courage is vulnerability

“Courage is vulnerability. Vulnerability is courage.

Like shadow and light, neither one can exist without the other.” 

Wai Lan Yuen ~

another good lesson for me

Another A Course in Miracles lesson, a lesson I had to stay with for a couple weeks comes to mind. One lesson asks the student to think of someone they have been unable to forgive, bring an image of that person into our thoughts and keep looking at the person until we can see light emanating from their being, from their heart and than expand the light through the whole visage of that person. Then the lesson says "you know who the right person is, it is the first person you thought of when you read this but you probably rejected that person for the lesson. That person, the one you thought of first, that's the right one for this lesson.

I was only a few years past my divorce and past the incident of abuse my ex inflicted on our then-five-year-old. He had immediately come to mind as someone I was unable to forgive. When I envisioned him, I barely saw him, I only saw darkness. So he was the right one for that lesson.

Day after day, for weeks, I would begin my day with meditation and end the meditation by doing an exercise. This exercise got me stuck. For weeks, I tried to envision my ex-husband in my mind, to see even a hint of light, in the vision of him in my mind's eye.  I doggedly stuck with it.

Of course, I slowly became able to see light, first emanating from his heart area, and, eventually, I could see him surrounded by light.

I sometimes return to this lesson nowadays when I feel stuck on some negative thinking in relation to someone.

in my vulnerability, my safety resides

A Course in Miracles (ACIM)  has a text, a daily lesson book (or workbook) and a small manual for teachers. I have tudied ACIM quite intensely at times, then set it aside for years and then return to it. Marianne Williamson's work began in her ACIM studies. It's a great, channeled-material resource, channeled to two professors at Columbia. Science professors, no less, who initially feared losing professional credibility.

My favorite lesson in the workbook is this:

"In my vulnerability my safety lies."

In ACIM, in the workbook, some lessons are a full page of wisdom. Some offer an italicized quote at the top and invite the student to reflect on it, for a day, a week, however long is the right time.

I have attended some ACIM study groups in the Bay Area. I have been surprised by the many students I have met here who compulsively do the workbook one day at a time, beginning with the first day of the year. This is totally different from my experience with the work. The workbook introduction says there is no right way to do the lessons, that one can do them in arbitrary order, one can stay with the same lesson for days if one feels called to stay with a lesson. Sometimes I would stick with a lesson for weeks.

This lesson, 'in my vulnerability my safety lies' is one I return to quite often.  My vulnerability is my strength, my power, my base of safety.

on vulnerability

VULNERABILITY
is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse to ask for the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusory privilege and perhaps the prime beautifully constructed conceit of being human and most especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
David Whyte ~
‘VULNERABILITY’ From CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

me and Father Godly

After spending a year in Bogotá, I returned to the states abruptly. My Colombian boyfriend, Rafael, had thrown a cup of hot chocolate at my face. I got up, went to the phone, and made my reservation home for the next day. The story of that hot chocolate is an interesting story but it is not my focus here.

We both knew that leaving in response to his abuse meant we'd never see one another again.  He had asked me to marry him, even pleaded with me to do so.  I considered the proposal but, by the time he threw that hot chocolate at me, I had long since decided I could not marry him. 

So.  He and his brother accompanied me to the airport, with Rafa pleading with me until I passed customs, to change my mind, to stay. I was exhausted before my long flight to Miami. I had been up all night packing, crying and arguing with Rafa. I felt sad to leave him but I knew I would not stay in Colombia, could not have lived out my life there. And I knew I wanted to get back to college that fall. The abruptness of my decision may have given the appearance of impulsivity. His act of throwing that very hot chocolate at my face gave me the motivation I needed. I had been procrastinating about scheduling my return to the States, waffling over our moonie romance.  I don't think I was angry about the attack of the hot cocoa. I think I was grateful for the clarity that hot cocoa allowed me to have. Get out, was the message. Stop dinking around. Call the airlines. Avianca Air.

From Miami, I flew to NY's Kennedy airport, then took a shuttle to LaGuardia for my flight to Pittsburg. My mom and youngest siblings lived near Pittsburg. I wanted to see them before I got to Chicago, my hometown with my dad.

Once I got to LaGuardia, with a long wait for my flight, the only place open was a bar.  I have almost never gone to bars, and virtually never gone to one alone. Bars intimidate me, to this day. An airport bar, however, felt somewhat acceptable.

I sidled up to the bar and ordered a Diet Coke. As soon as I ordered that Code, the drunk man sitting next to me said "Oh, me darling, have a real drink. Let me buy you a real drink."

I was 19. Was the drinking age in NY State under age 21 in 1973?  I had never been able to order alcohol in bars before. I believe I was under the legal drinking age but, apparently, airport bars have looser standards. Plus the man ordering my drink was a priest.

Father Godley. He pulled out his wallet to show me his driver's license. "I am the only Godley in the book in Tacoma, Washington."

He explained to me that he was from Ireland, that he was returning to Tacoma after his annual visit to Ireland to see his family. He kept saying "Me brothers, all doctors, gave me lots of shots before I left. Me brothers, God love them, gave me many shots."

My thoughts snagged

karmic considerations

We shall not easily find our way into the innermost nature of karmic connections if we do not pay attention — with the eye of the soul, of course — to the particular mannerisms of an individual. Believe me, for the study of karma it is just as important to be interested in a gesture of the hand as in some great spiritual talent. It is just as important to be able to observe — from the spiritual side (astral body and ego) — how a man sits down on a chair as to observe, let us say, how he discharges his moral obligations. If a man is given to frowning, to knitting his brow, this may be just as important as whether he is virtuous or the reverse.

Much that in ordinary life seems to be quite insignificant is of very great importance when we begin to consider destiny and observe how it weaves its web from life to life; while many a thing in this or the other human being that appears to us particularly important becomes of negligible significance,

Generally speaking, it is not, as you know, very easy to pay real attention to bodily peculiarities. They are there and we must learn to observe them naturally without wounding our fellow-men — as we certainly shall do if we observe merely for observation’s sake. That must never be. Everything must arise entirely of itself. When, however, we have trained our powers of attention and perception, individual peculiarities do show themselves in every human being, peculiarities which may be accounted trifling but are of paramount importance in connection with the study of karma. A really penetrating observation of human beings in respect of their karmic connections is possible only when we can discern these significant peculiarities.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 235 – Karmic Relationships, Volume I: Lecture IX – Dornach, 15th March 1924

aw. . shucks

A friend told me this evening that he thinks I am, and this is a quote, 'very eloquent'.

Nice.  I'm going to count that as love. He loves my eloquence. I am trying to take note of all the love that streams at me, most of which I tend to discount. Working to count it all.  This friend is gay so its not romantic love. It's friend love.

I am very eloquent. Sweet.

the trouble with me

On the Roof
by C. K. WILLIAMS

The trouble with me is that whether I get love or not
I suffer from it. My heart always seems to be prowling
a mile ahead of me, and, by the time I get there to surround it,
it's chewing fences in the next county, clawing
the bank-vault wall down or smashing in the window
I'd just started etching my name on with my diamond.

And that's how come I end up on the roof. Because even if I talk
into my fist everyone still hears my voice like the ocean
in theirs, and so they solace me and I have to keep
breaking toes with my gun-boots and coming up here
to live -- by myself, like an aerial, with a hand on the ledge,
one eye glued to the tin door and one to the skylight.

honoring beloved community

In Beloved Community, everyone is welcome. Love, trust, and peace are present. We honor those places that are the fabric of our civil communities.  Beloved Community is a new FB page

Song by Adrienne Rich

Song, from "Driving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm l onely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows its neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

my runaway bunny

Most parents I have known have read Margaret Wise's beautiful children's book, The Runaway Bunny. Margaret Wise is also famous for her also wonderful book, Goodnight Moon. In Goodnight Moon, there is a picture on the wall of a scene from The Runaway Bunny.

The book, The Runaway Bunny, sprung into my thoughts over the last couple days.

When I read it to my infant, then toddler, then my big girl, I would hold her in my lap or cuddle with her in her bed, reading before kissing her good night. I always had her in my arms as I read the book.

The little bunny suggests running away. The mother bunny says 'if you run away, I will come after you."  When I read that line, every single time, and it is repeated rhythmically throughout the story, I would snuggle my baby a little closer, feel the bond we shared and I felt safe in the world. I felt proud that I could offer her the promise that I would never give up on her, that whatever she did, she would be my little bunny.

