weird line I heard on the street

Tuesday evening, walking through downtown in the rain, I came to a storefront with an awning so I stepped under the awning, to avoid the rain. I changed my course just one step over. There was a man standing there. I did not touch him or, I don't think, get anywhere near to touching him. He was also under the awning, at the end of it, sheltering himself from the rain, I think.  I stepped under the awning just past him and kept going. I was also feeling dizzy, with an unusual back ache that was causing me to struggle to stand upright and just keep walking.  And, as I stepped 'over', under the awning, I cleared my throat. I was not coughing. But even if I were, it is not illegal to cough on the sidewalk. What else can a coughing person do who is walking?  Are they supposed to beam themselves up?

So I stepped over and heard this guy say "Oh no you don't, you fat white blob of nothing, don't you come over here and cough on me."

I'm pretty sure he was talking to me but his venom did not immediately register because I was rushing. The dizziness, the backache. Plus I was sweating profusely. I have an ongoing intense sweating thing that my doc says is related to menopause. It's been years. It comes and goes.  I don't think its menopause.  It comes over me in waves and I can go from being dry to soaking in a minute or two.  Sometimes water drops literaly dream down my forehead and strangers will notice and ask me if I am okay. But it was dark, I was moving and no one saw my sweating, certainly not this guy. By the time he said that, my back was to him and I was a couple yards away and moving on.

Then I heard "Don't you spit that half gallon of your sour white milk on me".  When he had voiced the first insult, I had heard it but told myself he couldn't have been talking to me. I hadn't done anything but I had cleared my throat.  I considered looking back to see if he would have been looking at me just so I could be sure he was directing his unkind words to me.  But I felt bad. I was worried about racing home before I fainted.

I did not turn back to see him.  He sounded African American but maybe that conclusion is racist.  I wanted to turn back just to see if he was black or if he looked homeless. I had not really registered him when I took the step under the awning.  I had just registered a human standing still and I have measured my steps to avoid that human.

I think he must have been crazy.

When I heard that sour white milk line, I was a bit sickened.  By the time he said that, I was at least ten yards away. I had not spoken to him, not exchanged looks with him. I had not done anything. His radar that had detected my movement 'towards' him was a crazy person's radar, I think.

He spoke in a flat tone, as if he were detached from the content but the content was smart, acidic and unkind.

I still kept moving, got to the corner and turned, got past being able to hear him. He had not raised his voice. He had spoken in a conversational tone. I am sure he was talking about me and to me.

And for a brief moment, I felt fear.

I even considered going back to the corner, stepping into the Starbucks and going over to where he was to see him from where it was 'safe', from inside the store where other people would be around me. But I still felt dizzy and ache-y, still wanted to get home to my bed.

I didn't do anything wrong but I felt like I had. I felt slimed.

win the lottery

I'm playing win the lottery these days and I just won two dollars.  I had walked down to the Gourmet Ghetto, thinking about a slice of Cheeseboard Pizza, which is too carb-y for my diabetes but sometimes I trick myself into the exercise. I walk down there, telling myself I can have pizza if I want. When I get there, I don't. I buy a teriyaki thigh at Poulet or is it Pollo? it's a store that sells great roasted chicken and lots of sides.  One thigh was $1.87 at $8.50 a pound. Wow, huh?

Then I walked home, passing the temptation of Oscar's, which is a famous Berkeley burger joint that has been here forever. Their burgers are only okay and they don't brag about the meat so it much be corporate beef but they are pretty cheap. $4.50.  I also try to resist Oscar's. The buns are a lot of carbs but if I have not eaten all day, which is often the case -- I have odd eating patterns these days -- I might indulge in an Oscar's burger.

Mostly, I go in to buy a lottery ticket. Today I checked my last lottery ticket. I won two bucks.  Now I hope I win millions with the ticket I bought today with my winnings.  That would be great.

I'd buy a house with some garden sun to grow vegetables.  Maybe in New Mexico.  I love California. I love the Bay Area but I don't want to live in far-far-remote suburbia and the city is too expensive, right? Well, if I win thirty million, I'll househunt in the city.

Or maybe something in New York?

When I first lost my daughter, and I thought she was living in New York, I started playing win the lottery. It was the only way I could imagine getting her back in my life:  buying it.  I would dream hunt for cool lofts in what I imagine as early-Soho but which is now super extremely expensive even for a major lottery win.  I would endlessly debate:  should I buy a cool place for her to live in and then present it to her or should I contact her, tell her I have millions and want to buy her love.

