12/20/10 Psychic Information
Talking with a man I had just met, I got flashes--teeny almost indiscernible thoughts like ghost-movies in the poetry part of my brain--of houses, stone-built houses, and how crushing they would be if they fell on you. Heavy weights and dull ones, piles of rubble and structural beams. I wanted to avoid being buried alive. Then I started looking in the mirror, and saw myself as boxy, robust, armored in my stance against the world. Like him. I believe the cosmos is always giving us information, always telling us things that will help us. We need to pay attention to these tiny, faint, ghost-movies, these unflattering images of ourselves in the mirror, and see what the faint, ghost-like message is that the world is trying to give us. I canceled our coffee date.
Friday, December 31, 2010
12/20/10 The company of babies
Babies still have that fresh out newness, that smell of bubbles and teeny roses, that reminds us of why we chose to be human in the first place. I'm thinking now of how my year-old niece reaches toward what she wants. She's not shy. She wants it and she reaches, with chubby little fingers. Or shuns things she wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be picked up. She turns away, reaches the opposite direction. Cries when she's upset...by gas, noise, people, temperature, hunger, scratchiness, what-have-you. She cries. So simple. I'd like to do that. A hundred times a day at my job. Twenty times a day at home. When you're a baby, you get to do it any time. And smile. You get to smile and change the world when you do it. A baby's smile is, well, it's one of the seventeen wonders of the world, no--there have been so many babies...it is one of the seven and a half billion wonders of the world.
Babies still have that fresh out newness, that smell of bubbles and teeny roses, that reminds us of why we chose to be human in the first place. I'm thinking now of how my year-old niece reaches toward what she wants. She's not shy. She wants it and she reaches, with chubby little fingers. Or shuns things she wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be picked up. She turns away, reaches the opposite direction. Cries when she's upset...by gas, noise, people, temperature, hunger, scratchiness, what-have-you. She cries. So simple. I'd like to do that. A hundred times a day at my job. Twenty times a day at home. When you're a baby, you get to do it any time. And smile. You get to smile and change the world when you do it. A baby's smile is, well, it's one of the seventeen wonders of the world, no--there have been so many babies...it is one of the seven and a half billion wonders of the world.
12/19/10 Figs (writing on 12/31)
My co-worker Ernesto offered me some the other day. The spanish word for figs is Higos, so close to the word for sons, Hijos, that you're going to feel like you're related to these little babies. Family already, they are so small and they have such tiny seeds. They are chewy and crunchy at the same time. And sweet and mild at the same time so that you don't feel like you're indulging. And chewy. My mom served them recently simply soaked/marinated in Kahlua. Dark brown and weird looking--dried of course, how could they possibly be delicious??? Then I made this figgy cake--I was looking for a Christmas figgy pudding, like in the song, but this is what I found: . Of course I had to substitute the nuts and the liqueur, because it was Christmas day and the stores were closed. But it came out fantastic, and one can't say enough about fennel seed in baking. Or figs, those unassuming little fruits, usually dried, with so many tender and surprising qualities.
My co-worker Ernesto offered me some the other day. The spanish word for figs is Higos, so close to the word for sons, Hijos, that you're going to feel like you're related to these little babies. Family already, they are so small and they have such tiny seeds. They are chewy and crunchy at the same time. And sweet and mild at the same time so that you don't feel like you're indulging. And chewy. My mom served them recently simply soaked/marinated in Kahlua. Dark brown and weird looking--dried of course, how could they possibly be delicious??? Then I made this figgy cake--I was looking for a Christmas figgy pudding, like in the song, but this is what I found: . Of course I had to substitute the nuts and the liqueur, because it was Christmas day and the stores were closed. But it came out fantastic, and one can't say enough about fennel seed in baking. Or figs, those unassuming little fruits, usually dried, with so many tender and surprising qualities.
Monday, December 27, 2010
12/18/10 a scratchy sweater
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
12/16/10 a boring person
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
12/15/10 Sweet Blue dreams
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
12/14/10 Personal illumination
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
12/13/10 storybook man, running the blizzard
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
12/12/10 dark birds in a bright sky
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
12/11/10 Home is where the heart...
Yesterday, the illumination of my heart chakra at work. So many things to think about, such a busy day. And there I am in the middle of the chaos and trying to both feel and be better than my anger, and then my heart chakra opens up like the collar of a frill-necked lizard, and there on the inside of the cone and by then the cone is like one of those science museum exhibits where you toss a coin in and it spirals into the center of the cone on its edge and then circles the central drain. So my heart chakra is smooth inside, not frilled or reptilian, and I can feel all the houses I’ve ever lived in, and they are like little Monopoly game pieces, only their proper color and proportion, and warm-feeling, and I can feel all the little pieces of real estate that I’ve lived on, for this and a few lifetimes before and after this one. At least a half-dozen rickety college apartments, plus that 6th floor walk-up in Paris, and the tent that summer in Alaska, and the great outdoors another summer. And they are drawn out I guess maybe in order of importance on the inside of my heart chakra cone. And since the heart chakra is about relationships, I just instantly think, home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is. Places we have lived are written permanently in our lives, our hearts, how we relate to the world. Heart is where home is.
Yesterday, the illumination of my heart chakra at work. So many things to think about, such a busy day. And there I am in the middle of the chaos and trying to both feel and be better than my anger, and then my heart chakra opens up like the collar of a frill-necked lizard, and there on the inside of the cone and by then the cone is like one of those science museum exhibits where you toss a coin in and it spirals into the center of the cone on its edge and then circles the central drain. So my heart chakra is smooth inside, not frilled or reptilian, and I can feel all the houses I’ve ever lived in, and they are like little Monopoly game pieces, only their proper color and proportion, and warm-feeling, and I can feel all the little pieces of real estate that I’ve lived on, for this and a few lifetimes before and after this one. At least a half-dozen rickety college apartments, plus that 6th floor walk-up in Paris, and the tent that summer in Alaska, and the great outdoors another summer. And they are drawn out I guess maybe in order of importance on the inside of my heart chakra cone. And since the heart chakra is about relationships, I just instantly think, home is where the heart is, home is where the heart is. Places we have lived are written permanently in our lives, our hearts, how we relate to the world. Heart is where home is.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
12/9/10 piebald humans
A guy in the home-commute rush tonight with half an eyebrow white, half black. A gal I knew in grad school who had a patch of white exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke sideslipping its bobby-pin. A gal I knew growing up who had one brown eye with black eyebrow, one blue eye with white lashes & brow. We are such fine and beautiful specimens of animals, we humans. We come in various colors, shapes, sizes, and even in spotted, patterns. Actually, speaking of spots, I have seen differently-pigmented spots on the skin of some of my brown-skinned friends. And freckles. And my son, who has a teeny bit of brown-skinned heritage, has a few light-pigmented spots on his leg. Skin, hair, acoutrements. We are not solids, all. We are bright and various and rangey: appaloosas, calicoes, tortoise-shells, pintos, tabby-stripes, paints.
A guy in the home-commute rush tonight with half an eyebrow white, half black. A gal I knew in grad school who had a patch of white exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke sideslipping its bobby-pin. A gal I knew growing up who had one brown eye with black eyebrow, one blue eye with white lashes & brow. We are such fine and beautiful specimens of animals, we humans. We come in various colors, shapes, sizes, and even in spotted, patterns. Actually, speaking of spots, I have seen differently-pigmented spots on the skin of some of my brown-skinned friends. And freckles. And my son, who has a teeny bit of brown-skinned heritage, has a few light-pigmented spots on his leg. Skin, hair, acoutrements. We are not solids, all. We are bright and various and rangey: appaloosas, calicoes, tortoise-shells, pintos, tabby-stripes, paints.
12/8/10 positive, peaceful engagement, artful interaction
Received info and a plea the other day from a friend involved in the group, the Forgiveness Project. Looking for someone to run their U.S. presence. And I actually knew a person and a group to network with, to pass the lead along to. Mediation and peaceful conflict resolution. That is, if your universe is one that has "conflict" that needs "resolution." It has been suggested to others and me to use words positively, to imagine positive language. How about instead of "conflict resolution," we take out the conflict, and have it be "peace resolution?" or instead of mediation, it could be artful interaction. Instead of creating a polar opposite for everything that is, we could dwell as much in the gooey good stuff as possible, the viney, ropey, gushy, crunchy, lovely, aromatic, stupendous creative landslide of interactions.
Received info and a plea the other day from a friend involved in the group, the Forgiveness Project. Looking for someone to run their U.S. presence. And I actually knew a person and a group to network with, to pass the lead along to. Mediation and peaceful conflict resolution. That is, if your universe is one that has "conflict" that needs "resolution." It has been suggested to others and me to use words positively, to imagine positive language. How about instead of "conflict resolution," we take out the conflict, and have it be "peace resolution?" or instead of mediation, it could be artful interaction. Instead of creating a polar opposite for everything that is, we could dwell as much in the gooey good stuff as possible, the viney, ropey, gushy, crunchy, lovely, aromatic, stupendous creative landslide of interactions.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
12/6/10 guidance
whether it's an intuition of something you want to do, or an almost audible voice in your head reminding you of your soul, your spirit, that evanescent something that leads you on in search of fulfillment, guidance is fantastic. The rustle of feathers, a voice that's like a melody from the cosmos, the feeling of doors opening before your feet, leading you in the new direction you were meant to go. Guidance points the way.
whether it's an intuition of something you want to do, or an almost audible voice in your head reminding you of your soul, your spirit, that evanescent something that leads you on in search of fulfillment, guidance is fantastic. The rustle of feathers, a voice that's like a melody from the cosmos, the feeling of doors opening before your feet, leading you in the new direction you were meant to go. Guidance points the way.
Monday, December 6, 2010
12/5/10 speaking in tongues
Other than one's own of course. Speaking in another tongue, letting another culture's thoughts spill out of your brain & slide off your tongue like trick skiers on a jump. Slorp around those words, feel them fill your mouth differently, like different food. And no, French does not sound all that romantic spoken. It's more like a long unintelligible slur until you can get the hang of it.
Other than one's own of course. Speaking in another tongue, letting another culture's thoughts spill out of your brain & slide off your tongue like trick skiers on a jump. Slorp around those words, feel them fill your mouth differently, like different food. And no, French does not sound all that romantic spoken. It's more like a long unintelligible slur until you can get the hang of it.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
12/4/10 a snow angel
It's a lawn ornament at a kitsch-y little house in the town where I grew up, near the apartment of a musician friend of mine. I've driven by her as often as I can lose my way over there, and really she always points me my way home. She's about life-size, I was going to say, but since no one knows if you can really dance a googolplex of them on the head of a pin, or if they are, as some of my New Age cronies used to say, as big as a mountain, I don't know. She's about the size of an average human, then. I think I've seen her, wingless and temporarily animated, a few times waiting serenely in the lobby of the DMV, as if she has drawn a number. And definitely I've seen her in the building where I work, the family justice center, waiting for her child support case to be called. She holds a little platter or basket with two hands--it's where you can put the geraniums or petunias in the summer, snowdrifts now in winter.
12/3/10 Freshly ground cloves
My hair would have been this color, if I had henna'ed it in college, like all my friends were doing--dark brown with an almost iridescent auburn layered on top. A bay horse in the sunshine. These cloves came from the co-op and I've never had them this moist before. It's like the difference between dry sand (most cloves you get at the store), that pours methodically like it's in an hourglass to measure time, and damp sand (this batch) that clumps together and wants to hold a shape, maybe the shape of a dark moist cake. And the smell, with a wood, almost sandalwood undertone, with fruity flecks in the middle, and a top note a little jasmine-y. Cloves like this you want to make something out of, add to henna to color your skin, you hair, you want to bathe in it, soak your bedsheets in it, dry them and toss around a bit in them. Cloves like this you want to dance to, to drop grains of it in peace talks between warring parties, and have the old soldiers suddenly remember the touch of their grandmothes. Cloves like this you want to cast in a subway tunnel so that the mindless commuters will think suddenly of a splinter they tried to suck out of their thumbs when they were eight and had been digging in the dirt. Cloves like this should be carried in a small pouch into banks, so that everyone there remembers the fragrant wooden blocks and carved cars of their youth, their own "Rosebud" beloved as they are worrying about the numbers on their pieces of paper. Cloves like this should be dropped by pinches into rivers to bless and consecrate them with the blood and sheen and fragrance of other places.
My hair would have been this color, if I had henna'ed it in college, like all my friends were doing--dark brown with an almost iridescent auburn layered on top. A bay horse in the sunshine. These cloves came from the co-op and I've never had them this moist before. It's like the difference between dry sand (most cloves you get at the store), that pours methodically like it's in an hourglass to measure time, and damp sand (this batch) that clumps together and wants to hold a shape, maybe the shape of a dark moist cake. And the smell, with a wood, almost sandalwood undertone, with fruity flecks in the middle, and a top note a little jasmine-y. Cloves like this you want to make something out of, add to henna to color your skin, you hair, you want to bathe in it, soak your bedsheets in it, dry them and toss around a bit in them. Cloves like this you want to dance to, to drop grains of it in peace talks between warring parties, and have the old soldiers suddenly remember the touch of their grandmothes. Cloves like this you want to cast in a subway tunnel so that the mindless commuters will think suddenly of a splinter they tried to suck out of their thumbs when they were eight and had been digging in the dirt. Cloves like this should be carried in a small pouch into banks, so that everyone there remembers the fragrant wooden blocks and carved cars of their youth, their own "Rosebud" beloved as they are worrying about the numbers on their pieces of paper. Cloves like this should be dropped by pinches into rivers to bless and consecrate them with the blood and sheen and fragrance of other places.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
12/2/10 Blessed by birds
This is a flashback post. I just saw a picture of St. Francis portrayed in a film with a little bird on his hand. And it reminded me of magic that I experienced with Fred, with birds. Here is what happened--I was making him leave one night, early in our courtship. Because my son was asleep and I didn't want Fred to stay over that night. So we were having that sweet goodbye conversation outside, where my driveway empties like a harsh apron into the street, no it was the wee hours and dark out and maybe he was showing me a constellation and maybe we were looking at star charts in the middle of the seldom-traveled street where it's easier to see the stars without houses and trees in the way. And we were saying sweet somethings I'm sure and looking at the charts and each other--it was the beginning of a few sweet something years. And all of a sudden something huge and weighty and dark and heavy and silent and looming rushed through the air near our heads and landed on the dead-end electric wire a few feet above. Swinging like a circus high wire act, quietly, heavily it sat--a plump, suburban great horned owl who had come out for conversation with us, I assume as well. We politely tried hard not to stare, but it was hard--this guest was so unexpected, or maybe we were to her, and so close.
The other time was when we were having one of about half a dozen breakup conversations a couple of years later. These bird blessings bookended the relationship, and we were sitting unter a blossoming fruit tree on the St. Paul campus, just trying to summarize the good things before trailing off, and this bird, that I took to be a hummingbird at first because it was hovering. But no, it was a bluebird that flew up from eating bugs in the park, flew up under the lightly-speckled with blossoms boughs where we were sitting on the ground, and hovered there, staring at us a few feet away, as we talked about its presence, color, species, meaning. It hovered several infinite moments and then sped off, just as abruptly.
I think now I will have to write about crows in the city, since they are the key to life here.
This is a flashback post. I just saw a picture of St. Francis portrayed in a film with a little bird on his hand. And it reminded me of magic that I experienced with Fred, with birds. Here is what happened--I was making him leave one night, early in our courtship. Because my son was asleep and I didn't want Fred to stay over that night. So we were having that sweet goodbye conversation outside, where my driveway empties like a harsh apron into the street, no it was the wee hours and dark out and maybe he was showing me a constellation and maybe we were looking at star charts in the middle of the seldom-traveled street where it's easier to see the stars without houses and trees in the way. And we were saying sweet somethings I'm sure and looking at the charts and each other--it was the beginning of a few sweet something years. And all of a sudden something huge and weighty and dark and heavy and silent and looming rushed through the air near our heads and landed on the dead-end electric wire a few feet above. Swinging like a circus high wire act, quietly, heavily it sat--a plump, suburban great horned owl who had come out for conversation with us, I assume as well. We politely tried hard not to stare, but it was hard--this guest was so unexpected, or maybe we were to her, and so close.
