On The Edge of Extinction

"Barbara at the Water's Edge", Rockaway Park, NYC, 2011. Juliana Beasley.

You are Not Here But You Are In Me

I spoke to Peter on her birthday. I called him at the neuropathology lab at a hospital in Long Island. I found the phone number on-line at the hospital's site as well as a photograph of him on his staff page. He is 65 years old now, his hair early turned gray now snow white. No, longer the younger man who married my mother, my mother's second husband. It had been several years and several of her birthdays since I had last called him. I closed the door to my study while my intern worked in the other room.

Barbara And Julie(a.k.a. Juliana) Watching T.V., 1973

I am home. Saturday night. I had all the opportunities not to be alone or at least right now it seems that way. I canceled last minute with my dear friend, Jason who was going to make it all the way out to Jersey City to hang out. Not, exactly hang out but edit each others work in a friendly way. By midday, I was still under the covers. I had not accomplished enough to let go and enjoy human companionship.

I've set myself up to be a full time workaholic whether things are left undone or not. And there will also be those loathsome danglers like itchy wool sweaters that graze against innocent flesh. All this excitement and I am just a commonplace hermit, manning the keyboard around the clock. I sit in awe that I manage to play some strange balancing act, sitting on this old roller coaster I've been riding for way too long. It's easier to stay put, hold onto the metal rails than to free fall, the body supple and relaxed, into obscurity, outside of this catacomb I built for myself like some estranged Unibomber living in a shed.

"My Mom in Medical School", Philadelphia, PA., 1962? (My father, Andrew is center. He was my mother's Anatomy Professor). She is to the left of him.


I'm untouchable really. I'm lonely and yet, I want to be alone. I want every one to call me and leave a message on my land line, tell me that they are inviting me out, tell me that they miss me so much, tell me that life hasn't been the same since I stopped coming out or never came out with them. And then I want to swim in the recognition that there is a world out there that cares about me and needs me. And then I just want to stay home, coveting all of the ego boosting affirmations on the answering machine.

"My Mom on Her Wedding Day", at my our house in New Rochelle, New York, 1981? She is 42 in this photo. She loved Calla Lillies.

In the top image, she is dancing with a family friend, Nate at her wedding party reception. She has had too much to drink. I love this photo of her because it really shows her for the hungry child she really was.

I'm blasting a Tori Amos album right now. I feel like an adolescent milking every bit of pain with a pop song. My esophagus locks in as tight as a Pit Bull's bite.

I try to feel it and know it more than I can remember or touch it, more than the tightness in my chest. Instead every blow is accentuated with a shrill while a melancholic finger piano strikes irony.

This week one of my interns voiced his opinion. I'm disorganized. I know that. Welcome to my daily struggle and my nightmare. I never intended to push anyone in the paper pit with me.
"My Mother, My Greatgrandparents Lichtenstein and My Sister Eliza", 1963.


I live in chaos of to do lists scribbled on backs of envelopes, in 3 different binders, on my mirror, stickies posted to my computer, typed in 3 different programs. I'm multitasking like everyone else I know out there except I feel like I'm not keeping up with my side of the bargain.

"I know I have a problem", I said. "I've been trying to change this for a long time. I'm very right brained for better or worse". I started to sob and tears filled my eyes.

I try to explain that being overly creative and unfocused and having a mind that is firing off at all times with new ideas is the good part of this attention deficit, not only a defect. It sounds cutesy and like I am genetically flawed at no fault of my own. It sounds like I am some sort of spectacular idiot savant; some kind of "take the good with the worst of me."

I know the facts:

I have no recourse except years of counseling.

If it were as simple as pure genetics, all those pills I ingest might actually be more effective.

I am running as fast as I can.

I think that he already knows this.

By the end of our meeting, I can see that he too is very upset. Malaise and nausea on the high seas can be infectious.

It's a big Saturday night, I go through my stuffed half bathroom, now a depositary of boxes stuffed with what I can't remember and other floating odds and ends. I hang over on one foot, lift the other to balance myself as I grab in between a small space to leverage the box labeled "Personal Pictures". I'm on the way of creating more disorder in the disorder. I know what I am doing. I'm looking for something that has been on my mind the last two weeks.

I pick through the envelope that says "Family Pictures". I grab into the envelope with the greedy hands of a child. There she is--my Mom, Barbara. Her birthday was more than a week ago on January 29th. She died in 1997. Tonight I feel like I need to be close to someone who might profoundly understand me. A daughter like me who took more time and patience to understand her than she took in her life time to understand me.

Over the last couple of years, I have come to terms with all that of her that is me now...her laughter, her sobbing, her hysteria, her deviance, her addictions, her pills, her strange analogies, her body, her gestures, her humor, her face, her anger, her creativity, her grotesque ambition, her depression and her invincible smile.

Everything feels like it might be alright. After all, I found the photographs of my mother just where I thought they might be, clustered and sealed in a manila envelope scribbled with a Sharpie, "Family Photographs", in a box labeled "Personal Photographs." Maybe there is recovery for the chronically disordered or maybe my disorder truly is organized.

I leave the photographs in a pile scattered next to my Epson scanner, go to the kitchen and look for a clean cup and make myself a cup of coffee.

I know that by the time I finish this entry Saturday night with all it's youthful expectations will be done.


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"My Mom at Medical School? or maybe Head Intern of Neurology?",1964? Philadelphia, PA.