<![CDATA[AKA MITZI

<![CDATA[AKA MITZI - Blog]]>Sun, 26 Jul 2026 03:29:02 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[55 Drafts]]>Sat, 07 Jan 2023 08:00:00 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/55-draftsIt's been more than a year since I blogged and even longer since I did so regularly.

I can't remember a specific reason as to why I stopped. I can blame the pandemic, but that would be a blatant falsehood given the sheer number of gluten-free cakes I baked and endless board game tournaments my husband and I played while in lockdown.

I can blame Instagram sort of. My IG posts have replaced my writing, but in a more "look at me, I'm happy and productive, aren't I, don't you see that?" way than the diary-like uncovering-topics-I-should-explore-in-therapy, pseudo-anonymity writing that my blog offers. In other words, I traded something that was true and authentic and raw and at times really difficult for something that is glossy and disingenuous and easy.

The inexplicable abandonment of my writing becomes even more disconcerting because of the amount of unadulterated pleasure I derive from it.

The armchair psychologist in me wonders if I stopped writing as a form of emotional self-flagellation for enjoying it too much. It doesn't fit the mold, you see. I have been conditioned to be a doer. To work, to clean, to mother, to wife, to do whatever it is except something that is 100% just for me and no one else. Because my inner voice shouts in my ear reminding me that to do something just for me would be selfish and lazy and entitled and who wants to think of themselves in those ways, right? To do for myself would be so entirely different from the behavior that was modeled for me as a female and to reframe this thinking at times seems completely intractable.

But my thinking can and must be reframed. It is a new year and a new me, and I will dive into the 55 drafts, some dating back to 2015, that are waiting for me. Like a Gmail folder that needs cleaning out, most are blank posts that need to be deleted. Others, however, are more intriguing and worth revisiting with writing-prompt titles such as "The Claustrophia of Life" and "Everything Paleo 'Cept the Hair."

I will continue to work, to clean, to mother, and to wife. I will not do these things because I have been conditioned. but instead I will do them because I really dig my job and a tidy house and, of course, my kids and husband. But starting right now, with these words, I am reserving a piece of my life for me and for my writing and for whatever else brings me happiness.

]]><![CDATA[The Invisible Woman]]>Fri, 23 Apr 2021 00:22:08 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/the-invisible-womanI didn’t start out invisible. It was a gradual, slow folding in.

Unlike a snake who releases its skin whole, my cells shed one by one, floating and dropping like colorless confetti the day after a parade.

Did I feel it, this unmasking? Some days I did, yeah. At the beginning mostly, before I lost myself completely. It was only then that I began to miss the pain.

I am mobile in my invisibility, yet it is a mobility restricted within a sphere that sardonically shifts and shimmers, taking delight in my entrapment.

Why don’t I break free, you ask? It's simple, really. Without eyes, all barriers become impenetrable.

I am invisible, yet I am not an apparition. There are no ghostly footsteps, no knocks, no whispers in the night. Instead, I lay quiet, intransmutable.

There are days, when the sweet winter wind whirls around my nothingness, that my skin yearns to renew. Layer by cold layer, I feel my cells start to return like paper mache upon its host. But then the air stirs and turns saccharine, cracking the veneer, leaving me invisible yet again.

Will I end as I began or will I remain as I am?

Come close. No, even closer. Only then will you see.

]]><![CDATA[Missing pieces]]>Wed, 30 Jan 2019 02:56:53 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/missing-pieces

Scattered and lost
the sea queen
found
herself
whole again

]]><![CDATA[My Heritage]]>Mon, 28 Jan 2019 20:38:41 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/my-heritage

Looking back at my last blog post from more than a year ago, I am somewhat bemused by the dramatic "my whole identity has been upended" tone of it all.

Yes, I will admit that when my My Heritage results came back as zero-percent Italian ancestry, I was quite taken aback.

Growing up, I was immersed in everything Italian - food, sayings, superstitions, and people. I was raised by my second-generation Italian grandparents who in many ways were more like Italian immigrants. My grandmother spoke Italian - mainly to her friends when she didn't want us to know what was going on - and she baked and cooked all the foods that her own mother and grandmother had made back in Southern Italy. My grandfather, like his Neapolitan ancestors before him, loved working outdoors with his hands, growing his own tomatoes on a borrowed sliver of soil. And while my grandfather was not bilingual, his off-color, slang Italian still weaves itself within my own vocabulary to this day.

Growing up, I also identified as Italian because in doing so it was an implicit and maybe not-so-implicit rejection of everything from my paternal side. Irish? Yeah, I guess I'm technically half Irish, I would say, but I am really Italian.

When my DNA results came back, not only did Italian not come up under my Ethnicities, very few of my DNA Matches had Italian surnames. Instead the surnames most matched with me were Miller, David, and Smith - an additional blow to my childhood "really Italian" claim.

Another surprise was that I am (at least according to My Heritage) 14.3% Jewish. My reaction to this was more "eh, that feels right" especially because it allows me to fantasize that I am a direct descendant of my all-time favorite painter Amedeo Modigliani.

