After Alzheimer's: A Beginning

memory

Back Among 'Em 

Michael Sedano 

There's this euphemism I'm going through right now, After Dementia. I am a combination Rip Van Winkle and Miranda, awakening to a brave new world after 55 years living a dream, the final five years puro nightmare. Our progressive decline got saddled with GOPlague-induced isolation. It was the worst of times in the worst of all possible worlds. 

Now comes after dementia. Unlike the disease, there's no gradual transition, no pause nor time-out. The caregiver career is done, whatever's next, you're in the middle of it now. Unskilled or anachronistic.

I have to fight off future shock from all this change coming all at once. It's going to happen to all of us living with Alzheimer's, that brave new imposition.

Getting that diagnosis, "Dementia of the Alzheimer's type" signals the start of a new career, a caregiver's life of incessant tasks and mostly doing it alone, twenty-four hours seven days. Then absolutely it's over. What to do? Where to go? No place to be. Nothing to go home to.

So go. 

Five years of grieving take a toll, and human resilience says ya basta. Mira nomás, Miranda sees it, "O brave new world to have such creatures in it!" Has the world changed much since 1968, just before I met Barbara, and I was socially competent? I was also 23 and a total mocoso.

Poets, in my case, are the such creatures in it, and their world today is the community room of Altadena Library. Except for the night Barbara entered Memory Care in 2019, I had missed every poetry reading in the world for five years.

Saturday, February 25, 2023, I stepped into the poetry reading site in Altadena, not far from my home. I took a breath; I was back. And for sure, mira nomás! There sat Peter Harris chatting with my friend Jean, who'd invited me into the world. 

Peter Harris serves as Altadena Co-Poet Laureate, with Carla Sameth, who sponsored the day's reading. The night Barbara entered Memory Care--one of the lowest points in my life--I attended a poetry reading (link) featuring Peter Harris and that pulled me up. Today I am stepping  back into the world, things are looking up. Thanks for being there, Peter. Balance has meaning.

Back in the day--pre-Alzheimer's--I had this goal to capture the perfect public speaker foto. A poet, for example, making eye contact, mouth saying something, eyes, face, hands and body in an act of eloquence and expression. In my view, Oracy is equivalent to Literacy and Numeracy as fundamental social competencies, and I want to take its picture. I used to want to do that for a living--be a speech teacher.

Every poetry reading, I get close to what I need. I need, not want, that foto. Y sabes que? I want and need to take fotos of poets. When I walked into the Altadena library it was as if five years ago was last week. But I have a camera with new capabilities. 

I was warmly greeted by Xochitl and Carla to begin the day joyfully, a big hug across the row of folding chairs, tú sabes, a joyful howyadoing. They know me. Barbara loved poetry; she hosted Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo’s publication party for Posada Offerings of Witness and Refuge (link) at CasaSedano.

Poets are good people and they welcomed me back. It is good being back, camera in hand, goals in mind: capture a reader's expressiveness, see the world as you find it.

Happily, La Bloga-Tuesday is pleased to share three of the works gente attending Altadena's Saturday reading heard, along with portraits of the poets presenting their work.

Carla Rachel Sameth

Carla Rachel Sameth

We Used to Argue Over Hearts

I called my older sister over and over again whenever I ran away. The first time, six, crossing the street to the little park—but then I couldn’t come back because I’d remember I wasn’t allowed to cross the street by myself. I sat on a pile of leaves sniffling, imagining my sister rescuing me. 

When I was a teenager, she went away to college. I’d telephone her, my complaints a steady pitter-patter or a torrent, depending on the temperature at home. 

My brother taught me how to avoid recurrent nightmares by focusing on the scariest moments before going to sleep. I was terrorized for a period of dreams about “Bunny Goo,” who was either a tall bald white man who wanted to take over the world or a sticky tar that got on the bathtub faucet and caused it to overflow. 

My younger sister gave me imaginary sleeping pills, told me just breathe and think about ocean waves and Mt. Rainer, ferry boats and sunsets over Puget Sound. She teaches meditation now. We were so young then, turning to the closet for refuge.

My dad was a high school teacher who used to say with liberty and justice for some when forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He was my favorite dance partner, and I felt graceful on the floor with him at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. My mom went out for Shirley Chisholm. She worked, went to school, and took care of the four of us plus my dad. Later, with almost all speech robbed by dementia, she found the words, God that man is repulsive when pre-2016 Trump was on television. 