Then I realized I was 'dreaming' that the only way my kid would come back to my life was if I could magically afford to buy her love.  Yuck, right?

Then I started dreaming of what I would do for myself.  I guess I could dream that again. For a few years, I dreamed of buying a property that could be co-housing, like a really great apartment building or a row of townhouses or just a block of houses.  It's a fun dream game.  I have whiled away days and days planning my co-ho.

Now, I observe, I can't see myself in community. I see myself alone all the time. That sucks. I am sure I could buy friends. 

I am unhappy if I am building a dream life around buying love, huh?

I don't understand drinking alcohol

I never drank much. I tend to feel sick hungover after just one or two drinks. When I was about fifty, I sat a ten-day Vipassana silent retreat and the teacher, S.N. Goenka talked about not drinking. Anthroposophists, which is the closest thing I have to a spiritual faith system, believe drinking alcohol burns holes in your etheric body. Your 'etheric' is your energetic sheath, a layer that holds a 'kind' of layer between your physical self and your spiritual self.  I am popping off. Serious anthroposophists would probably be aghast to read what I just wrote. And I am not a student of Buddhism or Goenka-gi's take on Vipassana so I am probably off in whatever I say there.

I heard a Vipassana teacher say 'drinking alcohol affects your work, your real work of being' and I patched that with the 'burns a hole in your etheric, matched with a lifetime of memories of headaches and nausea after just one glass of wine and I thought 'I'm done drinking'.

I will, in theory, have a beer on a hot day, with a friend, for the conviviality. I enjoy the taste of a good beer.  I also enjoy the taste of good wine. And I think that organic wines don't leave me feeling sick.  I don't really feel hungover if I drink 'hard liquor' but I've never really done that.  I never really liked the taste of gin, scotch, vodka, bourbon, whatever.  Do they have tastes?  I'm fuzzy on the deets. It's been a long, long time.

I love the glam of fancy cocktails in fancy glasses.  I love fruity tastes and bitter blends in sweetness.

But I never really got why so many people like to alter their consciousness with drugs. Alcohol is a drug, right?  I just don't get the appeal of the drug aspect of booze.

This might seem unusual.  I have four brothers and I think all of them are alcoholics. They would probably all angrily denounce that statement.  Lots of alcoholics never end up in the gutter so they think they aren't alkies.

camping

I haven't been tent camping in over ten years. When I did go camping, it was in Minnesota State Parks.  Park rangers enforced the rules and no campers were allowed to get drunk and party late and loud with boom boxes. Families are out there camping. Drunk boom box dancing keeps kids awake.

But there are a lot of federal campsites in northern Minnesota, like up in the Boundary Waters, endless miles of nature with no rangers. Drunken louts who, apparently, love nature  and boozing camp here. If you are unfortunate enough to get stuck next such a party, you are shit out of luck. The people who behave these way seemed very aware that there was nothing other campers could do. What? Were you going to get up and stuff your kids in a car and go driving looking, probably futilely, for a ranger to shut the party down?

But there is one thing you can do.  You can get up about five a.m. and make noise.

lightning bugs and free gold

When I was a child, we tried to stay out after dark in the summer time so we could catch lightning bugs. Lightning bugs are also called fireflies.  They are flying bugs (insects?) that are only seen in the warmest months of midsummer in Chicago.  They only came out when it was really dark and it doesn't get very dark in midsummer Chicago (at least back in the early-to-mid sixties) until late. Or what seemed very late to a six year old, or a seven year old.  We had to fight to get permission to leave our front porches once it got dark. Going 'out' after dark was only for big kids.  Gradually, 'we' got permission to go on the lawn in front of our house, and the houses on either side of us.

