Various Portents

By Alice Oswald

Various stars. Various kings.

Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,

Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.

Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.

Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.

Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North Star, more than one South Star.

Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems,

Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thicknesses of Dark,

Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,

All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:

Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,

Works of wonder and/or water, snowflakes, stars of frost . . .

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,

Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,

Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,

Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,

Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,

And all sorts of drystone stars put together without mortar.

Many Wisemen remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,

Watches of wisp of various glowing spindles,

Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,

Seafarers tossing, tied to a star . . .

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.

Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening

Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.

in winter's deepest night

Triumphant in man’s deepest soul
Lives the Spirit of the Sun;
Quickened forces, set astir,
Awake the feelings to His presence
In the inner winter life.
Hope, impulse of the heart,
Beholds the Spirit victory of the Sun
In the blessed Light of Christmas,
The sign of highest life
In the winter’s deepest night.

Rudolf Steiner.

The Golden Tunnel

I am in the Golden Tunnel today. Great to be back. Everything is holy in the Golden Tunnel. Everything is happy. Love is all around. So is Light.

Various Portents

By Alice Oswald

Various stars. Various kings.

Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,

Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.

Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.

Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.

Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North Star, more than one South Star.

Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems,

Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thicknesses of Dark,

Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,

All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:

Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,

Works of wonder and/or water, snowflakes, stars of frost . . .

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,

Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,

Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,

Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,

Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,

And all sorts of drystone stars put together without mortar.

Many Wisemen remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,

Watches of wisp of various glowing spindles,

Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,

Seafarers tossing, tied to a star . . .

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.

Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening

Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.

remembering my childhood thrill over Xmas trees

the berlin wall

The Berlin Wall fell, I think, in 1989. Katie was seven. I don't remember paying much attention to the event but Katie must have heard about it at school. While Christmas shopping, for Xmas 89 or 90, we came upon a display in Dayton's Department Store: they were selling chunks of the Berlin Wall for $9.95. It was like a pet rock only with a putative historical significance. I don't remember how but the opportunity to own a piece of history captured Katie's fancy. She wanted to buy one for her dad for Christmas.

I tried to discourage her. I swear. I knew, instantly, that he-who-shall-not-be-named would think I was making a commentary, comparing our divorce to the falling of the Berlin Wall.

And he did. He was furious about that piece of the wall.

Katie was oblivious to any possible undertones in that hunk of the wall. She thought she was giving her dad a piece of history. She thought it was thrilling

The wisteria are in bloom again. . .

I lived in the Upper Midwest,  until I moved to the West Coast in 2002. I've been in CA since 2006.

I don't think wisteria thrives in the very hard frost of MN winters.

At my first CA swimming pool, one of my favorite parts of that pool experience was the walk home. I walked there on one route and walked home on another. My walk home took me through a private apartment complex, a very nice one, probably an expensive one. It has a long trellis that became completely drapped with luxuriously verdant wisteria.  I liked that walk all year round but when the wisteria were in bloom, I'd walk up and down under the archway from which hung dense wisteria.

Here in Berkeley, there is always a lot of wisteria. Wisteria must like cool, misty climates. Fog!

There is an Oakland public library on College Avenue that is fronted with many trellises. Right now, the wisteria is (are?) overflowing on those trellises.

When I lived in Seattle, I lived on the northernmost boundary of the city. I lived on 145th Street, which is where Seattle ended. Across the street from my building was a suburb. It was a poor, shabby part of Seattle, plus remote from everything anyone would want to do in Seattle. With just one bus line that snaked through north Seattle, then through the University of Washington campus and then snaked back up north on the other side of the city. It took forever to go anywhere on that bus.

I came up with self entertainment. I decided early on that all the front yards that I had many hours to view on the always slow bus were 'my garden'. I tried to memorize the gardens and then savor how they changed with the seasons.  It turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying expeirence. I came to quite love trees, shrubs, perennial gardens.  My point is that I paid a lot of attention to flowers in Seattle and I don't remember seeing huge plantings of hanging wisteria. Not anywhere there.

So I am wondering:  where else does wisteria thrive as it does here? I bet wisteria really likes the foggy, misty air of the bay.

ask: She gives

When I went to my weekly farmers market this Saturday, in my power wheelchair, I placed a bag on the back, one bag handle on each handle behind the chair.

I have been using this bag for the few weeks since I have this loaner wheelchair. When I have bought stuff, I stand up, step around, put stuff in the bag and get back in the chair. Standing up, moving around hurts. If I am moving for longer periods, all my stiff, kinked joints seem to loosen up but for the few moments of getting up to put my persimmons in the bag behind me is a lot more of a challenge than I think it should be. So I have been sending myself messages of self negation, grumbling to myself about growing more disabled.

Last Saturday, I tried something new. When I bought something, I paid for it and then I asked someone, chosen for their proximity to me, if they would please put my bolani in the bag behind me. Or whatever. I am way into the spinach bolani these days. And now I am way into the very nice young men who sell it. They are a free sample operation, almost aggressively offering potential customers all kinds of bolani and all kinds of toppings. They sell the toppings too. I buy some bolani every Saturday so they now see me as a regular. It is always nice to be a regular, in with some humans.

I never asked the bolani guys to put something in my back bag before. The guy had already given me two or three samples of different breads and spreads. He made, he said, a special sample for me, then came over to hand it to me and then to put my purchased items in the bag on the back of my wheelchair.  I thanked him, telling him the samples were delicious and he and his partner were such nice vendors.

As he walked behind my chair with my stuff, just two or three steps, him almost looming over me because I was seated and he was standing, he emanated kindness. So I said so, I said "You are so kind." And he said, and I did not make this up, "I am not kind. I am love."

That statement is still buoying me days later. I see his smile, see his being's light radiating as he came over to help me.

People mostly seem to light up when I ask them, strangers to me, to put something in my bag. People sometimes ask detailed questions to be sure they put it in right. These are flashing, fleeting moments of human connection. I quite enjoy this. And the secret to accessing such light, love and kindness is to ask for help.

Asking the occasional stranger to help me, plus accepting the many offers of help I get through my days (on UC campus, the students fall all over themselves to open doors and ask me if they can do anything else for me. . . such a lovely energy flowing through our exchanges) is allowing me to see something I have known all along but which I can lose sight of:  people not only want to be kind, they need to be kind. That old saw about giving is receiving is true. I am giving people something when I ask them to put my spinach in the bag on the back of my wheelchair. I am giving, and receiving, a moment of kindness, love, connection.

Thank you Goddess.

the love sound of puffing cranberries

Every Thanksgiving season I think about my holiday pie. I am not supposed to eat cranberries anymore because of a medication I take. I eat them when I make this pie.  I have been thinking about making my cranberry pear pie. I like the way memories can float about, like the smells coming from a kitchen readying a holiday feast.

It is a simple recipe. A bag of fresh cranberries (used to be a pound, these days these bags hold 12 ounces) and less than one cup of real maple syrup and a bunch of beautiful pears. Prebake the pie crust slightly. Peel and slice the pears. If you are baking this pie with a child, let the child eat all the pear slices s/he wishes to eat. Layer the fruit artistically. And use a lattice top. It is a very beautiful pie. The red cranberries shine like rubies nestled in the pears. The red peeks through the lattice crust nicely. Serve with unsweetened whipped cream. Let the child taste a fresh cranberry too, if they wish. Explain the word pucker afterwards.

The recipe is not really what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the real reason I love to make this pie.

You put the maple syrup in a saucepan with the cranberries. The actual recipe calls for two cups of maple syrup but one of the reasons I like this pie is that it is not too sweet. Cut way down on the maple syrup and you really taste fruit. Cranberries are tart so they need the syrup but use as little as possible.

Heat the syrup and cranberries gently, slowly. Here is the  reason I used to make this pie: as the cranberries warm up and start to both cook and absorb the maple syrup, they make a very soft puffing sound.

Oh my gosh, I love the sound of the cranberries puffing. I love to do this with a child. I love to enjoy the hushed anticipation as we listen for the first puff. While waiting, this is a good time to kiss the child on top of the head a few times. Quietly so you both hear the puffs.  Nowadays, when I think of this pie, I am mostly ruminating on making the pie so I can revisit the pleasure of kissing my Katie Joy atop her head as she helps.