If you run away, I will come after you, for you are my little bunny.

My little bunny turned 33 on the 26th. I can't give her a hug, tell her I love her, tell her that no matter what, she is my dear daughter and my love follows her wherever she does, irregardless of what she does.

If I had a grandchild, The Runaway Bunny would be the first book I gave my grandchild.

Yesterday, in the early hours of the morning, I suddenly bought Rosie a new copy of The Runaway Bunny, paying full price and paying for shipping!! I only buy used books, the cheapest possible. Rosie did not like to use library books for she was aware many unknown persons would have touched the books. She was a bit obsessive compulsive, OCD, like her father. I don't think she ever recognized that buying her all the books she read was costly. I have always used libraries generously.

I bought her many great books. A few years after she disowned me, I gave the books to my sister's little boy.  My French brother-in-law, my sister reported, was thrhilled to see Maurice Sendak's 'In the Night Kitchen", a book that had been important to my brother-in-law as a child. Of course, Rosie's copy was in English but that book is all about the pictures.

I suppose my sister claimed The Runaway Bunny. I had only given her permission to take Rosie's books but she also took Rosie's American Girl doll and the custom-made doll chest that my mother had made for Rosie and Samantha.  I didn't like it that my sister took the stuff without asking but I was in California, the things were in my brother's house which he was losing and there was no where to store anything.

I wrote to Rosie to ask if she would like her handmade Waldorf books. In Waldorf Schools, the children make thier own textbooks. Rosie's were, by far, the best in her class. So good that her class teacher asked me for copies. Sometimes Waldorf teachers like to show a sudent's work as part of the teacher's professional portfolio. I splurged and gifted him color copies of all her Waldorf books. Color copies were newish and expensive but we loved Mr. Maier. He gave my Rosie so much. And he gave me a lot too. He is a very good man and we both needed to know some good men.  How I love Mr. Maier still. I wonder if she does?

Anyway. My little bunny has run away and I cannot run after her. And goddess knows I have tried.

So what do some people do? Do they jst get over grief such as I feel? Does such a loss ever become easier to bear. It's been fourteen years and it is, in some ways, harder than ever.

Lately, I have been haunted by a sense that she might have a child. If I were ever to learn I have a grandchild that I am not allowed to meet and love, I know I could not bear it, that I could not live much past such a blow.

She always said she never wanted to have children but falling in love with a good man can change such a conviction.

I wonder what kind of mother she would be.  Truth told, I have a hard time seeing her as a mother, but maybe my vision of her is blocked by the dark shadow in my heart.

toxic attraction: empaths and narcissists

Toxic attraction between an empath and a narcissist



The above link takes you to an article at elephantjournal.com. It's written by an empath. Everything she wrote is also true for me and my experiences.  I am a high empath and I fall for sociopathic narcissists. 

Not all charmers are sociopathic narcissists but my guard goes up when I interact with a very charming man.  I have a hard time distinguising genuine charm and predatory charm.

I did all the things the writer describes doing in her article.  I became a festering wound, wanting my last narcissistic sociopath to love me, approve of me and stop attacking me. I don't want, or need, a man who projects his unworked wounds onto me and then attacks me for his projections. I have my own wounds. I don't need the unworked wounds of anyone else.

Some excerpts from this spot-on article:

"A narcissist is wounded. Something, somewhere along the line, usually stemming from childhood causes a person to feel worthless and unvalued and, due to this, they will constantly and very desperately seek validation.

 Here comes the empath, the healer (NB: that's me, the empath/healer). An empath has the ability to sense and absorb other people’s pain and often takes it on as though it were their own. If an empath is not consciously aware of boundaries and does not understand how to protect themselves, they will very easily and very quickly bond with the narcissist in order to try to fix and repair any damage and attempt to eradicate all their pain.

What the empath fails to realise is that the narcissist is a taker. An energy sucker, a vampire so to speak. They will draw the life and soul out of anyone they come into contact with, given the chance. This is so that they can build up their own reserves and, in doing so, they can use the imbalance to their advantage.

This dynamic will confuse and debilitate an empath, as if they do not have a full understanding of their own or other people’s capabilities, they will fail to see that not everyone is like them. An empath will always put themselves into other people’s shoes and experience the feelings, thoughts and emotions of others, while forgetting that other people may have an agenda very different to their own and that not everyone is sincere.
The narcissist’s agenda is one of manipulation, it is imperative they are in a position whereby they can rise above others and be in control. The empath’s agenda is to love, heal and care. There is no balance and it is extremely unlikely there ever will be one. The more love and care an empath offers, the more powerful and in control a narcissist will become.

Own your own shit.

rejoining the cosmic dust

 Star systems by Clive James ©

The stars in their magnificent array

Look down upon the Earth, their cynosure

The stars in their magnificent array

 Or so it seems. They are too far away,

In fact, to see a thing; hence they look pure

To us. They lack the textures of our globe,

So only we, from cameras carried high,

Enjoy the beauty of the swirling robe

That wraps us up, the interplay of sky

And cloud, as if a Wedgwood plate of blue

And white should melt, and then, its surface stirred

With spoons, a treasure too good to be true,

Be placed, and hover like a hummingbird,

Drawing all eyes, though ours alone, to feast

On splendor as it turns west from the East.

 There was a time when some of our young men

Walked plumply on the moon and saw Earth rise,

As stunning as the sun. The years since then

Have aged them. Now and then somebody dies.

 It’s like a clock, for those of us who saw

The Saturn rockets going up as if

 Mankind had energy to burn.

The law Is different for one man.

Time is a cliff You come to in the dark.

Though you might fall As easily as on a feather bed,

It is a sad farewell. You loved it all.

You dream that you might keep it in your head.

But memories, where can you take them to?

Take one last look at them. They end with you.

And still the Earth revolves, and still the blaze

Of stars maintains a show of vigilance.

It should, for long ago, in olden days,

We came from there. By luck, by fate, by chance,

All of the elements that form the world

Were sent by cataclysms deep in space,

And from their combination life unfurled

And stood up straight, and wore a human face

I still can’t pass a mirror. Like a boy,

I check my looks, and now I see the shell

Of what I was. So why, then, this strange joy?

Perhaps an old man dying would do well

To smile as he rejoins the cosmic dust (emphasis added)

Life comes from, for resign himself he must.

solitude, love and egoism

About solitude, love and egoism

All men need to be alone to a certain extent, and this is not just egoism. Someone who always wants to help others will at some point feel that he can’t help anymore if he doesn’t get the forces for this out of solitude. One who always wants to talk will someday sense that his words are empty if he doesn’t let spiritual forces come to him in solitude. We must be alone for prayer and meditation; communal prayer can only bring men to a certain groupsouledness. One who thinks that it’s egotistical to go into solitude simply feels the need to be with other people, not to help them. A supposedly selfless wish to help can really come from egoism, where one simply seeks sociability. For instance, the magnetic healing that’s used to lessen others’ pain could just come from the need to have a pleasant feeling from stoking someone’s body. Although love and egoism are opposite poles, it’s nevertheless true that in certain boundary cases they come very close to each other and it’s difficult to tell them apart.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 266 – From the Contents of Esoteric Classes –Esoteric Lessons Part II – Karlsruhe, 14th October 1911

if doors of perception were cleansed . . .

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” – William Blake

wow! history moves fast

Stephen Colbert: “Wow, history moves fast. It’s hard to believe that gays achieved full constitutional personhood just five years after corporations did.”

the unhoped-for needs space to emerge

The whole feeling and attitude of soul that must emerge from a true understanding of karma, is one which makes us realise when, perhaps some misfortune befalls us as consequence of an earlier weakness in the life of soul — that if this misfortune had not come about, the weakness would have persisted. Looking into the depths of our soul, we must realise: It is good and right that this misfortune has come upon me, because it has enabled a weakness to be eliminated. […] That man alone faces misfortune aright who says to himself: ‘If it has occurred because of an earlier weakness, it is to be welcomed, for it will make me conscious of the weakness (which expressed itself perhaps in some definite failing); I will now eradicate the weakness, I will be strong again.’ […] In a case, on the other hand, where a misfortune befalls one as the first step in karma, the right attitude is to say to oneself: If we were always only to encounter what we wish for ourselves, such a life would make us out and out weaklings! One or two earthly lives might continue to be comfortable and easy through the fact that only that would befall us that we desired for ourselves — but in the third or fourth life a kind of paralysis of soul and spirit would supervene, and no effort to overcome obstacles would arise in us. For, after all, obstacles would not be there for us to overcome unless the unhoped-for, the undesired came upon us.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 224 – The Forming of Destiny in Sleeping and Waking – Bern, April 6, 1923

I'm here, I'm queer, get over it mom

When my daughter was sixteen, she had a couple torrid affairs with other sixteen year old girls. As soon as the first one got going, she was eager to come out to me. I think she hoped to upset me, shock me. Or something. She couldn't have thought it through very well. I had made accepting homosexuality a central value in our family, for my best brother and her best uncle is gay. Plus, for several years, my closest friend was a fat bull dyke that Rosie loved as much as I did.