The other time was when we were having one of about half a dozen breakup conversations a couple of years later. These bird blessings bookended the relationship, and we were sitting unter a blossoming fruit tree on the St. Paul campus, just trying to summarize the good things before trailing off, and this bird, that I took to be a hummingbird at first because it was hovering. But no, it was a bluebird that flew up from eating bugs in the park, flew up under the lightly-speckled with blossoms boughs where we were sitting on the ground, and hovered there, staring at us a few feet away, as we talked about its presence, color, species, meaning. It hovered several infinite moments and then sped off, just as abruptly.
I think now I will have to write about crows in the city, since they are the key to life here.
12/1/10 So many things to say
Yesterday at the book arts show, with all those books of poems and chapbooks of observations and pictures with legends and legends without pictures, I knew there was a lot to be seen, said and heard in this world, thoughts jumping off pages into the corracle of a cottonwood leaf drifting down the surface of the river, its infinitesimal weight sitting as a rounded meniscus, making of the water a pillow. The thoughts on the page, a thought drifting....huh? oh yes....So many thoughts to think and express. If I'm ever at a loss again, I'll just go wandering through the corridors and links of these blogs like I just did and find poets talking about the moon, garbage, homelessness and motorcycles all with commensurate passion. Passion, in all the words, feeling and expression and moonlight and shagbark and leaves that float even on the icy river and sometimes lights and hairdos and okay even family blogs but you have to skip a bunch of words and just make somthing of them. Surf the blogs and start to follow some. Find the words, the passion, the things about the universe that most people try hard not to notice, lest they become too poetical, too engaged in seeing the infinitesimal, in feeling the ghosts.
Yesterday at the book arts show, with all those books of poems and chapbooks of observations and pictures with legends and legends without pictures, I knew there was a lot to be seen, said and heard in this world, thoughts jumping off pages into the corracle of a cottonwood leaf drifting down the surface of the river, its infinitesimal weight sitting as a rounded meniscus, making of the water a pillow. The thoughts on the page, a thought drifting....huh? oh yes....So many thoughts to think and express. If I'm ever at a loss again, I'll just go wandering through the corridors and links of these blogs like I just did and find poets talking about the moon, garbage, homelessness and motorcycles all with commensurate passion. Passion, in all the words, feeling and expression and moonlight and shagbark and leaves that float even on the icy river and sometimes lights and hairdos and okay even family blogs but you have to skip a bunch of words and just make somthing of them. Surf the blogs and start to follow some. Find the words, the passion, the things about the universe that most people try hard not to notice, lest they become too poetical, too engaged in seeing the infinitesimal, in feeling the ghosts.
12/1/10 a rapid recovery
Not sure what brought on the soreness, but it's always good to feel instantly, surprisingly better. When that happens, there is this huge glowing corona of energy around the joint that was sore, and you keep walking around with unexpected lightness where you're not sure you ought to be feeling it, like you are almost tripping over the empty space that used to hold an unbearably painful wound.
Not sure what brought on the soreness, but it's always good to feel instantly, surprisingly better. When that happens, there is this huge glowing corona of energy around the joint that was sore, and you keep walking around with unexpected lightness where you're not sure you ought to be feeling it, like you are almost tripping over the empty space that used to hold an unbearably painful wound.
11/29/10 a Brit-flavored pub
Dark and fusty, with coats-of-arms in frames on the ceiling above the bar. Fusty because we don't allow smoking indoors anywhere anymore in this state, and I don't think this place has been properly aired out since the law went into effect five years ago. Fusty because it was kind of dark and I didn't even notice the colors of the wall--they could have been made of wood planks, for all I remember. And don't ale and whiskey drinkers love their political posters? On all the walls, calls to dissent and speak one's mind. Lovely and enchanting. And most of all, and I want you to know it is a great effort for me to acknowledge this: Pub food. My friend had some kind of meat pie with handmade crisps, and I had a basket of fries. Both meals came with a glop of rust-colored goo in a portion dish. Waitress called it cajun aioli, but when I tried it, it didn't taste. I ate a few crisps before ordering my own chips. And the food, let me just say, tasted like it was made in a joint where the sweat of one's brow is appreciated, and good friends are as comfortable as old sweaters, and no one cares whether you've washed your face yet that day. But fabulously so, and to find it in the land of renovate everything was awesome.
Dark and fusty, with coats-of-arms in frames on the ceiling above the bar. Fusty because we don't allow smoking indoors anywhere anymore in this state, and I don't think this place has been properly aired out since the law went into effect five years ago. Fusty because it was kind of dark and I didn't even notice the colors of the wall--they could have been made of wood planks, for all I remember. And don't ale and whiskey drinkers love their political posters? On all the walls, calls to dissent and speak one's mind. Lovely and enchanting. And most of all, and I want you to know it is a great effort for me to acknowledge this: Pub food. My friend had some kind of meat pie with handmade crisps, and I had a basket of fries. Both meals came with a glop of rust-colored goo in a portion dish. Waitress called it cajun aioli, but when I tried it, it didn't taste. I ate a few crisps before ordering my own chips. And the food, let me just say, tasted like it was made in a joint where the sweat of one's brow is appreciated, and good friends are as comfortable as old sweaters, and no one cares whether you've washed your face yet that day. But fabulously so, and to find it in the land of renovate everything was awesome.
11/28/10 a collection of prints
Let's face it, going to see art anytime is fabulous. It's arty, it's topsy-turvy, it's giddy and florescent and fun--it's little pieces of metal and wood and paper and flecks and blobs of paint and other colors spread and strewn over their matrices so as to wake you up & draw your attention--first to itself, and then to the world around you that it is commenting on. Too abstract? Linoleum cut story prints, flat and black and heavy, I like how block prints are so dark, like heavy shadows, like shadow puppets. And the painted colors, not sure what process that was, the panoramic nature shots, and how did she decide which roots under the washed river bank to paint? And the polymer prints, chickens around a yard, chickens!!! I so want to do art around chickens (but for now, I'll have to focus on songbirds), and the poem on the weird metal cardboard wood shapies, like a disassebled letterpress with poetry in two languages, the warms of wood and paper, and the cool of sheetmetal and ink. Warm and cool, shredded and burnished, sanded and filed. One of a kind books. What if I made a book and it was only for a one-time reading, or only to be read at a certain place, a certain exhibit. Prints are great when they make you think about the world, about art, about yourself.
Let's face it, going to see art anytime is fabulous. It's arty, it's topsy-turvy, it's giddy and florescent and fun--it's little pieces of metal and wood and paper and flecks and blobs of paint and other colors spread and strewn over their matrices so as to wake you up & draw your attention--first to itself, and then to the world around you that it is commenting on. Too abstract? Linoleum cut story prints, flat and black and heavy, I like how block prints are so dark, like heavy shadows, like shadow puppets. And the painted colors, not sure what process that was, the panoramic nature shots, and how did she decide which roots under the washed river bank to paint? And the polymer prints, chickens around a yard, chickens!!! I so want to do art around chickens (but for now, I'll have to focus on songbirds), and the poem on the weird metal cardboard wood shapies, like a disassebled letterpress with poetry in two languages, the warms of wood and paper, and the cool of sheetmetal and ink. Warm and cool, shredded and burnished, sanded and filed. One of a kind books. What if I made a book and it was only for a one-time reading, or only to be read at a certain place, a certain exhibit. Prints are great when they make you think about the world, about art, about yourself.
Monday, November 29, 2010
11/26/10 too many cooks create an awesome spread
I grew up on my mom's amazing fried chicken, bacon grilled cheeses, manicotti and rice hot dish. I also learned to cook next to my two grandmas, as did my sister. And our aunt, my mom's sister. And I've worked in restaurants, and so has my sister And we have been blessed with two sisters-in-law who have astounding culinary skills, at whose tables I would gladly dine even if they only had a $2 grocery budget. So there were five of us good cooks at the holiday meal, each preparing our own dishes, planned out ahead of time. I'll go into detail some other time.
I grew up on my mom's amazing fried chicken, bacon grilled cheeses, manicotti and rice hot dish. I also learned to cook next to my two grandmas, as did my sister. And our aunt, my mom's sister. And I've worked in restaurants, and so has my sister And we have been blessed with two sisters-in-law who have astounding culinary skills, at whose tables I would gladly dine even if they only had a $2 grocery budget. So there were five of us good cooks at the holiday meal, each preparing our own dishes, planned out ahead of time. I'll go into detail some other time.
11/25/10 squeaky-cold snow
It blows across your cheek as it falls, hard and small, little pellets like grains of sand, like mustard seeds but white. It stays fluffy, too airy and high, forms a crust on top as the freeze deepens. Sooner or later you need to leave for provisions, or to get gas or go to the post office. You step on it. Squeak. Another step. Squork. You get to the garage. Squorkety sqawkity squickety squinkety squack. You try to shovel it, but you need warmer gloves, so you go back inside. Is there any other noise in the universe like squeaky cold snow? It's like the snow has a voice and it's warning you that you need to go back inside, that it's too cold out for humans. It's the snow singing to you!
It blows across your cheek as it falls, hard and small, little pellets like grains of sand, like mustard seeds but white. It stays fluffy, too airy and high, forms a crust on top as the freeze deepens. Sooner or later you need to leave for provisions, or to get gas or go to the post office. You step on it. Squeak. Another step. Squork. You get to the garage. Squorkety sqawkity squickety squinkety squack. You try to shovel it, but you need warmer gloves, so you go back inside. Is there any other noise in the universe like squeaky cold snow? It's like the snow has a voice and it's warning you that you need to go back inside, that it's too cold out for humans. It's the snow singing to you!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
11/24/10 the cold dance
If someone were moving this way at the bus stop in summer, I think they would have a wide swath of empty space around them. But the woman in the padded blue jacket with the fake fur ruff on the hood was not in the least out of place or isolated as she did the cold dance at the bus stop in near-dark in late November. Shifting rapidly from one foot to another, she looked as if she were in the alto section of a highly caffeinated gospel choir. We're northerners. We do what we have to, to keep warm. The cold dance is spontaneous, universal and effective. The cold dance--coming soon to a bus stop near you.
If someone were moving this way at the bus stop in summer, I think they would have a wide swath of empty space around them. But the woman in the padded blue jacket with the fake fur ruff on the hood was not in the least out of place or isolated as she did the cold dance at the bus stop in near-dark in late November. Shifting rapidly from one foot to another, she looked as if she were in the alto section of a highly caffeinated gospel choir. We're northerners. We do what we have to, to keep warm. The cold dance is spontaneous, universal and effective. The cold dance--coming soon to a bus stop near you.
11/23/10 a bite in the air
This is again along the lines of pain equals pleasure. Well, maybe it's pain for some people. For others it is feeling alive, piqued, love-bitten by the cold in the air. Jack Frost nipping, the bite of the North wind. I knew someone who participated in these workshops where "perverse delicious" was a catch-phrase. It meant doing something naughty that felt good because you were breaking the rules, like spreading vicious gossip, or starting a fight with someone because YOU feel bad and it would pull you out of your funk to at least interact, even if it's a fight. I'd like a similar phrase for these intense pleasures that most people don't recognize as such. Only not that they're naughty, just that they're judged as unpleasurable. That nip in the air that turns your ears and cheeks red and hot. The chill that gets your circulation going. The cold that makes you tense all those muscles you wanted to forget about. And not to the point of sadomasochism or anything--I'm not talking about neurotic pandering. But just isn't it great to be alive, and fun when your senses do what they are supposed to do? It's stupendous. It's counterintuitive. It's marvelous. It's counterstupendtuitive. It's oppolicious. It's harshelous.
This is again along the lines of pain equals pleasure. Well, maybe it's pain for some people. For others it is feeling alive, piqued, love-bitten by the cold in the air. Jack Frost nipping, the bite of the North wind. I knew someone who participated in these workshops where "perverse delicious" was a catch-phrase. It meant doing something naughty that felt good because you were breaking the rules, like spreading vicious gossip, or starting a fight with someone because YOU feel bad and it would pull you out of your funk to at least interact, even if it's a fight. I'd like a similar phrase for these intense pleasures that most people don't recognize as such. Only not that they're naughty, just that they're judged as unpleasurable. That nip in the air that turns your ears and cheeks red and hot. The chill that gets your circulation going. The cold that makes you tense all those muscles you wanted to forget about. And not to the point of sadomasochism or anything--I'm not talking about neurotic pandering. But just isn't it great to be alive, and fun when your senses do what they are supposed to do? It's stupendous. It's counterintuitive. It's marvelous. It's counterstupendtuitive. It's oppolicious. It's harshelous.
Monday, November 22, 2010
11/22/10 Singing out loud for no reason - silly
La la la, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, ba ba ba da ba da ba ba da....Yes! Haven't we all done this! It doesn't matter when--age two or age 52. It's so much fun. It doesn't have to be a song you know. It doesn't have to rhyme or make sense or be in tune or have a structure. Just sing, invent, be free. Any tone, any word, any language or sentence. This is the stuff of creativity, that we all need to do sometime in our lives. La la la. The trees. Doo doo doo the grass. Ba ba ba da ba my house and my cozy pillows. Frang frang frang doo ba da boo it's cold out.
La la la, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, ba ba ba da ba da ba ba da....Yes! Haven't we all done this! It doesn't matter when--age two or age 52. It's so much fun. It doesn't have to be a song you know. It doesn't have to rhyme or make sense or be in tune or have a structure. Just sing, invent, be free. Any tone, any word, any language or sentence. This is the stuff of creativity, that we all need to do sometime in our lives. La la la. The trees. Doo doo doo the grass. Ba ba ba da ba my house and my cozy pillows. Frang frang frang doo ba da boo it's cold out.
11/21/10 A slippery world
Rain that freezes on things, freezing rain that clings to twigs and stairs and pavement, an invisible icy layer of slipping and sliding. Just making it to the car without falling is a major feat. The trouble is, the world is naturally very textured, and to have a slippery coating on our smooth roads, sidewalks and parking lots reminds us of how unnatural the man-made world is. I had no problem walking on my mom's gravel driveway, or the grassy lawn. Elsewhere--so slippery.
Rain that freezes on things, freezing rain that clings to twigs and stairs and pavement, an invisible icy layer of slipping and sliding. Just making it to the car without falling is a major feat. The trouble is, the world is naturally very textured, and to have a slippery coating on our smooth roads, sidewalks and parking lots reminds us of how unnatural the man-made world is. I had no problem walking on my mom's gravel driveway, or the grassy lawn. Elsewhere--so slippery.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Orange dreams 11/20/10
You awaken and you realize you have been dreaming, in close-up, of oranges. The bright skin, a furrowed landscape of fragrant hemispheres, a topography of resinous oils, tiny ridges and arroyos. You eat an orange, thinking of the tang of him, the bite of salt from skin that has been working, straining to bring you something, life, a latticework to climb, some kind of earth. But really it is an aftertaste you remember, and you lick a part of your own arm, as if his scent, his imprint lingers. Your own fragrant resins rise, and you notice that skin is pocked by stars, hemispheres, resins, in a formation not so easily eroded. You remember the taste again, and it has marked the back of your throat, the salt, and you know that you will always recognize his scent, his touch.
You awaken and you realize you have been dreaming, in close-up, of oranges. The bright skin, a furrowed landscape of fragrant hemispheres, a topography of resinous oils, tiny ridges and arroyos. You eat an orange, thinking of the tang of him, the bite of salt from skin that has been working, straining to bring you something, life, a latticework to climb, some kind of earth. But really it is an aftertaste you remember, and you lick a part of your own arm, as if his scent, his imprint lingers. Your own fragrant resins rise, and you notice that skin is pocked by stars, hemispheres, resins, in a formation not so easily eroded. You remember the taste again, and it has marked the back of your throat, the salt, and you know that you will always recognize his scent, his touch.