As soon as the cranberries start puffing, you have to quickly pull the saucepan from the heat. The thrill does not last long, the puffing is only a few seconds and the sounds very soft. Yet it is a very fine experience. There is a temptation to keep the cranberries on too long in the hope that you will get to hear another mild puffing sound but you must resist. Resolve to make this pie again soon.

Then you layer the cooked berries, the pears and bake, not too long, just long enough to meld the flavors, to lightly bake the pears.

in out

I am not in the Golden Tunnel now. I wish I were.

genius is a male trait

Genius is, by its original definition, a male trait. For realsies.

Megan Garber published an article, about David Foster Wallace, but also about the male hijacking of human genius (some of that is my words!), published in May 2018 in The Atlantic. Here's link to the article:  men own genius? no fucking way  Again, I add my own flava to Ms. Garber's excellent piece.

Here is the etymology the Oxford English Dictionary provides for the word genius, imported to English straight from the Latin: “male spirit of a family, existing in the head of the family and subsequently in the divine or spiritual part of each individual, personification of a person’s natural appetites, spirit or personality of an emperor regarded as an object of worship, spirit of a place, spirit of a corporation, (in literature) talent, inspiration, person endowed with talent, also demon or spiritual being in general.”

There’s more, but there’s already so much: genius, by definition a male condition. Genius, a male condition that inflects its maleness on the individual soul. Genius, an object of worship. Genius, perhaps slightly demonic. The derivation isn’t surprising on its own (no one would mistake a typical Roman for a feminist). What is striking, though, is that, millennia later, the biases of the language remain with us, tugging at the edges. Genius itself, the way we typically conceive of it, remains infused with the male gaze, or perhaps more aptly, the male haze: It is gendered by implication. It is a designation reserved, almost exclusively, for men. Guess who the first seasonof that new show Genius is about? I’ll give you a hint: The first name of the genius in question is Albert. The subject of the show’s second season? Pablo.


I am angry.

dear daughter: I love you around all impediments

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Nothing can stop me from loving you unconditionally. I wish I were more skilled at loving myself. If I loved myself as I love you, well, I don't know.  I find myself imagining such self love but I am not there. XO

my next life

spring has now unwrapped her flowers

spring has now unwrapped her flowers SOMEONE WROTE THIS, I DON'T KNOW WHO, BUT NOT ME
day is fast reviving
life with all its growin powers
towards the light is striving
all the world with beauty fills
all the world with beauty fills
gold the green enhancing
flowers make glee among the hills
and set the meadows dancing AUTHOR UNKNOWN

I wrote the rest of this post. A dream:  I was at a conference that had no facilitation. Not open space, just poorly planned. All women. So everyone was hanging out,just roaming around, wondering what to do. Someone that did not know me had been asking around , or something (this was some dream confusion, the weird way dreams sometimes (always?) unfold, outside physical plane logic sometimes?..

someone women, two, came to me and asked if I could do something with music, saying tht some art would be good to coalesce the women's energy


at first I began to demur but something in me was dran to lead the group in singing. with no instruments what else could I offer but to sing, to sing in rounds. I agreed while still casting about in my mekories for something to sing. At first I thought of somewhat dull things to sing in rounds, like
frere jacque or you are my sunshine.  I cast off my dull song choices and decided to trust that a good song would come to me. And then it did.

I remember this song, typed at the top of this post. My daughter learned it in school and taught it to me as she and I worked in the garden of our house, new-to-use that spring. The song was perfect for working in our new garden. I had bought the house in winter and did not know what the landscaping was so spring days were unwrapping the shrubs, perennials, trees and weeds with each passing day.

Age ten, I think, Katie had learned the song and sung it many times and knew it well. She had the fast memory of a smart child and the embodied memory of having sung it over and jover. It took me several run throughs to memorize it but, as we see, I did memorize it. and memorized it for good because twenty five years later, I still know it.

Of course, when I remembered this song in my dreamscape, I decided to teach it to the women. When this plan emerged, I felt peaceful, confident and happy; In my dream, I kept going to a sloping hill with all the women assembled, imagined myself breaking them into three smaller groups, imagined myself teaching the group this song, imagined the group getting it well enough, with me reciting the lines one at a time as they sung the previous ones, guiding, conducting, leading.

I awoke before I lead the group in song but, in my dreamscape, I knew that the singing in rounds was wonderful, popular and energizing.

'art is like that.

to walk inside one's Self

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond
between two people:
that each should stand guard
over the solitude of the other.
What is necessary, after all, is only this:
solitude, vast inner solitude.
To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours -
that is what you must be able to attain. 
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Dad, this one is for you

Another day needing lemon cookie ice cream by Three Twins Organic Ice Cream. With an evil mad man in the White House and evil Republicans eager to keep corruption going, I need lemon cookie ice cream. With the world sliding into environmental, economic and dictatorship collapse, I'ma gonna eat what I want. My dad never tried to manage his diabetes, which is definitely why he has a massive, paralyzing stroke around age 56, then died at 62. His left side was paralyzed and he never regained the use of his left arm. He was able to limp, dragging his left leg a bit, but his left arm stayed dead. When I would see him eating sweets, which sometimes seemed like his only eating choice, he would say "Whadda I care? Life is short. Life is hard. And if eating cookies makes me feel better, whadda I care?" My dad would totally understand me eating lemon cookie ice cream two days in a row. I also did a TJ run this morning to stock up on their tasty chocoalte/coconut-covered almonds. This is what insulin is for! Dad, this pint of lemon cookie ice cream is for you. Cheers.

Icarus did not fail, his triumph came to an end

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

we must risk delight in these dark times

A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert.   Gilbert spent much of his life living abroad. From SF, he wrapped up his life in Berkeley.

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Hope, a dimension of the soul

"Either we have hope in us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the Spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it's good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. . . It is also hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless. . ."

- Vaclav Havel (1986)

today is her birthday

I started the day, of June 26, 1982, already in the hospital. I had sprung a small leak the evening before while waddling back to our table. We had gone out to dinner and a movie, with a plan to go out every day until our due date of July 11th.  I felt a very sharp pain as I walked back to the table from the restroom. Later, health care folks opined that I had had a contraction. Or else the baby had kicked.

We had planned to see "E.T." which opened in our city that day but, as usual, her dad came home late and ET was sold out. So we went to see 'Poltergeist', the only Friday evening movie at our cineplex that sitll had tickets.  When hospital staff speculated that I had a contraction or a baby kick when my water leaked, I silently wondered if it was the movie and its loud noise that had unsettled my baby.

While I had gone to the restroom, my husband had paid our check. So we went to our car and drove home. It was only when I started to get out of the car that I realized I had sprung a leak.

Pregnant women sometimes have a gusher when their water breaks. My water didn't quite 'break'. I really did simply spring a small leak. I knew, however, from reading and from the one lamaze class we had attended (and I had paid attention) that once that water seal was broken, the risk of infection was present. I knew the baby had to come.

My ex, however, did not trust my judgment. He insisted on going into our house, with me in the car sure I needed to go to a hospital for the baby's wellbeing, to call our labor and delivery nurse friend Denise. Denise was the instructor of our one delivery class but she was also the wife of one of my ex's childhood friends.

Denise agreed with me, telling my husband that I had to go to the hospital.

I did not go into labor that Friday night. The L&D staff decided we'd wait for me to go into labor. And my husband went home. The next morning, he went to his office. All the top staff worked on Saturdays and he was more worried about his appearances to his employers than his wife and baby over at the hospital. When he walked into work, he announced his wife was at the hospital and might have the baby that day. All the men he worked with dropped their jaws. They were all husbands and fathers and they couldn't believe he had gone to work instead of staying with me.

He had asked my labor and delivery nurse to give him a call when it looked like the baby was coming soon. Really he did. The men he worked with were so appalled that he had gone to his office that he came to the hospital. He showed up at the hospital with his wife in labor with his child because the guys at work were appalled that he was not with me. He did not show up because of me. Or his baby.