I miss my mom and dad, even the fights and the television blaring news, my dad’s temper. Our stuffed animals, large, wise and plush, sat sentry, while we ran amok. Eat a thigh instead, dark meat is juicier. We used to argue over the hearts and gizzards; now no one wants those parts. 

--

Carla Rachel Sameth, MFA

Co-Poet Laureate for Altadena, CA 2022-2024

Author of What Is Left and One Day on the Gold Line: A Memoir in Essays

carla.sameth@gmail.com

Noriko Nakada

Noriko Nakada

Hey Dad,

I will not be sending you this letter
because I fear that the end of this project
and the end of your life
might intersect
that the end of the pandemic
won’t come before our next visit.

I can’t remember
what we talked about the last time
I saw you in person.

I have never been away from home this long
if home is Oregon:
land of pandemic protests
fire and sacred ash
friends and family
religion and hate.

All of the reasons I stayed/left in the first place.

You know this.

You moved there despite it all
shifting our family’s proximity to whiteness
leaving me to ask myself:
Who are my people?
Where is home?
Questions embedded in my blood.

It might not have mattered
where I was born and raised.
The questions we ask might still be the same:
How is the weather?
When will I see you again?

Romaine Washington

Romaine Washington

Jazz

 

poets!

we too

            be jazz

musicians

            sassafrassan rhythm

improvisin’ life

            and blowin’

we too

            be rubato blue

Sahcmo 

            feelin’

Coltrane

            reelin’

  lovers.

and syn/

            co

pa 

            tion

heavy down

            beat 6/8 time

waitin’ 

            tempo up

                        breathin’ breezy easy

free

            we be

free

            we be

free 

            we be 

jazz!

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

What Was Meant To Be

 

            After Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

A murder of bullies menace Joel 

into hammering a dead bird. 

Deep in a boyhood memory, he’s cloaked

in a red cape. Clementine meets him there 

crowned in a pink cowboy hat. 

She reaches for his hand and says let’s go. 

Joel wants to stand up to the boys, but Clem 

says it’s not worth it. “They’re not. Worth it.” 

 

Still, they were always meant to break up.

 

You and I were never meant for more than 

a waxing moon. But the fullness of your kiss 

still glows brilliant.

 

You shared your Coca-Cola with me.

Took me dancing. Spun me at a concert 

in the park on a cool summer night. 

Said you couldn’t believe no one else 

had ever spun me before. True and not true. 

There was always my mother. But this. 

This was different. Wasn’t it.

 

Afterward, we fought mouths spitting hot in the street. Still.

 

If we stop right now, grab our belongings, 

and exit the vehicle, that can’t erase the laugh-scream 

that bellowed from my body as we chased a track 

spinning fast around a mountain. The path

was always set. The ride was always meant to be 

exhilarating. 

 

When I was little I wore tight braids 

and was told to not be a bother. I imagine 

your wild curls growing big with every harsh word

that said you weren’t enough. But for a moment. 

We reached for the other’s hand. Worth it.

-- 

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016)

Co-founding member of Women Who Submit

Technical Notes

I use a Canon EOS Rebel SL3 body with a Canon Macro 100mm EF lens. 

All fotos exposed at f/2.8 1/250s ISO25600

New camera bodies like this SL3 have that sensitive ISO capacity that serves well in the deep dark of the library basement space. At 1/250 of a second, gestures and facial expressions hold focus without blurring, provided the hand-held guy doesn't move.

This camera also takes up to five exposures a second, offering the best chance to capture an expression-in-the-making, as well as lots of closed eyes and "just missed it" frames.

Todays readers exhibit wel-honed skills that honor their work. Poets owe themselves and their arte effective oral interpretation. 

None of today's artists do "the voice" but read with natural cadence elevated to the quality of art they make. Eye contact perpetually bedevils some readers. They actually read off the page more than they share their stuff.

I encourage poets to look at the manuscript, memorize the final words of the stanza and the first words of the next, look up and say what you've just committed to memory. Giving your audience that eye contact and personal directness not only informs your ethos for the listener, it gives the hapless photographer an extended opportunity for several frames, and maybe that magic moment of perfection!

Poets should become camera aware and speak to the lens several times. One of these days, some photographer will get the right portrait and you'll have the back cover of your next book.

For the photographer it's puro enjoyment, listening to a writer's cadences, the syntax in an expression, observing how the poet moves into and out of the page to the audience, predicting the moment in the unique expression of an unheard poem, then pressing the button.