feathers, the angrier and more insulting she became. This is my countryman i thought. She is one of "us". And they say the French are rude.

Never have i been treated rudely in France. Especially if you make an effort or better, have some fluency in the language, it is appreciated and respected. When i was growing up, you had no choice but to learn two languages. When travelers come to America, we do not speak their language, yet when we go abroad, we expect them to speak our language and they do for the most part. It seems unfair to me somehow. A double standard; i've meet Russians who speak perfect American English and had to learn a whole new alphabet. I"m not sure i could do so well myself...

But this is off topic and not what i meant to say. Perhaps it is better said in a poem:


One year. It is too long.
Why when we do not watch do the years slip by,
the pace quickening, yet when we long, when we yearn
a year is a lifetime.
I have waited – a year to the month
to return to our Paris ; anniversary celebrated, love consummated.
I took it all in. Found the strands of our love and wove them in Pressigny.
Recall the village square clock, how it chimed at our conception:
Our first, our would-not-be.
Then, I knew nothing of him. Only felt myself blooming,
unfolding with fertility. I beamed pink with the love of it.
Three months and I would bleed red as the love drained out,
as my body, auto-immune and inhospitable refused to believe.
Â…I believe.

Come September again we will be.
My ballet-slippered feet, my wrap skirt dancing at the knee.
We two returning to the old haunts, the new.
Your own clear memories; that garret where you made love.
the girls of your youth: sweet, so easily sensual.
And iÂ… I will swing a path down Rue Mazarine,
wondering as I do if in those first early summers
you have found or noticed me.

If you would have wooed me with your slow, easy charm.
Whether you would have noticed:

- the curve of my hips
- the perfect shape of my tits
- the plump, bowed lips meant for kissing

Would you have taken me home to your high, scented room
Fucked me with the vigor, the gentleness of youth.
Taken, wanted me for yourself, exclusive and predatory.
A thing to be possessed, never shared.
A woman you could hold.
The one with whom you'd be where we are right now.

Paris.Fr, Septembre, 2005

dishevelled elegence | on being a woman.

I hate to admit to being vain at all because it has so many and only negative qualities that one thinks of that song by Carly Simon, supposedly about Warren Beatty but hey, ancient history and water under the bridge and so on. The song that, whenever it came on over the radio my mother would turn the volume way up and say, "Listen to the words, Sarah. This song is about your father. "

Do I need to say they were, by then, divorced? And so I listened carefully to every word and thought of my father off "cavorting" and Lear jets and hair (or is it hat?) that "strategically dips below one eye" as, by chance, his did. That even I, now, can see that the song could so easily fit my father that it’s amusing. He did always have one eye covered by a thatch of beige/blonde hair. That he did seem to “cavort” with women, not just be, but be in a way that was different. And women too, likewise, would flock to him. He had that “thing” that people say I inherited from him. This thing that defies definition but when I look at my father I see exactly what it is and in his case, it is pure charisma and that slow, easy charm of his.

Was the hair contrived to fall over one eye? I doubt it. I think it was naturally floppy that way. But did he do other things to make himself appealing – in his studied “disheveled elegance’ as I call it, with his clothes on looking ‘as if they didn’t care,’ his ratty old belt buckle scratched and faded but still somehow sexy but on him. On anyone else it would look foolish. I could see why so many women fell for my father, and I felt for them too because I knew that they were, each of them, just one of many. That he would never settle for one. That much as he may have wanted to settle down, it just wasn’t in his make-up. If he had been American he’d have been a Woody Guthrie type figure hopping’ freight trains and breaking’ hearts at every stop. No doubt, my father lead a life that, from my nine year old point of view, seemed charmed and romantic, and really, truth to tell, I didn’t mind that he changed girlfriends so regularly.

For one, it meant that I was the one permanent in his life, which as a child is a good feeling, and secondly, it was interesting to see who he chose. What they looked like, how they were. I remember one in particular whose name, let’s call her Sue, said all the time, “Really, that’s soooo interesting” with this god-awful snotty Kensington accent. She had wavy blonde hair (contrived on both counts; even hen I had an eye for fashion), and dressed in gypsy skirts and semi-sheer gypsy blouses and the like. She also spent a lot of time applying lipstick, which was fine because no doubt father was off somewhere fixing the flop of his hair.