Friday, November 19, 2010
11/19/10 gentle encouragement
He has a gentle heart and a round face, and he encourages by telling a slanted story, a story that might be about you, or it might be about someone else. He tells you to fight, and how not to fight. He tells you to be yourself. He has brought you berries and iron and a pair of shoes, things you will need for the road ahead. He tells you a riddle, and at first you don't get the gist, then you realize that it pokes fun at everything ridiculous, and it allows you to laugh. Laughing, you put on the new shoes, which help you walk magically quietly. You take the iron and fashion a breastplate, which you use as a decoration and jingle, since the universe is such that you don't need protection, you need touch, allies, healing. He tells another joke, and you laugh louder. He has his own flock, his own field to tend, so he makes to go. The day moon has left the sky. You stain your mouth with the berries, and they allow you to tell the truth. You don't like being treated the way of the past. You are at a crossroads, a confluence of stream and river. He has been rescuing drowning souls and is pressed for time. His message to you has been an aside, he has more important things to do than to instruct you. You must find your own way. But somehow, the berries, the moon, the shoes, the stream, the rescuing, the souls you see who are better off...somehow this makes sense, and the low grey clouds of early winter lift, and you are again alone with your thoughts and your purpose.
He has a gentle heart and a round face, and he encourages by telling a slanted story, a story that might be about you, or it might be about someone else. He tells you to fight, and how not to fight. He tells you to be yourself. He has brought you berries and iron and a pair of shoes, things you will need for the road ahead. He tells you a riddle, and at first you don't get the gist, then you realize that it pokes fun at everything ridiculous, and it allows you to laugh. Laughing, you put on the new shoes, which help you walk magically quietly. You take the iron and fashion a breastplate, which you use as a decoration and jingle, since the universe is such that you don't need protection, you need touch, allies, healing. He tells another joke, and you laugh louder. He has his own flock, his own field to tend, so he makes to go. The day moon has left the sky. You stain your mouth with the berries, and they allow you to tell the truth. You don't like being treated the way of the past. You are at a crossroads, a confluence of stream and river. He has been rescuing drowning souls and is pressed for time. His message to you has been an aside, he has more important things to do than to instruct you. You must find your own way. But somehow, the berries, the moon, the shoes, the stream, the rescuing, the souls you see who are better off...somehow this makes sense, and the low grey clouds of early winter lift, and you are again alone with your thoughts and your purpose.
11/18/10 neighborhood blackout
Sparks flying out of a box on the pole, and people bleary eyed come out into the night, out of their dens of electric jolted awakeness, out of their tiny message addictions, they come out into the night, where frozen chunks of dirty snow line the streets and trees dance a little more stiffly for the cold weather. Where a cup of kindness is just water because you can't boil on the electric stove, and everything is smooth, like the lines people create between one another, because people are not jangled for the moment, in the beautiful blue-black winter before the ominous truck comes to save the night from its own darkness, the neighbors from one anothers' warmth.
Sparks flying out of a box on the pole, and people bleary eyed come out into the night, out of their dens of electric jolted awakeness, out of their tiny message addictions, they come out into the night, where frozen chunks of dirty snow line the streets and trees dance a little more stiffly for the cold weather. Where a cup of kindness is just water because you can't boil on the electric stove, and everything is smooth, like the lines people create between one another, because people are not jangled for the moment, in the beautiful blue-black winter before the ominous truck comes to save the night from its own darkness, the neighbors from one anothers' warmth.
Monday, November 15, 2010
11/17/10 the new hat
You re-discover this old thing in the closet. Rejected by those who prefer overt gazing, your styling eyeshade makes people want to move in close, to see what you're looking at. Your head is cozy and padded, the brim slanted just so, and you know that everyone wants it. Holmes-ish, Dashiell Hammett-ish, yourself-ish, the hat keeps off the gobs of snow and drops of rain, and you bust a move or two because it is fun to dress up and be someone.
You re-discover this old thing in the closet. Rejected by those who prefer overt gazing, your styling eyeshade makes people want to move in close, to see what you're looking at. Your head is cozy and padded, the brim slanted just so, and you know that everyone wants it. Holmes-ish, Dashiell Hammett-ish, yourself-ish, the hat keeps off the gobs of snow and drops of rain, and you bust a move or two because it is fun to dress up and be someone.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
11/14/10 Talking shop
My friend is so enthusiastically pro-writing, and pro-personhood, and pro-get your groove on and be your best self. She's a personal coach, and she just can't help herself, the bug bites her in every conversation. So there we are talking about writing and editing and doing stuff with writing and where to publish and what classes she's taking and teaching next. And it's just so inspiring to talk shop with someone with their hair bobbed and tea-tinted just so, and to sip actual tea and talk blobs about blogs and coffee and more tea and the thousands of books on writing and spirituality that are strewn around her house as if she herself is the holy shrine and they, the books, are pilgrims come to see her. Hey, talking shop means you invite all the best stuff to make a pilgrimage to see you. And it's serendipitously, synchronistically, synesthestically sympatico.
My friend is so enthusiastically pro-writing, and pro-personhood, and pro-get your groove on and be your best self. She's a personal coach, and she just can't help herself, the bug bites her in every conversation. So there we are talking about writing and editing and doing stuff with writing and where to publish and what classes she's taking and teaching next. And it's just so inspiring to talk shop with someone with their hair bobbed and tea-tinted just so, and to sip actual tea and talk blobs about blogs and coffee and more tea and the thousands of books on writing and spirituality that are strewn around her house as if she herself is the holy shrine and they, the books, are pilgrims come to see her. Hey, talking shop means you invite all the best stuff to make a pilgrimage to see you. And it's serendipitously, synchronistically, synesthestically sympatico.
Friday, November 12, 2010
11/12/10 A Traveler's Curiosity
In third grade, Miss Theresa asked our class to write a few sentences about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and why. My great-grandma has recently died, and she had moved here from Sweden when she was in her thirties, which I thought was pretty adventurous. So I wrote that I wanted to be a traveler like her, as if that were a profession rather than a hobby, or a part of a profession.
When you travel, you are on your guard a little, and you need to pay attention to details of tone, character, landscape and cityscape in a way that a native doesn't. You need to pay attention to transportation, signs, languages, attitudes. There may be rules only known to the locals, some of which signify danger, or amusement, or relaxation. You need to be alert to people's body language, and their habits, and to things that look out of place.
This is leading up to why I often feel alone in the business crowd downtown in the middle of the day. A whole slew of characters, a circus, really, could go by and no one would notice it but me. Walking to the bus, these two ladies came out of the public defender building. They are obviously mother and daughter, since they have the same build, same taste in clothes, same face except one is a generation younger, and purt-near the exact same hairstyle. And actually, these two women, walking arm-in-plump-but-strong arm and leaning on each other as they cross the street, look like they could be the mother and grandmother of a circus act--the trapeze artists, maybe, or scarf aerialists. Their hairdos are giant teased beehives, and I don't mean any disrespect, but they are backcombed and shaped--each of them--to the streamlined buoyancy of teeny, loosely-moored zeppelins. The grandmother had an added ornamentation of some pulled and rosetted strands in the center-back, where the dirigible's canted gonodola basket should be. No one else on their way to the bus stop batted an eye at them, but I watched them with a traveler's eye, walk across the street as if they belonged here--which I'm sure they did.
I had to stop and think what could have brought these women here in such a retro style. I know there are probably some villages up in the iron range that are less touched by modern fashion than others, and again I mean no disrespect (because certainly my relatives are not post-modern chic, nor am I for that matter), or maybe northern Wisconsin--foreigners. I settle on Slovenian iron worker wives who rarely come to the twin cities. But it also crosses my mind that they could be time travelers, visiting our downtown from some housewifey (or circus-y) vortex in 1964. Or they could be aliens who are visiting us and who have not done their research by decade, but rather by round century, like Kirk, I'm sure, in several classic Star Trek episodes. And so they blend in, but slightly anachronistically, they don't, and the effect just makes me curiouser and curiouser.
In third grade, Miss Theresa asked our class to write a few sentences about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and why. My great-grandma has recently died, and she had moved here from Sweden when she was in her thirties, which I thought was pretty adventurous. So I wrote that I wanted to be a traveler like her, as if that were a profession rather than a hobby, or a part of a profession.
When you travel, you are on your guard a little, and you need to pay attention to details of tone, character, landscape and cityscape in a way that a native doesn't. You need to pay attention to transportation, signs, languages, attitudes. There may be rules only known to the locals, some of which signify danger, or amusement, or relaxation. You need to be alert to people's body language, and their habits, and to things that look out of place.
This is leading up to why I often feel alone in the business crowd downtown in the middle of the day. A whole slew of characters, a circus, really, could go by and no one would notice it but me. Walking to the bus, these two ladies came out of the public defender building. They are obviously mother and daughter, since they have the same build, same taste in clothes, same face except one is a generation younger, and purt-near the exact same hairstyle. And actually, these two women, walking arm-in-plump-but-strong arm and leaning on each other as they cross the street, look like they could be the mother and grandmother of a circus act--the trapeze artists, maybe, or scarf aerialists. Their hairdos are giant teased beehives, and I don't mean any disrespect, but they are backcombed and shaped--each of them--to the streamlined buoyancy of teeny, loosely-moored zeppelins. The grandmother had an added ornamentation of some pulled and rosetted strands in the center-back, where the dirigible's canted gonodola basket should be. No one else on their way to the bus stop batted an eye at them, but I watched them with a traveler's eye, walk across the street as if they belonged here--which I'm sure they did.
I had to stop and think what could have brought these women here in such a retro style. I know there are probably some villages up in the iron range that are less touched by modern fashion than others, and again I mean no disrespect (because certainly my relatives are not post-modern chic, nor am I for that matter), or maybe northern Wisconsin--foreigners. I settle on Slovenian iron worker wives who rarely come to the twin cities. But it also crosses my mind that they could be time travelers, visiting our downtown from some housewifey (or circus-y) vortex in 1964. Or they could be aliens who are visiting us and who have not done their research by decade, but rather by round century, like Kirk, I'm sure, in several classic Star Trek episodes. And so they blend in, but slightly anachronistically, they don't, and the effect just makes me curiouser and curiouser.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
11/9/10 chainsaw
When I first bought it, I asked a bunch of men--my uncle, brothers, friends--how to use it. No one would tell me how. It was like a male code. So I called my aunt long-distance in Alaska. She's been living in a house she hand-built for the past 30 years or so, and she gets her stovewood from the beach and cuts and splits it herself. Her tips for the chainsaw: 1. make sure your body is always steady, that you support yourself with your legs; 2. Lock your arms stiff when you are cutting, so that if the saw bucks, it will fly above your head and not into your face; and 3. Consider carefully where the thing you're cutting is going to drop. Be ready to step aside quickly.
Oh, backtracking. I had to buy a lacy undergarment the same day I bought the chainsaw. Balance in all things.
Anyway, the thing is hilarious to use. I mean, really fun. And I'm the kind of person who hates noisy, mechanical toys. But you get to cut up firewood and clear paths and be strong and independent.
In college, I met the guy who wrote and starred in the original, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." His name is Gunnar Hansen, and he came to the college as a visiting prof in writing/journalism. I took his class in Environmental Journalism. He seemed pretty normal, not the kind of person who would dream up a murderous stalker to frighten people.
I prefer to use my chainsaw in the service of good.
When I first bought it, I asked a bunch of men--my uncle, brothers, friends--how to use it. No one would tell me how. It was like a male code. So I called my aunt long-distance in Alaska. She's been living in a house she hand-built for the past 30 years or so, and she gets her stovewood from the beach and cuts and splits it herself. Her tips for the chainsaw: 1. make sure your body is always steady, that you support yourself with your legs; 2. Lock your arms stiff when you are cutting, so that if the saw bucks, it will fly above your head and not into your face; and 3. Consider carefully where the thing you're cutting is going to drop. Be ready to step aside quickly.
Oh, backtracking. I had to buy a lacy undergarment the same day I bought the chainsaw. Balance in all things.
Anyway, the thing is hilarious to use. I mean, really fun. And I'm the kind of person who hates noisy, mechanical toys. But you get to cut up firewood and clear paths and be strong and independent.
In college, I met the guy who wrote and starred in the original, "Texas Chainsaw Massacre." His name is Gunnar Hansen, and he came to the college as a visiting prof in writing/journalism. I took his class in Environmental Journalism. He seemed pretty normal, not the kind of person who would dream up a murderous stalker to frighten people.
I prefer to use my chainsaw in the service of good.
Monday, November 8, 2010
11/8/10 Moving freight
Today I got to move cartons of printer paper--8 of them on a 4-wheel cart. The cart has a painted, cast-iron chassis, with push handle and requisite incomprehensible steering. No frills. And the bed of it is ancient 2 x 6's with about 5 generations of faded magic marker department notes, chips, dents, faded stickers, dirt, smells. And heavy. One carton of paper is almost too much for me. Pushing 8 on a cart requires my inner Amazon.
And I'm leaning into it and throwing my weight around, so fun to see what you can do. Once, when I was working at a fish cannery my first summer in Alaska, I added up all the cartons and pallets full of dungie crab I had loaded myself that night (with Tone moving it around with the forklift--lucky guy). Sixteen tons. Sixteen tons. You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Well, it's hilarious and fun anyway.
Today I got to move cartons of printer paper--8 of them on a 4-wheel cart. The cart has a painted, cast-iron chassis, with push handle and requisite incomprehensible steering. No frills. And the bed of it is ancient 2 x 6's with about 5 generations of faded magic marker department notes, chips, dents, faded stickers, dirt, smells. And heavy. One carton of paper is almost too much for me. Pushing 8 on a cart requires my inner Amazon.
And I'm leaning into it and throwing my weight around, so fun to see what you can do. Once, when I was working at a fish cannery my first summer in Alaska, I added up all the cartons and pallets full of dungie crab I had loaded myself that night (with Tone moving it around with the forklift--lucky guy). Sixteen tons. Sixteen tons. You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Well, it's hilarious and fun anyway.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
11/7/10 Hemingway shops for sofa art
A shopper at the Northrup-King art crawl had a Papa Hemingway cropped white corona of a beard around his chin, a short, weathered face, even a cap recalling the era of marlin fishing off Cuba and Florida. He walked with a cane, like Hemingway did, and I couldn't see which group of people he rather belonged to. Last I saw him, he was sitting wearily on a bench in a hallway, third floor, outside several studios with sofa paintings.
Papa Hemingway has come across time to see what's going on in 21st century Minnesota. He thinks most of the art show is B.S. He likes the naked lady photo show, and maybe wants to talk to the Argentine photographer about bullfighting. Or maybe there's an expert fly-fisherman whose technique he wants to suss out. The fisherman needed to talk to a few artists to buy stuff for his cabin, and Hemingway is waiting to go out with him to a pub later. Maybe Hemingway is with his wife, who is shopping for bland paintings for their home--paintings that won't disturb him or his mental tranquility. Even literary legends have to sit on a "husband bench" while their wives shop.
"For some idiot reason," I told my friend about the Hemingway doppelganger, "this excites me." She told me there is a Papa Hemingway lookalike contest every year in Key West. The art shopper could win top honors. http://www.sloppyjoes.com/lookalikes-pastwinners.htm
A shopper at the Northrup-King art crawl had a Papa Hemingway cropped white corona of a beard around his chin, a short, weathered face, even a cap recalling the era of marlin fishing off Cuba and Florida. He walked with a cane, like Hemingway did, and I couldn't see which group of people he rather belonged to. Last I saw him, he was sitting wearily on a bench in a hallway, third floor, outside several studios with sofa paintings.
Papa Hemingway has come across time to see what's going on in 21st century Minnesota. He thinks most of the art show is B.S. He likes the naked lady photo show, and maybe wants to talk to the Argentine photographer about bullfighting. Or maybe there's an expert fly-fisherman whose technique he wants to suss out. The fisherman needed to talk to a few artists to buy stuff for his cabin, and Hemingway is waiting to go out with him to a pub later. Maybe Hemingway is with his wife, who is shopping for bland paintings for their home--paintings that won't disturb him or his mental tranquility. Even literary legends have to sit on a "husband bench" while their wives shop.
"For some idiot reason," I told my friend about the Hemingway doppelganger, "this excites me." She told me there is a Papa Hemingway lookalike contest every year in Key West. The art shopper could win top honors. http://www.sloppyjoes.com/lookalikes-pastwinners.htm
Saturday, November 6, 2010
11/6/10 the right healer
Whether it's mind, body or spirit, you need to have the connections who can really help you. It really matters. The right person at the right time, and you might grow out of them in time and place like you wear out your favorite shoes, or move to a different neighborhood when you need to. But you gotta have that person or those people who are going to help you make the changes. Personal evolution is not for sissies.