After I received my DNA results, I got in touch with a few of my maternal cousins. In speaking with them and doing subsequent research, it makes sense that my heritage would come up as Greek and Iberian instead of outright Italian. Naples, where my great-grandparents were from, was settled by the Greeks in the 8th Century BCE and for two centuries starting in 16th century was ruled by Spain. In addition, it's possible that at least some of my family - perhaps 14.3% of them - came to Italy with paintbrushes in hand as part of the Spanish Inquisition.

Who I am has changed. That's undeniable. But who I am has changed not because of some early morning swab of my cheek sent off to a DNA lab.

Instead, who I am has changed because of a slow unfolding and release of what has defined me. I am Italian. I am not Italian. I am not Irish. I am Irish. I am Catholic. I am Jewish. I am a mother and a wife. Without sons at home, I am no longer the same mother. Nor am I the same wife. And, maybe most importantly, like my newly-imagined paisan Modigliani, I am a creative. I am a sculptor. I am a painter. Maybe not as good as my forefather, that's for sure, but I am both of these things nonetheless.

Mitzi is still in the house. But with her now are so many other people - some from far-away lands long ago and some closer to home waiting to be discovered.

]]><![CDATA[A Case of Mistaken Identity: Mitzi and the MyHeritage DNA Kit]]>Sat, 13 Jan 2018 00:31:39 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/a-case-of-mistaken-identity-mitzi-and-the-myheritage-dna-kitWhen I was little my grandparents didn't call me by my given name,

For the first few years, they called me Dee, presumably because that's the only way my brother - a scant 20 months older than me - was able to say my name when I was born. But even after my brother graduated to polysyllabic words, my grandparents still wouldn't call me Judy. Instead, I was Mitzi.

Now, the on-the-surface, thoroughly ironic explanation for this was that my grandmother loved the actress/singer/dancer Mitzi Gaynor so much she was hoping by some weird namesake osmosis that I'd inherit some of Mitzi's long-legged beauty and talent. (The truth for my name rejection, as it turns out, was sadder. My maternal uncle was left at the altar by a woman named Judy, and the name was a hurtful reminder, especially for my grandmother.)

Even as a little kid who didn't find out the truth until much later, I knew there were holes in the nickname explanation. My grandmother was absolutely gaga for Rock Hudson and yet the only thing she ever called my brother was Joey. But more than that, what I was told just didn't ring true instinctively, and because of this one day I put down my very ungraceful, very chubby foot and and insisted in a very non-melodic voice that everyone, including my grandparents, call me by my real name. To my surprise, they agreed.

In a flash my identity changed. And even though I was the one who initiated the change it was unsettling. Who I was and how I viewed myself my whole life became instantly just so different.

Flash forward more than four decades to today and I am experiencing an identity crisis all over again, thanks to something I once again initiated; I insisted my husband and I do a MyHeritage DNA Kit just for fun. Now with the results in, I am unsettled. I am unsettled because everything about who I am and how I have viewed myself my whole life is just so different.

Until next blog post....

]]><![CDATA[Mitzi's in the House!]]>Wed, 08 Nov 2017 15:22:15 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/mitzis-in-the-houseFor the four people who read my site, make note:

I am switching the domain to this blog to akamitzi.com.

Bookmark it!

And then come back in a few days and read why.

Peace and love.

]]><![CDATA[Self-Discovery]]>Fri, 03 Nov 2017 16:10:26 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/self-discovery

]]><![CDATA[All the World's a Stage]]>Mon, 30 Oct 2017 13:29:51 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/all-the-worlds-a-stageWhen you descend the stairs to the Metro, you are signing a contract, invisible yet binding.

Your eyes, windows to the world, must be instantly battened down and shuttered. Do not show emotion or react - not to the woman carrying a limp baby and sign asking for food nor to the man, barely out of his teens, skeletal, strung out.

Swipe your pass and shed your true self at the turnstile. No sorrows or struggles. No joy. Especially no joy, no smile, not laughter, unless you are high and, if you are high, your contract is unique and ironclad. Follow the lead of your homeless brethren and shrink within yourself. Hide your stink, your filthy clothes.

Find your mark behind the yellow line. You are a play actor who must exist in caricature form only - the businesswoman, the junkie, the hipster.

Enter the train and get out your props. Your phone, your book. Tolerate the noise and the smell and the taste of despair as if all your senses are lost.

Whatever you do, do not break character.

Ascend the stairs only to sadly discover that the contract remains, its language more ambiguous yet equally irrevocable.

Execute the terms until you become your part. Method act until you are faceless and empty of all humanity.

Do it. Day after day after day, all the while awaiting the contract's end.

]]><![CDATA[October 22]]>Sun, 22 Oct 2017 15:23:14 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/october-22Today is my mother's birthday.

There are no balloons or cake. No gifts or decorations.

My mother is dead and has been for almost six years.

But today is still my mother's birthday.

I see the date on my computer - October 22 - and I feel a rise to my throat and I swallow down hard.

I will cry, but not yet.

First, I want to - let me correct that, need to - swim through this pain that I am feeling. I must bathe in the mixture of guilt and sorrow and sadness and loss.