Is it so awful to care about the way we look? I don't mean obsessively - that does strike me as "vain" or too self-preoccupied in the least, but to care about how and who you are can only be good things.
Recently, a friend of mine had an aunt pass away who had left her all of her clothes, jewelry, and more. Since I am the right size, I was kindly invited to have my pick of the clothes that fit me. I found clothes that had never been worn from the forties, fifties, sixties. A black silk and lace slip; several pair of split slips in silk - blue and peach. Several white slips and so many lovely clothes, including beautiful black, crushed velvet dress and as I dry-cleaned and spruced up each one, I felt myself becoming more womanly with each. I felt better than I did or do in jeans. I felt more like myself and wondered when I had become this person who wears pants every day when I used to wear a skirt and stockings no matter what. Was all of this going to lead to some inevitable affair that my husband would have? Some suburban domestic drama that just bores me to tears by now.

It could I suppose. How you look is important to your partner. You can't just say, Well, I'm home so I can just let it all hang out. There is a fine line between relaxing fully and being a complete sloth and not taking care of your looks. I wear perfume every day, even on weekends, regardless of whether I am going to see anybody on that day. I wear perfume to bed, as did Marilyn Monroe (who wore Chanel No 5 to bed every night). I myself wear Penhaligon's Castile but to each her own. Taste and scent are so subjective but I cannot imagine a day in my life without fragrance and god help us, it just so happens that I have expensive tastes (I never tried: it just happens that I am drawn to higher end scents and those have higher natural oil concentrations and so are more expensive. The higher oil concentration means that they will last longer too so that's good, but the money bit we could do without.

Being a woman is about so much more than just wearing a genuine forties slip and Penhaligon perfume. It is about, as with me, intelligence, analytic abilities, ability to maneuver about and succeed to best effect in any given situation no matter what. When we say, Do the best you can do, this is essentially what we are saying. No two people will have exactly the same ability level but you can do certain things to increase your odds. First, and don't go yelling at me for this, recognize that there are just things that men are better at and things we are better at. I wouldn't give up being a woman for all the tea in China, but that's me. Some people want total equality which I agree with but I would hate total sameness which I hope is a different thing.

I don't want to dress like a man and hide my feminine figure. I don't want to open my own doors if a man is gracious enough to open it. I want to know that should I need to I can fix the toilet, open my door, level and hang my artwork, paint or stain heavy bookcases, carry a hundred pound air-conditioner up a flight of stairs, paint the apartment by myself, bathe the cat when she walks in the paint and drive a stick shift if I need to and an automatic with variable because I like it. I want to fix my own car, put air in my own tires, own my own pressure gauge, my own ratchet set and toolbox, and I want to be able to change the ugly showerhead to one of those big silver sunflower ones that spray the shower water everywhere.

The best part is, I can do all of these things because I had no choice but to learn. In actuality, whether you have to learn or not I recommend learning all of these things for some of them were great experiences, even if they didn't feel it at the time. Even if at the time they felt nerve-wracking, they were good things.

Sure, yes, I'll wear Crazy Aunt I's old clothes that are still new. I'll wear all those things she bought on anxious or heartbreaking shopping sprees when she was seeking something she never could find (peace of mind?, I can't say...) What I can say is this: I will wear them like a lady and am ever-grateful for the reminder, the winter wake-up shot in the arm that reminds me that women are all tits and hips and curves and softness and great smells and that none of that detracts from my daily (and highly unsexy) job as a technical writer for a software firm and an editor of a Russian book on children's literature. But if I must do these things, then I can at least do them with grace.


sadi ranson-polizzotti

old friends revisited

Old friends become new again and for as much as we feel they have changed (never us, never we who have changed, we think), the truth is, we have changed just as much. They look at us with fresh eyes as much as we do them.

Misha is one of my best friends and it had been years and here he is, bright and alive in New York, the world laid out before him and his for the taking, and I remember him when he was an intern at our publishing house - how young and rollerskating to work every day, now married with children.

