Persephone Abbott

Pilgrimage

Posted on March 16, 2025

Reading Shakespeare and drinking tea are pleasant occupations. And drinking whiskey and reading Shakespeare are also pleasant occupations. A friend of mine and I meet up every so often and read a play together. We switch the parts freely. She’s a health care professional and during the break between transitioning from the tea to the whiskey part of the evening she said to me, “You know, living with a narcissist ages a person.” She meant literally ages a person physically, mentally and spiritually. I remembered  myself at the age of seventeen when I couldn’t recall what I had done an hour previously. I wasn’t taking medication, I wasn’t under the influence of any substances. In despair I dyed my hair grey for a period of time in highschool. Outwardly, I’m now guessing, I seemed to be managing to put one foot in front of the other back then, but inwardly I was drowning. I got away from the narcissist dominating my childhood home, pulling myself hundreds of miles across the globe, and I became hyper aware these past few years that in doing so I saved my own life.

*

Before meeting up to read Shakespeare I spent the week editing my father’s short story that he wrote on the time he introduced Ken Kesey at a reading. The draft that I had received, by the grace of whatever universal energy was present via the nephew of a friend of my father, was twenty-eight pages long. The print out date was July 12, 2012. That would be six years before Keith’s death. Considering that I have edited Racer for publication (TBA publication date) and put together a retelling of Mordecai of Monterey (both novels were written in the early 1980’s), the difference in the writing is evident. My parents spent fifty odd years together, so the question arises: Whose language and use of words belonged to whom? Pausing frequently as I edited my father’s story about Ken Kesey, I could tell where a certain idea had been supported or reinforced by my mother because of the words my father was selecting. I downplayed those ideas as I edited or I removed the toxicity entirely. At times it was heartbreakingly obvious that in 2012 my father’s impeccable logic was already failing him, but in all fairness this was a draft that I was reviewing. I freely rearranged the paragraphs to sort out his ideas. “It’s living with chronic stress and trauma,” my friend reminded me. Yes, and living in a “land” where time evaporates into thin air.

I finished the final blog posting (the short story is now a five part series of postings on my father’s website) on Saturday night just in time to pull on some layers and head out the door. I had heard about the Stille Omgang when I recently took part in an architectural tour and remembered the date. March 15th. Glancing at the websites that were promoting the event, I couldn’t quite figure out what exactly was expected from the participants. I knew there would be a procession, and it would be a Catholic procession in a Protestant country.

*

The temperature outside was just above freezing as I made my way to the place where the procession would start. We entered the church. “Of course,” I said to myself, “first thing on the agenda: a church service.” By the end of the mass I felt myself uplifted by the final hymn which I recognized from my experiences in the Protestant Church. It was as if a gloom had been lifted from the brow of every person present. 

Now ready to venerate the miracle (for which the priest had instructed the congregation, “Our faith is in the mystery. It never makes sense and that is the radicality of Catholicism,” and right then, duly noting that silently deliberating the miracle while sitting in my pew would be a waste of my energy, I decided not to think too deeply about the matter and go wih the flow), we gathered outside to begin the re-enactment of the medieval tradition. The manifestation of the miracle was witnessed in the year 1345 and the gist is that as a man lay dying the sacrament had not burned. Okay, so the moribund was given the final sacrament whereupon he vomited the Body of Christ which was then thrown into the fireplace and later, upon inspection, the Host was found intact and without any traces of incineration. 

Catholic processions were officially banned after the Reformation in the Netherlands. Therefore, the ones that did manage to exist, supposedly after the ban was lifted, and the few that still remain are often called “Silent Processions”.  My curiosity was killing me. We exited the Begijnhof and started making our way up the Kalverstraat. Like most of the world, retail shops are falling under hard times and many of the stores on Amsterdam’s “high street” are stripped empty. Adding to this malaise is the fact that the apartments above the shops are mostly devoid of inhabitants. The entrances and stairways to the former homes of people were removed in the mid-late 20th century to make way for more shop space, enriching real estate transactions in the area. It’s a thorn in the side of the city now and there are various movements to reinstate citizens in the apartment spaces. 