Sometime that day, my L&D nurse actually said to me, in a hush, that I seemed better off without him. She took to sending him on errands all that day to keep him away from me as much as she could. He was upset that I did not go into labor on my own. Huh? Why was he blaming me for nature? He was upset that I had been given a drug to get me into labor.  He was upset that I called for pain relief, as if my doing so was an embarassment to him. This is not a moron. He has an MBA and a JD but he didn't seem to grasp basic things, such as I did not control when I went into labor, when I delivered.

A substitute ob-gyn, for my doc was out of town for his daughter's wedding, came around at 9 a.m. the morning of June 26 and gave me the 'pits', the pitocin to prod my body into labor. 

I spent much of June 26, 1982 waiting to feel labor pains. Once I felt some, I called for drugs. Even my L&D nurse saw that my husband was not a real support so she did not press us to try natural delivery. Induced labor with pitocin generally has more intense labor pains.

Blah blah blah. I got drugs. I got wheeled into delivery. My baby was born.

Later, Mr. Charm told me what he had seen watching our daughter be born, watching all the blood, tissue, etc., that had to be expelled from my body, had been really disgusting. He said "Your body is really disgusting". He was referring to my placenta, her placenta, life process.  A screen was placed so I could not see what my ex referred to as the grossly disgusting bits.  For one moment, I was propped up and given a mirror so I could see beyond the screen to see my body half out of my body. I wanted to watch the whole thing.  I was not put off by the messy stuff. I think that propping me up for a seconds-long glimpse of my baby half in and half out, before we saw her gender, was an odd touch. Was that supposed to help baby and I feel bonded?  It didn't.  I had been as bonded to her as any mother ever has been from the first instants I felt the new being in my body. I felt the presence of another being in my body in the first week or two that she landed in there.

He never patted my hand throughout my labor. He never paid any attention to me at all.  He was such an odd duck.

She was wonderful.  They took her away briefly to clean her up and then brought her back to me. He followed her. In the recovery room, they also took the baby away for a short while. The idea seemed to be that new parents would want to talk to one another alone for a bit. Not my guy. He left me alone in my recovery room and stayed with her.

He loved her. I am sure he still does. So do I.

Say, I am writing this story very differently than past tellings. And I am not keening in grief over losing her as I have. Progress? Or the end of caring?

This is how the day she was born unfolded for me.

summer produce

blackberries, boysenberries, fresh figs, stone fruits (Arctic Star peaches! Arctic Snow nectarines!), avocados and my weekly load of spinach and kale, a red onion to flavor salads, a bag of salad greens and heirloom tomatoes.

I will likely braise some spinach, smoothie-pulverize some kale. Such prep is all the cooking I'll be doing this week.

A tiny basket of boysenberries will be a meal. A few figs are heaven.

As I trundled home after my farmers market foray this morning, I imagined human ancestors foraging for food, eating what they foraged, with no agriculture and no cultural rules about 3 meals a day, sit down dinners or whatever.

If I had to choose just one food to feed on this week, it would be fresh figs.

And I don't have to choose!

love dynamites the heart to grow

The pain of love is the dynamite that breaks up the heart, even if it be as hard as a rock.
Everybody can speak of love and claim to love, but to stand the test of love and to bear the pain in love is the achievement of some rare hero.
The mere sight of love's pain makes the coward run away from it.
No soul would have taken this poison if it had not the taste of nectar.
Those who have avoided love in life from fear of its pain have lost more than the lover, who by losing himself gains all.
The loveless first lose all, until at last their self is also snatched away from their hands.
The warmth of the lover's atmosphere, the piercing effect of his voice, the appeal of his words, all come from the pain of his heart.
The heart is not living until it has experienced pain.
Man has not lived if he has lived and worked with his body and mind without heart.
The soul is all light, but all darkness is caused by the death of the heart. Pain makes it alive.
The same heart that was once full of bitterness, when purified by love becomes the source of all goodness; all deeds of kindness spring from it. <3 span="">
~Hazrat Inayat Khan

pink salt tomatoes fresh mozarella

After my great swim work out today, I sliced a vine-ripened tomato, ground a bit of pink Himalayan salt on the tomatoes, then added some slices of fresh mozzarella. The salt was so delightful as I bit into my lunch feast.  Just that bit of salt was transformative?!  I think so.

Pink lemonade blueberries yesterday. Pink-salted tomatoes today.  I am loved by Creation and I love Creation.

pink lemonade blueberries

Pink lemonade blueberries are designer agriculture. Corporate ag scoping out high profit drops. And awesome.

Every three months, I see a doctor in an office a block away from a Whole Foods. Every three months, I go into this WF to, typically, buy some hot prepared food for my lunch or dinner. Or linner.  I also always roll through the produce, mostly to be shocked by all the high pricing.
Today I took an attentive stroll past the large berries display. ONe side had organic berries, the other side conventional. WF sells mostly Driscoll berries which I am boycotting. Geez, they had a pound of Driscaoll's organic strawberries so cheap!!! those strawberries gave me the gimmees. I had to get some berries so I strolled around to the conventional side, just to see what was what.

I never buy conventional produce anymore. Never say never.

There, up close and almost personl, were teeny tiny, plastic clamshell containers container 4.4 ounces of. . .  drum roll . . pink lemonade blueberries. For only $5.99. For conventional!!!

Berries are some of, mostly, low glycemic fruit, good for this type one diabetic.  I have been tightly titrating my glucose and insulin lately. Which is how I rationalized buying a few ounces of pink lemonade blueberries.

Pink lemonade blueberries have no lemon taste. No pink inside but the skins are a bit pinkish.  They don't have all that much flavor.

I offered one or two pink lemonade blueberries to my property managers, then the two maintenance guys, then a couple neighbors.

My main property manager told me she just saw cotton candy cherries at Costco.  I said "I don't go to Costco, it's too hard to get to without a car but if I saw cotton candy cherries, I would buy one pint, for sure."

Pink lemonade blueberries!! They will be out of season by the time I see my pain specialist again. Praise goddess. They are spendy. They made me happy, so worth the indulgence.

Pink lemonade blueberries. Yowsa.

so this guy said

I have a newish friend, a man the same age as my daughter. He likes me. I like him.  I have, sometimes, strong maternal urges towards him.  He is an unusual guy.  He just quit one of his jobs to become a nanny for a newborn. The newborn's father is a psychiatrist, male, who came to realize he was sure he wanted to have a child but he was not clear he would marry. So he hired a surrogate and now has his month old son. Approximately one month.

My friend has never been around kids, much less infants, before he started to tend this little boy. Neither has the father. And no, my friend is not the lover of the baby's father and he is not gay and neither is the baby's father. The world is changing and men let themselves have children, sometimes, without female life partners.

My pal, let's call him Bob (not his name), does not trust himself to learn to distinguish the baby's sounds and cries. I told him today that babies make restless sounds, hurt sounds, hungry sounds, needing-a-nap or diaper change sounds. After Bob left today, I googled something about babies and came upon a website that suggested that some people never get to understand a baby's different sounds.

Huh.  When I have tended babies closely, and my daughter was not the first baby I tended*, I often did not need to hear any sound from the babies. I would simply intuit what they needed. My intuition was very strong about my daughter. I would know she was going to want to nurse an hour before she did, and I would know she'd want to drink in an hour. I once told her father "We shouldn't go out to brunch today [my first Mother's Day with no reservations] because we'd have a long wait for a table on such a major brunch day and our baby was going to want to eat before we got seated. Plus my ex hated when I nursed our daughter in public, although I often did so.

*I was a primary caregiver for my youngest bro, who was born when I was ten. I tended him more waking hours than either of our parents until our parents divorced and our mother took him to a new state without telling where. He was 7 when she defied her divorce judge by removing my baby brother and baby sister. Sis was born when I was 13 and I was her primary caregiver.

Anyway, today Bob surprised me by bringing up my daughter. He knows I struggle, painfully, over her choice to shun me for going on 17 years (maybe longer, don't want to think the numbers through).  I have told Bob that I have been doing a pretty good job turning off my longing for my daughter, plus he does not often introduce topics into our talks.