Flux: nothing profound about that. Wabi -sabi, the passing of time, the way things break down that can be both beautiful and /or ugly depending on the thing. But these are perjorative judgments. What counts is the moment and how you feel in it. Not to worry about where it's going or what you'll do next, but just to live in the "now" of things. That is the healthier way to be, or so I am told by those far smarter than I am and more educated in such matters.

So Misha: still the boy I used to play with, the friend I used to drink tea with and now the man I still drink tea with but who cannot touch me because he is orthodox. No goodbye or hello kiss or ciao. No touching of any kind and in that moment, I realized just how much we touched.

I hadn't really thought much of it before, but we do or did a lot. Or more than normal anyway, likely because we were friends and once upon a time etc etc... Life takes strange turns, unpredictable turns. So now we meet and we work together on projects and we sit facing each other, both of us with a quick sparkle in the eye at the joy of seeing the other in this moment, knowing to savor each minute for soon it will be gone. Vite!: catch it in a Polaroid!

documetarian

It's hard to capture the moment of any given moment in a single snapshot, and yet this shot, to me, captures everything about my most recent foray to NYC. It was subtle, full of life, soft, scented, productive, proud, energetic yet mild, and always but always with friends both old and new and discovering new things about myself and about them as well. Once can hardly say that this was by any means a 'wasted' trip; besides which, no trip is wasted unless you make it so.
Life, like anything (and I realize this is trite) is what you make it. It's like that song by the group "Talk Talk" (remember them?) "Baby... life's what you make it..." and so on. I loved that song when I was younger. It gave me the sense that anything was possible and that virtually nothing was beyond my grasp. That I could do anything at all and that life was mine for the taking - like a ripe fruit about to fall from a tree, I would catch it and drink from life's fine juice and feel enriched.
I cannot say this did not happen: life has been rich and remains so. I have been blessed in so many ways and yet like any one, I’ve had more than my fair share of trials and tribulations to say the least. I've been thrown curveballs and no one should ever have to face - too much death, illness, things that affect your very aspect and can even influence your personality to a great extent - if you let them. If you choose to be a victim, then you will be one. That is not to say that there are not victims and perpetrators, there are, or, to really get into thorny issues, that a rape victim is not a victim, she or he most certainly is. But ask such a survivor how they want to be viewed. Do they really want this one act to define who they are for the rest of their lives? I would say not. I would say that it is letting the perp win by allowing this to affect you forever and by not somehow fighting back through different means be it therapy or some kick-ass martial arts like kick-boxing which I do that says, No victim I.
Of course, I've gone off on a tangent again. What I meant to say and what I’ll now say is that every moment has its meaning and is worth capturing. My husband is so clearly not a photographer that it is entirely up to me to keep a record of our lives; some photo albums and scrapbooks. Now, why I feel compelled to this, especially lately, I think has to do with getting older and facing my own mortality (which is absurd because I’m still reasonably young and friend's laugh at me, but no matter, the feeling is real.) I want a record of who we were so that when we die, our son can have these records with their annotations and say Look this is Dad and Sadi in September 2005 in le Jardin Luxemborg. I want him to have what I never had, which is a past, which is roots.
My family albums, or most of them, the ones I could not save, were thrown in the trash when my mother got a divorce. Nobody said a word about it for I would have taken them and to me, it was a selfish act for those photographs represented my childhood or a great part of it.
My husband's family, by contrast, has saved everything and even the lock of hair from his first haircut that his and my Grandma gave to me to keep - such an honor to rust me with this object she has been carrying around for half of her life. Amazing and I put it in a very safe place with all other important things. As for me, I won many a blue ribbon for my horse-riding, lessons my grandfather paid for even though he couldn't really afford to. I have only one report card because nobody bothered to save them even though I was high honors and I may know it - I would like the official documentation. To go back and read the teacher's comments.
This will not happen because nobody in my family was, as I am, a documentarian, save for my father who, shhhhh, we don't talk about him, who liked to take photos of me with his telephoto and zoom lens's, so I never knew he was about. It was odd, always, to find these photos of me on my horse riding about on Rocket, completely oblivious to his hidden lens. But even those few photographs were destroyed once my family got wind of them.
I suppose I get this documentarian aspect from my father then - for he too wanted to save the moment, or try to. To stop time as much as is humanly possible. Maybe this is why programs like Flickr are so common today - a public way of sharing one's life. I'm not sure. My own "real" albums are all here, thick and brimming with photographs, ferry receipts, Eiffel tower tickets and so on and I take great time to annotate and date each one.
I recently made a little book entitled "un jour de ma vie" which has a photograph for each part of my day (a representative picture). So there I am getting up (je me leve), getting dressed (je m'habille"), sitting in my study at midday, at dusk, retreating to the bedroom for the late in the day respite and a cup of tea, and photographs of the things I see each day - dresser, desk, computer, etc etc.. You get the idea. We try to mark each in French as well since everyone here is bilingual and any chance to practice, including for our son, is used.
My husband asked Why are you making this. I thought about it a while: for one, it is a great little object: black with white-bordered photographs to make them look older, the annotations in silver ink, an black spiral bound, each photograph representing various hours or a time period. The other reason, I suppose I wish someone had done this for me. I wish my mother or father had cared enough to create something of their life or even better, taken the time to think about my own life and those small objects that are so highly symbolic. I would do anything to get back my blue ribbons. Now, all I can do is say I won - but I can't prove it.
tant pis - that's over, so move on and I have by becoming the documentarian myself.
Treasure the moment and hold it close. If you can find even a sugar packet (as I often collect even though I don't take sugar) from a restaurant to remind you, then do it. Whatever it takes but live in the now - not the past or future, but this moment as it is.
sadi ranson-polizzotti, December, 2005.