When Rosie was about fourteen, and dancing quite a lot with the dance company where she was an intern, she started coming home telling me moonily about how much she loved doing contact improv with a certain female, twenty-something dance teacher and member of the company. When Rosie told me about that older female, I said "Rosie, you know it is fine with me if you turn out to be gay but you cannot date Shannon (I don't remember the actual name) because she is 28 and you are 14."

When I thought, for a few years, that I should expose Rosie to some kind of religious upbringing, but was unwilling to revisit my Catholic childhood faith, she and I church shopped for a long time, checking out churches all over Minneapolis.  My standard: we could only attend a church that accepted my gay baby brother Dave.

We found an über liberal Unity Church and attended for several years. After awhile, I would drop her off for Sunday school and skip the adult service, go out for breakfast and pick her up. In the fall of fifth grade, Rosie came out to the car after Sunday school and said "Mom, I am done with church" and I said "Okay" and that was it for us and church. I was not a hypocrite, a trait I loathe. I wasn't going to church so I was not about to force her to keep going. And she knew that about me.

She got me. She liked me. So what the fuck happened?

When she came out, at a restaurant, I said "I don't think you are gay, honey. I think you'll have this fling with Anna and then go back to boys." That's when she said "I'm here, I'm queer, get over it". And I said "I've thought a lot about whether you are gay because Joni (my former close bull dyke pal -- she called herself a bull dyke, btw) has told me she's sure you are gay. I never thought so and I still don't. Maybe bisexual." In my being, I knew she would end up with males. She's too much of a diva to be with a girl.  Rosie needs to be adored, put on a pedestal, cosseted with luxury and the finer things. Of course, there are lipstick lesbians. But I am brilliant and brilliantly intuitive. I knew my kid, which probably has something to do with her rejection of me. She can't hide anything from me when we interact. I feel her and she feels me.

In honor of Pride weekend, which is an über big day in San Francisco, I share my Rosie's little coming out day. She came out to me in October 1998 and by February, she was in an even more torrid affair with a boy named Rob. She stayed with Rob until they graduated from an associate's degree program. Rob transferred to Stanford, Rosie to Cornell. And then she was with Michael. Michael seems out of the picture. I sense that he had drug issues and died from them.  I sense Rosie has alcohol or drug abuse issues but is in recovery. Who knows?  This is just stale maternal intuition.

But gay?  Nope.  She's not a lesbian.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Snidely Whiplash

Remember Snidely Whiplash? He was one of the bad guys in the old Bullwinkle cartoon show.

Snidely Whiplash is my new name for more egregious evildoer in Berkeley, who is raping the city of Berkeley and, apparently, blowing the mayor and giving him lots of hand jobs. Yes, Snidely is more evil than our evil mayor.

lean towards the light

I used to own a house with a 100+ year old elm tree that gave most of my property deep shade once all its leaves came in. But in the early spring, before leaves, the front yard got a little sun. My backyard had a couple patches of sun, but the three-story house and the maple tree in the back yard also limited how many plants I could grow that needed lots of sun. I used those patches of sun for tomatoes, zinnias and snapdragons.

And I became fairly adept at growing shade flowers.There are shade flowers but shade flower garden require different considerations. And different plant choices.

So my front yard was densely shaded most of the summer, although the house, with its skylights and many picture windows, got a lot of sunlight in the winter.  I loved the tree, its shade, the absence of its shade in winter, all the light that streamed in from the sides.

I have written about my annual planting of one snapdragon plant in my front yard, right in front of that towering elm tree*. It did not thrive. Snapdragons will fill out and grow many steps of flowers in sun. In shade, my single snapdragon remained a single all summer. I kept planting one in the same spot for the pleasure of watching that one flower grow horizontally about six inches above the ground in its invisible, nonmaterial but very-real attempt to grow towards the light.

I've been leaning into the light myself all my life, trusting that I will get to some light, some happiness, some love.

I'm tired. I'm hurting. I have no energy to lean towards the light.

I just faked being okay

I love my pure joy daughter unconditionally, all the time no matter what. Her birthday is a hard day for me, a day of grief and a reminder of having lost her. She's alive, she has shunned me since 2001.

I've been crying all day thursday, intermittently and I am crying me a river right now.

I don't want to be alive anymore. I don't want to live without my daughter.

A friend hugged me on Wednesday, a big wonderful hug and said "I am so sorry this suffering goes on for you."  I felt so loved in that moment.

I don't feel loved now. I am thinking about my huge, unused, stash of class a narcotics, thinking I have enough to check out.

I will never get over the loss of her. Never.

gimme all your love

"Gimme All Your Love" by Alabama Shakes, new album Sound and Color, you can hear it on itunes

So much is going on
But you can always come around
Why don't you sit with me for just a little while?
Tell me, what's wrong?

If you just gimme all your love ohh
Gimme all you got, babe
Gimme all your love ohh
Bit more

So tell me what you wanna do
You say the world, it doesn't fit with you
Why don't you talk to me for just a little while?
I can only try to make it right

If you just gimme all your love ohh
Gimme all you got, babe
Gimme all your love ohh

the blues

The Blues by Billy Collins, from The Art of Drowning
Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn't even stop to say good-bye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent and beseeching key,

people will not only listen;
they will shift to the sympathetic edges of their chairs
move to such acute anticipation

by what chord and the delay tha follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you're a hard-hearted man
but the woman's sure going to make you cry.

flee the past, evacuate its temples

Some Final Words by Billy Collins from The Art of Drowning.

I cannot leave you without saying this:
the past is nothing,
a nonmemory, a phantom,
a soundproof closet in which Johann Strauss
is composing another waltz no one can hear.

It is a fabrication, best forgotten,
a wellspring of sorrow
that waters a field of bitter vegetation.

Leave it behind.
Take your head out of your hands
and arise from the couch of melancholy
where the window-light falls against your face
and the sun rides across the autumn sky,
steely behind the bare trees,
glorious as the high strains of violins.

But forget Strauss.
And forget his younger brother,
the poor bastard who was kiled in a fall
from a podium while conducting a symphony.

Forget the past,
forget the sunned audience on its feet,
the absurdity of their formal clothes
in the face of sudden death,
forget their collective gasp,
the murmur and huddle over the body,
the creaking of the lowered curtain.

Forget Strauss
with that encore look in his eye
and his tiresome industry:
more than five hundred finished compositions!
He even wrote a polka for his mother.
That alone is enough to make me flee the past,
evacuate its temples,
and walk alone under the stars
down these dark paths strewn with acorns,
feeling nothing but the crisp October air,
the swing of my arms
and the rhythm of my stepping--
a man of the present who has forgotten
every composer, every great battle,
just me,
a thin reed blowing in the night.

apple pie help from my toddler

Another fond memory I have sharing life with my daughter was all her help in the kitchen. 

She began helping me by sitting in her high chair and listening to me.  I talked about everything I did. I also shared many, even most, of whatever thoughts happened to float through my mind.

"I have all the things I need to make this pie crust in this cupboard. This is a cupboard. See me open the cupboard."  I was a homemade version of Mr. Rogers, the mommy version. 

"You are strapped into the high chair, safe,  and I need to go into the next room to get my pie plates. You are safe and I'll be right back."  Then I might step outside her field of vision for a few moments, get what I needed and pop back into view.  Sometimes I would voice exaggerated relief that she had survived four seconds with me out of view. Other times I laughed aloud at myself, for her benefit. Anything I did was okay. We were happy. I know I did not imagine that.

Rosie helped me make just about everything. Sometimes her help was adding the cut carrots into my stew pot and munching on a carrot while I did the other work of preparing beef stew.  When she was able, I let her add ingredients into whatever I was making.

She helped me immeasurably on all things that I did.

One of my favorite examples of her generous help was the help she provided when I baked apple pies.

