A Life Well Lived
Posted on May 30, 2008
Filed Under Relationships | 6 Comments
Always center stage, the star of all life’s dramas and comedies, a 5’1” package of fire and lightning, sharp edges and razor wit, my mother was theater to her fingertips. Today is the first anniversary of her death, the yarzheit, and the complications of our relationship arose from the dichotomy of our being at once too different and too much alike; it has taken the space of a year to gain the perspective needed to begin to see and appreciate who she was, and the gift she was to me.
An inveterate believer in the future, her personal mantra was “I must go on trying!” So much a part of her was this unwavering sense of determination that, upon her death, my sister and I immediately agreed that this line would be engraved on the tombstone. As a lifelong atheist who viewed death as the last act, and one without encores, Mama would be the first to laugh at the irony.
She had a good run, 88 years, in which she lived as she wished, was adored by two good men, enjoyed either the love or the loathing all those who knew her (there was very little gray area where she was involved), and died on her own terms, with her nearest and dearest racing from points around the world to reach her in time; she was not to be rushed at her final curtain.
As an actress, writer, and composer who could tear a Shakespearean passion to tatters, deftly manipulate public opinion, and pen both a lyric and melody filled with either poignancy or laughter, she was sure of her strengths and disinclined to acknowledge her weaknesses.
Ardent in her beliefs and staunch in her opinions, she could never be described as “middle of the road”. A card-carrying Hollywood communist at 17, by the age of 30 she was a true believer in Joseph McCarthy. When she wed my stepfather in 1985, she teasingly referred to theirs as “a mixed marriage”– not because she was an intellectual Jew and he a devout Irish Catholic, but because he was a Democrat and she a Republican…
Never hesitant to back a cause or candidate with her time and talents, she didn’t know how to back down, and had no interest in doing so. She taught me the importance of giving the full measure of one’s devotion to those people and ideals in which one believes– and she taught me well, as I find myself constitutionally unable to do less.
She also ingrained in me the love of language. While other three-year-olds were being read tales from Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss, I felt the flames and heard the voices as she performed for me Shaw’s “Saint Joan”, and trembled at the rage and pain in her voice as she transformed herself into Shakespeare’s Queen Margaret, inventorying the crimes of Richard III and calling for revenge on
“…A hellhound that doth hunt us all to death:
That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes,
To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,
That foul defacer of God’s handiwork,
That excellent grand tyrant of the earth
That reigns in gallèd eyes of weeping souls,
Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves…”
Not the usual stuff of early childhood. But nothing about her was usual. And while there was no doubt that she loved her daughters, motherhood did not come to her naturally or easily; instinctively, she was more inclined to train us, as would a director, and perceived us not so much as children, but as unreasonably recalcitrant actors who would not follow her notes and stage instructions.
By her own admission, she could only see her children as extensions of herself, rather than as separate and unique individuals, and could not entertain as possible—let alone credit as being valid— anything in us that she did not first find true of herself.
My sister, Moira, blessed with a strong sense of self-preservation and natural gifts in an area far removed from our mother’s spheres of expertise and bone-stripping criticism, knew by the age of nine that she would become an architect. My own passions, however, were too much the same as Mama’s, and while I pulled away early from performing, knowing that I couldn’t survive being torn apart and then remade in her image, writing was an inescapable part of me.
It was unfortunate that, despite having much in common, there existed between us an essential, fundamental difference– something very simple, but impossible to overcome—that set us on a permanent and unyielding collision course with one another: whereas she could only feel something after first consciously thinking it, I have always been the opposite, and can only consciously think something after first feeling it. For her, logic would always triumph over emotion; for me, the former never stood a chance against the latter.
So simply stated, this hardly seems sufficient to act as the ongoing catalyst for a lifetime of miscommunication, but there it is, and that it did; every experience, every relationship, every desire, every regret, was, for each of us, filtered through a perspective 180-degrees in opposition to that of the other. And throughout my life, she steadfastly insisted that my perspective was a nonexistent delusion, an impossibility; no one could be put together in that way.