of ankle socks and other matters ....

It's okay to be different. i've finally realized that being different, however one defines that, is more of a strength than it has been any weakness. I come from an entirely different culture, speak differently, have a condition that makes me see the world differently as through the eyes of Van Gogh (same condition - epilepsy) and i feel nothing but blessed anymore. I used to see all of this as a bad thing. That the fact that i still wear ankle socks with my high heels to work is not exactly de rigeur with the American female set and likely never will be. It might be a nice idea in French or Italian or even American Vogue (where i used to work and no doubt was hired for my 'quirkiness' and again , i'm not even sure what that means, only that the word has been used to apply to me numerous times but never once has it hurt me. It has, every time so far, been a great asset.

I remember when i was running Lumen Editions , a small press that i started that published literary fiction and by god we were successful . A tough thing to do in fiction in publising in those days and now. And so as Editorial Director i received a lot of attention and a reporter was dispatched to interview me and so i did. She was gracious, we sat outside, me avoiding the sun at all costs and she taping and taking many notes. She asked for a photograph and i gave her the best one i had, i thought; me in my friend Misha's yellow slicker and yellow rain cap , sitting on his fireescape and looking in the window. It's a great picture and i'd reproduce it here if i could find it. Instead, i offer up my feet.

The point is, i became who i am, for better or for worse, by being exactly who i am. Not a put on of what is not, not something unreal, no longer trying to force myself to fit in, but just allowing myself to be everything that i am, and you know what, it worked. Suddenly i became successful and had more job offers and the like than i could count.

Don't try to fit in. You'll almost undoubtedly fail. Simply keep being who you are, whoever that is, and if you are good, you will shine and that will come through. It's obvious advice, but sometimes it's the obvious we miss. I recently, for example, got two jobs because of my accent because both involve recording to some degree. All that after all those years of trying to lose it, i find, like Frank McCourt, that it is a useful thing after all.

I thought it was brave of McCourt to admit he had once an American accent and then decided to reconnect with his roots and inherited a Dublin accent. Who would ever admit such a thing? I remember my own awful american accent when i tried to fit in, which i never did, and when i discovered that i t was easier to just sound like me and give up. When i did that, everyone wanted to be my friend. You couldn't ask for more.

The same is true now, only now the stakes are higher. I've outed myself a bit here but honesty is always the best - accept me with my brogue and accent or not at all. Accept that i grew up in London and spent a great deal of time in Scotland and was raised by a Scot herself and so of course i have a bit of a brogue. Of course i also have a bit of american - a mid-Atlantic accent they call it. Anything else would be prentious and not what i want. I hate it when people have been here for twenty years and still sound as British as the day they arrived or worse, who go to England for 6 months to study and come back sounding more British than i. How phony, i think, how utterly pretentious; backed, no doubt, by a deep insecurity.

