Yesterday I was early for a meeting with a friend. Decided to walk around the block when a building caught my eye that had huge photographs of seniors mounted against its facade. Mind you, I have walked down that street many times, since I often go to Fleur de Lis, the cafe where I was expected. It’s strange how attention waxes and wanes.

Turns out it was the Hollywood SeniorCenter that I consciously perceived for the first time. A window display spoke of a project that paired middle schoolers with seniors for photography, one, as I was told when I entered the halls to inquire, that had happened years back.

The friendly manager, apparently not bothered by my curiosity disrupting her work, told me of something more current which I thought I’d share.

This Friday, June 28, from 3:30 to 5:30 pm – 1820 NE 40th Ave, Portland, OR 97212 – they have an event that introduces a topic even richer than the mouthful of a title: The Grandma Reporter Intimacy Issue Magazine Launch Party.

It might be late(r) in life but the issue of intimacy remains a focus, particularly in a world preoccupied with body image and visions of eternal youth. The Grandma Reporter seems out to crack stereotypes, provide pragmatic advice and encourage fun. How can you not adore a Manifesto like this?

The Grandma Reporter (TGR) is a publication committed to the subculture of senior females and their rich worlds existing across the earth, where elderly women have lived forever. TGR aspires to be accessible to young and old but especially to elderly women. We hope to energetically connect our readers, contributors and interviewees in a senior female culture movement. We believe in: proudly declaring your age and keeping it a mystery; dressing up, down and from the heart; talking about death and thinking about past and future lives; walking sticks, wheelchairs and flying in your dreams; wrinkles, bulges, spider veins and bunions; ‘old’, ‘elderly’, ‘senior’, ‘nag’, ‘ageless’, ‘prune’, ‘sage’; discussing disease, incontinence and great television shows; sharing stories of crime, adventure and nonconforming genders; considering the struggles of growing old in a young, technology-focused world; food, genes and other things passed through generations; uncovering long loves, heartbreaks and sex that evolves with age; swimming as a magical way to keep fit in spite of on-land mobility challenges.

– TGR editor, Xi Jie Ng

Ok, those of us personally familiar with a variety of concepts mentioned above, surely will.

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It was time to visit with Judith Arcana, so back to the café I went. We met during the making of a documentary where I photographed her, and have had many thought-provoking conversations since. The poet, writer and activist just published a new edition of her book Grace Paley’s Life Stories, an unusual literary biography based on countless interviews with Paley during the 80’s. From feminist consciousness to political activism of Paley, Arcana’s perceptive narrative triggered a spontaneous “It takes one to know one…” in me. Folks around here can pick up the book at: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 523 SE Morrison. Other wise you can order it here.

I wanted to close the arc back to early, though. Here is one of Arcana’s poems that struck me for both (familiar) content and (unfamiliar) form.

Eight

Awake and asleep or both or between I traveled
in my bed, voyaging grey waves and storm foam
under black skies ripped by fierce winds, or

The bed bobbed and eddied in slow breaking circles
of sunlight on flat green water; or rocked
on smooth blue pools, riding slow swells easily.

And every time, great sharks swam round my bed:
I saw their strict fins, saw they were not orcas
marked like magpies, mimes and clowns. Not dolphins.

I would lie rigid under the sheet: to stay alive
I must not move, not stand up against
the headboard, brace muscles for action,

Raise the sheet into a sail; I must not sit up
when they swim alongside, toothed skin raking
the mattress, gill slashes red above the water line.

From the smallest corners of my eyes I’d see them
thrust their thick torpedo snouts from the water;
they rose with gaping gullets, baring mythic teeth.

But the bed did not grow sodden, capsize, slip
below the surface and slide me paralyzed
under water to the circling sharks’ open throats.

In the darkened theater of childhood, I turned away
from the screen, from the shadow of danger. Closing
my eyes, I learned nothing of death, only of fear.

And here are slightly fearful variations on a nursery tune by Donanyi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvcFmb9EKs&feature=youtu.be&t=10s