From habit born in childhood and an aching need for her stamp of legitimacy, I spent the first forty years of my life asking for her validation of who I was, and the next ten years gradually coming to terms with the painful fact that it was something she would never grant me. And she never did.
Instead, she did other things. She taught me not to believe anyone who said “you can’t…” She taught me that it’s not arrogance if you can deliver. She taught me to take risks, and to not be afraid of working without a net. She taught me that anyone who believes death is the worst thing that can happen has absolutely no imagination. She taught me to give my heart unconditionally, without measure or limitation, but to walk away from any man who didn’t fully appreciate what he was getting in me.
And it wasn’t that she taught me to think outside the box, but rather, to her way of thinking, there was no box…
On the night she died, my stepfather advised me the local newspaper would need her obituary in the morning, and he asked me to write it. It was not my finest piece of work, but it was the toughest assignment I’ve ever had. As I wrote, I felt her watching over my shoulder and, when it was finished, giving me a wry smile and the slightest nod of approval.
What I wrote that night one year ago was a piece of the story, a fragment, as is what I’ve written this day; I suspect that throughout the remainder of my life I’ll continue to ponder and work through other aspects of that complex compilation of uncompromising truths, surprising contradictions, hidden facets, unasked questions, feathered persuasion, blunt trauma, demanding perfectionism, and fierce loyalty that composed just some of the building blocks from which she was constructed.
There was a lot that she did wrong—but there was also a lot that she did right. And above all, she never stopped trying.
My sister took that message with her when, after a decade in Iran, she moved to Hong Kong at the age of forty and, in 1981, opened her own architecture and design company with the goal of building an empire; today, M. Moser Associates, Ltd., has eleven offices across the world, from London and New York to Delhi and Beijing, and a client list that reads like a “Who’s Who” of international big business.
I’m hard at work on two major projects that no one sane would ever believe could be brought off—but I don’t hear the words “you can’t”, and long ago came to realize that sanity was an overrated, self-limiting commodity to which I should never aspire…
Mama always hated funerals, and didn’t wish one for herself; what she wanted was a fabulous party, at which people would eat well, drink well, speak of her in exceptionally glowing terms, and leave feeling damned glad to have known her. And that’s what she got. Hers was a life well lived and, far more than most, those parts of the script she didn’t write herself, she edited to her liking.
And I don’t for a minute doubt that she accepts full responsibility for the final cut.
——————————————————————-
OBITUARY:
May 30, 2007
Camino, California
“Born in a trunk, and raised on printer’s ink” is the way in which Halmar Forrest Moser Flynn, 88, who died May 30th from congestive heart failure and pneumonia at her home in Camino, invariably described her beginnings. The actress, dancer, writer, and composer was born in Chicago, March 21, 1919, to actors Hazel Howell and Al Wohlman, and was brought up in the artists’ colony of Laguna Beach, California by actors/newspaper writers Marion and Hal Forrest; her first name was the deliberate combination of those of her four parents.
Classically trained to both ballet and the stage, she began performing professionally at the age of five, and as an actress and dancer participated from its very beginning in Laguna’s famed Festival of The Arts. Growing up the daughter of the editor of The South Coast News, the newspaper was another of her frequent haunts, and by her teens she was writing a column about Laguna’s colorful denizens, as well as learning the discipline of straight reporting. As a passion for writing came to dominate her interests, her love of both words and music found expression through pen and typewriter, and rather than physically interpreting the work of others, she preferred to create her own.
In 1943 she fell in love with Swiss entrepreneur Fred Moser, whose interests and involvements ranged from nightclubs and resorts to the discovery and development of natural resources. Until his death in 1978 they shared 35 years together, and over those four decades she wrote novels, plays, musicals, special material for Hollywood stars, and eventually created for herself a highly successful career in public relations, which had previously been virtually unknown in El Dorado County.