On my block growing up, there was a child my age in each of five houses in a row. Tammy, then me, then, when we were in the 7th grade, Nancy, then Patrick Snooks, then Bucky Cywinski. Bucky's real name was Richard but everyone called him Bucky. He had the most bucked teeth I have, to this day, ever seen.  I asked him once if it bothered him to be called Bucky and he said he was okay with it, that even in his family, before he was old enough for school, he had always been Bucky, it was the only name he knew. And I took him at his word but, upon reflection, all these years later, I still wonder, what else could have have said?  Was he supposed to organize a campaign to stop being called Bucky and draw even more attention to his negative trait?  I always felt sorry for Bucky.  I sensed that his parents didn't really love him. My parents were unevenly focussed on their parenting but even my semi-negligent folks would have campaigned against a nickname like Bucky.  Maybe Bucky's parents felt helpless.  Us kids formed the impression they were immigrants. There were lots of immigrants in our neighborhood, poles and slavs and other denizens of eastern europe fleeing post war starvation. The freshest immigrants did not go to Catholic school but they tended to be Catholic and went to CCD classes on Wednesday. Do public schools still send kids for a half day of CCD?  In my southside Chicago, Catholic kids got let out of their public schools at noon on Wednesdays and came to Catholic school for religious instruction. And us Catholic school kids had only half a day of school on Wednesday. We ran until 12:45, to give the publics time to wolf down lunch and run over to our school. So, in general, we thought well of the publics because they gave us that half day on Wednesdays. But, also in general, we pitied the publics. We believed public school teachers didn't love their students, and didn't really care if the kids learned. We believed the Catholic school teachers cared more about us. Kids.

Although I was forbidden going past the house next door once it was dark on a summer night, it was hard to catch lightning bugs in front of my house because the street light was in front of my house and we didn't have any trees in front of our house. Two houses down, at Patrick Snooks' and then Bucky's, there were dense shade trees and no streetlight. Good for lightning bugs.

One of my earliest acts of disobedience was inching down the sidewalk to catch lightning bugs under the cover of Patrick and Bucky's tree canopies.

One night, I became determined to catch enough lightning bugs to form a gold ring. If you caught a lightning bug and pulled off their 'light' and rubbed it on your finger, and if you caught enough of them to go all the way around your finger, and make a thick ring of the gunky stuff, the next morning you would have a gold ring. As soon as I heard that fairy story, I knew it was a fairy story but I still wanted a free gold ring. Anything of real gold seemed very impressive to me.  So, sending myself a lot of negative, shaming self talk, for killing lightning bugs and for being gullible, I caught several dozen lightning bugs, slimed their light all around my left wedding ring finger and slept with my hand carefully outside the sheet that night so as not to disturb my ring.

But I didn't tell anyone what I was doing so no one would laugh at me later.

And my parents never caught me down in front of Bucky's.  I learned a few things that night.  Instinctive knowledge. If you are going to break the rules, don't tell anyone. Certainly not my brothers who would have ratted me out. And certainly no boys, who would have ratted me out to my brothers. Maybe I could have told Tammy.  Her mother did not let her off the front porch after dark, not when I was so young that I believed lightning bug lights could turn into gold rings. Maybe later.

You're the one by Tracy Chapman

 listen here

Some say you're crazy
Say that you're no good
Say your family's cursed with bad blood
But I think you're cute and misunderstood
And I wouldn't change you if I could

Let'em talk you down
Call you names
My mind's made up
It ain't gonna change
I'm sure in my heart
Happy and free
You're the one you're the one
You're the one for me

Some say you're bitter
Think you're mean
Uncouth untamed and unrestrained
But I think you're sensitive and sweet
Stay as you are don't change a thing

Let'em talk you down
Call you names
My mind's made up
It ain't gonna change
I'm sure in my heart
Happy and free
You're the one you're the one
You're the one for me

Some say you're bawdy
Wicked and wild
A restless useless juvenile
But I think you're funny and I like your smile
Want to be with you want you to stay awhile

Let'em talk you down
Call you names
My mind's made up
It ain't gonna change
I'm sure in my heart
Happy and free
You're the one you're the one
You're the one for me

A no account mixed up
Amount to nothing
A day away from a bum on the street
Some low class kind of royalty
That's what they say about you
When they're talking to me

Some say you're bad
A bad bad seed
You love to play with fire you love gambling
But I know what you love and I know what you need
And I like it when you play with me

Let'em talk you down
Call you names
My mind's made up
It ain't gonna change
I'm sure in my heart
Happy and free
You're the one you're the one
You're the one for me

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tracy+chapman/#share

Mission Pie's Shaker Lemon Pie

Last winter, about this time, I discovered shaker lemon pie at Mission Pie. I had gone to La Taqueria for a burrito and stopped in Mission Pie, which is a few doors down. One of the owners is a former girlfriend of a former friend of mine and this admittedly tenuous connection prods me to go into Mission Pie each time I go to La Taqueria for one of their world class burritos. They don't use rice.  I never get rice in any burrito, even though I know that rice and pinto beans form a perfect protein, which explains why Mesoamerica thrived for thousands of years on rice and beans.  I consider rice filler carbs in an already overloaded-carb situation. They use humongous carb tortilla shells to make burritos: that's all the carbs I need. True, true enough, it would be better if those gigantic tortilla shells were made from high fiber whole grains. Is it possible to make a grained-based wrap from brown rice?  Such a tortilla might not be as tasty as the classic white one but you don't really eat burritos for the shell, do you? You eat them for the mezcla, the mix of flavors. The tortilla is, basically, just what you use to hold all the yummy insides together.

