WRITINGS, LINDA MARY MONTANO 2011

1. SELF PORTRAIT

1942: BENEDICTINE HOSPITAL, KINGSTON NY & SAUGERTIES NY.......................................JUST TIME


1959: NEW ROCHELLE, NY....................................................................................................JUST TIME

1960: OSSINING, NY..............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1962: TOPSFIELD MASS..........................................................................................................JUST TIME

1963-65: OSSINING NY............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1966: FLORENCE ITALY............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1966-69: MADISON WISCONSIN..................................................................................................JUST TIME

1969-70: ROCHESTER NY..............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1971-81: CALIFORNIA....................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1981-91: NY STATE.........................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1991-98: TEXAS...............................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1998-PRESENT: ULSTER COUNTY.......................................................................................................JUST TIME

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2. I REMEMBER

" The ability to hold onto a piece of information in order to complete a task is specifically human. It causes certain regions of the brain to become
very active in particular, the frontal lobe,....which is highly developed in humans and is the reason we have such high, upright foreheads. Human
memory is acomplex phenomenom and involves other regions of the brain as well. Information is transferred from short term memory to long
term memory through the hippocampus,so named because it's shape resembles the curved tail of a seahorse(hippocampus in Greek.) The
hippocampus is a very old part of the cortex evolutionally and is located in the inner fold of the temporal lobe. Information is decoded in the
various sensory areas of the cortex then converges in the hippocampus which then sends them back from where they come from. We past
memories through the hippocampus several times....strengthen the associations , and then the cortex will have learned to reconstruct what we
call a memory."
Once she heard a story about a 12 year old girl who, while drawing a picture of an old Asian man from a book, remembered knowing him.
From where? A dream? Someplace else? Some other life? (Not a very Catholic explanation.)
Then 20 years later, she literally and truly met him, the same Asian man. Almost fainting, this real-time recognition was beyond the cortex.

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3.BABY

A dream, flashback, past life? She walks east. A busy small village. Where? A tiny, adorable, cute, sweet, endearing 4 year old boy runs to her.
Brown skin. Another culture. A foreign country. Unaware of cars. Focused. One pointed. Wants to run to her. Why? Can hearts evolve from stone
to flesh in 3 seconds?Anatomically impossible but hers did. Adrenals propelled, eyes binoculared out of her head,silently shouting or maybe audibly,
"Baby, baby. Stop! Cars Cars Cars! Watch out." Fishing for languages she improvisatorily creates, she shouts, "Arete! Aiuto! Attende!" Nothing works.
Winded but frozen in place, her body morphs into Mother Love. My dream baby's 8 year old brother or cousin follows but the babitos pace is beyond
time and cosmically set, not to be matched.
Willing cars,trucks, vans,motorcycles, bikes and ambulances to be banned from the premises by some unseen force, he powers through the parted
sea of cars as potential killers into her arms. She kneels, absolves him, holds him at least in her mind, shakes him and tries 400 new languages to
teach Mother Law 101 to curb his instinct to innocence. "Dangeroso, dangeroso she moans. Dont you ever, ever, ever run away like that again.
Do you hear me?" By then younger brother and company are there translating my dnagerosos to periculosos, periculosos or maybe it is the other
way around. "Where's your real mother", I ask and the real is in silence. More commotion and a crazed with worry 16 year old babysitting aunt and
her friend breathlessly chant the same message, "Periculoso, periculoso, muy muy periculoso", and then THE MIRACLE! Time stopsand without
looking even to the sky to confirm his message, beauty babito baby point to his left and sings, "RAINBOW, RAINBOW!!",diverting his captive loves
from yet another almost 911 real time tear in the middle of the sorrow chest. Certainly diverting me from the coudha, wouldha, shouldhas mind to
instant rapture, and a harboring of new beginnings. As angel son and company concur and stop rescuing....rainbow, rainbow, they head west, I
north, but ever the magician he looks back at me with yet another translated by his cousin prophecy/warning,"Are you going home?"