I used to bake lots of apple pies. We'd go to an arboretrum, harvest an entire basket of apples and then I'd bake as dozen, sometimes even more pies, all in one day. I'd have an open house the next day, inviting everyone we knew over.  I also was known, in this era of our lives, for bringing apple pie when going to friends' homes for dinner. Everytime, and this was in the mid-eighties, when I first brought a piece, the host would voice concern about the calories. I would say "We can cut very thin slices." A host often remarked that she did not like pie. I would say "I bet you have never had a homemade apple pie. Do you think you can buy an apple pie in the freezer section?  Trust me, you will like this pie."

Now, in 2015, with pie shops all over the place and foodies crawling all over the San Francisco Bay Area, many people know what real fruit pies taste like, In 1984, not so much.

Most commercial pie back in the eighties were drowned in sugar and one did not taste much fruit. I used almost no sugar with my pies, choosing half tart apples, half sweet ones. I added tiny amounts of cinnamon-laced sugar.

Like most apple pie makers, I tossed my apple slices with cinnamon sugar before putting the apple slices on top of the bottom crust.  Over time, Rosie learned to lay out the apple slices in patterns, any patterns she chose, to maximize how many slices we could cram into our always deep dish apple pies. We always cut out an apple shape from the pie crust to put in the center of the top crust, signaling the contents. Once we tried a peach but our pie-dough peach looked like apple. That was fun. When we gifted her Waldorf teacher's family a peach pie, they thought the pie-dough symbol represented apple and were happily surprised to bite into a peach pie.

Mainly, we were known for our apple pies.

And now the best part:  when she was one, two and three, Rosie helped me make apple pies by, yes, adding cinnamon to the sugar, stirring the flour, even cutting lard into the flour. She excelled, however, at sucking on cinnamon-sugar covered apple slices until the slices turned to mush and she would eat it. Then she'd cajole me, although she did not need to cajole me, into letting her suck on another cinnamon-sugar apple slice.

As she sucked on those cinnamon apple slices, I did my chatter thing. "What do you prefer, Rose, a regular pie or a deep dish?"  "Ah, so you like both. I myself, my dolly delight, is the deep dish. I eat pie for the fruit. I use as little sugar as possible because for me pie is all about baked fruit.  Heck, keep your pie crust on the top. Or just feed me apple crumble, stinting on the flour and sugar. It's baked apple slices covered in cinnamon sugar that I am all about here."

"Yum yum, my little plum. Want another apple slice?"

That's it. I loved and still love, how my toddler loves to help me by keeping me company as I prepared food and sucking on cinnamon apple slices. She always came into the kitchen for a few cinnamon apple slices, longer after she stopped helping me cook. The apple slices covered in cinnamon sugar were a family thing.

My Rosie was always very tidy, even as a baby. She didn't get that from me. Fastidious, oh my.

for you are my little bunny

BALLAD OF A SHADOW
-- Alice Oswald, great British poet
Take from me my voice and I shall voiceless go
to find you, take from me my face,
I'll treck the hills invisibly,
my strength, and I shall run but keep no pace.

Even in cities, take the sense with which I reason
and I shall seek, but close it in your heart,
keep this and forget this
and this, when we're apart,

will be the shadow game of love.
And I shall love in secret
and I shall love in crowds
and love in darkness, in the quiet

outlet of shadows, and in cities
as a ghost walking unnoticed,
and love with books, using their pages like a wind,
not reading, and with people, latticed

by words but through the lattice loving.
And when at last my love is understood,
with you I shall not love but breathe
and turn by breathing into flesh and blood.

the truth about me

One true thing about me:  I am a great mother. I did a wonderful job raising my daughter. I never beat her. I was never abusive. I sacrificed to give her things, including things she wanted but did not need. I sent her to private schools, gave things up for myself so I could give to her. I loved her. I was funny with her. I was brilliant with her. I exposed her extensively to the arts: visual art, music, cello lessons, opera, theater, dance. Some years I spent more on dance training than her private school tuition.

I gave and I gave and I gave, like Shel Silverstein's book,The Giving Tree. Hey, that should be my name for my daughter to call me:  'mom, my giving tree, the giver of life'.

The truth about me:  I am a great mother and I don't deserve to have been shunned for fourteen years by my only child.

catalpa flashbacks

Long ago and far away, I owned a house on a huge, double lot. And on this lot, there were some trees. Pine trees and silver maples. Green shrubs hugged the base of the house.  Alongside our house was an entire lot, big enough for another house but it had only grass and a couple mature maple trees, plus a row of tall shrubs acting to block the noise from the street alongside that lot.    The maples were mature and majestic, with spectacular fall color shows. Silver maples, however, have a shallow root system, making it difficult to grow the kind of suburban lawn that most people aspire to. Plus, the shallow root systems make it hard to mow your crappy lawn. The roots jam your mower.  Our trees provided deep shade, which added another challenge to my then-husband's fantasy of thick, lush, green sod. I loved the silver maples but, also, I hated them because I had to listen to the he-who-shall-not-be-named whine about the roots, the challenge of grass.

The root system of our silver maple trees came above the ground, making it impossible to grow the kind of fantasy all-American lawn most Americans want. Or used to want. My ex husband wanted one.The motherfucker. The word rolls happily off my tongue when used to refer to him but I won't use it again, having now provided a sketch of his values and personality.

There were no catalpa trees on our land.

My neighbor across the street, however, also had a huge, double lot. Her double lot was covered with catalpa trees. All the catalpa leaves from across the street were blown over to our yard. And my wasband demanded I keep the lawn clear of those leaves.

Did I mention that although he-who-shall-not-be-named complained constantly about the lawn that he never did any yard work? He worked  sixty hours a week in his big-shot job. When I was lucky, he worked more than that.   He watched sports when he was home, expected his meals on the table, his laundry done. And, the jerk, he'd patrol the house, inspecting it to see if I had cleaned properly. He mostly came home to eat, sleep and dominate abusively. The yard work, in our little family, was woman's work. My work.

The lawn mower terrified my baby, then my toddler. First, I had tried to mow the lawn while she was napping, fretting that she might wake up and need me but I would not hear her over the mower. This meant that I mowed the lawn in little snatches of time. So I was eternally mowing the goddamn lawn. This meant the lawn was never all mowed at the same time. This gave my then-husband something else to berate me for. He said I should just let the baby cry as long as it took me to mow the lawn in a manner he considered proper. It was proper to mow the whole lawn all at once. The extra lot was all lawn and the main lawn had hard to mow grass, mired amidst the tree roots that came up to the surface for water. I could not work outside for two hours, unable to hear my baby crying inside the house while I was out with the roaring lawn mower.

The lawnmower was much more powerful than we needed. I had wanted a push mower. He acted like the lawnmower reflected his manhood and had bought one, over my objections, that was particularly loud. Very manly. As I have said, I did all the mowing.

Mowing the lawn was a pain in the neck with a baby but raking leaves with a baby was fun. Before she could walk, I would just prop my Rosie near me and chatter to her nonstop. I really liked to talk to her about the wind.

"Let's be quiet, honey," I often said to her, "Let's just be as still as we can and think about what we feel."

Then I would pause to listen expressively, the expression being for her benefit. "Did you feel that?" I would exclaim, "Did you feel that movement on your cheek? Did you feel your hair move? I saw your hair move. I felt my hair move."

I paused a lot, to give her a chance to think about what I was saying, to think about the air. "You feel the air moving, honey," I would say. "Isn't that amazing? You can feel it but you can't see it. Oh, Rosie," I would conclude, "Life is full of things you can feel but you cannot see."

"When you feel your hair moving, that is the wind, honey. Can you say wind?"

It never mattered to me that my daughter could not talk back. I talked on and on. I felt compelled to talk to her about everything. I believed I was imparting meaningful things to her with my nonstop chatter. Even when she did not understand what I said, she felt what I felt. She felt my love for her, my attention. And she did communicate back, just not in language, not at first.

"Look at the tree, see how the branches and leaves move? That's the wind, honey, moving our trees."

"See the leaves blowing away? What is making them move?"

We had great conversations while I raked leaves. We had great conversations while we did everything. I was scintilating. She was mesmerized.

Left to my own choices, I would not have raked any leaves, and especially not the catalpa leaves. The lawn was a wipe out anyway. I wanted to let the leaves stay on the lawn. I did not care about the grass, although I was very invested in my vegetables and flowers inside the fences that protected the back yard. Almost no leaves in the back yard. 