I force myself to imagine what my sweet gentle mother's birthdays must have been like when she was locked away at Rockland Psych. I hear the screaming down the halls and human smells and violence fill my nose and I see her little body, not even five feet, on an iron bed collapsed into itself.

There were no balloons or cake. No gifts or decorations.

I need to feel what my grandparents must have felt on their daughter's birthday, their baby's day, year after year as she descended deeper into her schizophrenia. The pain that hits me is too real, too present. I shove it back to the past, a coward.

Instead I let self loathing wash over me for not knowing my mother's favorite flavor cake or asking her what her birthdays were like when she was a child, still free. For not flying out from California. For thinking sending sneakers and t-shirts via Amazon were the same as being there.

I swallow again.

Today is my mother's birthday. Today will always be my mother's birthday. And today I will look for her, as I have done every day for the past five years and eight months, in the skies and on the ground. I will call out to her, silently and aloud. And I will pray to God, as I always do, that she will answer.

Happy birthday, Mom. I love you.

]]><![CDATA[Photo Synthesis]]>Sat, 21 Oct 2017 16:18:57 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/october-21st-2017

My plants speak to me, softly yet urgently.

"Judy," they whisper as I walk by.

"Yes," I say.

But they do not seek my words. My words are useless to them, to their survival, to their happiness. So I say nothing more.

Instead I feel their need. Their thirst. Their drowning. From sunlight. From water.

From neglect and from decay.

I stand silent with them and they completely fill me with their desire until I feel their thirst, their drowning, their neglect, their decay.

Where do they end and I begin?

I caress their leaves - for just a moment - before mercilessly tearing away at any sign of death. I fill them with water or empty their vessels, dry.

I turn them toward the light or shield them from its burning.

I leave them, their rotted leaves staining my hands.

"Judy," they whisper as I walk by.

]]><![CDATA[Bare Bones]]>Mon, 09 Oct 2017 14:31:18 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/bare-bones

do not avert
your eyes
my wounds, fester,
centuries old

peel them away!
with indelicate hands
expose
smothered marrow, dying

swim in my blood
promise
and excise me
from this facade

]]><![CDATA[Breaking the Chain]]>Sun, 08 Oct 2017 15:49:00 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/breaking-the-chain

We don't know how Daisy ended up at the city shelter.

But there she was, four years ago, leaning against her cage, staring, silent.

Her age was a guess as she was found on the street, a stray, maybe a runaway or maybe discarded. She was young, younger than the age on her card, as it turns out, and certainly younger than the shelter volunteer would admit.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. Never tell a shelter volunteer what you are looking for in a pet. In their desperate eagerness to get the animal adopted out, they will try to convince you that the old, white Chihuahua snarling at you is in fact the young, sweet black Labrador you've been dreaming about.

I made it clear the minute I walked into the shelter that I wanted a full-grown, medium-sized dog. No puppies and certainly no large dogs. Hershey - our first family pet ever - had just died two weeks earlier and in his long, protracted dying I would have to lift his 65-pound shaky frame into my car to take him to the vet and every day I would have to clean up the mess left by his failing body in much the same way you would a gigantic sad puppy. I made a solemn promise to myself that nothing would ever make me go through that again.

"Yup, she's full grown."

Anyone with an ounce of puppy experience would have seen Daisy's sparkling sharp teeth and big floppy head disproportionate to her adorable little 38-pound body and would have replied "Nope, puppy."

But Hershey was our only experience with a dog and he came with rotted teeth and a previously fractured femur that left his back leg forever dragging behind him. We just didn't know from puppies.

We didn't know from puppies and that's why, for the past four years and almost forty pound later, Daisy is out of her cage and in our home.

Her teeth aren't as white anymore and her body, stout like a barrel, is now in proportion to her head. She's only five, a verifiable five, but you can see her slowing down. She doesn't get up -- or into the car -- like she used to. There are no battered bones, just back hips beginning to betray her.

There are days while sitting on her bed next to the couch, she will lean her thick body against mine and stare, silent.

On these days I allow my hand to rest on her soft solid head while I stare back, equally silent, for just a moment.

"Don't worry, girl, there are some promises that are made to be broken."

]]><![CDATA[Seeking Salvation]]>Sat, 07 Oct 2017 16:13:43 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/seeking-salvation

the morning sun
cannot cleanse
dirty cities
of their sins

]]><![CDATA[There's a thief in my house!]]>Wed, 08 Mar 2017 23:38:27 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/theres-a-thief-in-my-house

a Robin Hood,
hiding in mirrors
silently stealing
reflections of youth
leaving behind
false representations
old, Merry Men laugh
my visage, invisible

]]><![CDATA[Unholy Water]]>Mon, 27 Feb 2017 16:34:33 GMThttp://www.akamitzi.com/blog/unholy-water

I gave
a man
an umbrella
to stop
the flood
of guilt
forgive me, brother,
for I have sinned
no blood on my hands
rubber-glove loving
through
rose-colored goggles
ain't no giving
at all

]]>

the morning suncannot cleansedirty citiesof their sins

the morning sun
cannot cleanse
dirty cities
of their sins