Lily Tomlin

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I almost missed watching a PBS special tonight. I don't know why I didn't know Lily Tomlin received the Mark Twain Award for American Humor. It's the highest award given for humor.

They picked the appropriate recipient.

In the 70s, Lily performed in a benefit for the Los Angeles Women's Building. So did Cris Williamson, Margie Adam and several other women. We were raising funds to move the Women's Building to a new location.

My roommates were among the producers. I was living in a collective household of six, on a hillside in Pacific Palacades, CA. Seems the Reagans lived near by.

Well, I was too terrified of Ms. Tomlin to even speak to her, either before or after the performance. We had a lovely party at the old women's building afterward. I'd perch here and there, in the corners and the shadows, and just watch Ms. Tomlin. She looked my way once, questioningly. I was wearing a 1920s hand silk screened silk chiffon dress. My head was shaved. I'd wanted to wear that dress to my high school prom, but my mother wouldn't let me. I still have some scraps of it.

Lily is a magnificent talent. Of course, Jane Wagner puts most of the words in her mouth. And that's a monumental job. Ms. Wagner is very perceptive, ironic, dry. She's a lot like Dorothy Parker, minus the maudlin alcoholism. When Lily speaks a Wagner line, my heart literally exhults in my breast. I am thrilled to hear my truth spoken by two genius women in one body.

Lily can portray an outcast without contempt for the character. Most jokes about bag ladies make me furious. But Tess, and her later bag lady, make me proud. They're prophets, critics and clowns. Like me. I named a truck I once owned "Tess," for one of Lily's bag ladies.

Now, I sat here tonight, watching this tribute to Lily, and I felt very ashamed of myself. I felt like a complete loser and failure. I am a good writer. I am a good reporter. I'm a decent artist and I'm a damn good performer. Hell, I'm even musical.

Lily didn't come from the "good side" of town. She came from poverty, abuse, alcoholism, uprooted southerners, trying to make a go up north. Just like my family.

But she made it out. Whoopi Goldberg made it out. Roseanne made it out, but burned like a moth in a porch light. Rosie O'Donnel made it out, but is too nervous to enjoy herself.

What's wrong with me? How come I'm living like a hermit, in other people's pants, with broken teeth and a busted down scooter?

I tell myself I didn't try hard enough. But is that really true, or just the biproduct of living in the age of Rush Limbaugh style blame-the-victim syndrome?

I have volunteered in community groups my entire life. I've worked to publish magazines, produce radio broadcasts, research news stories, operate food pantries, start community centers, plant gardens, run churches, protect children, resist wars, harbor refugees, play flute in concerts.

All the while, I supported myself at menial jobs. They were all I could get; I couldn't afford any college education beyond two-year community colleges. Without a degree, all I could do was factory work, pizza delivery, house cleaning, janitorial, nurses' aid: minimum wage, no benefits. I'd come home so sick and tired, I couldn't even make supper.

And, speaking of college, I kept taking classes, anywhere and everywhere I could: all over California, in Kentucky. And I'd LOVE to go here; I'm right down the road from a community college. But I can't afford tuition.

I can't do the physical work I've always done anymore to keep a roof over my head.

And I don't know if it's these reactionary times, the conservatism and reactionary cliquishness of my present location, or if I'm just too "out there" for people to tolerate, but nobody here gives me even an opportunity to show them what I can do! I volunteer all over the place, but am not welcomed to stay and work. In fact, if I stick around long enough, they'll invent excuses and put up road blocks to keep me out. And I get angry, make a fool of myself, and get a reputation for being a crack pot, I'd have to assume. I don't know this; I'm guessing.

So, I'm a failure. My poetry is in foot lockers, unpublished. My art sits on shelves, unsold. My blogs and web pages go unviewed (about 10 visits per day, each). My love burns in my heart, unacknowledged.

My greatest fear, and I'm sure it'll come true, is that I'll die in here, all alone and my life's works will be thrown in the dumpster, unread, uncared for. My animals will be killed and I'll be a specimen at the medical school. And that's all I will have been good for. A joke about bag ladies.

Alice Walker wrote an essay a long time back, before she got too comfortable with new age and hot tubs. It was called, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." Poor women don't have to grow flowers. We don't have to sew quilt pieces into patterns. We don't have to braid the bread for it to be edible.

We poor women who create do it to keep from going crazy. We're smart. We can't make ourselves small enough and dull enough to tolerate the monotony of day after week after year of drudgery, abuse, deprivation, taunts and exploitation without SOME beauty.

Our gardens are our art. ANYthing from which some color, some life, some joy can be fashioned keeps us from suicide or worse.


So, Lily Tomlin makes me cry. Because she made it. Some how. I don't know how, or I'd have done it, too. It's not like I didn't try.

Lily made it. For every Lily, Whoopie, etc. who made it out, there are approxemately three hundred million women who didn't, if the population of the planet is six billion, if half are women, and most of us poor.

I have an education. That makes it worse. It's the tortures of Tantalus, knowing how close I am to freedom, and how chained I am by prejudice.

I do try. I try damn hard.

I'm not lazy; I'm exhausted.

I'm not crazy; I'm scared.

I'm not weird; I'm wise.

I'm not a failure; I'm failed.

All my LIFE, I've been told, "you have so much potential! Why don't you DO something with it?"

I did. I survived incest. I survived abuse. I survived homelessness and rape. I didn't become a junky or a drunk or a hooker or a thief. I didn't die, even though there have been times when I sincerely tried to kill myself.

I don't want to be famous. I'd like to be successful. I'd like to make what's around me better, like I do with the animals I've rescued and the garden I've scratched out of hot gravel.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I'll spend it alone, without enough food, because I'm in too much pain to cook. I'll see the heart warming commercials about eating too much, spending too much, being a good, conspicuous consumer. I'll hear all about family love and friendships and children.

And I KNOW I'll cry. I cried tonight, for the military, stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan. I cried for the helicopter pilot from Kirtland who came home for the holidays in a body bag. I cry for Lori Piestewa's children. I cry for the dead of Manifest Destiny: "Kill them all, big and small; nits make lice!" I cry for the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the USA.

But I'll try to watch some movies on my VCR. I'll comfort myself the best I can.

I was so scared today when that inner tube popped. People jeer and throw things at me, when I'm on the scooter. I was in a bad part of town. I risked my LIFE, just to get some damn groceries, and came home empty handed! And exhausted.

No, I am not lazy.

I hereby present the Mark Twain Award for American Humor to Rogi Riverstone.

So, Lily Tomlin makes me cry. Because she made it. Some how. I don't know how, or I'd have done it, too. It's not like I didn't try.

It's not like I've stopped trying.