My husband, he who I shall not name but I will use an accurate adjective to refer to him:  my motherfucker of a husband insisted I rake all the leaves, even the catalpas that blew from across the street. They were not even our leaves.  The catalpa leaves were so thick that they might have wiped out what little grass we had between our shallow, on-the-surface, tree roots.Easy for motherfucker to insist I rake them; he did no yard work at all.

My life raking catalpa leaves was short-lived. As soon as my ex and I separated, I never raked leaves again in that house.

While I still raked, just for two falls, I put Rosie in a lavendar sweater outfit, pants and matching top with a hood. The hood had a white ball on a string, attached near the crown of her head. That fluffy white fabric ball would bounce around her head and I loved the intensely gorgeous perfection of the white bobbing ball, her rosy cheeks and her dark brown eyes, contrasted against the lavendar hood. An exquisitely beautiful visage.  Her pink to red cheeks beamed out of the hood, mittened hands waving. She seemed intently focused on me, still the center of her existence at that time.  Remembering her on those chilled fall days, her rosy cheeks, her big brown eyes following me, evokes one of my sweetest memories of being with her.

We loved to rake the maple leaves, which are easy to gather into large piles. We loved to tumble in them. My job was to gather all the leaves into piles on our driveway and then my husband would help me bag them. It is much easier to bag leaves with two people. It was a challenge to get those piles because Rosie loved to mess them up. We loved fall. We loved all the time we spent together. Or so I thought.

Just about the time Rosie and I finished raking our maple leaves, the catalpa leaves would begin to fall.

Catalpa leaves are gigantic, often twelve inches or more at their widest tips. And catalpa leaves are thick. Catalpa leaves are a misery to rake. They stick to the rake. I would make just one small swath with my rake, the rake would be full and if I wanted to continue raking, I would have to stop, after just one swipe with the rake, two swipes tops, and then have to pull the leaves off the rake before I could rake more. I had to tear off the leaves, put them in a pile or in a bag, and swipe again. Again and again. It was tedious, hard work. And exhausting. Imagine trying to gather dozens of cubic yards of anything but only able to gather a few cubic inches at a time.

Nowadays, a person might use a leaf blower. Not back then.

When I raked the catalpa leaves, I vented my frustration to my daughter, who was the best listener I ever knew, before she learned to speak. After she learned to speak, she still liked to listen to me some. Until she became a teenager.

"I remember reading about Nancy Drew's yard having catalpa leaves," I told Rosie, "When Nancy Drew had catalpa leaves, they sounded beautiful. I read about them and longed to see catalpa trees. When I was a little girl, I used to wish our house in Chicago had catalpa leaves just like Nancy Drew. But oh, no, my dear little girl, I was wrong. Nancy Drew was wrong to love her catalpa trees. Catalpa trees are one of god's curses, my honey bunny. Don't ever saddle yourself with catalpa leaves. You've been warned."  Even now, it gives me great amusement to remember the one-sided, brilliant arguments I presented to my one, then, two-year-old.  I was always giving valuable life lessons like the catalpa leaves lessons.

Of course I didn't really think I was giving her meaningful lessons in my words. I did believe, fervently, that I was giving her lessons with my constant attempts to expand her world, open her up to consider things like the invisible wind and, most importantly, the lesson that I loved her and liked her enough to focus on her.

One nice thing about talking incessantly to an infant is that it is not necessary to stop and explain things like who is Nancy Drew unless you feel like it. Rosie was always willing to listen to whatever I had to say. She trusted me, at this stage in life, on all things. She didn't need to know that Nancy Drew was a teenage sleuth in a series of mysteries targeted to young, female readers. What could she do but trust me, as she sat in her walker under one of our old maple trees and I raked leaves, talking almost nonstop.

"Catalpa leaves are horrible," I often complained. "And do you know what is the worst?" Rosie always wanted to know the worst. I could tell she wanted to know. She signaled this longing to me telepathically. "The worst is that all these goddamn leaves are not even ours, honey. These leaves belong to the neighbors. Every year these leaves blow across the street, into our yard. By every right, the neighbors should come over here and rake them. But no, oh no, they do not. They shirk their duty, my little one. Don't ever shirk your duty, my little Rosie. Well, don't ever own catalpa trees but if you should ever be so foolish, well, then be a good neighbor and gather your own goddamn leaves, wherever they may blow. Just ask your neighbors where you need to rake. I am sure they will happily accept your raking help."

Sometimes, when making indignant speeches about those cursed catalpa leaves and the negligent neighbors who did not help me, I spoke as loudly as I could, as if the neighbor would hear me and come over and help. It was fall. Windows not open. Plus that neighbor had a full time job and I usually raked her catalpa leaves while she was at work, while the whole neighborhood seemed empty except for me and my kitty kat, my cocoa bear, my cake cup. My Rose.

It was not necessary to explain things like 'shirk your duty' to Rosie. I knew that if I spoke to her intelligently, she would catch up. And she did. She had near-perfect scores in English on her SATs.

I made a decision as soon as Rosie was born that I was going to talk to her exactly like I talked to everyone else. So I said 'goddamn' to her. I also said things like bullshit, fuck, and damn, except never in front of her dad because he would have been furious. We left him when Rosie was a baby but we stayed in the house a few years. Once he moved out, I stopped raking leaves. Rosie still helped me grow flowers and vegetables, of course.

Pat Clark was the name of our neighbor who owned the cursed catalpas. Sometimes,  Pat would sometimes stroll across the street while I was raking her catalpa leaves to say hello. Pat was a very tall woman and she had a way of looking regal, whatever she did. She would cross her arms, settle back on her feet and say from on high "It just isn't fair that you have to rake all these leaves. They come from my yard, after all."

"Well, Pat," I would say, "You are welcome, feel perfectly free, to rake these leaves. Here, you can use my rake. Rosie and I will sit and watch. I could use a break. Rake as much as you want!"

Pat would laugh, shift on her feet again and stroll back home.

"Did you hear that?" I would exclaim to my Rosie, "Even she knows it isn't fair that your poor mother has to rake these cursed leaves! Don't ever own catalpas, my little pretty."  I so appreciated Rosie's unspoken but passionate support for the injustice of those catalpa leaves.

Catalpa leaves will choke a lawn. If you care about lawns, which I do not and did not. You have to get them up if you want any grass.

I hated catalpa leaves. I had no interest in grass.

Now I can find  lots of catalpa trees in Northern California. They are beautiful trees with lovely flowers in the spring. Great shade trees.  Nancy Drew was right. Nancy had spoken of their great shade. As I walk around, I crunch on the leathery, thick, cursed things. Since I don't have to rake them, they are beautiful to me once more. As I crunch along, I have mental conversations with my baby Rosie, telling her that it is okay to enjoy catalpa leaves now that her mother does not have to rake them. I remember the many, perfect shades of rosy her cheeks usually looked when we did yard work. I remember that her cheeks grew red when she helped me shovel snow. I remember the spring I planted dozens of zinnias. When I weeded my zinnias, two-year-old Rosie would help me but two-year-old Rosie could not distinguish the weeds from the zinnias. She followed me as I moved along my zinnia border, and she pulled up all my zinnias. She was so proud to help. When she was asleep, I went out and planted new plants.  I never told anyone before this that I replanted flowers after my dumpling dolly helped me by pulling out all my starter flower plants.  She was helping. I don't wish for her intentions to be misunderstood.

Sitting on the ground with her, talking about the beauty of flowers, nattering on about the miracle of growing things, how we could put seeds in the ground, water them and the sun and other forces would cause the seeds to grow. What, I often asked rhetorically, do you think it is that has tiny seeds grow into pumpkins, my little pretty?  Why water? And look, some plants like sun and some plants like shade.  I made plenty of educational gestures with my lectures. I was always trying to point out more things she could not see but which were real.  I spoke of these things hoping to get her to sense into this majestic world, to get her thinking about a seed breaking open, growing, stretching towards sunlight. Like babies do. Like plants do. Like all of creation does.  Do you ever consider, my bunny bee, that you are sorta kinda like a plant? and other growing things?