Whether it's mind, body or spirit, you need to have the connections who can really help you. It really matters. The right person at the right time, and you might grow out of them in time and place like you wear out your favorite shoes, or move to a different neighborhood when you need to. But you gotta have that person or those people who are going to help you make the changes. Personal evolution is not for sissies.
Friday, November 5, 2010
11/5/10 Rosemary Clooney
This morning on the radio, I heard her rendition of "The Lady is a Tramp." It must have been from her later years, because her voice had that growing huskiness of weight, the smaller range and lack of sustained tone of age (or maybe of too much touring with a tired voice). But still she swung it.
Okay it's a little embarrassing for me because I like to think I love progressive, abstract jazz--world saxophone quartet, threadgill, mingus, bird, coltrane, geri allen, betty carter, etc. All the hip & cool & cats (which really, I should get more disks & study their stuff more). So it's embarrassing for me to love someone as corny as Rosemary. But I do. I hereby adopt her as my second mom. No, wait, that designation is already taken by my aunt Jan, third, no...fourth, no...Okay, I think Rosemary has to be my fifth or sixth mom, but no remoter than that. And I'm definitely officially posthumously adopting her as such. Herewith.
Rosemary is an exquisite ecstasy. Raised in small-town Kentucky, she has that homespun feeling of not-perfect physical appearance that attained fabulous glamor. And the non-perfect, non-buttery voice, but an oomph that makes whatever she sings sound like a statement. That you want to believe too.
And her dresses, the wasp-waisted nightclub frocks of her early years, all taffeta and chiffon. The caftan-y muu-muu-ey things of her later years. I want to drape myself too. I want to wear them (I know many stars of that era wore them, so it's not just Rosemary's that I envy. But her a girl from Kentucky!) And she sings so much of the songbook. The songbook. Rosemary. Awwww. (still regret not going to that last concert here in town in 2001). Love ya mom #6.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzLQZ0PHes
This morning on the radio, I heard her rendition of "The Lady is a Tramp." It must have been from her later years, because her voice had that growing huskiness of weight, the smaller range and lack of sustained tone of age (or maybe of too much touring with a tired voice). But still she swung it.
Okay it's a little embarrassing for me because I like to think I love progressive, abstract jazz--world saxophone quartet, threadgill, mingus, bird, coltrane, geri allen, betty carter, etc. All the hip & cool & cats (which really, I should get more disks & study their stuff more). So it's embarrassing for me to love someone as corny as Rosemary. But I do. I hereby adopt her as my second mom. No, wait, that designation is already taken by my aunt Jan, third, no...fourth, no...Okay, I think Rosemary has to be my fifth or sixth mom, but no remoter than that. And I'm definitely officially posthumously adopting her as such. Herewith.
Rosemary is an exquisite ecstasy. Raised in small-town Kentucky, she has that homespun feeling of not-perfect physical appearance that attained fabulous glamor. And the non-perfect, non-buttery voice, but an oomph that makes whatever she sings sound like a statement. That you want to believe too.
And her dresses, the wasp-waisted nightclub frocks of her early years, all taffeta and chiffon. The caftan-y muu-muu-ey things of her later years. I want to drape myself too. I want to wear them (I know many stars of that era wore them, so it's not just Rosemary's that I envy. But her a girl from Kentucky!) And she sings so much of the songbook. The songbook. Rosemary. Awwww. (still regret not going to that last concert here in town in 2001). Love ya mom #6.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzLQZ0PHes
11/4/10 tree-tending
The giant tree-like Ents are a weird people in the movie and the written trilogies of "Lord of the Rings." The Ents resemble trees themselves, and so totally blend in with a forest milieu. We marvel at them, but I think this fictional "invention" strikes a deep note, because it is part of our collective human experience to revere trees (oops, more than I intended to invoke--now I have to acknowledge the Druids. There.)
In her book, "Iroquoian Woman," Barbara Mann describes the physical and spiritual labor that went into maintaining the "pristine wilderness'" park-like quality that the European colonists encountered on their arrival in North America. In gender-role divisions, for the Iroquois anyway, the men would tend the forests, meadows, heaths, wild rivers and so on, by planting trees, shrubs, flowering and medicinal plants, by doing proscribed burns to control vegetation, and by befriending and taking care of the so-called wild animals.
Someone I met who had studied with the descendent of a different indigenous North American tradition told me once that the first peoples of this continent thinned the trees to no more than 40 mature trees per acre. Much less than the overgrown contemporary forests, that are stressed by insects, overuse by humans, crowding, etc.
In her book, "Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered," Machelle Small Wright describes being in a deep meditation and actually seeing living trees on her property move without trauma, root trunk and crown, move tens of feet from a previous location.
My own story is not magic. A scrub elm in my yard, about 30 feet tall and very thin, part of a triplet trunk, started drooping in the spring. I had been communicating with the spirit of the tree for months, and finally, after this past weekend's windstorm, the trunk was doubled over so that its crown was nearly brushing the grass below. And there are small children living in another unit on the property, so it was not safe to continue to let the tree do its thing. And I only had my hand saw. So I had to choose the right place, right moment. I started sawing a few hours before dusk, but it was tiring and slow going. I asked the tree for help, then wandered into the house and spaced out. I went back, in my lazy, wise way, when it was much darker out, when the sap had stopped running, and then my saw cut through the tree easily. I'm sharing this advice: Do your tree-cutting as much toward dark as possible, and it will be easier on you(and probably easier on the tree as well)
The giant tree-like Ents are a weird people in the movie and the written trilogies of "Lord of the Rings." The Ents resemble trees themselves, and so totally blend in with a forest milieu. We marvel at them, but I think this fictional "invention" strikes a deep note, because it is part of our collective human experience to revere trees (oops, more than I intended to invoke--now I have to acknowledge the Druids. There.)
In her book, "Iroquoian Woman," Barbara Mann describes the physical and spiritual labor that went into maintaining the "pristine wilderness'" park-like quality that the European colonists encountered on their arrival in North America. In gender-role divisions, for the Iroquois anyway, the men would tend the forests, meadows, heaths, wild rivers and so on, by planting trees, shrubs, flowering and medicinal plants, by doing proscribed burns to control vegetation, and by befriending and taking care of the so-called wild animals.
Someone I met who had studied with the descendent of a different indigenous North American tradition told me once that the first peoples of this continent thinned the trees to no more than 40 mature trees per acre. Much less than the overgrown contemporary forests, that are stressed by insects, overuse by humans, crowding, etc.
In her book, "Behaving as if the God in All Life Mattered," Machelle Small Wright describes being in a deep meditation and actually seeing living trees on her property move without trauma, root trunk and crown, move tens of feet from a previous location.
My own story is not magic. A scrub elm in my yard, about 30 feet tall and very thin, part of a triplet trunk, started drooping in the spring. I had been communicating with the spirit of the tree for months, and finally, after this past weekend's windstorm, the trunk was doubled over so that its crown was nearly brushing the grass below. And there are small children living in another unit on the property, so it was not safe to continue to let the tree do its thing. And I only had my hand saw. So I had to choose the right place, right moment. I started sawing a few hours before dusk, but it was tiring and slow going. I asked the tree for help, then wandered into the house and spaced out. I went back, in my lazy, wise way, when it was much darker out, when the sap had stopped running, and then my saw cut through the tree easily. I'm sharing this advice: Do your tree-cutting as much toward dark as possible, and it will be easier on you(and probably easier on the tree as well)
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
11/3/10 Chutzpah
Seizing the moment, seizing the day, daring to make something happen, if only for a moment. Here in the "Sweet Land" of the midwest, we often follow such structure in our lives that it's hard to see another way of doing things. Chutzpah breaks the spell. With chutzpah, you speak up to ask for seconds, wear a loud color, run for your life to catch someone who is pulling away down the street, and have no intention of taking no for an answer. Chutzpah sometimes doesn's know what it is. It's an opinion, an action, the gall.
Seizing the moment, seizing the day, daring to make something happen, if only for a moment. Here in the "Sweet Land" of the midwest, we often follow such structure in our lives that it's hard to see another way of doing things. Chutzpah breaks the spell. With chutzpah, you speak up to ask for seconds, wear a loud color, run for your life to catch someone who is pulling away down the street, and have no intention of taking no for an answer. Chutzpah sometimes doesn's know what it is. It's an opinion, an action, the gall.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
11/2/10 The other options
What if being at odds and ends with the world were a conscious choice? What if choosing peace means not fighting no matter what? What if being angry about a situation is meant to teach us the restlessness and discontent that we want to change, not to emulate the behavior of people or groups we think are unbalanced.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, a sort of voice came to me. Okay I'm not schizophrenic. But this voice or thought, familiar, kind but firm, posed the question, do I want to keep fighting. Because if I wanted to keep fighting, they would give me an adversarial relationship with someone whom I see on a regular basis. In my half-asleep state before my workweek, I thought about it, considered it, considered what would be best for me (the previous two weeks, I had made the choice to fight--my ego was invested in the identity of being a fighter--opposing oppression in all forms). So in the wee hours of Monday morning, in this inner conversation with my spirit guide, I said, no, I don't really care to fight, to project my sources of disharmony outside myself onto another person or group.
For me, it feels like when I take an adversarial stance, even one that's for overcoming injustice, I get locked into a role of hating my opponent and finding everything they do worthy of derision and despisal. I can find the most innocuous actions to be hostile. Instead, if I am open to any number of meanings, I can respond with joy and spontaneity. I can come up with creative solutions, and see others' behavior as interesting, appropriate for them and their lifestyle & beliefs.
On this election night, I wish to point out that everyone wishes for abundance and safety and nurturing community and choices.
What if being at odds and ends with the world were a conscious choice? What if choosing peace means not fighting no matter what? What if being angry about a situation is meant to teach us the restlessness and discontent that we want to change, not to emulate the behavior of people or groups we think are unbalanced.
In the wee hours of Monday morning, a sort of voice came to me. Okay I'm not schizophrenic. But this voice or thought, familiar, kind but firm, posed the question, do I want to keep fighting. Because if I wanted to keep fighting, they would give me an adversarial relationship with someone whom I see on a regular basis. In my half-asleep state before my workweek, I thought about it, considered it, considered what would be best for me (the previous two weeks, I had made the choice to fight--my ego was invested in the identity of being a fighter--opposing oppression in all forms). So in the wee hours of Monday morning, in this inner conversation with my spirit guide, I said, no, I don't really care to fight, to project my sources of disharmony outside myself onto another person or group.
For me, it feels like when I take an adversarial stance, even one that's for overcoming injustice, I get locked into a role of hating my opponent and finding everything they do worthy of derision and despisal. I can find the most innocuous actions to be hostile. Instead, if I am open to any number of meanings, I can respond with joy and spontaneity. I can come up with creative solutions, and see others' behavior as interesting, appropriate for them and their lifestyle & beliefs.
On this election night, I wish to point out that everyone wishes for abundance and safety and nurturing community and choices.
11/1/10 Getting involved, and what goes around comes around
Sometimes you need to warn perfect strangers, you need to tell them about a risk they are running, so that they take care of themselves. Sometimes you need to be a little rude or abrupt or diplomatic or gentle. Sometimes you have to make a noise in front of someone's face, to help them snap out of their little stupor, so they will pay attention and take care of a situation.
I had an opportunity to do that 2 years ago but I didn't. Not my fault, really. I wasn't under any obligation to be a nursemaid. No one could fault me for not getting involved. But the guy died of a heart attack, and I could have recognized what his symptoms meant if .... if... (and I don't blame myself, either, but I just kept thinking if it happened again, I know what I'd do).
It happened again. I met a guy who has symptoms of toxicity, probably from fish he eats from a toxic waterway. I not only told him in person and on the phone, but wrote him a note describing how to get help. There. I've done my job. In a way it feels like the karmic wheel came around to me again. I got to re-make a decision. I got involved. And now the follow-up is up to him.
Sometimes you need to warn perfect strangers, you need to tell them about a risk they are running, so that they take care of themselves. Sometimes you need to be a little rude or abrupt or diplomatic or gentle. Sometimes you have to make a noise in front of someone's face, to help them snap out of their little stupor, so they will pay attention and take care of a situation.
I had an opportunity to do that 2 years ago but I didn't. Not my fault, really. I wasn't under any obligation to be a nursemaid. No one could fault me for not getting involved. But the guy died of a heart attack, and I could have recognized what his symptoms meant if .... if... (and I don't blame myself, either, but I just kept thinking if it happened again, I know what I'd do).
It happened again. I met a guy who has symptoms of toxicity, probably from fish he eats from a toxic waterway. I not only told him in person and on the phone, but wrote him a note describing how to get help. There. I've done my job. In a way it feels like the karmic wheel came around to me again. I got to re-make a decision. I got involved. And now the follow-up is up to him.
10/31/10 lavender cupcakes
Hearty squash cupcakes sweetened with honey, and little gingery, lemony bits in the breading composition. Cream cheese frosting sprinkled with sugared lemon zest and whole, dried lavender flowers. Flowers that you don't feel, don't notice until you are chewing them and there are these little peppery, perfumy bits in your mouth and you think of how food is not just food, but it needs to feed the spirit, too. It needs to lift you up (and it's not just about the posh, gluttonous income-bracket thing that has been happening lately in our culture's food consumption, but just a little touch that reminds you that food is of the gods).
Hearty squash cupcakes sweetened with honey, and little gingery, lemony bits in the breading composition. Cream cheese frosting sprinkled with sugared lemon zest and whole, dried lavender flowers. Flowers that you don't feel, don't notice until you are chewing them and there are these little peppery, perfumy bits in your mouth and you think of how food is not just food, but it needs to feed the spirit, too. It needs to lift you up (and it's not just about the posh, gluttonous income-bracket thing that has been happening lately in our culture's food consumption, but just a little touch that reminds you that food is of the gods).
10/30/10 Puppet pageantry
Really, the message could be anything. Because there they are on the riverbank wearing bulky, jersey-draped boxy constructions that represent insects and people and robots and monsters and, and desserts. These giant make-believe faces and their human operators. And rapt people sitting on haybales and watching them. And eerie lights in the dark near halloween. And it doesn't matter what they say, they could be saying anything because you are wrapped in a blanket shivering on a groundcover with your straight-talking friend, and it is all a dream, a samhain night's dream.
For days and weeks afterward, you see the bare autumn trees and even the city's buildings as part of the set and scenery for a shadow-puppet production, with layers and textures and vanishing points, and back-lit by the rich autumn sunrise or the dark fall sunset.
Really, the message could be anything. Because there they are on the riverbank wearing bulky, jersey-draped boxy constructions that represent insects and people and robots and monsters and, and desserts. These giant make-believe faces and their human operators. And rapt people sitting on haybales and watching them. And eerie lights in the dark near halloween. And it doesn't matter what they say, they could be saying anything because you are wrapped in a blanket shivering on a groundcover with your straight-talking friend, and it is all a dream, a samhain night's dream.
For days and weeks afterward, you see the bare autumn trees and even the city's buildings as part of the set and scenery for a shadow-puppet production, with layers and textures and vanishing points, and back-lit by the rich autumn sunrise or the dark fall sunset.
10/29/10 Facing the monster
(okay, chronologically, this experience didn't happen until the 31st, but I need to backfill my ecstasy entries.)
What is the thing in life which you find most disgusting and revolting of all? Something that really turns your stomach, that makes you want to puke? Got it? What if you walked into a coffee shop and saw that thing? What if the thing you always went out of your way to avoid appeared right in front of your eyes? Asking for your help and a cup of Joe? And you just wanted to run?
You would need to keep your wits about you. You could run. This is your monster, your Quasimodo, your Grendel. You are a pleasure-seeking bipedal earth mammal. You want to be perpetually surrounded by joy and laughter and goodness and health. You are under no obligation to be nice to the monster. You could tell them off--tell them they are hideous and disgusting and be as much of a superior asshole as you wanted to be. You could ignore their humanity, their monsterness.
But you are also a shiny star, an earth angel with superpowers of life and light and healing. You are able to zap situations with your mind and have them change instantly. You have a conversation with Quasimodo, and tell him that he is so nice. You thank him for the wilted flowers. It does not diminish your power, your humanity to be kind to your monster.
It does not diminsh your shining brilliance to be a mensch, to treat someone decently. This monster will not eat you. And you feel that your heart has grown, that you have overcome some of your own monstrosity, that you have become more human yourself. It is an ecstasy to know you are capable of this.