He said "I've been thinking about how you feel about your daughter. I wonder if it might help you if you could see she is flawed, not perfect, maybe even not nice. Well, duh. A daughter that took took took from me and then when she had bled me dry and I wobbled as I faced an empty nest, she shed me like dead skin but kept the expensive education, arts training and the proceeds of my duplex that could be giving me a comfortable income in retirement. Instead it gave her an Ivy degree. I believe she thinks she did it all on her own. There, I am feeling lots of pain again so I'll wrap this up.

I surprised Bob when I said "I know her choices related to me are cunty. I shared the story of my sister showing me brochures for my daughter's early college. Sis said "I think you should let her leave h.s. after her sophomore year and have her go to this school. I think if you live two more years with you, you will be dead because she is so mean to you and you don't even seem to notice."

I noticed. And when I shared this little story with Bob, he was surprised. I think he thought I had only fluffy love for my beloved child. I do block out her callous disregard of me and I blocked it out when she lived with me as a young child and teen.

She's a feckless cunt, at least as far as I am concerned. As I relayed a few stories to Bob today, about my daughter, he seemed relieved to learn I saw some of her negativity. And the talk with Bob helped me. Bob is not my shrink, btw. He is my housecleaner. 

I believe loving her around her callous shunning of me is hugely iportant. I believe my unconditional love, even without contact between us, is real energy that buoys her and guoys me. I thought, after Bob left today, of Shakepeare's Sonnet 116 which is, most believe, a romantic love sonnet but it speaks so beautifully about human love. I shared with Bob the geat line from sonnet 116 that says 'love admits no impedments'. Loving her is about who  I am. Holding her in my heart, loving her, matters. It matters to me and my belief system says it matters to her whether she knows it consciously or not.

A week from today she turns 36. I have not seen her, other than one abusive glimpse a couple years ago, since she was 17. I have never known her as an adult. How to bear such a grievous loss?  On my good days, I bear it by allowing myself to love her.

Bob seemed a little surprised but also glad to hear my perspective.

my dad

My parents got divorced at a court hearing held the day after my high school graduation.  Mom said, under oath, to the judge that she agreed she would not take my baby sister and toddler brother out of the state of Illinois. She left that courtroom and raced to our house to meet her United Moving Van. Those movers removed most of the furniture in our house, even taking my bed.

My dad did not want the divorce. He had not believed she would go through with it until she actually did. He did not have a lawyer but he went to court to plead to be able to see his kids.

Mom disappeared with my babies, for I believe I had spent more time with them, tending them, thorughout my h.s. years than our mother or father spent with them. I was the family cook, grocery shopping (done by stroller with the babies in tow, so shopping for one day at a time so I could haul kids and groceries home in that stroller). Mom was working half time, in the evenings to earn money for her college tuition. Mom went to college during the day. I was pressured to get the kids from their child care as soon as possible after school to save the hourly childcare fees. I actually had the use of the family car, which angered my teenage bros, so I could get the kids when I needed to.  I had the car a lot but I don't remember grocery shopping with it. We lived very near grocery stores, a short walk. And my babies like the walks.  I am skipping over lots of detail because I came here to write about a specific meory of my father.

Mom hid her location from my dad, thus hiding what I considered my babies from me. Off to college at the end of the divorce summer, I became drunk regular and cried about my lost babies. Mom reappeared only after she tried to collect the child support dad had owed but their divorce judge had said my dad didn't have to pay her a dime until she told him where his children were living. So she didn't surface because she cared about her other four children, including me and including Tom who was six when she fled with my babies. Tom was also a baby to me but I was only 7 when he was born and my babysitting talent was limited at age 7.

I spent college holidays at my dad's. Later I also sometimes spent school break time at my moms new home in Ohio but, except for the one time all the kids in our family but me went to mom
s for Xmas and I stayed in Chicago so dad wouldn't be alone on Christmas. Otherwise, I pretty much organized our family Christmasses during my college and grad school years.

I'd get to dad's in Chicago and start shopping. I learned what each of my siblings wanted for Xmas and I'd go out and get it. Dad gave me credit cards and freedom, trusting me more than he trusted himself to get the younger children their most wanted Xmas gifts. Sometimes the little ones had no specific want.

One year, I found a blue mylar/shiny vest that was supposed to be a disco dancing vest. I bought that shiny sparkling vest plus a skull cap about the shape of a swim cap but this hat was covered in multi color sequins. It was great stuff for playing dress up. My sister was thrilled with it.

When my dad had seen the hat and vest, he had been skeptical sis would like it. When she loved it, his eyes teared up as he cast meaningful glances at me, signaling his gratitude that I had chosen so well for my sister.

My dad was happy with hid children that day, esp happy to have the little kids in Chicago with him on Xmas. I used to have a photo, and maybe I still do, of my dad wearing that sequined cap and that shiny, shimmering blue vest with his long arms wrapped around my little sister (maybe age 7 by then?).  My dad looks as happy in the photo I am remembering as he ever looked. He looked joyful. And, and this was the kind of super power my dad often displayed, he managed to joyfully play with my little sister while he joyfully signalled his gratitude towards me. He actually said, his arms draped about little sis, that he realized I had gotten everyone exactly what they wanted. He teared up a bit, even choked up. And then, his face collapsed as he realized he had not gotten me anything.

He scrambled, telling my one elder brother to come with him. They went to Walgreens and he had brought my one older bro to give advice. My dad never really grasped how nasty this brother was towards me. He was not about to pick me out good gifts, although in those days, Walgreens was not the everything store it is today.  Dad brought home a couple drug store presents -- cologne and an address book -- and told me he had had them in the trunk of his car. I went along with that tale.  He had forgotten about me and presents for me. Truth told, being given money to buy what I wanted for my siblings, all deeply loved by me, had been a great gift.

My dad's been gone about 30 years. I miss him often. Some days I keen in longing for him. Some days I manage to feel his love for me and mine for him. Today is such a day.

I miss my dad.

my dad rolling over in his grave

My dad grew up in a milieu that took the Democratic machine politics of Chicago as a baseline for life.  Dad's father had worked for the city, reteaining his secure, steady gig through the Depression. My dad was a college grad but he sidled into Chicago city jobs for their job security.  Security was my dad's top priority. To possess and retain that security, he was happy to be a precinct captain for the original Mayor Daley's political machine.

And my dad prodded all his kids to get government jobs. Government jobs were a winning formula for the Irish in Chicago. As I graduated from law school, my dad made a hard push for me to become a Chicago police officer. As if.

And if one didn't work for 'the city', the next best thing was a good union job.

I have four brothers and a sister. I didn't go government or union. My sister chose a career in international education, having now taught in China, Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Egypt, Albanian and, since she and I have not been in touch in over ten years, maybe other countries.  

My sister flunked as a U.S. public school teacher. She did work for a couple public schools but she failed to hide her racism.

My baby brother is gay. If he is racist, he has hidden it from me.  He is not at all political. He'll sleep with any race as long as his lover is male.

My three other brothers, which include a retired judge, a sliding into retirement accountant for unions (he learned the union lesson?) and one who got fired from his gig driving a delivery truck for Chicago schools because he is a drunk. Still, he was a union man until he got bounced.

My sister and the three other brothers are all racists.   Racism among whites raised in Chicago is not unusual. I grew up white in Chicago's South Side. I heard plenty of privately articulated racism all my life. But never from my mother or father. 

I had a boyfriend in h.s., somoene I dated a few months, who often commented about the monkeys, the free circus show he 'treated' me to when we went somewhere downtown. Going downtown meant we had to pass thorugh some all black neighborhoods. Mike, this awful boyfriend*, would say "I'm going to take this route so we can see more of the monkeys in the circus". He was referring to black humans.  I cringed to hear comments like that but I don't think I, when age fifteen, objected. I was shy with guys. I was shy about everything. And I did not understand the murky paths of racist commentary.

My top three brothers (so excluding my gay baby bro) grew more open in their casual, racist invectives. As we got to college age and beyond, these brothers, and my sister, spoke openly in racist tones, using the "N" word a plenty.

I am estranged from all my siblings. Not my choice.  I made a friend request on a FB page for my Irish twin, my brother Joe. Gosh, I may have made that request years ago. And Joe only has about 8 FB friends so he is not particularly invested in using FB. Still, recently, he accepted my friend request.  I am astonished that he did. Of course I looked at his FB page once he accepted me and granted me access. Which is how I learned he has a few 'likes' and one of his likes is some Donald Trump fan group.