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4.MORNING

She knows how to give good gifts. Quality was always a 10, durability factored in, even if it was mail ordered. Nothing cheap, including the
clock they gave me maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago.... a travel alarm, because I was always on the road. Thoughtful gifts. An emergency kit
for my car one year when it seemed I was living in it. And then they ran out of ideas, energy, unable to remember who I am or what I do
so this past Christmas I aksed for something recycled, in fact she had mentioned she had a cassette recorder and I said, "That would be great,
i'd love that." But when they cleaned the cellar and found it, mold, mildew, dust and a barry Manilow tape or something else equally dispicable,
clogged it forever. So via ebay, or cragslist or Wikipedia, or QVC, via Taiwan, Istanbul, or maybe Beijing she found a duplicate Sony knock off
version which I actually use as a defense against the ipad/blackberry/blueberry/iphone/kindle/digital camera and robot caregiver.
This morning, I responded to the sound of the 15 year old gift that has never had a battery change but now flutters for 30 seconds before it
offers a polite European-like wake up call to this traveller who now prefers journeying in the silence of the dark night.

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5.THE 39 INCH RULER

Thirty-six inbches long/yellow-golden/aged/smeared with wear/readable numbers:
1.blackout
2.remember
3.remember
4.blackout
5.blackout
6.remember
7.blackout
8.blackout
9.remember
10.remember
11.remember
12.blackout
13.remember
14.blackout
15.blackout
16.remember
17.remember
18.blackout
19.remember
20.blackout
21.remember
22.blackout
23.remember
24.remember
25.remember
26.remember
27.blackout
28.blackout
29.remember
30.remember
31.remember
32.remember
33.remember
34.remember
35.blackout
Then it says 3, not 36. Where's the 6? But there are lines and words: Amos Post INC.,Petroleum Products, Catskill 278. Smell? Taste? No, but it elicits
immediate and constant flashbacks: Dad, where are you? Tell Grandpa I'm really, really, really ,really sad and sorry I didn't say a proper goodbye and
apologize. He knows what I am saying. But maybe he's sad too? The story is that when Grandma woke up from being sick with the 1918 Spanish Flu,
he had to tell her it killed their 3 year old only daughter and sister of 5 brothers. Did he hand Grandma a rumored photo of her in a child's coffin?
Aunt Uula, after that your mom sat mute for hours by the Partition street window day after day after day after day after year, teaching me how to
measure time.

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6.JUSTICE

It was a total betrayal. Senoir citizenzry and all of that kevetching had set in. Activism and volunteering for political causes which demanded
outrage/inrage/anger/ability to harass and blow off group steam had served her well as an organizer for umpteen issues truly unfair; from
female circumcision to migrant equal wages; from Kendra's law to fracking...she was a card carrying angeraholic/suffragetted hope-ette on
wheels, barking for change.
There isn't one deciding moment or reason why it all changed, why the anger turned petty, went internal and tasted bitterly explosive. Illness?
Death of friends? Early dementia? Whatever it was, the focus shifted to one,singly solitary, oxymnoronic task: to stamp out public, uncleaned-up
dog do. Like a mad anchoress released from a medieval cartoon, her morning walks became exercises of such intense detecting that she actually
became proud of her ability to sleuth out the size, shape, odor, placement and sex of the offending canine's refuse, soon to be earth mulch or
creamed "awfull" on a walker's shoe.
Didn't CNN report that there are some equally irate seniors with nothing to do and nowhere to place their fear of dying who live in Long Island
and take DBM (dog bowel movement) samples (uck!!!) from their shared Long Island co-op lawn, and then send the doo to a lab for DNA matching
up to the 4 legged offenders who live in their neighborhood. Now this is creative justice at it's best or a retired lawyers prank. What mentors and
new examples of patrolling with attitude they were!
But I had an idea to offer them: Why not monogram used Wall Mart plastic bags to hand out to early morning dog walking offenders, especially that
one at 6:30 with not one but 2 life sized megaton monster canines, verging on the obese. Do you have an idea for the moniker? Hmmmm,how about:

MY DOGS PACKED UP SHIT OR

DOGGY DO IN HERE OR

NOT MY SHIT, MY DOG'S OR

DON'T WORRY DOGS, HOPEFULLY I'M GOING HOME TO DO THIS TOO

With liberty and justice for all, a concerned citizen.


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7 . DREAM OF A NEW SCULPTURE FOR STORM KING OR WHEREVER : THE VISITATION


On 50 acres?
10 rocks
Each 7 foot circumference
Pink or grey
One a crystal rose
A metal plaque
Etched Mary holds Elizabeth
Easier as art.