(okay, chronologically, this experience didn't happen until the 31st, but I need to backfill my ecstasy entries.)
What is the thing in life which you find most disgusting and revolting of all? Something that really turns your stomach, that makes you want to puke? Got it? What if you walked into a coffee shop and saw that thing? What if the thing you always went out of your way to avoid appeared right in front of your eyes? Asking for your help and a cup of Joe? And you just wanted to run?
You would need to keep your wits about you. You could run. This is your monster, your Quasimodo, your Grendel. You are a pleasure-seeking bipedal earth mammal. You want to be perpetually surrounded by joy and laughter and goodness and health. You are under no obligation to be nice to the monster. You could tell them off--tell them they are hideous and disgusting and be as much of a superior asshole as you wanted to be. You could ignore their humanity, their monsterness.
But you are also a shiny star, an earth angel with superpowers of life and light and healing. You are able to zap situations with your mind and have them change instantly. You have a conversation with Quasimodo, and tell him that he is so nice. You thank him for the wilted flowers. It does not diminish your power, your humanity to be kind to your monster.
It does not diminsh your shining brilliance to be a mensch, to treat someone decently. This monster will not eat you. And you feel that your heart has grown, that you have overcome some of your own monstrosity, that you have become more human yourself. It is an ecstasy to know you are capable of this.
10/28/10 a scar
saw a woman at work today, someone visiting the courthouse on a personal matter, who had the most beautiful scar I think I’ve ever seen. She was wearing a sleeveless dress on the coldest day so far this fall. We hadn’t spoken, but had only made eye contact; she slowly turned her shoulder toward me, leaning on her chair, as if she wanted to show me something, and there it was, about the size of a child’s outspread hand, a keloid with feathered fibers going this way and that in a kind of orderly entropy, that reminded me of tendrils of frost on a winter window, or the crystalline formations on the inside of a geode, or the plumes on the ancient brown wallpaper at my grandmother’s house when I was growing up. A strange, old beauty. And whatever had caused her scar, whatever fleshly trauma had occurred—accident or act of violence, had also excavated the outer third of her deltoid muscle. I’m not glorifying that event or saying that it didn’t hurt, or that it was a good thing or that she wouldn’t be better off if it hadn’t happened.
But there was the fact of the scar, the way the universe did its job of repaving, resurfacing the event, her body healed, somewhat, and left a picture to commemorate something. And it got me thinking again about what we find beautiful and what we don’t (perhaps she was exhibiting it to let the world know about her pain), and how the universe resurfaces our experiences, how there are layers, how there is beauty if we find it, if we look for it, if we admit it. Who is she now with the scar? What would she tell me, if I had had the time to have a conversation?
saw a woman at work today, someone visiting the courthouse on a personal matter, who had the most beautiful scar I think I’ve ever seen. She was wearing a sleeveless dress on the coldest day so far this fall. We hadn’t spoken, but had only made eye contact; she slowly turned her shoulder toward me, leaning on her chair, as if she wanted to show me something, and there it was, about the size of a child’s outspread hand, a keloid with feathered fibers going this way and that in a kind of orderly entropy, that reminded me of tendrils of frost on a winter window, or the crystalline formations on the inside of a geode, or the plumes on the ancient brown wallpaper at my grandmother’s house when I was growing up. A strange, old beauty. And whatever had caused her scar, whatever fleshly trauma had occurred—accident or act of violence, had also excavated the outer third of her deltoid muscle. I’m not glorifying that event or saying that it didn’t hurt, or that it was a good thing or that she wouldn’t be better off if it hadn’t happened.
But there was the fact of the scar, the way the universe did its job of repaving, resurfacing the event, her body healed, somewhat, and left a picture to commemorate something. And it got me thinking again about what we find beautiful and what we don’t (perhaps she was exhibiting it to let the world know about her pain), and how the universe resurfaces our experiences, how there are layers, how there is beauty if we find it, if we look for it, if we admit it. Who is she now with the scar? What would she tell me, if I had had the time to have a conversation?
10/27/10 Coffee
Okay, maybe I've posted about this before. But it's thick and dark. I imagine it gooey and string-y sometimes. Bitter (why don't people like other bitter things?) (what if bitter were the taste we humans sought, instead of sweet or salty or sour?). But black and opaque, a mystery. Chewy, substantial on the tongue, a mouthful, but it doesn't fill you up, because you get the espresso and don't add much to it, so there are no calories. And it makes you thirsty, because you always get thirsty around mysteries, so you drink more water. And you wonder about the darkness.
Okay, maybe I've posted about this before. But it's thick and dark. I imagine it gooey and string-y sometimes. Bitter (why don't people like other bitter things?) (what if bitter were the taste we humans sought, instead of sweet or salty or sour?). But black and opaque, a mystery. Chewy, substantial on the tongue, a mouthful, but it doesn't fill you up, because you get the espresso and don't add much to it, so there are no calories. And it makes you thirsty, because you always get thirsty around mysteries, so you drink more water. And you wonder about the darkness.
10/25/10 Going to work in the dark
Such a wonderful time of year, autumn... For some odd reason, we humans keep time mostly by mathematical divisions of more or less equal parts, the numerical hours changing their relationship to the actual day with a niggling numerical whine, over the course of the year. Get up now!!!, the round face complains, says that it's time to eat breakfast, shower and go to work, even though your body knows, as the earth and all of nature knows, that dark is the time to sleep. Go to lunch now!!! the mechanisms of the office shout, you must be hungry, and the little digital timekeeper must be fed. Go home now!!! You wish you had been cuddling safe at home with your loved ones hours ago, but it's here you must remain until the timekeepers dismiss you. But we humans know more, know deeper, and the factual evidence of darkness strikes notes that disturb the superstructure. So, in winter, here in the Upper Midwest, we go to work and come home in the dark.
Okay, that sounds burdensome, so here's the ecstasy part: Who would have thought that a rational, sentient, emotional species would have found a way and a nearly universal compulsion to get up in the dark during the coldest time of year? What a feat! We all want to sleep, but no! We all have this ability to rouse ourselves, expose our senses to artifically-generated indoor light, and dispatch the necessary tasks to pretend that it's still midsummer. What a hoot!
Oops, I really meant for this post to be about how calm and lovely and striking it is in the dark, a time we rarely inhabit during the warm months (speaking strictly for myself). How you gradually say goodbye to the light during weeks of morning bus rides, how things seem quiet, protected, compared to in the lurid bustling daylight. Sometimes an ecstasy is scattershot.
Such a wonderful time of year, autumn... For some odd reason, we humans keep time mostly by mathematical divisions of more or less equal parts, the numerical hours changing their relationship to the actual day with a niggling numerical whine, over the course of the year. Get up now!!!, the round face complains, says that it's time to eat breakfast, shower and go to work, even though your body knows, as the earth and all of nature knows, that dark is the time to sleep. Go to lunch now!!! the mechanisms of the office shout, you must be hungry, and the little digital timekeeper must be fed. Go home now!!! You wish you had been cuddling safe at home with your loved ones hours ago, but it's here you must remain until the timekeepers dismiss you. But we humans know more, know deeper, and the factual evidence of darkness strikes notes that disturb the superstructure. So, in winter, here in the Upper Midwest, we go to work and come home in the dark.
Okay, that sounds burdensome, so here's the ecstasy part: Who would have thought that a rational, sentient, emotional species would have found a way and a nearly universal compulsion to get up in the dark during the coldest time of year? What a feat! We all want to sleep, but no! We all have this ability to rouse ourselves, expose our senses to artifically-generated indoor light, and dispatch the necessary tasks to pretend that it's still midsummer. What a hoot!
Oops, I really meant for this post to be about how calm and lovely and striking it is in the dark, a time we rarely inhabit during the warm months (speaking strictly for myself). How you gradually say goodbye to the light during weeks of morning bus rides, how things seem quiet, protected, compared to in the lurid bustling daylight. Sometimes an ecstasy is scattershot.
10/24/10 Playing with frost on the window
Feathers and crystallized mandalas and god's-eyes and fleurs-de-lis and diamonds and Lucky Charms and snowflakes and stars. Back when the world was a portion of a century younger, we didn't have such good insulation in our windows. We didn't have year-round windows that were so frickin hard to wash, reaching around the permanent frickin frame. Instead, we had these hook on the top windows, and brackets on the house windowframe and the windows you stored on 2 x 4's in the basement, washing them outdoors with soapy water and rags and newspaper and then ripped sheets in late September every year, as you take down their summer analogs with the screens. Wipe the spider webs and dirt out of the window wells, hook on the storm windows and lock them shut. Of course they leaked around the edges, and of course in freezing weather, they made all the little frost shapes and tokens. And then you, with your dreamy childish self, would look out into the frozen yard, and use the meat of your childish fist to make a little peep-hole out into the crystalline magic-land of winter. Or you'd make a daisy, with its petals your pinky fingerprints, its eye the tip of your thumb's print. Or a footprint with your fist's heel and fingerprint toes. And the frost sealed onto the glass like a damask weave, grey and white, and the cold shavings on your fingernails and even a tongue print sometimes, but not on the coldest days. Frost on windows. I don't think my 17 year old son has ever seen it.
A post on 10/28, written previous to this one, talks about the designs of frost, too.
Feathers and crystallized mandalas and god's-eyes and fleurs-de-lis and diamonds and Lucky Charms and snowflakes and stars. Back when the world was a portion of a century younger, we didn't have such good insulation in our windows. We didn't have year-round windows that were so frickin hard to wash, reaching around the permanent frickin frame. Instead, we had these hook on the top windows, and brackets on the house windowframe and the windows you stored on 2 x 4's in the basement, washing them outdoors with soapy water and rags and newspaper and then ripped sheets in late September every year, as you take down their summer analogs with the screens. Wipe the spider webs and dirt out of the window wells, hook on the storm windows and lock them shut. Of course they leaked around the edges, and of course in freezing weather, they made all the little frost shapes and tokens. And then you, with your dreamy childish self, would look out into the frozen yard, and use the meat of your childish fist to make a little peep-hole out into the crystalline magic-land of winter. Or you'd make a daisy, with its petals your pinky fingerprints, its eye the tip of your thumb's print. Or a footprint with your fist's heel and fingerprint toes. And the frost sealed onto the glass like a damask weave, grey and white, and the cold shavings on your fingernails and even a tongue print sometimes, but not on the coldest days. Frost on windows. I don't think my 17 year old son has ever seen it.
A post on 10/28, written previous to this one, talks about the designs of frost, too.
10/21/10 wild dandelions
People say dandelion greens taste too bitter, but you shouldn't believe them. Their tastebuds have been skewed by even the most healthful American diet, and require serious recalibration. In our culture, we cover up the bitter with all manner of sweetness--of taste, appearance, manufactured goods, travel, relationships. What if we allowed ourselves to feel the bitterness that underlies it--the selling of people and things, the dark agreements, the negotiations.
In the springtime in suburban Boston, someone once told me to look for the Italian women around the highway 93's edges in the weeks before Easter. I saw them a few times, gathering wild dandelion greens for Easter without violating the local parks' injunctions against harvesting. In dark dresses, kneeling close to the ground like figures in a religious diptych, they looked like they were making ablutions. So foreign to our lives, you don't see them unless they are pointed out to you, like the ships of Columbus to the Taino indigenous peoples, according to the film, "What the &*%$@# (bleep)" They are reclusive, arcane, their ritual ancient.
Dandelion, I've been told, is less bitter in spring before the first flowering, and I imagine, also in the fall, when flowering has ceased and it collects the last drops of sunlight with its rosette of leaves. To me, it tastes like itself year-round, and the only time it's close to inedible is when it's from a hot, drought-y midsummer vacant lot. But still, I'd try it, if the lot were clean.
People say dandelion greens taste too bitter, but you shouldn't believe them. Their tastebuds have been skewed by even the most healthful American diet, and require serious recalibration. In our culture, we cover up the bitter with all manner of sweetness--of taste, appearance, manufactured goods, travel, relationships. What if we allowed ourselves to feel the bitterness that underlies it--the selling of people and things, the dark agreements, the negotiations.
In the springtime in suburban Boston, someone once told me to look for the Italian women around the highway 93's edges in the weeks before Easter. I saw them a few times, gathering wild dandelion greens for Easter without violating the local parks' injunctions against harvesting. In dark dresses, kneeling close to the ground like figures in a religious diptych, they looked like they were making ablutions. So foreign to our lives, you don't see them unless they are pointed out to you, like the ships of Columbus to the Taino indigenous peoples, according to the film, "What the &*%$@# (bleep)" They are reclusive, arcane, their ritual ancient.
Dandelion, I've been told, is less bitter in spring before the first flowering, and I imagine, also in the fall, when flowering has ceased and it collects the last drops of sunlight with its rosette of leaves. To me, it tastes like itself year-round, and the only time it's close to inedible is when it's from a hot, drought-y midsummer vacant lot. But still, I'd try it, if the lot were clean.
10/20/10 Buckwheat honey
I had to keep going back to the tea table and checking and smelling the different things that went into my cup. I just couldn't believe that the buckwheat honey was making that taste & smell. Heavy, dark, malt-y, sweet. Like burnt sugar, like Irish cream, like the skin of a friend, brown & creamy.
I had to keep going back to the tea table and checking and smelling the different things that went into my cup. I just couldn't believe that the buckwheat honey was making that taste & smell. Heavy, dark, malt-y, sweet. Like burnt sugar, like Irish cream, like the skin of a friend, brown & creamy.
10/18/10 Walking barefoot
In October, the grass has started to dry, so instead of feeling wet and springy, it feels a little dry and wiry underfoot. It is comforting and warm in the sun, and a little shocking in shady coolness. Walking barefoot on a gravel drive is a massage, sometimes harsh, sometimes welcome. You want to press feet to feet in a sandbox greeting, use feet, massage feet, worship feet. Feet that feel so much coming up from the ground, and then the cold slap of concrete in the camp building. Barefoot feet.
In October, the grass has started to dry, so instead of feeling wet and springy, it feels a little dry and wiry underfoot. It is comforting and warm in the sun, and a little shocking in shady coolness. Walking barefoot on a gravel drive is a massage, sometimes harsh, sometimes welcome. You want to press feet to feet in a sandbox greeting, use feet, massage feet, worship feet. Feet that feel so much coming up from the ground, and then the cold slap of concrete in the camp building. Barefoot feet.
10/16/10 Using a mortar and pestle
Carved and polished out of heavy marble, this ingenious invention makes everything about spices more intense, sensual. You drop the flakes or seeds into the bowl, you take the rough-bottomed stick and strike and strike and strike the fragrant seeds as they release their aroma. Your hand and wrist draw lazy circles, ellipses, squiggles on the floor of the bowl. To finish the spice into a usable powder, you need to increase your effort, your arm and hand working in a churning, rapid, almost frantic pace until you are done, and can see that the product is now a homogeneous granulation.
Carved and polished out of heavy marble, this ingenious invention makes everything about spices more intense, sensual. You drop the flakes or seeds into the bowl, you take the rough-bottomed stick and strike and strike and strike the fragrant seeds as they release their aroma. Your hand and wrist draw lazy circles, ellipses, squiggles on the floor of the bowl. To finish the spice into a usable powder, you need to increase your effort, your arm and hand working in a churning, rapid, almost frantic pace until you are done, and can see that the product is now a homogeneous granulation.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
10/6/10 a toothache
Nothing says "I'm alive" like pain. Dull, throbbing pain in the jaw, and you need to take something for it. Delicious, rugged pain, and you don't want anyone to go near it, least of all the dentist. Tell the dentist you have a phobia, in addition to the toothache. Then she will be extra-extra careful. The pain and throbbing make your brain feel furry. You have a right to be out of sorts, you have a right to be grumpy, petulant. Tell people, "this is my toothache, and it's awful!!" People will give you sympathy. They will understand that you are just having a day of being human. The pain will go away once you get the crown.
Nothing says "I'm alive" like pain. Dull, throbbing pain in the jaw, and you need to take something for it. Delicious, rugged pain, and you don't want anyone to go near it, least of all the dentist. Tell the dentist you have a phobia, in addition to the toothache. Then she will be extra-extra careful. The pain and throbbing make your brain feel furry. You have a right to be out of sorts, you have a right to be grumpy, petulant. Tell people, "this is my toothache, and it's awful!!" People will give you sympathy. They will understand that you are just having a day of being human. The pain will go away once you get the crown.