Right?

Whatever.

So.  I get my burrito and I go into Mission Pie.  I have gone into Mission Pie many times now and most of those times, I get coffee and leave.  I don't eat pie.  In principle.  The carbs in one slice of pie throws my glucose into the stratosphere.

The City Limits by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Loving you less, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Loving you less than life, a little less

Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

Or bush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

I cannot swear I love you not at all.

For there is that about you in this light--

A yellow darkness, sinister of rain--

Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

And I am made aware of many a week

I shall consume, remembering in what way

Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,

And what divine absurdities you say:

Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

Will know I love you, whether or not I do.

edna again

And do you think that love itself, Living in such an ugly house, Can prosper long? We meet and part; Our talk is all of heres and nows, Our conduct likewise; in no act Is any future, any past; Under our sly, unspoken pact, I KNOW with whom I saw you last, But I say nothing; and you know At six-fifteen to whom I go— Can even love be treated so? I KNOW, but I do not insist, Having stealth and tact, thought not enough, What hour your eye is on your wrist. No wild appeal, no mild rebuff Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat— Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book To intercept my clockward look— Tell me, can love go on like that? Even the bored, insulted heart, That signed so long and tight a lease, Can BREAK it CONTRACT, slump in peace.

modern declaration by edna st. vincent millay

MODERN DECLARATION

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few

      things, never having wavered
In these affections; never through shyness in the

      houses of the rich or in the presence of clergy-

      men having denied these loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiroprac-

      tors having grunted or clicked a vertebra to

      the discredit of those loves;

Never when anxious to land a job having diminished

      them by a conniving smile; or when befuddled

      by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled

      the fingers of their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.

No matter what party is in power;

No matter what temporarily expedient combination

      of allied interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.

why can't I be good?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S3U_lHWR9M

lyrics:

Why can't I be good
Why can't I act like a man
Why can't I be good
And do what other men can
Why can't I be good
Make something of this life
If I can't be a god
Let me be more than a wife

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I don't want to be weak
I want to be strong
Not a fat happy weakling
With two useless arms
A mouth that keeps moving
With nothing to say
An eternal baby
Who never moved away

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I'd like to look in the mirror
With a feeling of pride
Instead of seeing a reflection
Of failure a crime
I don't want to turn away
To make sure I cannot see
I don't want to hold my ears
When I think about me

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I want to be like the wind
When it uproots a tree
Carries it across an ocean
To plant in a valley
I want to be like the sun
That makes it flourish and grow
I don't want to be
What I am anymore

Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

I was thinking of some kind of whacked out syncopation
That would help improve this song
Some knock 'em down rhythm
That would help it move along
Some rhyme of pure perfection
A beat so hard and strong
If I can't get it right this time
Will a next time come along

Why can't I be good
why can't I be good
Why can't I be good
Why can't I be good

insight into crazy

Twice in recent weeks I have gotten into stupid arguments at the bus stop, the one right on my corner.

There is a Peets Coffee at the corner of Shattuck & Kittredge. In front of the coffeeshop are two large benches, forming a 't', then the bus shelter, then the street.  The sidewalk is very wide. There are many posts and lampposts. There are no smoking signs on every posts, on the doors of each business, on each bench and on the bus shelter.  Smokers seem to think the benches were put there to create a public smoking lounge.

There is a local ordnance against smoking with 25 feet of any door or window. It is also against the law to smoke within 25 feet of any bus shelter. So it is illegal to smoke in the nice little plaza formed by the two benches.

These are comfortable benches, too.  It's a nice little public spot.

And smokers very often hang out there.  It's only a handful of people who smoke there. There can't be many because the smokers look familiar to me.  I see the same people smoking there.

In the two years I have lived here, I have often asked smokers to stop smoking, pointing to the no smoking signs and asking them to obey the law and respect my lungs.  Some of them will put out their smokes. Some will get up and move down the block until I get on the bus.

And a few ignore me.

