Why I teach…

I can say in all honesty, looking back over my experiences, that without my teachers I would not be alive today. In fact, I probably would have died long ago. The persecution by my birth family was so severe I barely had the will or energy to keep on going at times.

Most of my teachers had no idea what was going on in my family’s house. How could they? A possibility of being caused bodily harm, verbal and emotional abuse were not subjects even discussed back then. And how would they have known? I did not have the words to tell them.

Some of my teachers seemed to sense something. I love them, every single one of them. A few of them tried to help. The first was a piano teacher who insisted on teaching me chord structure and voicing at a very young age. I had started taking piano lessons by the time I was three years old. My Mother uncovered my composition book and promptly fired the teacher.

The band director at Andrew Warde High School went out of his way for me. He mentored me into a spot as the Principal Flute of the University of Bridgeport Orchestra when I was a sophomore, as Warde had only a band. He enlisted the help of a teacher there as well. The teacher my Mother selected had me practicing Kulau exercises to perfection. But with the university teacher, before I knew it, I had learned the Mozart D Major Flute Concerto. I used it for the Connecticut Allstate audition and won a spot as first flute in their Concert Band. Mr. German then insisted I perform the Concerto for the school, which I did, to an astonished and enthusiastic response. I then went into the Girl’s bathroom and broke down sobbing. No one from my birth family attended the performance.

It was the first performance of Mozart playing Mozart in about two hundred years. My best friend, Allison, attempted to console me, to no avail.

And so my school life became my real life, while my family life remained a quagmire. Each day I would deliberately close the door on the darkness of the Fairfield house and strive to do my best at school.

I can give you many other examples of teachers who went out of their way for me. They did not know me personally, nor were they likely doing anything different for me than they did for all the other students. But it was because of their mentoring that I kept on going.

And so, when I teach, I am shot out of a cannon every morning. I am a substitute in the public and charter schools of our area, so I usually have a different assignment every day. I don’t know who I will work with, or what will happen. To complicate things, the schools of today are a far cry from the ones I attended. I frequently feel like a sojourner in a foreign land.

But that’s another story.

I just hope that I am able to give back in some small measure what was given to me. I hope that I can provide a nurturing word or validating response that will be of value to the students. I want to make sure I don’t leave anyone out…just in case there is one dealing with what seems like an unfathomable darkness at home…

The Bob Dylan connection…looks like it’s all about the stones…

How strange it seems to be bringing it all back home to the first time I heard Bob Dylan’s song Like a Rolling Stone. I had been kicked out of my family’s home in Fairfield Connecticut right after graduating from Bucknell University, Phi Beta Kappa and University Honors (one of two and the only woman to do that) because I had taken a job in New York City. I found myself on a lazy Saturday afternoon walking down 57th street with thirty dollars to my name and a month’s railroad pass. My first month’s salary was going to pay the employment agency that found the job for me — at MONY, on 1740 Broadway. I found a place to stay and it all worked out ok, but when I first heard that song the following year, I thought it had been written about me. All I could hear was the screeching, mocking voice of Dylan. I tuned him out after that. For a very long time.

But now it is all coming together, and the connection makes sense, as it looks like Bob Dylan and his people had been receiving information about me from my birth family, without my knowledge and consent. And some of it seems to have ended up in some of his songs. The intent appears to be to create a false reality that would cause me to lose hope…

I discuss this at my blog, Dylagence…https://dylagence.wordpress.com/

Here is an example…

And at the center of the vortex…

It looks like Bob Dylan has been stoning me, to try to cause me to feel slandered and humiliated…and encouraging his insider fans to do the same with the oblique references in some songs coming from ‘inside’ information from my birth family…

The Dylan connection seems to be in the vortex.

I can’t change that, even if I wanted to.

The battle seems to be in the vortex.

The battle is already won…

On the possibility of my having been poisoned as a child…

Update, January 9, 2023

My parents were never brought to justice…but their accomplices may be…

Original post..

When I was four I had a vision, of sorts, that probably helped to keep me alive.  The significance of it to me at that time was that I became convinced I had to protect a Gift I had been given from my mother whom, it seemed, had made some sort of a pact with a dark angel I came to call “Lermontov”,  as it resembled a movie character by that name. I had no doubt my mother was my adversary, but I did not at the time comprehend the extent of her antagonism.

Although a robustly healthy child, I regularly found myself becoming violently sick to my stomach and throwing up.  Ironically, at those time, my mother was conciliatory and sympathetic, bringing me ginger ale with shaved ice and saltines to calm my stomach.  This continued until shortly before I left home for college.  Once I had settled into dorm life, my first thought was how nice it was to be somewhat on my own. My second thought was relief that I was no longer throwing up.  It immediately occurred to me that my mother had probably been behind this, but my relief at having survived was my primary emotion.

Within a few months of this realization my father nearly died by his own hand.  All my attention switched to him.  I did not make the connection until recently, as, subsequent to that event, the rest of my birth family seemed to circle the wagons and lock me out, so to speak, that there could have been a connection. Other questions that I had about my birth family also began to fall into place when I looked at them from the perspective of my birth family trying to shield themselves from the consequences (not of their own actions, mind you) of my having survived this ordeal.  :-0

Update 4.17.21

Since this post was written a lot has taken place.  I spoke to my dear husband about this possibility and his response was, “You remember that?” Of course, I was puzzled, to say the least.  I then told my two younger children of this possibility. I received blank looks.  There were no questions.  There was no concern. Just a chill emptiness.  I did not know what to think. 

It became evident that for whatever reason, protecting my one living birth family member from being held accountable for their part in this terrible situation was more important than showing any concern for me. 

At that point I began to step back.  The Corona pandemic provided an extension of what I had already decided to do.  

Now I see the situation from a different perspective.  I have had the courage to ask, “What if it didn’t stop?” I don’t like the answers that come to me, but accepting the truth is always better in the end.  

Update June 9, 2021

There has been a veritable flood of information coming at me for the last few weeks. Most stunning is the realization that these odd coincidences possibly connecting Bob Dylan’s family and mine are not that at all.  Instead, this may consist of ‘inside information’ from a member of my family that made its way to Dylan’s people.  Even more astonishing is the possibility that this may have been going on for a long time…perhaps even back to when Dylan appeared on the scene in New York.  What could possibly be the reason for this, I wondered?  It has been, at the very least, a betrayal, but to what end?  I puzzled over this until the lyrics of one of Dylan’s songs came to mind…Jokerman…whose features could have been carved out by Michaelangelo…dancing to the nightingale tune…

Jokerman

Whoa Nelly, I said to myself…could Dylan be hinting at my father’s ignoring my mother’s terrible behavior toward me?  Is he giving his insiders information about what happened in that house? Where would that possibly come from?  My family members have all been in lockstep to shut me down whenever I mention what happened in that house, and here is a complete stranger telling the world — or at least his ‘insiders’ — about this?  

And then, another possibility occurred to me — that Dylan’s people had somehow obtained a pilfered copy of my manuscript Titan, from Piper to the Alternative.  The heroine’s middle name is Philomela — which means nightingale.  Her father, Dorian, is as handsome as Dorian Gray, and as ignorant and selfish…

This opened up an entirely new kettle of fish, so to speak…

Jokerman appeared on the scene in 1983. The only adversary I am aware of who had access to my early drafts of Titan in the late 70’s, was my ex-husband, a bass player in the Minnesota Orchestra, whom I call “Monostatos”…

Was that what had happened, if that is the case? 

Stay tuned, as this is becoming curiouser and curiouser…