I have come back to the present. I remember that I am walking on catalpa leaves without Rosie. I find myself wondering if I imagined her. Maybe only the catalpa leaves were real and she a figment of my imagination? Am I a figment of my imagination too? Being her mom is, or was,  so central to my sense of self and my sense of self got shattered when I lost her. Now I have to invent myself again and I don't want to invent a new me. I want to be Rosie's mom. The hardest aspect of losing her, I think, is the way it plays with my memories. I have what I am calling memories of what it felt like to love her while I raked those damn leaves and talked to her about everything. Inside these memories, I was a warm, loving, good mommy. Did I make that up? Maybe loving Rosie was a story I made up. Maybe I was a horrible mother and I made up memories of being a good one. These kinds of thoughts don't make me as sick as they used to but they are often with me. The  catalpa leaves brought them on this time.

My daughter told me, the day I dropped her off at Cornell, which I helped make possible in a million ways, she said "Now that I am in the Ivy League, I don't want to have anything more to do with you."  That was the last time we saw one another until, on a trip to my hometown of Chicago recently, where she lives these days, I went to her office building just so I would know where my kid spends some of her life. Just to have an image of her in a place, safe, happy. Things went awry, she became aware I was there and she threatened to have me arrested for trespassing.  Me, the human who taught her the dangers of catalpa leaves.

Big Heart

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
In the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
And all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.
They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs, }
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in--
all in comes the fury of love.

and if I love you this is incidental

I sorta think I'm not entitled to enjoy love poems since I don't have my own someone to love. Well, I have lots of folks to love and plenty, praise goddess, that love me back, but you know what I mean, my own special someone, a mate. I don't know if I want to be in love to be in love or just so I can read love poems to him. These poems, from Alice Oswald's The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, are gobsmacking me today. She writes about love, not 'just' romantic love. And I am in love with everything these days, especially the sun.

WEDDING

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it's like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it's like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it's like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions. . .
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it's like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.

BALLAD OF A SHADOW

Take from me my voice and I shall voiceless go
to find you, take from me my face,
I'll treck the hills invisibly,
my strength, and I shall run but keep no pace.

Even in cities, take the sense with which I reason
and I shall seek, but close it in your heart,
keep this and forget this
and this, when we're apart,

will be the shadow game of love.
And I shall love in secret
and I shall love in crowds
and love in darkness, in the quiet

outlet of shadows, and in cities
as a ghost walking unnoticed,
and love with books, using their pages like a wind,
not reading, and with people, latticed

by words but through the lattice loving.
And when at last my love is understood,
with you I shall not love but breathe
and turn by breathing into flesh and blood.

SEA SONNET

A field, a sea-flower, three stones, a stile
Not one thing close to another
throughout air. The cliff's uplifted lawns.
You and I walk as wicker in virtual contact.

Prepositions lie exposed. All along
the swimmer is deeper than the water.
I have looked under the wave,
I saw your body floating on the darkness.

Oh time and water cannot touch.
Not touch. Only a blog far out,
your singularity and the sea's
inalienable currents flow at angles. . .

and if I love you this is incidental
as on the sand one blue towel, one white towel.

purpose of evolution

This relates to my thinking on banning the evil symbol of the confederate flag.

EVIL AS CATALYST
"...a condition of moral holiness on Earth......can be achieved only if the evil has first come into existence; then the power needed to overcome the evil will yield a power that can reach the heights of holiness. A field has to be treated with manure and the manure has to ferment in the soil; similarly, humanity needs the manure of evil in order to attain to the highest holiness. And herein lies the mission of evil. A man's muscles get strong by use; and equally, if good is to rise to the heights of holiness, it must first overcome the evil which opposes it. The task of evil is to promote the ascent of man. Things such as this give us a glimpse into the secret of life. Later on, when man has overcome evil, he can go on to redeem the creatures he has thrust down, and at whose cost he has ascended. That is the purpose of evolution."
-- Rudolf Steiner

http://wn.rsarchive.org/…/Engli…/RSPAP1986/19060829p01.html…

the result of egotism

Spiritual science wants to implement a mighty education of our innermost soul forces so that the social life will shape itself out of other thoughts and feelings. What this means is that spiritual science has no patented recipe about how this or that is supposed to be done on this or that post, it doesn’t judge anyone, but it’s very confident that everyone will arrive at a right judgment if he’s permeated by the fundamental truths. One such truth is that poverty, misery and suffering are nothing but the result of egoism. One should look upon this as a law of nature. A man is egotistical as soon as he lives in accordance with the principle: I must be remunerated personally, I must be paid for the work that I do. An esoteric must ask himself whether work is really what sustains life. Work is of no importance if it isn’t directed wisely. What serves men can only be produced and made through the wisdom that men put into it. One who doesn’t understand this and who sins against it even slightly, sins against the social thinking of the present time.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 266 – From the Contents of Esoteric Classes – Hamburg, 3rd March 1906

Twelfth Night

Tonight is the Twelfth Night of Christmas, tomorrow the Epiphany.

I'm done with my Xmas but I've been thinking, a bit, about Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. A friend recently suggested to me that I confuse love with power. Then he helpfully, or was it condescendingly, pointed to Twelfth Night, indicating that this play is about confusing love with power. I am not overly fond of Twelfth Night. Heretofore, it had not struck me as a play about confusing love with power although certainly I have seen it as a play about the confusion of love. Mostly, I have always thought Twelfth Night was boring. This guy has a doctorate in modern thought from Stanford so I trusted his interpretation of Twelfth Night more than my own. Sheesh. When will I wholly trust my own knowing?  Power had absolutely nothing to do with my struggle, and that guy was trying to tell me what my own private experience meant. This same guy often chastised me to ever daring to comment on what he referred to as his side of the net.  I was never supposed to say anyhing about him but he was free to assess me, tell me what I was thinking and feeling and even make a referene to Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and I assure you that Twelfth Night did not have one damned thing that related to the inner challenges I faced.

It was interesting to me that this friend referenced Shakespeare in relation to the struggle I have had in recent months related to him. I myself had been thinking my insignificant tempest was more like Midsummer Night's Dream. I am convinced that Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night well before he wrote Midsummer and that in Twelfth Night he was still working out his thinking about romantic love, its deceptions and its conceits. By the time he wrote Midsummer, I posit, Shakespeare had come to understand that there is nothing rational about love, romantic of otherwise, which is why he set Midsummer in a fairy forest random with the deceptive, illusionary, irrationality of fairy dust and other delusions (such as love). NB:  nowdays, I consider fairy tales to be real, probably more real than the limited, mechanistic material world most are mired in today.  Contrasted with the fact that I have thought that Twelfth Night is a boring play, I love the pixilation of Midsummer, which seems like a close proximation to the irrationality that infects humans and leads them to think they 'love' one human being as opposed to another.

To elucidate myself, I have now watched two films versions of each of these plays, courtesy of my Netflix account. Judging by these DVDs, I am happy to report that there are lots of great productions of the bard available to the masses. I have also spent a few hours researching scholarly opinions about Twelfth Night at Stanford. Truth be told, I am in love with the libraries at Stanford and I look for reasons to go there and look something up. They have real librarians who seem to get involved in the thrill of my little chases. My research was by no means exhaustive but I could not find any writing around the idea that Twelfth Night is about the confusion of love with power. Even without authoritarian citations, however, I am willing to concede that Tall is right, that one of the themes of Twelfth Night is 'confusing love with power' although I tend to think that this play is about an aspiration for power disguised by ill-fitting cultural norms associated with 'love'. I do not think there is much love in this play.

I was not, when that guy suggested I was, confusing love with power. I was confusing what I felt with the wholly mistaken belief that the guy loved me. That's not power and I sure as shit was not, as he suggested, confusing love with power. And I don't think 12th Night is, even remotely, about confusing love with power.  It's about the confusion of love.

Let's take a look at Twelfth Night. Then I will talk about Midsummer.

Viola and Sebastian, twins, are shipwrecked. Each of them believe the other has drowned and has to make their way in the society of the island upon which they washed up. Viola deems it best to disguise herself as a male and enters the service of the local grand poobah, Duke Orsino. For much of the play, each of these twins believes the other to be dead. Duke Orsino seeks the hand of the grandest female in the land, Olivia. Olivia is of lofty birth and wealth. Wealth has almost always been an aphrodesiac, I guess! Orsino wants Olivia's hand because, he says, he loves her but it seems to me he really thinks she should be his mate because, like him, she is well born and rich. Orsino sents Viola-disguised-as-Cesario to pitch his woo to Olivia. Olivia get struck by the irrationality of love and declares herself in love with Cesario. Olivia repeatedly rejects Orsino. Viola-as-Cesario rejects Olivia. Viola-hiding-as-Cesario loves, perplexingly, Orsino, who is really a self-absorbed jerk with power and wealth. Orsino is attracted to Cesario-hiding-as-Viola. Shakespeare does not overtly address the transgendered issues and neither will I. Also, there are lots of subplots in this play but they mostly irritate me and I will not address them here.