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8. MOM, FIVE OF HER GRANDKIDS AND MITCHELL : A PHOTO

What's the title? "Unless the seed falls on good ground"...or something like that? Or is it the picture with 5 people wearing stripes, two not? Mom
stands, in lined pants stretched over an extended abdomen, legs suggesting A GRANDMOTHER QUEEN BIRTHING. She's my age now, or I'm her
age then and with a duplicate haircut, or wig, and if I were wearing those incredible pants, it would be me! And like her, I would be there , before
it happened, reveling innocence and forgetting like she always did, anything but beauty.
BIG BELLY MA, WITH THE KIDS IN STRIPES, that's the title. Most of them are happy to be there, a few pouters, all oblivious to the crouching , not
seen but actually center stage panting dog, symbolically previewing and harboriging the syncronisity of medical tortures to that BIG BELLY MA,
burned radiationally to death.
In the far right corner, a photographer taking a picture of the picure that is already taken. Double life , but he holds his camera to the same cheek
where the bullet entered and spattered now defunct grey matter all over his mother's kitchen.
Hey, new title: THIS PHOTO BY BIG BELLY ME: YOU'D BETTER GO GET A COLONOSCOPY!



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9. A CONVERSATION ...FROM A PHOTO OF A GENERIC WHITE HORSE FOUND IN THE PAPER

I'm so large, so white, so magatonish! When just a stumbling gelding, Samantha dyed my mane pink and I tried out for a MY LITTLE PONY TV
commercial and a few years later, I wore feather angel wings for a walk-on in a play titled: Icarus. I was always a star. But that's the past. The
reason I'm even happier now is because I'm much too old for my current job in this charming village's equestrian competition. Samantha's family
used to bring me to jumping events every summer but I have to tell you what really happened and why I feel so liberated. Of course I will miss
the food, the apple snacks, the ohhs and ahhhs from the adoring girls and endless attention. How can I forget Miguel who hosed me down and
massaged me so lovingly every 4 hours when he wasn't running back to his hellishly hot trailer to check on his very situationally diabetic pregnant
wife and their other 4 vacantly unstimulated kids, hungry for lunch.
Even with all of the perks, the gig was horrible. How would you like it standing in a suffocatingly hot 4 horse capacity van driven by a taxied out
mother and a newbie teen who preferrred texting to talking. I never understood why Samantha's mom always seemd very peaced out on the trip
back after spending time with Uncle Bob at the local library or at least that's where she said they went, but they were so ozzingly gooey and happy
that it made me sick with suspicion. But the good news is that her mom was in a much better frame of mind (or was it body) and so she didnt mind
the 12 hour drive, round-trip! But me, oye vey! For hours I stood, in my own sweat, stink and shit, ankle-high-wet with pee , then robotically jumped
over pieces of wood, and endured the vibrationally lame stares of the entitled viewers who were eternally bored by excess, bored by too much food,
bored by too many stock dividends, bored by too many so called non-friends, bored by too much meaningless chatter about the Kardashians. By
association, I became as joyless, shocked into numbness and hopeless as all of them so one day I intentionally decided to become fat, sloppy, too
lame, too unfocused, and I tripped on purpose. Samantha cried for a week then her dad bought a new version of me to dry her tears.
Now, I truly fly in my dreams and gallop unhindered by phantom pain only when Samantha's not around.

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10. WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK: FROM MY JOURNAL

FOUR BILLION

DIAMOND-EDGED BLADES

SEVER EARTH ARTERIES

SO

BLOOD OF LIGHT

CAN BURN.


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11. LOST

Dear friend,
For 27 years I have shared Nagasaki Day with you internally because at 9 years old, you lived about one and a half hours from there so for years I imagined
that you survived the violence and sin of war that occured in those two cities: HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI. That was that, a quick and easy dismissal with horrible
images but my source of much information, the internet taught me otherwise, that is , I learned that Japan was incendenary bombed by B29's for about 6
months before the atom bombs leveled and decimated your country. But fire came first then nuclear devestation followed.