We passed the site of the Miraculous Wafer, presently the location of the Dungeon Museum. I had hoped that we would be allowed in the chapel that still exists within the museum but, unfortunately, this was not the case. We continued along the narrow shopping street, passing more empty, boarded up shops and darkened buildings. Drunken tourists around us yelled and sang, “This girl is on FIYAH!” in the streets while participants of the Stille Omgang tried not to engage in conversations with each other. This was difficult. I was beginning to sense a whiff of Catholic martyrdom sincerely floating in the air. We crossed the Dam and continued up the Nieuwedijk where, again, many shops were closed and above the shops hung the unlit windows in the building facades.

*

Amsterdam’s Central Station was now in our sights. We turned right. “Are we heading into the red light district?” I wondered. After all, by this time, it was almost 11 p.m., and the place was jumping on a Saturday night. The red light district was once the heart of the medieval city with multiple convents and monasteries but that all ended roundabout 1585. That was quite a while ago. We wandered down the Warmoesstraat. I could feel the mood in the group plummet a bit. The street scene was a complete reversal of the serious business of the church service. Despite the rosaries dangling from fingers, it was proving hard work to keep up with the appearance of a holy pilgrimage without having the option to make any noise. 

“Is the Gooi still a very Catholic place?” someone inquired softly behind me to their friend as we exited the Warmoesstraat. “No? Maybe Bunnik?” It sounded more like a hopeful proposal. 

Returning to the site of the Miracle, we circled the Dungeon Museum and then we stopped at the corner. The group I had joined at the beginning of the evening was coordinating the liaison with their tour bus. They had come in from Den Bosch to take part in the commemoration of the Miracle. 

I walked back to my apartment. Oddly enough as the procession had made its way down the Nes, I had a strange feeling of retracing someone else’s steps.

She Put Me On X

Posted on March 12, 2025

Keith sighed and looked down into his beer.

Sitting next to him in Beer Springs

his good buddy asked what the matter was.

“She put me on X.”

“Who?”

“Persephone.”

“Well, you named her.”
Persephone Abbott and Keith Abbott
Persephone Abbott and Keith Abbott

Don’t miss out and check out Routine Apparitions….or X

At the Circus

Posted on March 4, 2025

“Ah,” I thought to myself, sitting comfortably in my assigned seat at Le Carré in Amsterdam.  It was a very nice seat at the back of the royal “loge” section in what used to be the circus theatre. The theater is no longer the home of the circus. 

*

A few years ago I heard Mavis Staples at Le Carré and that was an exceptional experience. I signed up for a “We Are Public” seat (a subscription service to supplement an audience when sales are poor or the venue too big and Le Carré is huge) only to be told when I showed up to collect the ticket, that all the “plonk butts in seats”  tickets were taken. Quite a few disappointed and audibly irate “We Are Public” pass holders were standing around the lobby, determined to hear Mavis sing. 

I wasn’t hell bent on seeing the show but something told me to stick around. And so eventually it was just me and the doorman standing at either side of the entrance. Both bells had rung and everyone with a bonafide ticket had taken their seat. The doorman was eyeing me with distrust. I was watching a figure coming down the street, running awkwardly with a folded up bicycle under one arm and a supermarket bag hanging from the other arm.

*

The woman stopped in front of the entrance of Le Carre. “Do you,” she panted, addressing the only person in front of her not wearing a red doorman’s coat, “need a ticket?”

And that is how I got to see and hear Mavis Staples live. 

*

But that was years ago, and this time I had been cheerfully handed my “settle your backside” in a red plush seat ticket by a cordial young man at the ticket desk and I was ready to witness the opera Ariadne auf Naxos (opera is decidedly not a popular genre among the We Are Public pass holders). I found myself sitting front and center of the stage and I was thinking (because I hadn’t really thought about what I had signed up for) that Ariadne auf Naxos was the opera in which the character of Zerbinetta shows up. I was quite startled by this thought. I believe that four years ago I would not have been surprised but since I stopped singing, I rarely think about these things. 

*

Years ago, what like thirty odd years ago, I sang Zerbinetta’s aria in an audition. Maybe more than one audition. I never sang the role of Zerbinetta on stage. It was one of those, “Oh yeah, Persephone, you should study this aria. It’s you.” And so I studied it and it’s around fifteen minutes long and it’s a beast of an aria because of the vocal range and, by the way, it’s composed by Richard Strauss. Did I still know it? Yes, I did. Once the soprano (dressed up in a bird of paradise burlesque costume) shimmied her way onto the stage, I heard every phrase coming forward from the recesses of my brain. 