For 10/5/10 living color
Something happens sometimes and colors pop out. It is beautiful and rare and bold and delicate the way the colors of things blaze sometimes in the afternoon sun. A redheaded boy in a bright blue shirt coming out of the grocery. A handsomely compact young man in green with white flaking vinyl letters, a brown grocery bag, next. Someone else in living blue, someone else in living green. Sometimes the day is such that the dreams are visible in the colors, in the air, and the universe declares itself to be decorating along a theme for a dance. An artist in a black vest with a vee of blue below his throat. His clear, blue eyes, an unafraid gaze, and energy radiating from his heart. He loves his work, the artist, and there is so much blue and green in the world.
Something happens sometimes and colors pop out. It is beautiful and rare and bold and delicate the way the colors of things blaze sometimes in the afternoon sun. A redheaded boy in a bright blue shirt coming out of the grocery. A handsomely compact young man in green with white flaking vinyl letters, a brown grocery bag, next. Someone else in living blue, someone else in living green. Sometimes the day is such that the dreams are visible in the colors, in the air, and the universe declares itself to be decorating along a theme for a dance. An artist in a black vest with a vee of blue below his throat. His clear, blue eyes, an unafraid gaze, and energy radiating from his heart. He loves his work, the artist, and there is so much blue and green in the world.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
For 9/28/10 - Toddlers
At my job, clients often bring these short people with bobbly heads, wandering minds and tapered little bodies. Little wisps of hair (or sometimes a dense untamed shrubbery up top), and their little hands always reaching for stuff--elevator buttons, files, chair handles, toys someone brought for them. And they always look so curious, staring open-mouthed, impervious to instructions, as if here's a new thing, how do I relate to it. And their little heads bobble uncertainly. And they make noises in addition to words, and they laugh out loud and stomp or waddle unsteadily about. I work in a courthouse. Kids aren't allowed in courtrooms, but often the parents don't have sitters. They are angels, reminding us all about the stuff of life, our reasons for being in that building to begin with.
At my job, clients often bring these short people with bobbly heads, wandering minds and tapered little bodies. Little wisps of hair (or sometimes a dense untamed shrubbery up top), and their little hands always reaching for stuff--elevator buttons, files, chair handles, toys someone brought for them. And they always look so curious, staring open-mouthed, impervious to instructions, as if here's a new thing, how do I relate to it. And their little heads bobble uncertainly. And they make noises in addition to words, and they laugh out loud and stomp or waddle unsteadily about. I work in a courthouse. Kids aren't allowed in courtrooms, but often the parents don't have sitters. They are angels, reminding us all about the stuff of life, our reasons for being in that building to begin with.
Monday, September 27, 2010
9/27/10 - practicing falling in love.
I read in a book by the Dalai Lama yesterday that His Holiness does a meditation practice 6 or 7 times a day on dying, so that when the time eventually comes, he will be able to accomplish that transition with appropriate calm and grace (I assume), and go through all the structures and colors of the various levels of being that pertain in his belief system. I've decided that it's now my duty, since I've been on a dating website for almost a month, to practice falling in love with a similar devotional zeal. After all, people are afraid of it in this society, or they're doing it in the wrong say & making themselves ill, or some people do it but would they share how it happens? And I apparently haven't done it properly yet, or it might have lasted. So far what I have is this (practiced once this morning at home and twice on the bus on the commute home): Falling in love feels like the wing of a bird sweeps the top of your head, spinning it slightly, and then there are these clouds around the outside edge of your being that billow and drupe like clusters of grapes or lilac flowers or the leaves in the canopy of a great tree. The colors change like something you thought you knew in a fire, like a darkly tawny magazine photo of your body and someone else's, and you drop the page into a bonfire, so you still see the picture, but it starts to be engulfed in flames...that instant of fleshy picture and glowing fire simultaneously--that kind of tawny glow. And the colors and the clusters change and roll, like ocean waves crashing on the outside of your energy field, and then it is an implosion, and it washes over you and you are standing there no longer just your own person, but part of a set. That's what it feels like in meditation so far.
I want to keep practicing this, so I am ready at a moment's notice, because there are so many things in a day that I need to fall in love with. People on the streets downtown, and the newsstand guy reading his magazine article while I get my lunch, and the people at the office, and the clients who come in and their children, and a skittering dog on the sidewalk, and my son's face when he comes in from his game, and knowing the exact healing practice needed for my brother and his relationship, and knowing the exact exercise practice I need for my own health, and the ridiculous objects I've chosen to live with me in my house, and the compost I take out to the bin, and more and more.
I read in a book by the Dalai Lama yesterday that His Holiness does a meditation practice 6 or 7 times a day on dying, so that when the time eventually comes, he will be able to accomplish that transition with appropriate calm and grace (I assume), and go through all the structures and colors of the various levels of being that pertain in his belief system. I've decided that it's now my duty, since I've been on a dating website for almost a month, to practice falling in love with a similar devotional zeal. After all, people are afraid of it in this society, or they're doing it in the wrong say & making themselves ill, or some people do it but would they share how it happens? And I apparently haven't done it properly yet, or it might have lasted. So far what I have is this (practiced once this morning at home and twice on the bus on the commute home): Falling in love feels like the wing of a bird sweeps the top of your head, spinning it slightly, and then there are these clouds around the outside edge of your being that billow and drupe like clusters of grapes or lilac flowers or the leaves in the canopy of a great tree. The colors change like something you thought you knew in a fire, like a darkly tawny magazine photo of your body and someone else's, and you drop the page into a bonfire, so you still see the picture, but it starts to be engulfed in flames...that instant of fleshy picture and glowing fire simultaneously--that kind of tawny glow. And the colors and the clusters change and roll, like ocean waves crashing on the outside of your energy field, and then it is an implosion, and it washes over you and you are standing there no longer just your own person, but part of a set. That's what it feels like in meditation so far.
I want to keep practicing this, so I am ready at a moment's notice, because there are so many things in a day that I need to fall in love with. People on the streets downtown, and the newsstand guy reading his magazine article while I get my lunch, and the people at the office, and the clients who come in and their children, and a skittering dog on the sidewalk, and my son's face when he comes in from his game, and knowing the exact healing practice needed for my brother and his relationship, and knowing the exact exercise practice I need for my own health, and the ridiculous objects I've chosen to live with me in my house, and the compost I take out to the bin, and more and more.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
9/22/10 - the equinox
I love the advent of longer nights, warmer, sweeter soups, the darkness of creativity and fulsome transformation. Everything changes when the nights get longer--seeds start their journeys toward new plants, changing their insides overwinter. Some animals make their babies, in dark, fusty holes in the earth. Insects, inside their wintery carapaces and wraps, rearrange themselves to become something new. And there are stars, stars everywhere. I love the seasons of change.
I love the advent of longer nights, warmer, sweeter soups, the darkness of creativity and fulsome transformation. Everything changes when the nights get longer--seeds start their journeys toward new plants, changing their insides overwinter. Some animals make their babies, in dark, fusty holes in the earth. Insects, inside their wintery carapaces and wraps, rearrange themselves to become something new. And there are stars, stars everywhere. I love the seasons of change.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
9/18/10 - local lounge singers
You walk into a gritty bar with a clever name and a downtown address. Inside, the familiar smells of Carhart coveralls, draft beer and cement dust greet you, as well as flickering neon signs on the wall, uneven, beadboard wainscoting, and comfortable faces that have seen a bit of life. Your table is covered with red checked oilcloth and a flickering hurricane lamp. When you walk in, the singer and her accompanist are talking with people at various tables, asking people about their lives, their jobs, their kids. Cigarette smoke trails in at the door from people smoking on the streetside terrace outside, though smoking is banned in the bar. Boutique style reproductions of old headline singers (who probably never came here) hang on the wall--a young Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald.
The singer is as personable on the stage as she was at the tables between sets, chatting about her kids, the synchronized swim meets she had as a teenager, while counting out the next song. She scats like the pro she is, and she and the guitarist pour their everyday souls into the music, helping us soar for a few moments, above the bar stools, hair spray, painted walls, road construction outside, and the Saturday night lights in a quiet downtown.
You walk into a gritty bar with a clever name and a downtown address. Inside, the familiar smells of Carhart coveralls, draft beer and cement dust greet you, as well as flickering neon signs on the wall, uneven, beadboard wainscoting, and comfortable faces that have seen a bit of life. Your table is covered with red checked oilcloth and a flickering hurricane lamp. When you walk in, the singer and her accompanist are talking with people at various tables, asking people about their lives, their jobs, their kids. Cigarette smoke trails in at the door from people smoking on the streetside terrace outside, though smoking is banned in the bar. Boutique style reproductions of old headline singers (who probably never came here) hang on the wall--a young Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald.
The singer is as personable on the stage as she was at the tables between sets, chatting about her kids, the synchronized swim meets she had as a teenager, while counting out the next song. She scats like the pro she is, and she and the guitarist pour their everyday souls into the music, helping us soar for a few moments, above the bar stools, hair spray, painted walls, road construction outside, and the Saturday night lights in a quiet downtown.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Post for 9/12/10 - "Piling up unwanted things in an empty room"
at least, that's what my friend Dawn wrote on my Facebook page.
Here are my unwanted words for the (9/12) day, whew, such a relief to get them off my chest for now. I'll just put them under here, in this post:
Frivolous...choice...resuscitation...sneak attack...frivolity...thank god it's Friday...vituperation...syncope...address...charity...attractive...prosperity... Lame'...judicious...better than...excellence...mindfuck...happenstance... knucklebone...foundation... mobility...celebrate... poetry slam... unacceptable... needless...heedless... pince-nez... bayou ...
at least, that's what my friend Dawn wrote on my Facebook page.
Here are my unwanted words for the (9/12) day, whew, such a relief to get them off my chest for now. I'll just put them under here, in this post:
Frivolous...choice...resuscitation...sneak attack...frivolity...thank god it's Friday...vituperation...syncope...address...charity...attractive...prosperity... Lame'...judicious...better than...excellence...mindfuck...happenstance... knucklebone...foundation... mobility...celebrate... poetry slam... unacceptable... needless...heedless... pince-nez... bayou ...
09/15/2010 - burning hot chilis
I tried one today from Kung Pao chicken, just to see how hot I could stand it. Turns out, not very hot. That thing reamed out my skull like an acid wash, made all my facial bones and aponeuroses seem thin and stretched. I love the drunken walk into the land of the strange that we have to do to accommodate so much heat: shake the head, flail the hands a little, look for a liquid or a carb to douse the flame. The thin feeling inside the head, like the weaker gravity of a smaller planet, Pluto say, or Mercury. Wow! It's great to be alive!!!
I tried one today from Kung Pao chicken, just to see how hot I could stand it. Turns out, not very hot. That thing reamed out my skull like an acid wash, made all my facial bones and aponeuroses seem thin and stretched. I love the drunken walk into the land of the strange that we have to do to accommodate so much heat: shake the head, flail the hands a little, look for a liquid or a carb to douse the flame. The thin feeling inside the head, like the weaker gravity of a smaller planet, Pluto say, or Mercury. Wow! It's great to be alive!!!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
09/14/10
Fox in the Road, Morning
The water of the low-lying creek
weighs down this fold of land
like a woman lying on a soft, well-used bed,
or on an upholstered divan;
mist, like the woman's weary arm,
gestures low in the air.
The air above the creek hollow is bright,
translucent as weak tea,
though with the low, late-summer mist,
it should be rubbing things muzzy,
indistinct; instead, the air
like the lens of a telescope
enlarges and sharpens the oak,
the boxelder, the dispersing moths,
even the grey asphalt’s pebbles,
rendering them startlingly
close.
The vixen, whose momentary birth
from the boxelder opposite
I did not see,
lopes undisturbed uphill
in the moment’s quiet
to the nearer curb,
slender black legs undulating
with the economy of a centipede’s,
though she’s less rich of them.
Her golden coat glides
over the roadway, an unexpected,
unmistakable halo.
Haloed, she could be a saint
in a moving diptych;
my beggar's heart, rent by her beauty,
she also miraculously
restores.
But wild creature, she is on her strict
morning commute. She cants in her path,
darts effortlessly into the scrub,
and I see on the roadway, the far side
of the mist, that my bus
may be coming.
Fox in the Road, Morning
The water of the low-lying creek
weighs down this fold of land
like a woman lying on a soft, well-used bed,
or on an upholstered divan;
mist, like the woman's weary arm,
gestures low in the air.
The air above the creek hollow is bright,
translucent as weak tea,
though with the low, late-summer mist,
it should be rubbing things muzzy,
indistinct; instead, the air
like the lens of a telescope
enlarges and sharpens the oak,
the boxelder, the dispersing moths,
even the grey asphalt’s pebbles,
rendering them startlingly
close.
The vixen, whose momentary birth
from the boxelder opposite
I did not see,
lopes undisturbed uphill
in the moment’s quiet
to the nearer curb,
slender black legs undulating
with the economy of a centipede’s,
though she’s less rich of them.
Her golden coat glides
over the roadway, an unexpected,
unmistakable halo.
Haloed, she could be a saint
in a moving diptych;
my beggar's heart, rent by her beauty,
she also miraculously
restores.
But wild creature, she is on her strict
morning commute. She cants in her path,
darts effortlessly into the scrub,
and I see on the roadway, the far side
of the mist, that my bus
may be coming.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
9/9/10 - Prayer
I've been reading a lot of comments online about prayer and language. Prayer that is carried like the wisps of a mist up a mountainside into the clouds. Prayer that floats through the minds of people and unearths as secret thoughts when our guard is down. Prayer that finds its way out of holy books and whose letters spill in random places in our newspapers and novels, on billboards and on the sides of buses, in memos that we read on email at work, a mismatched ransom note to the world, in and of prayer. Prayers that are taught us by the animals we choose to live with, our companion animals who actually shepherd us, rather than the opposite. Prayer that travels in the wind, lightening our burdens, our lives, our songs, that turns green in a season and ages with stems and cascades and harvests. People are buying all kinds of holy books and reading them, to learn, to hear the voices of animals and angels, and to pray.
Prayer is about silent longing, what we keep in our vases, our vessels, in small boxes around our homes. Prayer is a voice addressing the Infinite, the Infinitesimal, one moment of one being, and all of creation. How is it that we happen upon this word, this trial, this random spill of hope and fluid? I trip and stumble like water over the stones in a brook. I pray every day as though I am all the letters in the universe's alphabet. I open my heart to these words of peace, of place, of the passing of time noticed by the stars.
I've been reading a lot of comments online about prayer and language. Prayer that is carried like the wisps of a mist up a mountainside into the clouds. Prayer that floats through the minds of people and unearths as secret thoughts when our guard is down. Prayer that finds its way out of holy books and whose letters spill in random places in our newspapers and novels, on billboards and on the sides of buses, in memos that we read on email at work, a mismatched ransom note to the world, in and of prayer. Prayers that are taught us by the animals we choose to live with, our companion animals who actually shepherd us, rather than the opposite. Prayer that travels in the wind, lightening our burdens, our lives, our songs, that turns green in a season and ages with stems and cascades and harvests. People are buying all kinds of holy books and reading them, to learn, to hear the voices of animals and angels, and to pray.
Prayer is about silent longing, what we keep in our vases, our vessels, in small boxes around our homes. Prayer is a voice addressing the Infinite, the Infinitesimal, one moment of one being, and all of creation. How is it that we happen upon this word, this trial, this random spill of hope and fluid? I trip and stumble like water over the stones in a brook. I pray every day as though I am all the letters in the universe's alphabet. I open my heart to these words of peace, of place, of the passing of time noticed by the stars.
9/8/10 - Being blessed in the street
You try to avert your eyes as you walk by--she is sitting there on a dirty blanket with a tattered cardboard sign, probably penned at a shelter from a bit of trash. You try to be inconspicuous, thinking of times when you do have more than 34 cents in your pocket, or what they could do with the coins. And regardless if you are thinking that, or whether you are feeling superior because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps so they should be able to, too. Or regardless if in your mind you are writing a check to an agency to help them, or memorizing the streetcorner and the hour so you can come back tomorrow or next week with a five-spot. Regardless of all that, here is someone who materially has so little, and yet she offers you a blessing. You have received a blessing.