I am reminded of the time my sister, fourteen years younger than me, was in college. I was a young mom and lawyer living far from the family of origin but we still saw one another a few times a year. I would go home to visit my folks and always saw my sibs. Once, when sis was in college, we had some exchange, the details forgotten, in which she said, snarkily, sneeringly, dismissively "Oh, people of your generation think everything matters." To which I retorted "Everything does matter. It is delusion to think it doesn't." She was referring to my, in her view, inappropriate attitude about blacks.  Crazy, black sheep me, I knew people of color are my equal, are all perfectly good.

I wonder how sis feels about Trump.  I have seen, on her FB page, that my niece has recently declared herself in love and in relationship with a young black man. Christ on a  cracker:  that would have killed my sister when I knew her. And sis' husband, my niece's adoptive father, is a Frenchman, a racist bigot, a drunk (as reported by my sister) and an all around dirtbag.

Trump?  In my family of origin?  Un-fucking-believable. Yet apparently true.

My father could tolerate racist commentary from his children but he would have had a wicked ahrd time choking down seeing any of his kids love any Republican, much less this awful scumbag DonBoy.

let me off

A conversation from about ten years ago has been flickering into my thoughts.  I was in the golden tunnel, aware of energy at some lovely, subtle levels. I felt the pulse of the Cosmos/Love/Goddess most of the time.  In such a space, I became vividly aware that the Cosmos is always conscious of me and all beings.  If someone reads this and disagrees, that's okay. I get to own my own life, my experience of being.

Some guy I knew at the time learned that I believed the Cosmos was aware of each and every being, and he scoffed, mocked, saying "No way is there an omnipresent consciousness that knows about you all the time."

In another direction, I have always found myself reflecting very fleetingly, here and there, on the various stories religions come up with to explain creation.

I was raised in a very seriously Catholic community. I learned lots about Bible stories from eighteen years of Sunday sermons that always had some kind of root in the Bible. I learned a lot about Jesus in the Bible.  No one in my Catho-world questioned an Immaculate Conception that resulted in Jesus Christ. 

I have heard many, and I have done this a bit myself, laugh at the origin stories adopted by the Mormon Church or Scientology.  Very recently, it struck me that any and all origin stories are human, imperfect, maybe impossible, attepts to explain essential mystery.

Why are we here?  Why are there fireants?  When did humans become humans? Where did the Earth come from?

I can no longer ascribe to the many creation myths that have male energy (patriarchy much?) at the core of Creation. I have yet to learn of humans who were not born from women's bodies.  It makes a kind of sense that men tried to hijack the human narrative and make it male dominator-y.  Men felt threatened and exerted control. Not unlike the tale of the USA fighting perpetual wars to retain its dominance.

farmers market, high food prices, good food

I have been buying less at my Saturday farmers market. Berkeley's farmers markets seem to price based on the theory of charging whatever the market will bear. The farmers markets in tourist-mobbed San Francisco sell local, organic foods for significantly less than the Berkeley markets.  And the vendors here, in Berkeley, seem to be dissociated from pricing reality. There have been many times that a vendor assured me her price was lower than anywhere else; I hold my tongue on such occasions because I pay close attention to food costs and they are very high at the Berkeley market.

Berkeley has a couple beyond-awesome locally owned, large grocery stores that sell awesome, and awesomely priced, organic food. It's not all local but where everything comes from is posted.

So why do I still go to my nearby market? Because there are a few things I can't get anywhere else. At least no where that I know about.

White mulberries were today's best score. These white mulberries are long. Very fragile. And priced at $7 for a tiny basket of, maybe, four ounces (I think it is less ounces).  If there are white mulberries again next week, that will be it for the year. White mulberries are a fastly fleeting bit of magic.

Black wild mulberries are another rarity that appears once or twice each spring. I bought some wild black ones last Saturday.

When I was a child, I spent lots of time most summers on my cousin Joy's Indiana farm. Her parents farm.  Joy's mom was my mother's sister. Joy's dad was, I think, the oldest son in  very large farm family. His parents, Rosie and Lem, bought up small, adjacent farms to their original farm, to have more acres to grow food and grow income for their growing clan. Most such farms came with a farmhouse so scattered in a bit of a cluster, my uncle's siblings, the ones old enough to be married with kids, moved into the farmhouses that his parents, well, his whole clan, bought.

Joy had an aunt, my uncle's baby sister, named Maggie.  Maggie was a year younger than me.  I heard lots of jokes mixing up the word aunt with the child named Maggie.  Maggie did not have a farm. She was a child and lived with her parents, Rosie and Lem. And with Jane, Rosie and Lem's oldest daughter who had had polio and could not walk.

I do run on, eh?

The farmhouse Joy and her parents lived in with, more or less, kitty corner, separated by an interaction of a gravel road, from the grandparents (Rosie/Lem).  In the front yard of that farmhouse, but actually on what was, in practical life, the side yard because no one ever used the front door or side porch to come and go to that house. Everyone walked in off the gravel driveway next to the kitchen. So the 'front' yard felt like the back.

In that front yard was an old black mulberry tree. It was taller than the two story house. My aunt never went to windows in her house that overlooked the yard with the mulberry tree.

Joy and I would pick all the mulberries within our reach but we could not get up past, maybe, six feet. Seeing thousands of ripely perfect mulberries going up above the roof was so tantalizing.

Being a bit older, and having endless brothers who did things like I did on that farm, I had JOy and I haul out a ladder so we could teeringly climb to the top and pick more mulberries. We got away with it for a goodly while because no one saw us.

Once my aunt found out, and I still don't get what was wrong with picking mulberries on a ladder (one of us held it down to the other and I was always the one up on the ladder, not my aunt's precious daughter), my aunt showed us the most anger I had ever seen. Even now, I can't understand why she was so upset. And she was upset with me, who she always saw as the instigator of things we did that she decided were unacceptable.  She was kinda right. I was usually the instigator, at least with stuff. Joy was the one who dressed up Puff, her cat, in doll clothes but I got blamed for Puff in doll clothes.

I'm running out of gas and I have to get in my laps.  Story incomplete.

Quickly:  a few other must-buys that only show up at my farmers market for brief appearances: persimmons, both kinds, and dried persimmons, both kinds; great tamales that keep in the fridge -- they cost $9 for four at the market and $14 at one of our local grocery stores -- but the tamales are a year-round thing.  Today I bought a four-pack of spinach and mushroom tamales. Yes, they are all vegetarian. And have some vegan ones, as in no cheese.

Oh, I want to mention the $12 a quart almond milk. $48 a gallon.  I mostly drink almond milk these days, but I will happily use coconut. These commercially prepared non-dairy milks nearly all use carrageenan, a known carcinogen. The $12/quart organic almond milk is carcinogen free but wow on the price. Making almond milk is actually easy if one has a Vitamix. And that's what I do:  make almond milk from raw organic almonds. This is not quite cheap but it is much less costly than the $12/quart stuff.

angels in america

I got myself perked up with the thought of seeing 'Angels in America".  Nathan Lane plays Roy Cohn in the Broadway show.

The Berkeley Rep is a great theater, often previewing shows that land on Broadway. And it happens to be doing 'Angels' now but, whoo-ee, the tickets for Berkeley's Angels in America are something like $175. I can't swing that.  I need a date with money to spend on me!

So maybe I should try to see it in NYC where it is, strangely enough, less expensive than Berkeley. Whodathunkit?

Thinking about 'Angels' reminded me that my daughter was still considering a career in acting as the world awaited Angels in America. She was in all the plays at her first college, always iwth a lead role. Always great. She also worked with a professional group in a play based entirely on Emily Eickinson journals and poetry. She got rave reviews. She could have been an actor but she shifted.

In her still-considering-acting days, her dad called me once to complain to me, as if it were my choice that our daughter was acting. He said she might starve and what was I thinking 'letting' her act.

To which I responded something like this:  "you are probably right, that the odds of her making a living as an actor are slim. And she might not make it. But think about the skills she is building. First her dancing:  she learned to perform emotionally and brilliantly as a dancer, revealing her soul to audiences and doing so scantily clad as dancers often are. And now she is learning how to present herself. She is building skills that would serve anyone in any field.  Leave her be. She's smart. She'll find her way."