I say enough. Time to move on. Like yourself, maybe, gosh, love yourself.

mince allors!

sadi ranson-polizzotti

greenwich village, nyc - december, 2005

It's the perfect New York moment. Caught just out of the shower, ready to go out on the town, ready to see friends and standing dripping in a loft in Greenwich Village where you have come to stay for several days - see friends, make new friends, and by god, you do and then some. You make friends that will likely last a life time and when they die or you die, you will mourn them as much as you mourned your cat, which is a lot and likely more than any person - if we're being honest here. Okay, not anyone, but most people. It must sound cold to say such a thing but people underestimate the importance of household "pets" how they become a part and parcel of the family proper and cease to be domesticated animals but more than this.

But this is not what i want to talk about today. What i want to talk about is New York and choice and so much more. I remember living in New York when i was working at Vogue at conde Nast publications in the mid-80s and most nights, we spent our time at clubs like Palladium or Area or The Saint and the like, places that are not, probably, so interminably unify, but what do i know. i just know that at the time, one needed a golden card to get through the crowd and get in and god knows for whatever reason i had it. Never once did i wait in a crowd of people to get into any club. Not once did i have to talk my way in - well, once i did when i wanted to, and succeeded in, bringing in the entire Norwegian Fleet who were in New York for the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty. I did succeed and angle deviating, whose name i shall never forget, what very grateful and gave me his hat, which i stupidly, in my youth, gave to a friend who collects hats instead of keeping it as a souvenir and the real gift it is and was for myself. I wish i could find Ansle and let him know that i still think of him and his fleet and his many kindnesses to me. I remember feeling like the only girl on the boat the next day, which essentially i was, and being in his office when another, petty officer came in and gave a look like a scene in a James Bond film in which the woman is taking a shower in the officer's quarters.

I admit, i was wearing something revealing and i admit too that i was doing it all for show because everything then was for show. It was the high and kickin' 80s and everybody was doing everything and even though i wasn't one of those people - i was a club kid and soon everyone knew me and just knew me as Sadi, which made me feel like Cher or Madonna to suddenly lose my last name but so what. I had some small measure of notoriety and was glad for it. I could do people favors, get them in the door, provide introductions between movers and shakers and realized that at the time anyway , shit, i was a little mover and shaker myself.

I was also fifteen. I had no idea what i was doing and Conde Nast and Vogue were intimidating and out of my league i felt. I was the youngest person they had ever hired and i doubt after the experience with me, they will ever make that mistake again. It wasn't that i was a bad employee - i wasn't - it was that i was young, politics were lost on me, which is just as well because i managed to largely stay out of them and not get caught up in such nonsense. I remember vividly one day having an assignment with a Vogue editor whose assistant was out of town or out ill for a period. I took to her desk and did all of the tasks she would do (I was in Fashion - so i picked up clothes, taped the bottoms of shoes so they didn't scuff, picked up jewelry, took polaroids of all of it, etc etc). There was a bulletin board above the assistant's desk that had a jumble of cards and ribbons from all over the world and from so many different companies. Looking back, it really was art or artful anyway.

But I, me in my anal retentive need to help others clean up, set about cleaning it up and so I did. I took each precious thing that she had and repinned then like little soldiers. The end result was a checker board pattern of beautiful objects but even i could see that something had been lost. That it must have taken her years to create the original and it had taken me fifteen minutes to destroy it and a half an hour to put it all back together in my organized way.

She was furious. Now i see why. Now, here with the New York wind on my face as i walk down Madison i understsand why people stay here no matter what and why i stayed there and why i would even go back to live there now. Why i visit as often as i do.

There is nowhere like New York; so on this day as i stroll down Madison, confident in my hip-switch and the movement of my shoe and the high arch of my foot and the wind blowing my hair seductively about my face and my body moving in time to a song in my head, i know i am home but most of all, i know i have grown up.

sadi ranson-polizzotti
december, 2005