The soprano sang it excellently with humor and tenderness. I could have never sung it that well. My German was never quite up to par and then, to be honest, I didn’t understand the sentiment Zerbinetta expresses in the aria. 

*

“Oh yeah, you need to sing this, Persephone. It’s you.” Correction, I had no notion, because of a lack of interest and experience of the aria’s content, of what the aria was specifically meant to express. However, I did my best to interpret the theme of “every man serves up a heartache and every man is an opportunity to fall in love so let’s enjoy a rota of suitors” and act my ass off as if I could emotionally relate to Zerbinetta. I was playing a role within a role. I was enacting the part of a neurotypical person playing the role of Zerbinetta. Deep down I was terrified and following my teachers’ orders by behaving as if the sentiment was a sort of farce. Actually the whole scene is a farce but the underlying sentiment is human.

“I think,” I thought while watching the last act of Ariadne auf Naxos, “that I related to the theme of implausibility in operas. That’s the part that felt natural.” 

Some things to be gone

Posted on February 28, 2025

I want some things to be 
gone like revoking a passport
no more designated grace

Just looking
across the border the landscape
appears about the same as
the acre I’m standing on

The guard
nearest
in a box and bored

Does it all have to make sense?
the world I mean
does my trauma have to fit
your trauma for either of us
to haul a pad of ink out of a desk drawer
stamp a visa and approve entry

After the Diagnosis: Part Ten

Posted on February 23, 2025

She was a professional and trying to find something to engage me. Something to do with autism that maybe I could elaborate on since I had, in the midst of the ongoing family trauma, indicated to my doctor my suspicion that I could possibly be autistic. 

The psychologist and I were facing each other in the basement of my GP’s office. The basement was the lower level of an 18th century canal house in the middle of Amsterdam and the young woman was a psychologist specialized in addiction. I was a mess, but not an addict.  She asked whether I had any special interests. 

*

Despite the tears and exhaustion, I perked right up. I could tell her about my soap collection. Since she had asked. It was very much on my mind and it was a collection that no one knew about. My soap collection was out of control because of the pandemic. The grocery stores and pharmacies had been the only choices for “shopping live”. No one was coming to my house. I could collect bars of soap at the supermarket or order online as many bars of soap to my heart’s content without having to explain the matter. I fantasized about building a “brick” wall, using soap bars, on the shelf in the bathroom. I carefully assigned different associations to the various bars of soap. One was about the novel I was working on, one was about my father’s novel that I was working on, one was about a house I onced lived in, one was about advice someone had given me, etc. Every morning I would opt for a theme that I had previously assigned to a bar of soap, a theme based on the perfume of the bar of soap. Standing in the shower, my hand wavering above the selection of bars of unwrapped soap, I focused on what I was going to do that day, starting with my choice of soap, a matter considered with great concern, care and love.

*

It was obvious. My bathroom did not have enough soap dishes. I bought more soap dishes.

*

I could tell by the psychologist’s reaction that my sudden change in demeanor and my unusual and elaborated subject matter was quite unexpected. Needless to say I was thereafter referred for assessment for possible admittance to evaluation for autism. However, I do believe that I have never discussed my soap collection so quite in depth with any other person. All further discussions in assessment and evaluation were on other matters. Special interests? That box had been ticked. 

It is amazing to me now that I even masked my autism in my own home, censoring myself. What was wrong with a collection of bars of soap? Was it so outrageous? Was a fully packed shelf, filled up with a wall of bars of soap, not artistic? Was an aversion to liquid soap socially unacceptable? 

*

“I like that,” a friend said as she gazed at the bottles of olive oil in my kitchen. The supermarket had held a sale on a certain brand and so I bought every type available, lined them up by color and eventually decided which ones I liked best (the pale green and the deep brown). Perfectly reasonable.  

After the Diagnosis: Part Nine

Posted on February 15, 2025

“Italian.” 

I was surprised. No one had ever asked me to cook Italian food for them. 