Sebastian undergoes some separate adventures. Near the end of the play, Sebastian shows up. Olivia believes Sebastian is Viola-as-Cesario and asks him to wed her immediately. Sebastian takes a look around at her wealth and beauty and he says, sure, why the heck not, how bad could it be being married to a rich, beautiful, powerful woman? Sebastian makes no empty declarations of love for Oliva. He just goes along with her out-of-the-blue proposal. When he marries Olivia, he believes himself to be alone in the world (thinking his twin sister dead), cast into the unfamiliar society of the island and he accepts Olivia's life raft happily. Why not?! Olivia may believe herself 'in love' with Cesario-as-Viola-confused-with-Sebastian but Sebastian does not have many illusions about love.

There's a bunch of confusion, silly games that have always bored me. In the big denouement, Viola-as-Cesario is mistaken for Olivia's husband, Sebastian. Finally, Sebastian and Viola realize their beloved twin is not dead. In these moments, everyone else realizes that Viola is a girl. Orsino is free to love Viola-as-Viola whereas until this moment there were, apparently, some social norms that prohibited Orisno from loving Viola-as-Cesario.

All's well that ends well, mostly.

I think the only people who simply loved one another in this play were the brother and sister, Sebastian and Viola. Everyone else in this play is strategizing to improve their position in life through, it seems to me, the illusion of materiality. Even though most people would tell you that love is more important than wealth in theory, it is the rare person who is not pixilated by wealth. Most folks will tell you it is just as easy, if not easier, to love a rich person as a poor person. I disagree: I think most people think it is a whole lot easier to love a person with wealth. If this play is about love and its confusions, it is about confusing love with material prosperity. Even in the snarky subplots, the aspiration to mate is rooted in bettering one's material position.

Mating for money and position is a time honored tradition. Jane Austen wrote brilliantly about this stream in human society.

Now Midsummer.

In Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia, daughter of the local grand poobah, has been ordered by her father to marry a man she does not love. She flees with the object of her affection, Lysander, into the nearby fairy forest. Demetrius is in love with Hermia so he follows the pair. Helena is in love with Demetrius so she follows him into the woods.

essay unfinished. . . . . .

Open House

OPEN HOUSE by Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.

The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth;
Rage warps my dearest cry
To witless agony.

I was feeling unsettled, I confess

I was feeling unsettled
I confess
on the days when my ipod
was not in my nest.

Praise all that is glory
Praise all that is good
my ipod has returned to me
Now if Rosie only would

In a DarkTime

In a Dark Time by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of the soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad daylight the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.


I should have devoted my life to poetry: to reading it and writing it. Is it too late, I wonder?

yesterday seems so far away

I practically leapt from my apartment to the train station in downtown Mountain View yesterday morning. I had started out the morning in a mild funk (a common beginning to my days) but as soon as I stepped outside into the sun, I cranked up my early Beatles music on the iPod. I danced from the bus to the northbound Caltrain platform. "Can't buy me love!" was lifting me higher and higher.

The train platform was crowded for a Saturday morning. As I noted the extra people, I also noted that we were all standing in a beautiful sunlight. I assumed everyone was headed for happy plans in the city. And I danced even more.

"Tell me that you want the kind of things that money just can't buy!"

I was so happy, swaying. I report that inside myself, I felt like happiness was gurgling up and down inside me the way the liquid bubbles in those bubbling Christmas tree lights. Then, out of the corner of one eye, I noticed that a youngish guy was watching me and joining in my happiness. He could see that I was lit with the music coming from my white earphones and that I was bursting with movement because of some happy groove. At first, I blanched, thinking that I would grow subdued, that I would stop dancing now that I was aware I was being watched. But I took another look at him, right in the eye, and I saw he was just feeling happy, too.

I rocked on until the train arrived. What a great start to my day.

I had a really great day yesterday. I guess it was preparation for today, which has sucked all day. I bought a bunch of stuff at the farmers market because I was unhappy. Then I ate a sweet, almost just to be unkind to myself. And now I'm grumbling gloom.

My great aunt Effie

When I moved to Minnesota to go to law school, my grandma Joy wrote and asked me to spend some time with her baby sister, Effie. Effie Carlota. A dutiful granddaughter, I looked my great aunt Effie up soon after I arrived in town. Effie was lonely and burdened with a senile husband, Ray. She basically never saw anyone unless they came to her home because going out with Ray was difficult and he could not be left alone. She grocery shopped once a week, with Ray in tow and it was a considerable burden to go out with Ray. Once, for example, he had gone into a restroom, began banging on the stall walls and would not stop, would not leave the bathroom.  This behavior really embarrassed my great aunt.  Soon I was doing her grocery runs.

She seemed very happy to have a new grand niece to shower attention on. I was her only relative in the Twin Cities. I was not used to getting a lot of attention from relatives and I liked it. Effie soon was inviting me to come to her home every Wednesday for lunch. She always encouraged me to feel free to bring a friend from law school. She was very impressed that I went to law school and she was always impressed by any 'boys' I brought along with me. She was especially impressed with a friend named Gary because he always wore a jacket and tie. Effie thought law students should dress like lawyers and she could hardly bear it that I wore jeans to class. On several occasions, she took me shopping, with Uncle Ray in tenuous tether, to buy me business clothes. Then she expected me to wear them to our weekly lunches. And I did. It made her happy and I guess I was happy to make her happy.

The lunches were fantastic. Planning what she would prepare, shopping for it and then carefully preparing it was the highlight of her week. She steadily asked me to talk about what I liked to eat and then she would research recipes to please me.

No one had ever given me this kind of attention before. She made a very big fuss about my birthday each year. She always insisted I invite a friend. She always gave me really lovely presents. And how she fussed over the meals. Effie color-coordinated her tableware to match the food. For my first Effie birthday, I had said I liked avocados. She served avocados, of course, but what I remember most vividly was that she had bought new napkin rings to match the avocados. What I remember most is how happy it made her that I noticed the green napkin rings.

Effie was a tiny woman. And cute. She had what I believe was a lifetime habit of using her smallness and cuteness to, skillfully, charm and manipulate others. She'd scrunch herself up, using her most adorable tone and get whatever she wanted.

My chums in law school often teased me about my great aunt Effie. At first, they thought I had made her up. Her name and her weekly luncheon parties sounded too quaintly old-fashioned to be real. In fact, the only reason I ever brought any of the guys to lunch with Effie was to prove that she was real. My friend Gary really loved going to Effie's with me on Wednesdays. Looking back, I am wishing I could remember why it gave him such a kick. I could never get any other friends to go more than once.

My grandmother and my great aunt Effie experienced a revival in their relationship. They exchanged letters weekly, something they had not been doing before I moved to St. Paul. The main topic in these letters was Effie's weekly visit with me. Effie would write to Grandma and tell her what we had for lunch, what I wore, how the lemon bars turned out and what I had talked about. Then my grandmother wrote back to Effie, writing separately to me, and commented on what we had for lunch, what I wore, how her recipe for lemon bars differed from Effie's and whatever Effie had reported that I talked about. My grandmother would also write to me, telling me what Effie told her. A hive of love.

My grandmother died right after my spring break of my first year in law school. I went to visit her for that spring break, visiting her on my own, in South Dakota,  for the first time ever. All other visits had been a part of brawling family trips but one. Once, when I was about ten, my aunt and uncle drove me to South Dakota, I stayed back with grandma for six weeks and then my mom came, with my brothers, to bring me home in time for school.  During that first solo visit with my grandma, she announced that we were going to 'the Woolworth's' to buy her a pair of tennis shoes. I dutifully wrote to my mother about our trip to 'the Woodworth's' and reported that grandma had bought a pair of navy tennis shoes. My mom wrote back and chastised me for lying. Mom wrote "There is no way mymother would ever buy tennis shoes." Grandma usually wore tied black oxfords. What I had left out of my first letter to mom about those shoes, but included in my follow up and my mom still believed I was lying was that grandma had bunions and she thought the tennis shoes would be more comfortable on the bunions, her attempt to avoid surgery. She cut holes out of the sides of those navy tennis shoes.

It was fun when my mom arrived and saw that grandma really had bought herself a pair of tennis shoes.  I had some hope that my mother might apologize for having called me a liar but my mom was never one to acknowledge any imperfection.