You try to avert your eyes as you walk by--she is sitting there on a dirty blanket with a tattered cardboard sign, probably penned at a shelter from a bit of trash. You try to be inconspicuous, thinking of times when you do have more than 34 cents in your pocket, or what they could do with the coins. And regardless if you are thinking that, or whether you are feeling superior because you pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps so they should be able to, too. Or regardless if in your mind you are writing a check to an agency to help them, or memorizing the streetcorner and the hour so you can come back tomorrow or next week with a five-spot. Regardless of all that, here is someone who materially has so little, and yet she offers you a blessing. You have received a blessing.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
8/29/10 - Road Trips
I know someone who is traveling in the desert right now on a sort of pilgrimage, and then I did a little driving today to meet friends for a movie and to buy groceries, so I was thinking of being on the road. I love that feeling of driving in the car somewhere and it's hot and it's summer and you roll the window down and stick one of your feet into that fast car breeze. And I know that driving and using gas is not terribly ecological, so please translate all this in your head to driving an oxcart or riding a horse, because they're more ecological, if slower, and I'd gladly substitute if I had to. Or translate it to running on my own two feet, yes, I would do the road trip making my own tracks if it meant I got to travel and see the world to the side speeding by my cheeks.
I read Jack Kerouac's book sometime in college, I don't remember if it was before or after my best road trip, but I love the maniacal feeling of going over the road with friends and time and rest be damned--we'll get there as soon as we can. Driving the graveyard shift was my specialty on that great road trip when I was 21--four people in a little Chevette that kept having problems--the muffler almost fell off in PA, and the radiator starting leaking in Arizona, so we had to turn on the heat to keep the engine cool--that's right, we had the heat on in the Arizona desert in June. And it took 3 1/2 days from Boston to LA, and I loved driving overnight, but I also loved when we stopped, piled out and unrolled sleeping bags under the stars.
Road trips, tossing all your necessities into the back seat and letting them toss around like suitcase salad, as you take out stuff you need & put things back at random. Naming the clouds that go by, making friends with the trees, their clumps of leaves nodding in the prairie wind. Putting your hand out the window to feel the passing, of place, of time, of air.
I know someone who is traveling in the desert right now on a sort of pilgrimage, and then I did a little driving today to meet friends for a movie and to buy groceries, so I was thinking of being on the road. I love that feeling of driving in the car somewhere and it's hot and it's summer and you roll the window down and stick one of your feet into that fast car breeze. And I know that driving and using gas is not terribly ecological, so please translate all this in your head to driving an oxcart or riding a horse, because they're more ecological, if slower, and I'd gladly substitute if I had to. Or translate it to running on my own two feet, yes, I would do the road trip making my own tracks if it meant I got to travel and see the world to the side speeding by my cheeks.
I read Jack Kerouac's book sometime in college, I don't remember if it was before or after my best road trip, but I love the maniacal feeling of going over the road with friends and time and rest be damned--we'll get there as soon as we can. Driving the graveyard shift was my specialty on that great road trip when I was 21--four people in a little Chevette that kept having problems--the muffler almost fell off in PA, and the radiator starting leaking in Arizona, so we had to turn on the heat to keep the engine cool--that's right, we had the heat on in the Arizona desert in June. And it took 3 1/2 days from Boston to LA, and I loved driving overnight, but I also loved when we stopped, piled out and unrolled sleeping bags under the stars.
Road trips, tossing all your necessities into the back seat and letting them toss around like suitcase salad, as you take out stuff you need & put things back at random. Naming the clouds that go by, making friends with the trees, their clumps of leaves nodding in the prairie wind. Putting your hand out the window to feel the passing, of place, of time, of air.
8/28/10 – Summertime – the Heat
The Heat: One time, I participated in a sweat lodge at a summer gathering. The sweat was lead by a woman who had done sundance for many years, and she had been trained in sweat lodge by a Lakota elder. I remember feeling the heat of the stones and our huddled bodies inside the lodge, as well as the steam condensing and running down my skin as water was ladled onto the stones. I was at first uncomfortable, and then, encouraged by the leader’s and other participants’ meditations and prayers, felt oneness with the hot air, the earth, the elements. As the lodge went on, my feeling of oneness and euphoria actually increased, to the point that I was wishing for more stones, more heat, more steam, more time in the lodge. It seemed there was no discomfort, only a different kind of environment that just took some focus.
(What I have learned, then and more recently, about safety and respect regarding sweat lodge: Money is never exchanged for ceremony in native tradition. Common sense is welcome. Overthinking one’s issues can be counterproductive. It is important to sweat with a trained elder so that the proper prayers can be intoned, and the appropriate spirit helpers and protectors can be called upon. If an improperly trained person leads a sweat, there can be a risk of ill health or unhelpful spirits who might add imbalance. Also, the strength and effectiveness of a ceremony are diluted over time if it is conducted improperly. I don’t know anyone (non-native) doing sweat lodge who does not in their heart admire the native traditions that created it and handed it down over generations. So why not take the extra step to safeguard those traditions and the integrity of the sweat ceremony by searching out a trained native american elder? Your efforts might also support and shore up the beautiful native traditions that have helped keep this continent abundant and balanced for so many generations, and that are surely instrumental in leading us through the current global crises.)
I have carried the teachings of that sweat lodge with me for a long time. A month or so after that sweat, I moved my household in the Boston area. On my moving day, the temperature was between 100-103 degrees in that Boston humidity. The friends I had help me, and the guy with the van that I hired, were extremely uncomfortable, but I remember skipping up and down the front steps, dripping sweat of course, but with unflagging energy, feeling that oneness with the heat. I felt no difference between that summer day and myself.
Heat is purifying, it’s true. I’m part Scandinavian, and some of my ancestry speaks of saunas and steam baths. I’m sure the Scandinavian parts of my ancestry learned the benefits of sweating from the indigenous people whom they met—the Sami (Laplanders) in northern Scandinavia. Sweating is great. Some people call skin the largest organ of the body. Others call skin the largest excretory organ of the body. When I do deeper massage work on people, sometimes they sweat, and sometimes in the sweat, you can smell the toxins that they have been in touch with, such as commercial solvents that get absorbed by the skin if they have done construction work. Sweat contains urea, lactate and trace minerals, including, I’m sure, some minerals/metals that should not be in the body. I keep thinking sweating has to do with clearing out the lymphatic system (so important to overall health, especially in freedom from and treatment of cancer) So I looked it up. The way sweat glands create sweat is by secreting fluid they get from interstitial fluid (that’s lymph!), and secreting that into little ducts around the sweat gland. So sweating, by my reckoning, is essential to good health, by pumping more fluid through the lymph system, allowing it to cleanse itself.
All this background is leading up to my opinion: I really think it’s normal and important to spend the summer sweating. I think that sweating in the summer heat is a natural sauna, a natural way of purifying the body of toxins that it builds up over the other three seasons. But air conditioning in the summer is such a norm in the affluent Western world, that no one questions why we do it. I find air conditioning to be expensive and unnecessary—part of the sense of entitlement of the western world. I’m not trying to justify my stinginess about the electric bill. I really think that sweating through the summer is healthy. Is it a coincidence that the rise of AC use has coincided with a rise in degenerative disease in the US and the West? If we let ourselves sweat a little more in the summer, don’t you think we could slow global warming a little bit by using less energy, and also be healthier? Could we stop complaining about how hot it is, and start accepting it for what it is? A great opportunity to heal.
The Heat: One time, I participated in a sweat lodge at a summer gathering. The sweat was lead by a woman who had done sundance for many years, and she had been trained in sweat lodge by a Lakota elder. I remember feeling the heat of the stones and our huddled bodies inside the lodge, as well as the steam condensing and running down my skin as water was ladled onto the stones. I was at first uncomfortable, and then, encouraged by the leader’s and other participants’ meditations and prayers, felt oneness with the hot air, the earth, the elements. As the lodge went on, my feeling of oneness and euphoria actually increased, to the point that I was wishing for more stones, more heat, more steam, more time in the lodge. It seemed there was no discomfort, only a different kind of environment that just took some focus.
(What I have learned, then and more recently, about safety and respect regarding sweat lodge: Money is never exchanged for ceremony in native tradition. Common sense is welcome. Overthinking one’s issues can be counterproductive. It is important to sweat with a trained elder so that the proper prayers can be intoned, and the appropriate spirit helpers and protectors can be called upon. If an improperly trained person leads a sweat, there can be a risk of ill health or unhelpful spirits who might add imbalance. Also, the strength and effectiveness of a ceremony are diluted over time if it is conducted improperly. I don’t know anyone (non-native) doing sweat lodge who does not in their heart admire the native traditions that created it and handed it down over generations. So why not take the extra step to safeguard those traditions and the integrity of the sweat ceremony by searching out a trained native american elder? Your efforts might also support and shore up the beautiful native traditions that have helped keep this continent abundant and balanced for so many generations, and that are surely instrumental in leading us through the current global crises.)
I have carried the teachings of that sweat lodge with me for a long time. A month or so after that sweat, I moved my household in the Boston area. On my moving day, the temperature was between 100-103 degrees in that Boston humidity. The friends I had help me, and the guy with the van that I hired, were extremely uncomfortable, but I remember skipping up and down the front steps, dripping sweat of course, but with unflagging energy, feeling that oneness with the heat. I felt no difference between that summer day and myself.
Heat is purifying, it’s true. I’m part Scandinavian, and some of my ancestry speaks of saunas and steam baths. I’m sure the Scandinavian parts of my ancestry learned the benefits of sweating from the indigenous people whom they met—the Sami (Laplanders) in northern Scandinavia. Sweating is great. Some people call skin the largest organ of the body. Others call skin the largest excretory organ of the body. When I do deeper massage work on people, sometimes they sweat, and sometimes in the sweat, you can smell the toxins that they have been in touch with, such as commercial solvents that get absorbed by the skin if they have done construction work. Sweat contains urea, lactate and trace minerals, including, I’m sure, some minerals/metals that should not be in the body. I keep thinking sweating has to do with clearing out the lymphatic system (so important to overall health, especially in freedom from and treatment of cancer) So I looked it up. The way sweat glands create sweat is by secreting fluid they get from interstitial fluid (that’s lymph!), and secreting that into little ducts around the sweat gland. So sweating, by my reckoning, is essential to good health, by pumping more fluid through the lymph system, allowing it to cleanse itself.
All this background is leading up to my opinion: I really think it’s normal and important to spend the summer sweating. I think that sweating in the summer heat is a natural sauna, a natural way of purifying the body of toxins that it builds up over the other three seasons. But air conditioning in the summer is such a norm in the affluent Western world, that no one questions why we do it. I find air conditioning to be expensive and unnecessary—part of the sense of entitlement of the western world. I’m not trying to justify my stinginess about the electric bill. I really think that sweating through the summer is healthy. Is it a coincidence that the rise of AC use has coincided with a rise in degenerative disease in the US and the West? If we let ourselves sweat a little more in the summer, don’t you think we could slow global warming a little bit by using less energy, and also be healthier? Could we stop complaining about how hot it is, and start accepting it for what it is? A great opportunity to heal.
Friday, August 27, 2010
post for 8/25/10 - stupid love
The poet Paul Valery once said that "Love is being stupid together," which a lot of people seem to like & gets a lot of hits on a google search. Well, not really, because I can't find the original quote in French, and I'm pretty sure that it's been taken way out of context. These Romance languages have strict parallel structure, and I really think if he meant that love was being stupid together, he would have written, tomber amoureux est d'etre stupides ensemble, which maybe he did, I don't know, I browsed (quickly though) through his complete works in the library, and couldn't find anything that resembles that phrase.
But I think many people are attracted to the idea that falling head over heels for someone makes you forget stuff, lose track of time, trip over your own feet (I hope we're stopping short of the Idiocracy with falling in love). Love, then, is being a fool, a fool for love. Yeah, and I think we're talking about the infatuation stage of love, but wouldn't it be sweet for people who have been together for who knows how long, to have those moments of idiocy, when they lose track of themselves and get all sweet on their beloved. I've seen it every now & then in friends' relationships, and I pray it happens to everyone in the world, in a safe way, to lose track of the world, to lose your bearings sweetly with someone, to dangle by your ankle over a cliff, maybe, because that's the best way to see your beloved eye-to-eye.
Plus, okay, Valery also wrote this: "Mes chaudes mains, baigne-les/Dans les tiennes... Rien ne calm/ Comme d'amour ondules/Les passages d'une palme." in his poem, "La Caresse." Really, could someone who thinks love is stupid have written something like that about the sense of touch between lovers???
The poet Paul Valery once said that "Love is being stupid together," which a lot of people seem to like & gets a lot of hits on a google search. Well, not really, because I can't find the original quote in French, and I'm pretty sure that it's been taken way out of context. These Romance languages have strict parallel structure, and I really think if he meant that love was being stupid together, he would have written, tomber amoureux est d'etre stupides ensemble, which maybe he did, I don't know, I browsed (quickly though) through his complete works in the library, and couldn't find anything that resembles that phrase.
But I think many people are attracted to the idea that falling head over heels for someone makes you forget stuff, lose track of time, trip over your own feet (I hope we're stopping short of the Idiocracy with falling in love). Love, then, is being a fool, a fool for love. Yeah, and I think we're talking about the infatuation stage of love, but wouldn't it be sweet for people who have been together for who knows how long, to have those moments of idiocy, when they lose track of themselves and get all sweet on their beloved. I've seen it every now & then in friends' relationships, and I pray it happens to everyone in the world, in a safe way, to lose track of the world, to lose your bearings sweetly with someone, to dangle by your ankle over a cliff, maybe, because that's the best way to see your beloved eye-to-eye.
Plus, okay, Valery also wrote this: "Mes chaudes mains, baigne-les/Dans les tiennes... Rien ne calm/ Comme d'amour ondules/Les passages d'une palme." in his poem, "La Caresse." Really, could someone who thinks love is stupid have written something like that about the sense of touch between lovers???
08/27/2010 - The wind
…The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
--Emily Dickinson
When my son was a dozy, arm-held chubby thing, I remember taking him out to the porch one spring day, when it was fresh out. He was a midwinter baby, and I guess I hadn’t had him outside too much, or else too well protected from the weather. At the edge of the front porch, checking out the yard, a sudden north wind came through that whipped our jackets and teased our faces a little. Zeke jumped in my arms in surprise, then looked up at me, his expression asking, “what the heck?—“
I’d like to cultivate a similar feeling of newness around the wind, a startle reaction, a surprise, a noticing of that thing that is always present. We are all touched by air, feel the pressure of this constant movement, the constant play of gasses against our skin and clothes, but how often do we really notice it? Does it have to be outrageously wild, or can it be just a normal spring trill? Can I become aware enough to notice the subtle movements of air on a breezeless day? Or what about the wild tempests?
I took out my old anthology of Romantic Poetry & looked up Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. (where the heck did I put that thing?). And Shelley’s Ode reminds me of a hike I made once with a friend up Mount Katahdin in Maine. We were looking for adventure and found it with straight-line winds on a ridge trail, over a field of boulders lit by lightning strikes.
It’s everywhere. Have I ever been without moving air, wrapping me like a blanket, messing my hair, coaxing the trees to speak, whispering secrets? What is the wind? What is the wind to you?
…The wind does, working like a hand
Whose fingers brush the sky,
Then quiver down, with tufts of tune
Permitted gods and me.
--Emily Dickinson
When my son was a dozy, arm-held chubby thing, I remember taking him out to the porch one spring day, when it was fresh out. He was a midwinter baby, and I guess I hadn’t had him outside too much, or else too well protected from the weather. At the edge of the front porch, checking out the yard, a sudden north wind came through that whipped our jackets and teased our faces a little. Zeke jumped in my arms in surprise, then looked up at me, his expression asking, “what the heck?—“
I’d like to cultivate a similar feeling of newness around the wind, a startle reaction, a surprise, a noticing of that thing that is always present. We are all touched by air, feel the pressure of this constant movement, the constant play of gasses against our skin and clothes, but how often do we really notice it? Does it have to be outrageously wild, or can it be just a normal spring trill? Can I become aware enough to notice the subtle movements of air on a breezeless day? Or what about the wild tempests?