I have actually tried to wave down passing police cars to ask them to give the smokers tickets.

This is not just my anti-smoking campaign.  The smoking den on this corner bothers many.

Twice since Xmas I have asked people to stop smoking and someone else, someone not smoking, has gotten involved and told me to mind my own business.

And, each time, I have pointed out that if someone smoking is none of my business, then my telling someone not to smoke is not the business of the person yelling at me.

Once, I asked some teenagers to stop smoking.  Lately, lots of traveling teens have been hanging out at this corner to panhandle.  I think 'traveling' teens tend to congregate over on Telegraph, near people's park. And it seems to me that there are more teen beggars on the streets of Berkeley since San Francisco voters passed a law making it illegal to sit on the sidewalk or lie on the sidewalk but that might be my imagination.

The begging teens bug me.  They are usually in small packs, often have dogs and always seem to be smoking cigarettes. It is hard for me to believe anyone gives kids money 'for food' when the kids obviously spend money on cigarettes.

Anyway.  A couple weeks ago, I asked a couple kids who were smoking near the bus stop to stop smoking. One kid looked around, after I had pointed out there within ten feet of where we stood there were at least ten no smoking signs, and said plaintively, "Where am I supposed to smoke?"

"No here," I said with a shrug.  There really isn't anywhere outdoors in downtown Berkeley where it is legal to smoke because smoking is not allowed within twenty five feet of doors and windows.  This is a downtown retail area. There really isn't anywhere on any sidewalk downtown that is not within a door or window.  Alongside my building, there are a couple stretched with no doors for awhile but there are windows to homes on the second floor that are less than twenty five feet above the sidewalk. 

There is a park in front of city hall, a couple block away, where there are no doors and windows.

I wasn't here when the no smoking near doors and windows law was passed but I venture to guess that the intent of this law is to make it difficult for smokers to be able to smoke near any place there might be other humans nearby.

Whatever.

The smoking scoff laws who smoke on my corner even though they know they aren't supposed to don't care about my right to not have their cigarette smoke in my lungs so I have little tolerance for their 'right' to smoke.  I have made a policy decision that every time I see smokers smoking at my bus stop, I will ask them to stop.  I am polite.  I am right. Am I getting involved in something that is not my business? Some might say so. To such someones, I say that my lungs inhaling someone else's secondhand smoke, coupled with the fact that the law is on my side, gives me standing to object.

When I asked the kids to stop smoking, they didn't put their smokes out but they moved to the edge of the sidewalk and as far from the bus stop as they could go and still be on the sidewalk.

And then an old man started yelling at me to mind my business.

echo canyon

I live on the sixth, top floor of an apartment building, my bedroom overlooking a central, interior courtyard. The courtyard is an echo chamber. People talking in hushed voices can be heard in my sixth floor apartment, with my windows closed.  Music blasting invades. Loud drunks are very loud.

The party room is adjacent to the courtyard. It is supposed to be closed at 10 p.m. but people often rent it and run over. And then drunks spill outside.

Tonight, there are also loud noisy boys with scooters, running around, shouting happily, playing and having a nice time. It is 11:30 p.m. If the shared resource is supposed to shut down at 10 p.m., which is in compliance with local noise ordnances that ban noise that intrudes upon adjacent residential space after 10 p.m. So it's not just me. It is, literally, a community standard.

This noise unsettles me. The courtyard is noisy much of the time. The windows are soundproofed. If people want to blast their stereos and keep the windows closed, I don't hear it. But if they keep their windows open, I do, even with mine closed lots of the times.  Someone else's loud music, not remotely similar to my taste, wears me down.  I sit here and feel assaulted, like I live in a noise bomb instead of a home.

I know all the rules.  I don't allow myself to be bothered until 10 p.m. But then, I am in the right and as the noisy evening continues, the noise wears on me more and more.

I am turning into a crank, a crabapple, a grump. 

I am persuaded

I am persuaded that there is such a thing as reincarnation. I kinda hope I am wrong.  I hope this life is it.  I don't want another one.  But if there is reincarnation, or some kind of accounting system, or if this is not an unconditionally loving universe, it  probably lowers my score to off myself. I am resolved. I am going to gut out this lifetime without any more attempts.  But if I can hate myself dead, I think I might.