For thirteen years, before my divorce, I lived in Gouda. During that period I happily made quite a few friends and remain in contact with people. But for professional and private reasons I became closer to one family with whom I still regularly meet up to share stories and home cooking. 

*

I racked my brain. Italian food. What did I have in my repertoire that would be enjoyable or special? My thoughts wandered off to the time I visited my father’s translator in Bologna. I was living in Paris and needed to escape my apartment because of tensions with an unpredictable roommate.

Wearing my roommate’s trench coat and fresh off the train one February afternoon in the early 1990’s, I made my way to the translator’s apartment in the heart of the city. A jovial person, he made me feel welcome and cooked me dinner. He was known for his love of food and drink and carefully explained his method of cooking chicken breasts in aluminum foil with great joy and affection.

*

It had been quite some years since I had made that dish. And I’ve come to realize that Franco was rather exasperated with me as a guest. “You’re here!’ he exclaimed one evening. I didn’t stay long at his apartment, maybe three days or so, and I was startled by his statement. Franco’s apartment had books piled up in corners, records of all genres of music and marble floors with patterns. It was the last item that fascinated me most. Why would I want to be anywhere else? 

*

I now understand that Franco thought that I, then as a twenty-two year old, would navigate towards other people my age and find a “scene”. In truth I was wandering around Bologna in someone else’s trench coat, inspecting dusty churches and, despite the assholes tediously trailing me around the city, I was having a reasonably good time. But honestly, I liked Paris much more than Bologna. 

Franco La Polla?” the director at the Instituto Italiano in Amsterdam said to me, raising her eyebrows. This was twenty odd years later and I was performing in a half lunatic and rather lame production of Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona. I happened to be the director, manager and soprano of the production. My colleague had arranged a performance of the piece in honor of his fiftieth anniversary at the Instituto. I was discussing the logistics of the matter in the director’s office. It turned out Franco had been a close friend to the woman and her husband. 

*

The show at the Instituto Italiano was nothing short of one of the worst evenings I have ever experienced while on stage. The performance was worthy of being stuck in a novel and I consider the twelve show “tournée” of Serva Padrona as fodder for a potential sequel to Idle Opportunities

Milling over these things, two points stand out to me. 1. I was never active in my peer group’s activities and 2. I have a tendency to initially accept people without being judgemental. My friends from Gouda are humans who are a little “off the beaten track” and who have opted for a wide variety of life choices with the subsequent ups and downs.  I feel that this pattern is a very reasonable one because I myself have obviously never followed the leaders well, hanging back to examine the patterns in marble floors. For instance.

After the Diagnosis: Part Eight

Posted on February 13, 2025

It’s one of my favorite buildings in Amsterdam and it happens to be called a palace. But the building was not designed to be a palace. Magnificent, Amsterdam’s City Hall was the first Republic building of its sort in Europe. Napoleon, after invading the country, transformed the city hall into a palace and, to this day, the building is retained as a royal residence. 

On the occasion of the fiftieth birthday of the King of the Netherlands, the palace – once the celebrated invitees to the state dinner in honor of King Willem-Alexander had departed – was opened to the public. To gain entry all I had to do was sign up online for a timed spot, free of charge. That particular April night I walked into Het Paleis just before the clock struck the midnight hour. I lived one street over at the time so it was an easy stroll to the neighbour’s reception hall, post-soiree and pre-clean up, to gaze at the crumbs sitting on the royal table. 

As it turns out His Majesty’s musicians were also still hanging around a podium, jacked up on adrenaline and crooning a set of limpet golden oldies into microphones. No trace of the hides or hounds of the  guests. Still, it was a very unusual opportunity to be in the building in the dead of night. The walls radiated a very different atmosphere from the day time visiting hours. 

*

Not long ago a friend of mine gave me a certificate to cultural activities, such as a guided tour. I decided to try out the tour at the palace. I slipped out of my office during the day and biked over to the Dam.  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn much new and I was fairly bored by the guide’s regurgitation of Greek myths, as depicted in the masonry which is, admittedly, quite spectacular.

What I realized, as I walked around, is that I didn’t want to see freshly upholstered Empire furniture and beds laden with satin bedspreads. It has to be said that, for the most part, the paintings are mediocre. What I wanted to see in the rooms were piles of papers and registers on tables and clerks and dogs peeing in the corners. In short, I kept looking for the original uses of the rooms back when they were offices. Where had 17th century bureaucracy gone?