FORGIVE US: A LIST OF ONLY SOME OF THE FIRE RAIDS

TOKYO:
83,793 DIED( FIRST RAID)
40,918 WOUNDED
167,171 BUILDINGS DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE THIS LOSS

NAGOYA:
3,609 TONS OF BOMBS
2 SQUARE MILES OF CITY DESTROYED
18 INDUSTRIAL SITES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE THIS LOSS

OSAKA:
8.1 SQUARE MILES DESTROYED
4000 PEOPLE DIED
678 MISSING
8463 INJURED
134,774 HOUSES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

NAGOYA:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

KAWASAKI:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

YOKOHAMA:
1.5 MILES DESTROYED
113,460 BUILDINGS DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

OSAKA:
3.5 MILES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

KOBE:
4.35 SQUARE MILES DESTROYED
51,399 KILLED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

SASEBO:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

PLEASE FORGIVE US

FORGIVE US

FORGIVE

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12. CINDERELLA RESEEN

Once upon a time in a very verdant village in India, there lived a Brahmin princess, silver earringed at birth. She hardly had to chew as she grew since her
attendants, there were 8, did almost THAT for her, finger feeding her chapitis, dal, rice, keer, chai, and rice pudding. And she played back the attention
given her by fluttering her dark kohl lashed love eyes. Easy to adore, especially in a culture seeped in that virtue, she lived in mutually aroused ecstasy,
aided by loving touch by the massage walla who daily rubbed warmed coconut oil on her smooth as silk skin while and actually during the respective and
spiritually motivated touching of her lotus-feet in gestures of respect by friends, family and her growing numbers of students. At her birth, the village's
Guru had announced that neumerologically and astrologically, she really was a re-born saint/holy woman/Guru herself....a legacy holder of a tradition
forgotten generations ago.
Songs spontaneously came to her, lyrics hiding the secrets but in a new innocence she shared what she received from deep inside her primitive visioning
in a spirit of light-hearted joy. A true pioneer, breaking out of stody illusions, Padmavati suggested reform, suggested a pioneering reversal, suggested
change, an idea anethma to her class but there it was, right out on the table for all to see....let's not play around any more with this priestly class vs
the merchant class vs the agricultrual class vs the untouchables ! The gig is up and she sang over and over her message, practiced it, married a dalit
and taught her own family how to feed their attendants chapatis from their own hands. Love was the new name of the game.



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13. A LOOK AT THE WORD KINDNESS: ONE WEEK OF UNKIND & KIND EVENTS: IN AUGUST 2011

GANDHI SAID:WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY, THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

1. K.....A Kitchen called LOVE KITCHEN , run by 2 sisters Ellen and Ashe, has given over a million free meals since 1986. They minister to what
they call the 5 H'S: HUNGRY, HOMELESS,HELPLESS,HOPELESS AND HOMEBOUND. They prepare and distribute 2000 meals a week.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

2. I....Investors reveal that one of the causes of the stock market collapse happened because the brokers sold investor bonds assuming
them to be safe only to discover they were worth less than the stocks.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

3. N....Names of the 30 US soldiers kileed in the helicopter downed by the Taliban, will soon be released lifting the public shroud of secrecy
that sourrounds navy seal operations.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

4.D...Discontent has been simmering among Britons urban poor for years and few have paid attention to the socila issues underlying the
anger in London.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

5. N...Nairobi reports a cholera epidemic sweeping across Somalia as thousands of starving people flee famine zones and pack into
crowded camps in Mogadishu.

GHANDHI SAID: WEHN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

6. E...Exercise, botox injections, denervation surgery, deep brain stimulation surgery, physical therapy, visualization, using a soft collar,
and elimination of all personal and siocial stress are some of the treatments used to deal with cervical dystonia/spasmodic torticollis.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

7. S...Sharon stopped eating,began to exercise obsessively and after family nmeals, she would go up to her room to do crunches and jumping
jacks for 2 hours straight. She couldnt watch TV without doing pushups or running on the treadmill.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

8. S..Spokesmen from the Maryknoll Fathers are determining if they will dismiss Father Roy Beaugeois who is campaigning to open the
Catholic priesthood to women. Father Roy indicates that he is following his conscience and that the prohibition on women ordination was
not an infallible church teaching despite vatican declarations to the contrary.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

KINDNESS............ K I N D N E S S