For much of the past 25 years she focused her creative efforts on musical theatre, and collaborated extensively with locally well-known pianist and vocalist John Trenalone. At the time of her death she was working on a show based on the Ayn Rand novel “Anthem”.
In 1985 she married El Dorado County native, politico, and consultant Joe Flynn, and with him embarked on a series of high-flying adventures that saw them criss-crossing the skies above United States in their single-engine Beechcraft, with Joe at the controls. Whether exploring America, campaigning for the causes in which they believed, debating ideas, or wandering through Europe and being kidnapped in Israel, love and laughter was at the foundation of their lives together, and their world never ceased being one of discoveries.
She is survived by her husband, Joe, of Camino; brother Juan Forster of Huntington Beach, California; daughter Moira Moser Luk and son-in-law Joseph Luk, both of Hong Kong; daughter Shoshanna Moser of Gold Beach, Oregon; son Scott Forrest of Beverly Hills, California, and grandson Daston Kalili of Hollywood, California.
As she would have wished, her family and friends converged from around the globe in time to say goodbye and, center-stage to the end, she was not to be done out of her final- act curtain.
At her request there will be no funeral services, but her friends are invited to join in a gala memorial celebration of her life on Tuesday, June 5th, from 3:00-7:00 p.m. at The Sequoia Restaurant in Placerville.
Wedding Photography and Its Assorted Permutations of Hell
Posted on May 29, 2008
Filed Under Photography | 2 Comments
As the wheel of the year inexorably rolled through the wet months of winter into the surprisingly soggy season of spring, the distant notes of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” grew louder and more insistent with the approach of the bridal season.
Venues, florists, food, and gowns… the beach or the church? Barefoot in the woods, or attended by fourteen bridesmaids in couture creations? A small gathering at home, or 500 guests at the country club? A menu conceived as organic, environmentally responsible, and “locally harvested,” or the traditional cardiologist’s nightmare? Heavy satin or silk charmeuse? Pearls or crystal beading? Should the dress be ivory, ecru, champagne, cream, candlelight, or pale buff? (The names fool no one, but allow the bride– who has spent the past five years living with her boyfriend– to wear the white dress she’s always envisioned, while still preserving her dignity from those given to the unceremonious giggle).
It sounds delightful as all get out, until there arises that inevitable moment when several conflicting and wholly incompatible visions of the same event are enthusiastically, then vigorously, unrelentingly, and—finally– combatively put forth by their adherents. The resulting skirmishes, strategies, division of allied forces, and endless rounds of diplomacy make the successful celebration of the embattled wedding appear somewhat less likely than the resolution of conflict in the Middle East.
Among the questions emerging from this bubbling cauldron of choices and decisions is the pick of the photographer. Contrary to the opinion of the bride, who assumes her wedding to be a plum assignment anyone would be thrilled to shoot, it’s actually a physically taxing, emotionally exhausting, psychologically stressful, and generally thankless bottomless pit of steadily increasing (but concomitantly uncompensated) expectations which no one interested in self-preservation would have any desire to take on.
I have been there, and I have done that… which is why, despite repeated requests, there exist no circumstances whatsoever under which I could ever be persuaded to do it again.
There is something about a wedding that brings out every woman’s inner psychotic.
Even when all the warring participants have been brought to the bargaining table, and it has been decided that the bride will carry “Queen of the Night” black tulips, wear a gown of Egyptian cotton that has been hand-woven along the banks of the Nile by left-handed mystics who weave for their very souls, and that neither veal nor anyone who has ever eaten veal will be permitted anywhere near the reception, the fact remains that everything in the world can go wrong, the unpredictable should be counted on to happen, and there’s no coming back the next day for retakes.
Despite this, the photographer must capture all the moments, great and small, of the couple’s most important day—and regardless of the reality of that day, the photographs must be a visual memory and record of the flawless fantasy the bride wants to remember.