I took out my old anthology of Romantic Poetry & looked up Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind. (where the heck did I put that thing?). And Shelley’s Ode reminds me of a hike I made once with a friend up Mount Katahdin in Maine. We were looking for adventure and found it with straight-line winds on a ridge trail, over a field of boulders lit by lightning strikes.
It’s everywhere. Have I ever been without moving air, wrapping me like a blanket, messing my hair, coaxing the trees to speak, whispering secrets? What is the wind? What is the wind to you?
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
8/24/10 Telepathy
I’ve taken classes in energy healing, where you learn to trust your intuition, to read people’s energy, to focus those prickly and/or eerie sensations we all have so that you can direct them for someone’s health benefit. One of the ideas espoused by this one healer that I took workshops from, (Barbara Brennan) is that you don’t have to believe something is true, for it to be useful to you. That’s it. Don’t believe in psychic connections? Don’t believe in past lives? Don’t even believe in this energy healing crap? Fine. But if this session is useful to you (relaxing, calming, even caring or friendly), so be it. You don’t have to believe it’s true to derive a benefit. One of the most skeptical people I ever met was this IT computer person who was married to this total new age gal. He kind of repeated the phrases, “I’m not sure about any of this,” and “I really don’t know if I believe it,” as his mantras whenever our meditation group met. He and his gal pal were clearly attuned to each others’ needs, and except for his professed skepticism, this man seemed at home and a positive contributor to every meditation session and he seemed to really enjoy them.
Another skeptic I know has an amazing psychic bond with his daughter, who is a friend of mine. Truly, this pair knows each others’ thoughts and feelings, and can sense good or ill moods and health in each other from 3 hours away. He doesn’t believe in this stuff either.
Even skeptics out there can cite examples where they know who is on the phone before they pick up, or they know exactly what someone is going to say before they open their mouth. We are all so psychic all the time, reading each others’ thoughts and feelings and body language, that it’s a wonder sometimes we even need to speak.
I love when telepathy happens. My favorite kind is having a long conversation with someone I wish I knew, or whose book I’m reading, or even someone I think may not know me too well, or have my best interests at heart. Through having a conversation in my mind (okay, some might call it just an overactive imagination), I feel like I can reach a wiser, deeper place in myself, to learn from these authors or teachers that I don’t know, or to heal and transform issues in friendships that aren’t working well.
I’ve taken classes in energy healing, where you learn to trust your intuition, to read people’s energy, to focus those prickly and/or eerie sensations we all have so that you can direct them for someone’s health benefit. One of the ideas espoused by this one healer that I took workshops from, (Barbara Brennan) is that you don’t have to believe something is true, for it to be useful to you. That’s it. Don’t believe in psychic connections? Don’t believe in past lives? Don’t even believe in this energy healing crap? Fine. But if this session is useful to you (relaxing, calming, even caring or friendly), so be it. You don’t have to believe it’s true to derive a benefit. One of the most skeptical people I ever met was this IT computer person who was married to this total new age gal. He kind of repeated the phrases, “I’m not sure about any of this,” and “I really don’t know if I believe it,” as his mantras whenever our meditation group met. He and his gal pal were clearly attuned to each others’ needs, and except for his professed skepticism, this man seemed at home and a positive contributor to every meditation session and he seemed to really enjoy them.
Another skeptic I know has an amazing psychic bond with his daughter, who is a friend of mine. Truly, this pair knows each others’ thoughts and feelings, and can sense good or ill moods and health in each other from 3 hours away. He doesn’t believe in this stuff either.
Even skeptics out there can cite examples where they know who is on the phone before they pick up, or they know exactly what someone is going to say before they open their mouth. We are all so psychic all the time, reading each others’ thoughts and feelings and body language, that it’s a wonder sometimes we even need to speak.
I love when telepathy happens. My favorite kind is having a long conversation with someone I wish I knew, or whose book I’m reading, or even someone I think may not know me too well, or have my best interests at heart. Through having a conversation in my mind (okay, some might call it just an overactive imagination), I feel like I can reach a wiser, deeper place in myself, to learn from these authors or teachers that I don’t know, or to heal and transform issues in friendships that aren’t working well.
post for 8/23/10 - pain
Yes, the ecstasy for Monday the 23rd is pain. We all need to come to terms with pain, to revel in it, to set aside time for it, to truly enjoy it when it happens. How do we do this? It’s like the yin-yang symbol, how within darkness, there is the seed of light (and within light, the seed of darkness). It’s one of the great paradoxes I think, and it’s partly a matter of disciplining the mind.
I know a few people who are midwives, and I studied for a while myself to be a midwife. Just when I was realizing that attending someone’s labor for days at a time wasn’t a good fit for my family and me, I took a workshop where midwives were talking about hypnobirthing. In the 1990’s it seemed like the best, most workable pain-free childbirth, where women learn to put themselves in a kind of trance in labor, and it allows them to dilate and push with minimal discomfort, theoretically. I’m sure it works for some people, and I think our minds are built for that.
But here are my two examples of pain being an ecstasy, and one of them is childbirth. I won’t go into too many details except to say that I had a hard time at first dealing with the pain of contractions. And because I didn’t want myself or my baby to be groggy, I didn’t want any meds. So I meditated. It was best when my healer arrived and breathed with me. She was completely unafraid and encouraged me to approach the source of the pain. I dropped my awareness to my bottom, and as the baby’s head hit every two minutes, instead of feeling a stabbing pain, as I had been in my fear, I stayed with it, and it ended up feeling like a really hard thud, and not excruciating. As I got the hang of going into the pain, it really got easier, although it took all my focus, to the point of being like, this is really hard, but kind of fun. And then, here’s the next contraction, and let me see how I can disperse this one. And to this day, I still remember the thuds, not pain, with joy.
A few years later, I was taking a walk with a friend along a rocky beach on the North Shore. I was wallowing in self-pity at the time, which took attention away from my footsteps. So I didn’t watch where I was going and fell and got a huge scrape on my thigh. Seriously, the whole outside of the upper part of my leg was raw and bleeding like hamburger. And I felt like an idiot, because I knew what I really wanted was sympathy, but it wasn't the right time or place. So I focused my consciousness on my hamburger-colored scrape, got into it so I could feel the throbbing of blood through the site, and then all I felt was warmth & expansion, not the sharp tenderness I had felt a moment before.
What happens when we bring our focus to staying present with pain, instead of recoiling from it, is that the sensation changes from a tight horrible feeling to the joy of intense focus and accomplishment. Yes, I know, an ecstasy.
A version of this works for emotional pain as well, but that's a topic for another day.
Yes, the ecstasy for Monday the 23rd is pain. We all need to come to terms with pain, to revel in it, to set aside time for it, to truly enjoy it when it happens. How do we do this? It’s like the yin-yang symbol, how within darkness, there is the seed of light (and within light, the seed of darkness). It’s one of the great paradoxes I think, and it’s partly a matter of disciplining the mind.
I know a few people who are midwives, and I studied for a while myself to be a midwife. Just when I was realizing that attending someone’s labor for days at a time wasn’t a good fit for my family and me, I took a workshop where midwives were talking about hypnobirthing. In the 1990’s it seemed like the best, most workable pain-free childbirth, where women learn to put themselves in a kind of trance in labor, and it allows them to dilate and push with minimal discomfort, theoretically. I’m sure it works for some people, and I think our minds are built for that.
But here are my two examples of pain being an ecstasy, and one of them is childbirth. I won’t go into too many details except to say that I had a hard time at first dealing with the pain of contractions. And because I didn’t want myself or my baby to be groggy, I didn’t want any meds. So I meditated. It was best when my healer arrived and breathed with me. She was completely unafraid and encouraged me to approach the source of the pain. I dropped my awareness to my bottom, and as the baby’s head hit every two minutes, instead of feeling a stabbing pain, as I had been in my fear, I stayed with it, and it ended up feeling like a really hard thud, and not excruciating. As I got the hang of going into the pain, it really got easier, although it took all my focus, to the point of being like, this is really hard, but kind of fun. And then, here’s the next contraction, and let me see how I can disperse this one. And to this day, I still remember the thuds, not pain, with joy.
A few years later, I was taking a walk with a friend along a rocky beach on the North Shore. I was wallowing in self-pity at the time, which took attention away from my footsteps. So I didn’t watch where I was going and fell and got a huge scrape on my thigh. Seriously, the whole outside of the upper part of my leg was raw and bleeding like hamburger. And I felt like an idiot, because I knew what I really wanted was sympathy, but it wasn't the right time or place. So I focused my consciousness on my hamburger-colored scrape, got into it so I could feel the throbbing of blood through the site, and then all I felt was warmth & expansion, not the sharp tenderness I had felt a moment before.
What happens when we bring our focus to staying present with pain, instead of recoiling from it, is that the sensation changes from a tight horrible feeling to the joy of intense focus and accomplishment. Yes, I know, an ecstasy.
A version of this works for emotional pain as well, but that's a topic for another day.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Entry for 8/22/10 -- the Madonna of the Post-Apocalypse
I'm ready for doom and gloom to be over, ready to be creating the world anew, and so I am creating a new cult celebrating all the lovely perfect qualities of an archetypal mother for the post-apocalyptic age. That is the ecstasy for today. The renewal of spirituality and the Madonna of the post-apocalypse who embodies everything that we wish her to. (your wishes and ideas here). (see? one of her qualities is adaptability and responsiveness to everyone's needs).
I'm ready for doom and gloom to be over, ready to be creating the world anew, and so I am creating a new cult celebrating all the lovely perfect qualities of an archetypal mother for the post-apocalyptic age. That is the ecstasy for today. The renewal of spirituality and the Madonna of the post-apocalypse who embodies everything that we wish her to. (your wishes and ideas here). (see? one of her qualities is adaptability and responsiveness to everyone's needs).
Mist entry for 8/21/10
Droplets suspended in the air, a vague greyness surrounding the outsides of everything, dew-ing up the skin, condensing in the hair to make curls, making everything damp.
I’ve lived in sea towns before, and having mist in the morning that burns off by noon is a perfect pleasure. Who needs to see anything before midday?
When things are misty, the mist obscures so much that we might start imagining things that exist in it, outside of the familiar…an amazing friend, the gift that you really need, a perfect new game and the people to play it with, the remedy for everything, it’s all there in the mist.
“Misty” is one of my favorite jazz standards, both because the melody is so haunting and the sentiments so all-possessing. It’s about an upwelling of emotion, about having discovered the perfect someone: “I’m too misty, and too much in love.” And being overfull of something is the perfect state to be in, because then you definitely have enough to share. Misty, like maybe the earth is having an upwelling of emotion, a supersaturated feeling of connection.
I just looked up mist on Wikipedia--apparently these supersaturated upwellings need to be called fog if the visibility is a certain level of bad, and merely mist when you can see a little better. I can see my path a little better, which is why I love the mist.
Droplets suspended in the air, a vague greyness surrounding the outsides of everything, dew-ing up the skin, condensing in the hair to make curls, making everything damp.
I’ve lived in sea towns before, and having mist in the morning that burns off by noon is a perfect pleasure. Who needs to see anything before midday?
When things are misty, the mist obscures so much that we might start imagining things that exist in it, outside of the familiar…an amazing friend, the gift that you really need, a perfect new game and the people to play it with, the remedy for everything, it’s all there in the mist.
“Misty” is one of my favorite jazz standards, both because the melody is so haunting and the sentiments so all-possessing. It’s about an upwelling of emotion, about having discovered the perfect someone: “I’m too misty, and too much in love.” And being overfull of something is the perfect state to be in, because then you definitely have enough to share. Misty, like maybe the earth is having an upwelling of emotion, a supersaturated feeling of connection.
I just looked up mist on Wikipedia--apparently these supersaturated upwellings need to be called fog if the visibility is a certain level of bad, and merely mist when you can see a little better. I can see my path a little better, which is why I love the mist.
Friday, August 20, 2010
8/20/10 crickets
So many ecstasies are creatures, maybe I should be calling this blog, “beings I love, and how that love is an ecstasy.” Or “How I want to see the world from the perspective of this critter and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “people I wish I knew now, or regret not knowing better, and how dreaming about the better is an ecstasy.” Or “music that I dream from the inside of someone or something else, and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “the million ways to melt with love over something, and how being alive and feeling things is an ecstasy.” Or “songs I wish I could sing, and that I sing in my dreams in particular at this time of year.” Or “how deep is my respect for these shiny black critters with segmented bodies and washboard knees, and how I wish I could sing like that.” or “songs I write when I am not myself, or when I am.
I don’t go out into the night enough, and I don’t remember what time of year they first start chirping, but once they start it seems as though they’ve been at it all summer, and it just gradually dawns on me, like tonight when I came home from work, there were crickets chirping in the rock garden at the front steps and I knew that had to be the ecstasy of the day. But I also noticed as I stepped inside the door, that two of the rock garden crickets had managed to chirp “shave and a haircut” in perfect cricket rhythm. So then I start thinking about crickets and compositions like that old koan about Shakespeare and a thousand monkeys at typewriters for a thousand years.
It took a few seconds for the crickets at my door to chirp shave and a haircut. And I don’t know if there are baritone crickets or basso profundo crickets or coloratura crickets to make this happen, but how and where would it be possible for crickets to chirp all the amazing compositions of human history. Eroica and the Moonlight Sonata and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Scarlatti’s sonata in E and the Jitterbug Waltz and chopsticks and everything (to name a few of my personal favorites). You’d need a thousand summers and at least a thousand crickets but you could maybe get that in a few square city blocks in a single night, so numbers would not be a problem.
But then, why would crickets bother with human music, when their own music, and the music of other animals and birds is so much more refreshingly interesting, and maybe our human music is lower on their list. Cricket Q To do: 1. Sight-read at rehearsal with humpback whales; 2. brainstorm with warblers planning an interspecies mash-up; 3. help cicadas find their authentic voice.
I have a friend who is a personal coach--she trained for it and got certified and everything. I think she has a t-shirt for her business and she definitely has cool business cards. I'm going to make up a cool business card for cricket voice and composition coaching:
Cricket music coaching
find your authentic voice and melodies
right here, right here, right here, right here
123-456-7890
So many ecstasies are creatures, maybe I should be calling this blog, “beings I love, and how that love is an ecstasy.” Or “How I want to see the world from the perspective of this critter and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “people I wish I knew now, or regret not knowing better, and how dreaming about the better is an ecstasy.” Or “music that I dream from the inside of someone or something else, and how that is an ecstasy.” Or “the million ways to melt with love over something, and how being alive and feeling things is an ecstasy.” Or “songs I wish I could sing, and that I sing in my dreams in particular at this time of year.” Or “how deep is my respect for these shiny black critters with segmented bodies and washboard knees, and how I wish I could sing like that.” or “songs I write when I am not myself, or when I am.
I don’t go out into the night enough, and I don’t remember what time of year they first start chirping, but once they start it seems as though they’ve been at it all summer, and it just gradually dawns on me, like tonight when I came home from work, there were crickets chirping in the rock garden at the front steps and I knew that had to be the ecstasy of the day. But I also noticed as I stepped inside the door, that two of the rock garden crickets had managed to chirp “shave and a haircut” in perfect cricket rhythm. So then I start thinking about crickets and compositions like that old koan about Shakespeare and a thousand monkeys at typewriters for a thousand years.
It took a few seconds for the crickets at my door to chirp shave and a haircut. And I don’t know if there are baritone crickets or basso profundo crickets or coloratura crickets to make this happen, but how and where would it be possible for crickets to chirp all the amazing compositions of human history. Eroica and the Moonlight Sonata and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Scarlatti’s sonata in E and the Jitterbug Waltz and chopsticks and everything (to name a few of my personal favorites). You’d need a thousand summers and at least a thousand crickets but you could maybe get that in a few square city blocks in a single night, so numbers would not be a problem.
But then, why would crickets bother with human music, when their own music, and the music of other animals and birds is so much more refreshingly interesting, and maybe our human music is lower on their list. Cricket Q To do: 1. Sight-read at rehearsal with humpback whales; 2. brainstorm with warblers planning an interspecies mash-up; 3. help cicadas find their authentic voice.
I have a friend who is a personal coach--she trained for it and got certified and everything. I think she has a t-shirt for her business and she definitely has cool business cards. I'm going to make up a cool business card for cricket voice and composition coaching:
Cricket music coaching
find your authentic voice and melodies
right here, right here, right here, right here
123-456-7890
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