On my law school spring break visit, my grandmother was in the hospital. Grandma still insisted on planning meals for me, handing me her wallet and directing me to restaurants, even telling me what to order. She got several of her friends to have me over for dinner and, based on what she had learned in Effie's letters, she would tell them what to prepare for me. She explained to her friends that she was asking them to stand in for her as my grandma and she apologized for having the audacity to tell them what to fix but I was her dear granddaughter and she was sure they understood.

Nobody had ever treated me with so much careful attention.  She also insisted I use her car. And when I would spend time with her in the hospital, she had me carefully account for everything I spent in Mitchell, S.D. that week. She wanted to be sure I was using her money, not my own.

One evening, at the hospital, I suggested we call Effie. We did, of course. For the rest of her life (Effie lived another twenty years), Effie often reminded me that it was because of me that she got to talk to her sister Joy that last time.

During my spring break visit with my grandmother, I called my mom and told her that I believed Grandma was about to die. My mother sneered at me, telling me my instincts were useless. Grandma had just turned eighty. When I first arrived at the hospital, Grandma said to me "You know, Tree, I turned eighty this week. Eighty is enough for me. Joe is waiting for me and I am ready to see him. Eighty is enough for me." As she said 'Eighty is enough for me", I felt her life force leaving her, her soul flying towards her Joe, my grandpa.  I felt like she was staying alive just long enough for our visit. She died the day after I left. Then my mom was angry, telling me I should have been more forceful when I had suggested she come see her mother before she died.

So. I had initially paid attention to Effie grudgingly. But in one and one half semesters of law school, she and I had woven real family ties around each other. It was hard to lose my grandma but I had my newly-discovered, newly-beloved, great-aunt Effie.

It was a win win.

I had lunch with Effie every single Wednesday of my law school years. When I graduated, I started having Sunday dinner with her. I kept this up for a long time but it grew difficult. I got married and my husband Frank was not charmed by my old-fashioned, fussy aunt. He figured she had never had kids and she had some money socked away so he was willing to show up and eat her free meals but he didn't like to listen to her talk about picking out her china with Ray or listen to her tell us about all the squirrels that had enjoyed the walnuts in her back yard over the years. Gradually, Frank and I stopped going. Frank made fun of me for taking pleasure in Effie's oft-repeated little stories. I began to feel like a fool because I loved to hear Effie tell me the same stories over and over. I can remember thinking she was still in love with Ray and she told stories about her life with him so she could feel her love for him. It was an honor to be shown her private love for her husband. Effie also told a lot of stories about my Grandpa Joe. Effie for some reason, had really adored my Grandpa Joe, married to Joy, Effie's eldest sister and my maternal grandma. How it had fascinated me to learn someone thought my Grandpa Joe was gregarious and funny. He was stern, harsh, irritable and demanded silence from us kids most of the time.  All us kids thought of Grandpa as an old sourpuss but Effie thought he had been one of the funniest and most fun men she had ever met. Naturally, her stories about a funny grandpa I had never seen were interesting to me. Effie knew a Joe Crowley I had never even glimpsed. Frank said there was something wrong with me if I thought they were interesting.

And then Frank and I moved to Omaha.

I hated Omaha, not as much as I came to hate Frank, but as soon as the marriage was over, I returned to Minnesota. By then I had my daughter Rosie. Uncle Ray was living in a nursing home. Effie spent all her waking hours at Ray's bedside. Her life was lonelier than ever. She spent all her days with her unconscious husband.

My daughter was two years old when I moved back to Minnesota. She and I began to visit Effie in Ray's nursing home every Sunday. It was sometimes very weird for poor little Rosie to go to that nursing home. A nursing home, we learned, is full of lonely old people who don't get enough visitors. And many of these lonely old people adore children. In no time, everyone came to expect Rosie's Sunday appearance and want to snatch a little bit of her attention. One little two-year-old cannot fill the lonely hearts of a dozen old people. Walking down the hallway to Ray's room, sometimes the hall was lined with people in wheel chairs, all with outstretched arms, reaching for Rosie's attention. I used to think it must have been extremely odd, surreal, for little Rosie.  I gradually concluded that the old people, their hands outstretched hoping the delightful child passing by would interact with them must have appeared like ghouls preying on little Rosie.  There was no easy solution. I was determined to visit Effie every Sunday and the only way we could see her was to go to the nursing home. I talked a lot to Rosie, while she was two, then three, then four, about respecting our elders. I told her stories about my Grandma and how I had loved her and how I was paying my respects to my grandma by showing up in Effie's life.  Eventually, Rosie and I simply steeled ourselves to ignore all the lonely old people, rush down the hall and give our attention to Effie, who always sat at Ray's bedside.

Effie, of course, adored Rosie. She always had some odd little treat for her. The treats were odd because they were all gleaned from Ray's meal trays. Cartons of cranberry juice or pineapple cups.

Effie lived near the nursing home and she walked to and fro. When I realized that she was making virtually all of her meals from Ray's meal trays, I began to cajole her to let me take her grocery shopping. Soon, we ended each Sunday visit by a trip to a grocery store and then driving Effie home and fixing her a real dinner, probably the only real meal she ate all week.

This weekly ritual, which we kept up for almost four years, until Ray died, was not suffused with much light or joy. It was dutiful. I always had a sense of duty about it but my sense of duty was not just to Effie and my grandma. I also felt that I was instilling something valuable in my daughter. I felt like I was giving her a meaningful gift by sharing our lives with people who were at the end of theirs. I remember wishing, just inside myself, never voicing it to anyone, that I was doing the right thing by concretely showing my daughter how to love old people.  I believed I was modeling respect and care for one's elders to my daughter. Ha! She lived in Chicago for years while my mother, her grandmother, was still alive and never once sought my mom out. And she has rejected me for many years.

Ray died while Rosie was visiting her dad for Christmas in Omaha. I asked Frank to keep Rosie for an extra week so I could give Effie my full attention for the funeral. It was during this visit that Frank molested Rosie. Later, when I found out what had happened, I beat myself up a lot for having asked him to keep her that extra week. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if he had sent her home when originally planned. Ouch, this memory still whips me.

After Ray died, Rosie and I continued to visit Effie weekly. We would go out to lunch, then go for a walk and then go to the grocery store. Effie lived near Como Park. She and Uncle Ray walked all the way around Como Lake every day of the married lives until Ray could go no longer. She liked to walk around the lake and adore Rosie. She also liked to walk through the Como Park Zoo and the Como Park Conservatory.

We went to the conservatory a lot in winter, the zoo year around for it has many indoor cages and, once in a blue moon, we went to the little amusement park. Then we'd do a grocery shop for Effie's weekly groceries. 

Once Ray was gone, Effie, Katie and I would take a long walk, to the Como Park Zoo, the Como Park Conservatory or around Como Park Lake. And then we'd have lunch in the Byerly's grocery store cafe and then grocery shop.

At some point in those outings, Effie would stop remembering who we were or how she knew us. Over lunch, she took to asking us questions that she believed were subtle. She might have said "Tell me again how we met." Every week, I would tell her the same answer, that her sister Joy had been my grandmother and that's how we knew one another. Sometimes she'd have to ask if what I said meant we were relatives and I would patiently restate, every Sunday, that she was my grand aunt and I was her grand niece.

Effie would go on asking questions. Who were my parents? My mother was her niece. Did I

sweetpea

sweetpea, honey bee, dew drop
snickerdoodle, cake cup, lollipop
chini bolini
chica mia
my beloved
my tuna fish
my dolly delight
my gumdrop
my guppy
my life

I know I loved you too much
And I love you too much still

what is too much love?
there is no such thing
as too much love

kiss kiss my cake cup

flawless imperfection

©
I am human imperfection
my energy is perfect love
I am lovable and love worthy
I am love

Love me around me
and you will expand capacity to love
Flawless imperfection is hard work
yielding perfectly flawless love


I  am worth investment
the hard work
of loving me yields big yields:
I love back more!

I am a gem
flawless in my imperfection
a flawlessly imperfect gem
Like a flawless diamond only me.



-- Tree Fitzpatrick

exposing the transnational ruling class

exposing-the-transnational-ruling-class/

This excellent article names names, identifying the some specific members of the global 1% ruling class. Information we all should know and fight.

The pitchforks will come, sooner or later, and woebetide the greedy, glutted, obscenely wealthy ruling class.

be a rebel: like yourself