I also believe, now, and this is very painful for me to think, that he was phonig her in those years too, denigrating me, saying whatever he could to put a wedge between her and me.  (should that be first person singular? -- I don't care).

After that, he told her he would support her if she went to NYC to try to get acting work, which was something she was briefly considering. Mia Farrow, whose son Ronan was ten and going to the same early college she did, had told her she was good enough to go to NYC, get an agent and get acting. I wanted to throttle Ms. Farrow. Farrow's parents were both movie world stars so of course Ms. Farrow easily got an agent at age sixteen.

But Katie came with some build in wisdom and smarts, I guess. She found her way with, whether she thinks so or not, my considerable help.

Oh:  I am thinking of Katie as I consider getting tickets to see Angels in America on Broadway on this trip because she asked me to buy her a copy of the play (so maybe my memories are wrong and Angels was already out?!) so she could prepare a solo from the play for auditions. Even as a student in college, she had to audition.

Her small first college did one 'big' play each of the four semesters she was there. She had the female lead in all of them.

I love her. I miss her.

Suffering required for higher development

Suffering is a side effect of higher development. We cannot avoid it in attaining insight. Human beings will one day say to themselves: ‘I am grateful for the joy the world gives me, but if I had to face the choice of keeping my joys or my sufferings, I would want to keep my sufferings for the sake of gaining insight. Every suffering presents itself after a certain time as something we cannot do without, because we have to grasp it as part of the development contained within evolution. There is no development without suffering, just as there is no triangle without angles.
[…]
By overcoming egotism, human beings get over the mood of depression and feeling lamed or paralyzed. In this phenomenon we can see something that is good: strength out of insufficiency or inadequacy. Thank God that I am encouraged by an inadequate deed–that is, by its failure–to further action! Human striving is not a vague matter of luck. Only those whose free will turns away from the destiny of the human being remain unredeemed. In the synthesis of the world process, suffering is a factor.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – The Spiritual Hierarchies and the Physical World, April 21, 1909 – 2008 edition, p. 147

I love New York in May

I love visiting New York.  I am here for some work, extending my visit so I can do tourist things. This trip, I am going to finally get to The Cloisters. Well, maybe. So much art. So little time.

I don't know much about what tourist things there are to do outside of art. Theater, sure, but that gets expensive and I don't much care about live theater.  I'm glad its there for others.

I took my niece, Izzy, to see Cats. First we stood in a long line inside the World Trade Center (pre-911!) to buy cheaper tickets. One of those day-of-the-show ticket sales booths was in the WTC. We struck up a conversation with a young woman from Ireland. Izzy's then-parents (a then-stepfather and her mom) were in Ireland.  I was the 10 ten babysitter.

When we went to 'Cats', waiting in the lobby to move into the theater, we struck up a conversation with some older man who, upon hearing she was my niece, asked us if she were really my niece or if we just called me her aunt for social reasons. "I am her mother's sister, I am her aunt, she is my niece" I assured him but he continued to voice his disbelief.

Once, my sister and niece met met in the Walker Sculpture Garden while I was getting some tour guide training. They arrived just as my class was ending. I introduced sister and niece to another art docent who said "you didn't have to tell me they were your relatives, my goodness, you all look so alike".

I think what that old coot in the Cats lobby was focussed on was my fat. Izzy was not.

I thought Cats was unusually boring, although toddler Izzy liked the crawling cats.  I couldn't believe it had run a very long time on Broadway.  But its a musical. Splashy musicals are fun (Cats did not strike me as splashy . . . I just didn't get it) but they are not much of a draw for me.

If I were going to see a play, it would definitely be "Angels in America".  We'll see if we can get tix while I'm in NYC. It's pretty last minute.

And one can always get into art spaces!

the hired help

"I am here for my annual pap smear and lab tests for any sexually transmitted diseases," the law student said to the doctor's receptionist. She had chosen a gynecologist out of the phone book, one near her father's home. She was spending time with her family over her Christmas break from school.  Still on her dad's insurance, it was easier to get the annual check up in Chicago.

She had been sexually active for a few years. And, like a good feminist and self-care-taker, she always had this annual check up.

There was a short wait to see the doctor. An assistant gave her one of those drapes of fabric to cover her up. She thought, as she took off her clothes and put on that open-in-the-back cover, which are all paper nowadays, that she did not think she needed to remove her top clothes but she did not voice that concern. She submitted to what she was ordered to do.  Of course she needed to have no pants on to get the pap. But making her sit, in a cold office in late December, in just that bit of robe was not necessary. It gave her a creepy vibe.t had still

The doctor came in. He greeted her. He said and did the routine, telling her to scooch down a bit more, explaining that he was going to put his hand insider her, then telling her that she might feel a pinch when he took the scrape he needed for the pap test.

So far, so good. 

When the doctor had done the pap, he could have, as was typically for this young law student when she got her annual gynecological check up, let her get dressed again before drawing her blood. Instead, the doctor had her remain, almost nude and freezing, on the exam table.

It was common for his assistant to draw blood for the annual blood test. In those days, doctors did not usually send her to a lab for a blood draw. Their offices just did the blood draws and sent it to a lab.

This time, the unfamiliar doctor announced he would draw her blood. As he put on the tourniquet, then tapped her arm to find a good vein, he said "Worried about sleeping with too many guys, are you?"

She was astonished. It took a couple moments for her to register that the doctor had just made an inappropriate comment about her private life.

"I always get an annual pap and an annual blood test for sexually transmitted diseases. I was told to do this for basic self care and I do it every year."  She ducked saying anything about her sex life. It had still not quite registered with her that the doctor was behaving abusively, batting his eyes as if he were flirting, making faces as he suggested she was, in his judgmental assessment, too sexually active.

As she lay on the exam table, trying to calm herself enough to say something, she thought "I have only had sex with one guy, my boyfriend, this past year. I am just getting this test out of self care habit."  And she thought "This clown is a doctor so he knows that even if I only had sex with one guy, I was sleeping with all that guy's past sex partners if he did not use condoms. This was just good, early feminist days, self care.  She had attended health clinics for female college students. She was doing the right thing and this doctor was behaving inappropriately.  He did not need to ask about her sex life and especially did not have any business making jokes about her promiscuity.  She could not quite get her thinking clear so she said little. She got dressed as soon as she could. And she left that office without saying anything to anyone.

On the short drive back to her father's, she calmed down and got clear on what thoughts she wanted to share with the doctor. When she got to her dad's, she phoned the doctor's office. First she blurted out to the receptionist that the doctor had no business asking her about the number of sex partners, no business leering at me as he speculated about my sex life. She announced, with rising angry tones, "The doctor violated me and I am going to report him to the Illinois Medical Board."

The receptinist asked her to wait on hold so she could put the doctor on the phone. By then, she had found her voice, found her anger and she all but shouted at the doctor, accusing him of harassment, then slamming down the phone.

A week or so later, she got the lab test results. The pap had been fine and her blood tests showed no sign of syphyllis.

And she never got a bill from the gynecologist.

women's lib

my privilege, being pure joy's mother

Pure Joy Tea: for real

I bought a small package of a beautiful looking and beautiful smelling, custom blended tea from a herbalist and healer today. The tea is called Heart Afire, Pure Joy. And it says made with love.

One can see bits of rose petals in the bag. QUERY:  do I send it to her? or drink it and try to feel loving towards myself as I sip? I'd use some almond milk. I love milky tea.

My daughter is named Pure Joy, altho I gave her a more conventional first name that means pure instead of naming her pure.  I chose her name with much clarity of intention:  she would be pure joy!!!

Ha. Ha. Happy Mother's Day to me, the childless mother.

I so fucking hate Mother's Day. As has become part of my awful Mother's Day ritual, I have ruminated several times this weekend about my first Mother's Day after her birth, which was in May 1983.  Being with her was pure joy but, Mother's day being on a weekend, her father's presence marred my day.