I left the tour before the end of the visit and marched outside. In the back of my head I knew I should have said goodbye to the guide and taken my leave but I just walked out, not wanting to deal with the interaction.  I wanted to get back to my office, filled with piles of papers and books. I wanted to organize tasks and get on with my day

*

As I walked across the street to where I had parked my bike, I had a flashback of the psychologist at the Hersencentrum who had listened to me describe my diligence and habit of reading through books because I continually believed that I would “finally” get the message and understand what other people found valuable as experiences. Or, rephrased, crack my “executive function” issues. My therapist held up the book I brought in, a tale of various types of social experimentation, and tossed it on the floor. “You don’t have to read it if you don’t relate to it,” was the message. Stop trying to catalogue what everyone else finds interesting.

After the Diagnosis: Part Seven

Posted on February 8, 2025

I was cleaning up dried out cat puke under the piano. I hadn’t noticed it before because I rarely go to the piano. Standing in front of the keyboard, I felt a vague inclination to lift the cover and sit down. This is the first time in three years, or since the beginning of the crisis that led to autism diagnosis, that I have actually almost wanted to play the piano. 

For about twenty-five years of my life, I stood on stage and performed as a classical singer. But when I was young and started working in opera companies, I quickly understood that something was wrong. I would crawl home after rehearsals and performances shaking, never comprehending how my colleagues carried on afterwards, going out to dinner or drinks. I was exhausted by the socializing that working in an opera production required. I continually heard the music for whatever production repeating in my brain twenty-four hours a day, meaning while I slept, and this added to my stress. I quickly moved away from participating in large productions and focused on teaching and small concerts. 

*

Fame. What did I hear about fame? Fame is a manner to normalize alternate behaviour. It was dangled like a carrot in front of my nose when I was growing up in a dysfunctional family. My father was supposed to become a famous writer and I was supposed to become a famous opera singer. Except that being the center of attention of a group was and is overwhelming to me. 

Yet I could do it on stage at a distance from the audience. For years on years I was trained to stand on a podium and represent some concept or character. But then I am not me. What’s actually more distressing is being the center of attention in daily life. I tend to divert the subject, refocus on who is standing in front of me, and jump into the routine of gently prodding that person to talk. It’s an act to circumvent being misunderstood and the pressure of not meeting expectations. 

*

Busy writing Routine Apparitions chapters, I ordered an obscure book of poetry written by one of my father’s friends. I recall the poet well, mainly emerging from the garage where he and my father had been getting stoned. The poet was drawn to teenage girls and I remember him leering at me at least once. I wasn’t really his type though. I don’t know whether I actually liked him. I was supposed to like him because he was a favored person at home and he generally had a gentle demeanor. A faint reference to my teenage self is in a poem in his book, something about not being interesting enough to be a mistress. 

*

A few years ago I stumbled across the works of an illustrator who had been employed at the restaurant where the poet worked as the manager. She wrote two books about her years there as a waitress. In the second book, the teenage daughter of the poet-manager runs away from home and is having a wild time doing teenage things.  The name of the fictional daughter is Persephone. I was not very happy at this discovery and I remembered that Isabella (the actual name of the poet-manager’s daughter) had run away and been into all sorts of typical teenage “pushing the limits” behaviour. As for myself as a teenager, I was at home with the cat and practicing the piano…..getting ready to become famous.

After the Diagnosis: Part Six

Posted on January 29, 2025

Sitting in a chair in a room, I took in the news. The room had high ceilings and big windows. There wasn’t a screen or a buzz or any electronic distraction. The mood was not modern, as in a modern life vibe. A plant stood in the corner. 

“You have the option,” I heard her say after announcing the diagnosis, “to join a group to learn about managing as an autistic person.” 

I said yes. Immediately yes. It’s ingrained in me. I am, afterall, an American. Free health care? It’s a no brainer. 

*

Sitting in chairs in a large room, we faced the experts who were going to teach us about autism. We were seven autistic people and the experts were not autistic people. It was a surreal moment.  As more women are being diagnosed, my group consisted of five women and two men. 