- It may be raining with Biblical intensity.
- Ice on the steps of the church, temple, or mosque may have transformed the entrance into a slapstick comedy awaiting its participants.
- The couple may have had an enormous fight just prior to the vows, and glare at each other throughout.
- The bride, who attended the Emma Willard Academy For Young Lesbians prior to four years at Smith, may be taking a long, appreciative look at her maid of honor and beginning to wonder if a man is what she really wants, after all…
- The flash equipment may fail.
- The two uniting families’ loathing of each other may far outstrip that of the Capulets and Montagues.
- The bridesmaids may– and almost certainly will– detest everything about the color, cut, and design of their dresses.
- The tone-deaf aunt who insists on singing at every family wedding may be so off-key as to cause visually discernible pain among all those present.
- The bride may be five minutes away from going into labor with twins, but “doesn’t want to look pregnant” in any of the pictures.
- The groom’s sister may have brought along her three, savage, screaming, out-of-control children, who are convinced of their inalienable right to play a rough and rousing game of hide-and-seek with the photographer’s tripods, lenses, lights, and other expensive equipment. Their mother will have no interest in dissuading them from this activity, and her concerns will be focused on ascertaining that the bar can keep her steadily supplied with Grey Goose.
- The bride’s uncle may be a falling-down-drunk.
- The best man may have had an affair with the bride.
- Or with the groom.
- The bride’s father may be a letch who can’t keep his hands off the bridesmaids.
- The groom’s mother may not be ready to let go of her “little boy”.
- The bride’s mother, to whom the photographer has carefully, repeatedly, and in great detail explained exactly what services will be provided, may metamorphose into a whining, demanding, kvetching pest who insists that a long (and continually expanding) list of unbilled extras be “thrown in”.
- In three days of panic-induced eating, the bride may have put on 10 pounds and, in her already-close-fitting wedding dress, look like an overstuffed sausage. (Inevitably, this will be found to be the photographer’s fault.)
- At the behest of his friends, in a final blowout of get-it-all-done-now debauchery, the groom may have had as many drinks and strippers as his body and wallet can tolerate, and look like the late Lenny Bruce after an obscenity-soaked night of exceptional raunchiness.
- Between the family and friends of the happy couple, there may be present at least four “photographers” who will force on the professional their advice about his or her shots; at least two of them will have cameras, and won’t hesitate to physically intrude on the pro’s carefully arranged setups.
- The wedding planner’s assistant may have just broken up with his boyfriend, and will be too shattered to complete half the tasks on his list, including moving the rapidly melting ice sculptures away from the heating ducts.
- At the reception, the shrimp, stroganoff, or macrobiotic menu may not sit well on the tummies of at least two children, who will throw up on at least one of the bridesmaids.
- Encouraged by his alarmingly close relationship with Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker, or Jose Cuervo, the groom may decide that his inventive comedic talents can best be showcased by the manner in which he feeds the first piece of wedding cake to his bride.
- The best man, in his daring-yet-whimsical toast to the newlyweds, may refer to an intimately tender moment shared by the couple, but in doing so make the critical error of confusing the bride with the groom’s previous girlfriend… predictably, disaster ensues.
The cornucopia of possibilities is virtually infinite, and at this point in my life I’m very glad to leave them to those who have seen little and experienced less, and are thus not yet inclined toward making side bets on the probable duration of the impending marriage.
The late, great theater critic George Jean Nathan once observed that “life is full of surprises, but not to a woman over twenty-five, nor a man over thirty.” To those innocent and enthusiastic photographers who willingly wade into the waters of the wedding wars, I offer not the meaningless and generic wish of good luck, but rather the simple, heartfelt, and far more appropriate benediction: “May G-d have mercy on their souls…”
Hiding Out From The Third Millennium
Posted on May 23, 2008
Filed Under Gold Beach, Oregon | 6 Comments
Thanks to the joys of syndication there are few Americans– even those born long after the series ended its original run– who are unfamil
iar with the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina, introduced to us by the long-running “Andy Griffith Show.” It was a quiet, folksy, friendly place in which little of consequence ever happened, crime was virtually nonexistent (and a good thing, too), and everyone knew everything there was to know about everyone else.