Her father was, as he was every day, a pure asshole. She was pure joy, pure bliss, pure love.

courageous love, conscious love

When a couple with a karmic love connection part ways, it is seldom the courageous one who fled. It is the coward that flees.   For some, cowards, when they meet a powerful love connection, they choose from their fears and abandon their beloved from fear. Conscious, whole loving shines a light on our darkness and the coward flees that light, flees being seen. Yet being really seen is the gift of love and worth any risk. And it is, ultimately, no risk, to be vulnerable to one's beloved. Some people can't handle having their dark places known by their beloved. Real intimacy, or conscious loving,  requires real presence, and if someone isn’t ready to be truly here on an individual level, they will find it very difficult to manage all the triggers that come up in connection. 

Only the brave can remain open to the light, and darkness revealed, of love.

Bolinas, CA

I've been to Bolinas once. It is a hippie dippie coastal town, north of Marin, along the coast, along Highway 1.  I lived in Sonoma for awhile with my then eight year old daughter.  Her father threatened to have me mutilated if I did not return to the Midwest so I did, cutting short my longing to live in CA.  Katie and I took many drives in the short time we lived in the area. t was all new and exciting.

We did not know about Bolinas, we happened upon it.  Once we strolled down its main street, poking our heads into shops, especially a children's book store.  I usually let my daughter pick out what she would read. I did try to keep her from reading stories like "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" because it had a scene of a girl being raped. And when I was strongly enthusiastic about "The Bean Tress" [a few years after the Bolinas book incident I am about to describe], I tried hard because it is a great novel but definitely an adult novel.  By about the fifth grade, so, what, age 10, I had accepted that my daughter was going to read what she wanted. What was I going to do?  Censor her choices?  So. Not. Me.

When we visited the shops in Bolinas when she was 8 or maybe 9, I still made some attempts to keep some books out of her hands but hey, I had not read all the books in the world. And I tended to trust star children's book writers like Beverly Clearly.

The children's book store was packed. It would have been a weekend, for otherwise K-J would have been in school.  We had to snake our way through the store as if it was one long line. Every inch of the shop was full of people. We passed by books like robotic models on a conveyor belt. There was plenty of time to look at books because that endless, snaking line moved very very very slow.

Katie picked out a book. It it wasn't by Cleary, it was by another children's writer my daughter had happily read many times. And I repeat:  I had not read every children's book ever published.

Katie wanted a book for the ride home. Say, back then she avoided talking to me, eh? I agreed to buy her the book she selected without looking at it.

When we got to the cashier to pay for her chosen book, the cashier asked if she could speak to me on the side, away from Katie. She said "I don't think you want to buy this book for your daughter, it is too mature for her."  I tut-tutted a bit, saying my daughter was smart and the book did not look to be above her age level. I did not say, but I was thinking "My daughter is a genius and is already reading books like Austen, she can handle this kiddie novel".

The woman, however, was very upset. And adamant. She seemed ready to refuse to see us that book.

Hey, it was a book store. There were many more books. I capitulated to that woman, asking her to recommend a book. Later I looked at the book the cashier had not wanted to sell us. It in volved a child's death.

By the time Katie was ten, she had read the 500 to 600 page "Mists of Avallon" which, if memory serves, opens with a brother and sister, who don't now they are siblings but the reader does, having sex in a Beltane ritual. Once she read that, I let her read anything she chose. The Bean Trees was a book, she happily told me, she had read on the sneak years ago. And I had suspected gtaht she had because she had stopped hounding me about reading it.

Bolinas, Ca, where booksellers cling to the fantasy that it is reasonable to control what children read. Fuck it, is what I say. We're talking about books. And censorship.  Not for my kid. Not then and not ever.

5 de mayo, 2006

On the 4th of May, 2006, I had a routine doctor visit with my Seattle primary care doc. She has a great assistant who always asked me the same questions. One of the questions, always except on 4th of May 2006, was "has anything changed since you last visit?"

I had been saving up my answer to that question because something had changed. Every now and then, for no reason I understood, I could not breath. This inability to breath could last about a minute. It was scary when it was happening. Since I resumed breathing, however, I downplayed its significance.

I was really only looking forward the the question 'what's different since last visit' so I'd have something to say.

The assistant did not ask.

So my doc came in. Martha. She did her doc thing.

Sidebar:  when did docs stop listening to patients breath, esp, as I am now, a heart patient?  My new primary did not use her stethoscope when I saw her yesterday.

Martha listened to me breath, asked some questions and she was done. As she gathered up her stethoscope to leave my exam room, I said, believing myself to be joking, "Your nurse forgot to ask if anything has changed. Something has changed."  I believed myself to be kidding, seriously not serious.  I was mostly joking around, 'catching' the nursing assistant in a small mistake:  she did not ask.

Martha, however, closed the door, which she had already opened and begun to exit through it, stepped back over to me and said "What's difference?"

So I told her about my very occasional inability to breath for a tiny bit.

She asked lots of questions, listened to my heart and breathing. And ordered me to get some lab tests on my way out, to get them asap. There was a lab in her building so it was easy.

The next day, I was out all day, at some meeting. I was the lead organizer for a large, complex conference that would start about two weeks after that office visit. I was probably out at meetings for that.  This was pre-cell for me. Cell phones existed but I didn't have one.

When I finally came home, around 3 p.m. I listened to multiple phone messages from Martha. It was unusual for the actual doc to call. Each of her messages had a slightly more anxious tone. "Call me as soon as you get this."  "Call me immediately, I have instructed my staff to put me on the phone when you call even if I am with a patient."

So, yeah, I called her. And, by golly, the actual doc came to the phone. She told me she had gotten my blood test results and it indicated I had, at least, deep vein thrombosis and, given my breathing issues, probably pulmonary emboli. "I want you to take a cab to the a lab next to the hospital and if you tell me you can't afford a taxi, I will pay for your taxi. Don't go on the bus."

I lied to her and promised to take the cab. I was thinking "If I am very seriously in threat, maybe this is my chance to die."  So I resolved to take the bus. She had told me to go to a lab what would test for DVT and PE, but it was adjacent to the hospital closest to where I live. It wasn't even a hospital in her system, she had chosen one closest because she was so worried.

She also said she had consulted two different specialists about my lab results because she was a bit surprised that I seemed to have DVT and PE and both of those docs has said my blood tests indicated significant clotting issues.

On the map, the hospital was closest to my apartment but it was not on a bus line. I had to transfer three times, with long waits between each bus. And, piece de resistance, the walk from my last bus stop to the hospital was almost two miles. It took me hella long to walk those two miles because I had to stop to catch my breath constantly.

When I got to the lab where my legs would be evaluated for deep vein thrombosis and then for lung clots, the receptinist squealed. Then she said "where have you been? Your doctor said you'd be here an hour ago and she keeps calling and lots of people have been worried that you died on your way here."  The rechnician rushed out and rushed me to her testing room. She shared that she had once had a DVT in a leg and it hurt like hell and asked if I was in a lot of pain.

It wasn't until that moment that I had realized my lower left leg was often in a lot of pain. I have had arthritis all my life. I am accustomed to feeling lots of pain.

So. She did the tests. I knew right away that something was wrong because on my not-clot leg, the machine made one kind of sound but when she put it on my DVT leg, the one with a mass of clots, the machine made very different noices.

After that, I was not allowed to walk. She rolled me over to the ER. I had not eaten lunch or dinner that day because I had planned to go out for Mexican on Cinco de Mayo. I was starving. The ER receptionists lied to me, said I'd be seen too soon for me to find the cafeteria to eat. Later I learned the health care team didn't want me to eat. But I was not seen soon and I was so hungry so I got up to get to the cafeteria. It involved going outside, it was a bit confusing so I asked for directions.

Whoosh. Someone rolled up with a wheelchair and I would be seen right then!  And I think they did that to keep me from eating.

I spent that whole evening, until around midnight, in the ER. I went for tests intermittently.  A doc was involved, ordering the tests, but I never saw a doc in the ER until the guy's shift ended. He came in, he did not tell me -- and no one had thus far -- what was wrong or going on with me. He patted me on an arm, said my condition (what condition?) was serious and the staff would do their best. But he didn't tell me what health issues were going on.