The room had high ceilings and big windows. It was a space in an old warehouse in Haarlem. There was a screen set up for a slideshow. Whenever the equipment malfunctioned, the experts immediately apologized for the noise and tried not to overly fuss.  Our reactions: wincing, glaring, shutting out the situation and/or no reaction whatsoever.

The two experts didn’t mind when the room fell routinely into complete silence.  We were not compelled to answer or respond to their prompts. The goal of the class was to teach us how to not hit sensory overload. So hey, no pressure. At the time and in my state I was not functioning that well.  I wasn’t alone. We were all struggling.

*

I had survived so long because somewhere in my mid twenties I realized I was probably going to dive into an abyss if I didn’t take care of myself. I developed a four point plan: eat regular meals, exercise daily, engage in mental chewing gum at some point in a day and sleep between 6 and 8 hours a night.  Sometimes I would give myself permission to sleep longer but I would be hypervigilant about avoiding experiencing what I could only describe as a comatose-like feeling if I overslept and which would take weeks to rectify. 

Of course, once I educated myself that my four point plan hadn’t been a bad plan and I just needed to focus on eliminating sensory overload, I had to educate my family and friends. Some friends were right on board, some friends wanted the “old Persephone” to show up. 

*

The masking was exhausting. And that’s a whole other topic.

*

Having finished two years of the post diagnosis trajectory, I was recently offered a place in a group for autistic women that meets once a month. It’s in a modern building and I was invited to interview for the spot that had opened up.  Again, free health care? Totally, I’m in.

The group leader ushered me into a room and asked if I was okay with the lights. 

“I wouldn’t want to work here all day,” I said, sitting under the office lighting. 

A group of people entered the next room over. The spaces were not soundproof.  

“Maybe we should move,” the group leader said and led me down the hall. 

We sat down in another office space under the same office lighting. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. 

I thought with some amusement to myself that the building I was sitting in was completely unsuitable for the autistic people who were being supported by the Foundation. 

*

And so my group meets up to sit in the dark and talk about a theme that had been decided on months previously and is printed on the schedule and a reminder is sent to us every month. Thus no surprise is sprung upon us.  Still, I think the group would function better in a different space, one that doesn’t seem like a dentist’s office. But that’s just my take on the situation. 

After the Diagnosis: Part Five

Posted on January 26, 2025

I would really like to go mudlarking. I daydream about this possibility. Wait, hold up – such a funny word daydreaming. As opposed to night dreaming. I don’t think I have ever dreamt about mudlarking at night. At least I have never woken up thinking that I almost took hold of a miniscule and wafer thin rose farthing only to watch it gently slip out of my grasp by the force of a passing wave as a seagull squawked overhead. (Pan camera angle to grey sky.)

Yes, Nicola White’s mudlarking YouTube videos entrance me. Occasionally she finds spectacular things like a whole Roman pot in an estuary, but most of the time the finds are odds and ends. But still items that  can tell a story and take us back to a far time ago. And that’s exciting no matter what.

*

Here in Amsterdam I tend to look at the freebee book boxes. I found a Delta Gallery circa 1982 exhibition pamphlet for Basquiat. That was a surprise.  I also found a 1963 proof copy of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Unfortunately on that one only half of the back cover is attached.  But still. Little treasures that I enjoy.  And I had to add that I enjoy my finds more than a pipe pulled out of the Thames mud, not that I would say no, but my particular joy in life is Rectangular Things. 

*

Knowing that I have a Cineville pass (also a rectangular thing) and regularly go out to see films, a colleague suggested that I go see the Nosferatu movie. I watched the trailer. It’s the noise. Soundtracks drive me crazy and, you guessed it, I am always wearing ear plugs. I don’t think I could manage Nosferatu. The modern one. I’ve seen clips of the original countless times.  It’s silent and pretty goofy looking. 

For utter relaxation I like to watch Japanese vlogs.  The kinds of vlogs about making tea and cleaning on a Saturday and arranging items in little shelves and baskets. I really mean absolutely nothing crosses my mind when I’m watching these videos.  Sometimes I think I might like to make a vlog channel like this. Silent, with text across the screen for commentary. But my small apartment is packed full of Rectangular Things and I don’t really think that anyone is going to find me continually trying to create some order very relaxing. Instead I have created a board on Pinterest: Rectangular Things, the Autistic Take.