More than a quarter century after Andy Griffith turned in his sheriff’s badge, another fictional small town entered the public consciousness– Cicily, Alaska, served up by the alarmingly fertile imaginations at work behind the scenes of the 1990s’ series “Northern Exposure.” In Cicily, a tiny and phenomenally remote dot on the map surrounded by spectacular scenery, an ex-con DJ spoute
d Proust and Nietzsche, the very young wife of a barkeep 40 years her senior could only sing rather than speak during several months of her pregnancy, the boyfriends of an extremely attractive (but inexplicably hostile) female pilot all died bizarre and premature deaths, and the citizenry as a whole would have to be considered at least half a bubble off plumb.
Now imagine what might happen if some celestial alchemist, in search of an afternoon’s amusement, decided to stir together (or perhaps even shake) the fundamental elements of Mayberry and Cicily…
The result could very well be Gold Beach, Oregon, the coastal village near which I live.
Nestled in the cozy embrace of fir and cedar forests and the glittering Pacific, its generously-estimated population of 2,000 souls vastly out
numbered by a myriad assortment of wildlife, Gold Beach is a peaceful hamlet that seems to exist in a time warp, circa 1958.
Houses go unlocked, car keys are left in the ignition, and the police department closes at 5 p.m.; it’s a place in which no one hesitates to start a conversation with a stranger, nor to offer help when it’s needed– and those who are ticketed for driving without first buckling up will find their names filling the police report published in the local weekly newspaper. Major crimes, of course, receive front-page headlines. These can and do include the memorable “Minor Stopped And Questioned For Possession Of Tobacco Product” and “Bear Cub Eludes Police In Su
permarket Parking Lot”.
At the same time, it can be safely surmised that Gold Beach is a mental hospital without walls—long-term observation of the place can only confirm the initial impression, which is that everyone here is crazy, and nobody minds. The natural beauty of the area acts as a lure to those of creative mind and temperament, and when this factor is added to the presence of an already somewhat-peculiar population, there tends to be a noticeably enhanced degree of individualism in many of those one meets.
This is generally considered to be a good thing.
So, when a waitress announces she’s running for the presidency of the United States because she feels that the White House should be redecorated in an Egyptian motif, the townspeople gather to listen to her platform.
No one considers it odd that another of the town’s residents puts out a weekly newsletter explaining the reasons that aliens have decided this is the optimal place to land and set up their headquarters. Instead, people argue the question of whether or not the aliens have really thought this out, and if Port Orford, half an
hour up the road might not be better suited to their purposes.
A local painter makes his practice to walk into restaurants, sit down, and begin singing; there’s no cause to object, as he has a pleasant voice and he takes requests.
A perhaps not-misplaced degree of respect is accorded the woman who, from time to time, walks around town in the pre-Vatican II habit of a Catholic nun. She isn’t a nun, and she isn’t Catholic, but the prevailing view is that at least she’s chosen a positive role model.
And so it goes.
Geographically removed from the rest of the world, with civilization and its discontents a distant, 3-hour drive across a magnificent but treacherous gorge, Gold Beach is not a place for people who need malls. It tends to attract those of independent mind and spirit, who like to do things their own way, without interference, and without the distractions inherent to more populous environs.
Artists, writers, composers, philosophers, and other creative, cerebrally-oriented individualists are drawn here by the unspoiled loveliness, the solitude, and the unimpeded freedom to be who they are.
It’s where one comes after thoroughly exploring the world, taking a good long look at the state that it’s in, and deciding to find the best possible location in which to escape from it.
It’s a great place to hide out from the third millennium.