Finally, I met my hospitalist. I don't remember her name but I liked her.  She explained taht I had deep vein thrombosis and multiple pulmonary emboli. I had had a test to look at my lungs so I had seen the images of my lungs. I had dozens of clots in my lungs.  More later. . . I have an appointment. Fascinating stuff, eh?

Later. . .

That first ER doc was such a jerk. He never talked to me, just looked at my chart and gave orders. I wsa in that ER from around 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. and until the nightshift hospitalist came on duty, NO ONE told me what was going on, what was wrong. Just test test test.

The hospitalist came in, shook my hand, introduced herelf to me. Then she told me I had a large cluster of clots in my lower left leg, a mass of clotting. She explained that some of those clots had broken away and traveled to my lungs. Lots of them in my lungs, which I knew because I had seen the image of my lungs. When I remember that image of my lungs full of clots, I usually visualize a chinese checkerboard, with little holes for all the marbles. The marbles represent my huge amount of pulmonary clots.

It was kinda a miracle I could breathe.

They had me on oxygen.

The hospitalist explained taht sometimes she would recommend surgical removal of lung cluts but I had so many that such surgery was not feasbile. She said I'd likely die before a surgeon could get all the clots! She was recommending, like I had a choice, that I be administered a serious drug by intravenous means that would, the theory went (said the doc) would gradually melt my clots. This drug was a very serious drug and I would be very vulnerable while receiving it. So, she went on, I needed to be in intensive care.

I just woke myself up as I cried very hard in a dream

I was arguing with my dad. He had mangled his agreement with me about how I would spend the summer, then he was forcing me to move furniture even though all my brothers, all big guys six feet or taller, and at least one bro a big hulk and all of them more capable than I have ever been of moving heavy stuff. And he was talking about some of my cousins, people neither of us had seen in many years, about giving them some of his money. If he had said he was giving all his money to these nephews of his, I wouldn't have been upset, I would have known he was pulling my leg. My dad was an awful tease, never knowing when to stop, always taking his teasing too far. But I could spot his teasing. Usually. Like if he had said share with my cousins, okay, he was teasing. But when he said, sober as a judge, no twinkle in his gambler's charming blue eyes, that he would have to talk to 'the boys' and then he'd decide but he believed in giving where it was needed. Maybe a pointed dig at me, like I shouldn't be holding out my hand. I didn't spot his teasing because he was being deliberately mean. My dad was not delibertely mean to me many times, if you don't count the incest. And I don't count his incesting me aas being deliberately mean. I count the incest as my dad being a weak, damaged man. I guess he was weak and damaged in all things but I didn't know this when I was about 22, as I was in the dream, getting ready to move to MN for law school without enough money to do it.  He never did give me a dime to help with that move. Throughout law school, I lived with one used wing back chair I bought in a dingy Lake Street used furniture store, then threw a furniture cover of it, a drexel heritage dining room table whose surface was very badly damaged that I bought at a garage sale. one straight back chair from the same sale and an old metal springs bed with old mattress on an old metal frame my landlady had offered me when, as she shoed me the apartment, she asked if I needed furnishing and I said "Well, yeah, now that you mention it." She gave me that bed and I, then I and my now ex hubby slept on it for years, into the marriage even. And she gave me an old metal dining table with two chairs. A kitchen table. It was art deco and would be prized in a fifties odernity furniture shop but my ex hated it for not being from a contemporary furniture store, not being bought new.

The most angst producing aspect of the dream was this:  I knew I was sleeping and kept trying to pull yself awake so I'd stop being so angry and hurt by my dad's talk but I didn't want to wake up because I knew I had no one to tell when I awoke. Even asleep, I wanted to tell Geo how rudely my dad was treating me and hear him coo sympathetically, stroking my hair, hugging me, telling me I was okay.

So I stayed in this in and out zone, sleeping but conscious I was dreaming, alseep but not wanting to wake up but wanting to stop the dream by waking up.

Come to think of it, many of the stories from my dad that have been cropping up in my thoughts, based on memories of real events, with the fractured filters one gets with fifty year old memories, and some of them dreams that were about things that never happened but which match emotional states I had when interacting with my dad, these stories often reveal a character trait that my dad and Geo share.

I have always been attracted to men with the worst traits of both my parents.

One of my dad's finest traits was his generosity, which is instilled in me. He would say "If giving away some of the money in my pocket will help a guy out, I'll give it to him. Sometimes a guy feels like the only friend he has in the world is the few bucks he has in his pocket and that's a terrible way for a guy to feel, honey. So if someone hits me up for money, I give it. I've been tapped out myself and it is a cold, lonely place to be."  Another thing he said a lot, to explain why he never locked any house he lived in. He said "If anyone wants anything I got so bad they will break in to steal it, they need it worse than me and I don't need the smashed in window or door so let them have it."  No one ever broke in but for some reason, I beamed with pride for my father each time he said it. As I beamed, I would think about what we owned. We didn't own anything of great value. Our most expensive asset that I could identify was our family tv. Even as a kid, I knew that was not great wealth.  And I knew we never had any money because my dad was a compulsive gambler. Chuck liked the ponies, the crooked world of horse racing.

I cajoled him to Omaha partly with his first glimpse of his first grandchild, and my gifted airfare, but I think what won him over, for my dad hated to leave Chicago and only left it to meet Rosie and to come to my wedding. Also he attended my law school graduation.  He talked, regularly, about going to Vegas but he never made it to Vegas. I always prayed he would never go to Vegas for I was sure he would gamble away his house.

He was a flawed human but I loved him. And he loved me. I always knew he loved me.

over to the rainbow

I need to go to the city, to the hallowed ground of Rainbow Grocery, a worker owned co-op with the largest selection of bulk items I have ever seen, more choices than I could have ever imagined on my own. I find things I did not know existed in that bulk food barn.

They also sell packaged foods. . . but no meat. They do sell dairy and eggs. And the prices on all their non-bulk food are exhorbitant.

I love going over to the Rainbow anyway.

I love it that I usually go there for something small. I'll be heading over to the rainbow tomorrow to buy bulk organic black peppercorns. Or colorful peppers. They sell multi-colored pepper balls for grinding.

I will pick up some fermented bulk foods.

I am on the hunt for pickled ginger. I keep forgetting to buy it when I am in food stores, which I am not in often.

kill the baby

I had a strange dream, disturbing. It awakened me. I wish I had taken notes as soon as I awoke. I resolved to but then, as most dreams of mine do, it slipped away. I was in some trying circumstances with a very young infant, perhaps three months old.  Maybe a little younger.  I deeply loved the baby. I ached, in my dream, as I would ache in real life if I held an unhappy baby, to sooth the pain out of the baby.   The baby in my dream was not my actual daughter. it was another baby.  For some reason I am not remembering from the dream, the baby was very challenging, problematic and causing me deep unhappiness. The baby fussed and fussed, which I didn't mine. I always have had powerful patience with unhappy babies, it is one of my superpowers. When I say the dream baby was causing me deep unhappiness, it was not crying or demanding attention.  I didn't know what it was, only, in the dream, that the baby was making me very unhappy.
I think I actually thrashed around as I still slept, trying to figure out what to do about the baby making me so unhappy.
Then a voice spoke to me in the dream. It said "Kill the baby".
Of course I would not harm an actual baby but dreams can be laden with metaphor and occult meaning.  When I heard the voice tell me to kill the baby, I was awash with thoughts such as "oh, this means I should truly let my daughter go, I should never try to connect with her again, I should spare myself all the pain my failed attempts to reconnect cause me."
The idea, in the dream's terms, to kill my baby filled me with hope that I might yet have a happy life beyond my too-long sorrow over losing my daughter. Seventeen years of trapped grief, trapped in one of those 'snow globes' but instead of flakes of snow this metaphorical globe is, glass cinders float around. Glass cinders can be sharp and hurt bigly.  And at the bottom of this metaphorical cinder globe is, at times, my tell tale, failed heart* missing beats the way the actual heart in my chest now fails and at other times, it is an image of my Katie as a beautiful baby and as I behold the cinder glass globe baby, I feel such intense love.

The dream did not mean I should actually kill a baby. It means I need to kill my pain over my baby. It's not like I would be denying her anything. Clearly she wants no connection. I have to kill my fantasy, my longing, to have her come back to me.