I have one child. She's 28 now.  She hasn't talked to me since 2000.  We did not fight. She was an adolescent. She wanted me to spend money on her that I would not always spend, but I spent a lot of money on her that I should not have. She used to complain that I never took her to Europe. Would she still love me if I had? Or if I had taken her on a beach vacation in bleak midwinter? Cause that's about all I held back from her.  I didn't beat her.  I wasn't abusive.  I made a couple mistakes. I slapped her a couple times.  Would two slaps cost other people their kid? I don't think it was the slaps and they were just slaps. Wrong, flawed, imperfect acts but not brutality. Just wrong. That wasn't it. She left me for darker reasons.

getting into gratitude for 2010

Right now, the main thing I am grateful for about 2010 is that it is over.

I started out the year estranged from someone I sincerely thought was an important friend. As recently as Nov 24th, he told me I was one of the most important people in his life.  He sold me.  He sounded way sincere, his voice emotion-laden, his voice catches with his posed earnestness. A tear in each eye more than once. A great show.

Then on December 22, he told me that he was downgrading me from friend to acquaintance.

He told me other lies on Nov 24th which was, get this, supposed to be our first conflict resolution meeting.  I thought the focus was on resolution, on positivity, on the fact that we cared enough about one another to work on the friendship. But he was faking.

I don't understand why people lie to one another when I don't see a gain for the liar.  There was gain for him to tell me the truth.  If he didn't want to be my friend, all he had to do was say so. Which he finally did, three days before Christmas.

That sucked.

Lots of good things happened in 2010.  The quality of light in Berkeley is very beautiful.  I look out my window every day, upon awakening. Each day, every day, I fall in love with the light.  I love the colors in the sky.  I love the way the light changes the colors on the tan stucco walls of my building and how the light changes the lightly tinted windows.  I love how the shadows change all day. There is a rounded tower cross the courtyard that is outside my bedroom window. When I open my eyes each day, I see that tower, note the angle of the shadows thrown down from the sun and I tell the time.  It is a sundial. Often, I think of olden time sundials, like you might find in the downtown plaza of an old community.  I think these sundials were in Middle Eastern, desert countries, with men and women milling around the down center, some produce vendors, horses, carts, music, clanging. Men and women in robes.  I don't know any real details about real sun dials. Is that something I saw in movies or read about and were they in Africa?  I guess I think Middle East because I think the Egyptian culture got very evolved very early, comparatively speaking. But then, so did Rome. Sundials in Rome?

Whatever. Sundials in Berkeley.

After I guess the time, I stir, check the clock to evaluate my guess.

I look at the light outside my window at other times of day.  I have lived here almost two years now and I am in love with the light.  My view has the other sides of my building in the foreground, with sky above and beyond, and patches of the Berkeley hills.  I try to remember to note the green of the hills. Sometimes I imagine I take something in when I appreciate that green, cause I'm not just appreciate green trees, I am imagining bugs, birds, dirt, squirrels, rustling, cats, dogs, ants, breeze, wind, flowers, leaves of flowers, leaves of trees rustling more, sometimes a snake, cars, shade, swings. These things are over there in the hills.  I like to take them in.

I have not fallen in love with a pool in Berkeley like I did in Mountain View.  There are buildings alongside my new pool. These building cast shadows.  The shadow infringe on the sense of endless sky I got in the pool in Mountain View. The MV pool was in a park, no buildings, except a one story locker room set back from the pool. In the water, all you saw was sky, ground, grass, trees. In that pool, I often felt like I was in a bowl of jello, rocked in the moving planet, rocked in space.  I often felt myself, a tiny dot in that jiggling, rocking, gentle hold.  Once in a while, not too many times, it seemed like my heart beat in rhythm with that rocking, and I felt myself a part of the earth moving. I felt held.  I haven't had that yet in Berkeley.

I can see the Golden Gate from outside my front door.  I try to see the sunset once in awhile. It is such a privileged view.

Sometimes, riding BART over to the city -- here in the bay area, 'the city' is San Francisco, even though I have to travel through the city of Oakland to get to 'the city', even though San Jose is a very big ciy, the only city here is 'the city' -- Sometimes on BART, when I see the bay, the golden gate, the sun dappling the surface of the bay and I want to gesture to fellow passengers, remark on the beauty. Then I remember I am a geek and everyone else takes these things for granted.  Or else I am the only geek that is dazzled by seeing Mt. Tamalpais or Alacatraz. What's the big deal, they are always there! But that's just it, they are always there.  It makes me happy to notice.

Lately, I don't seem to notice people.  I have been hurt all year, trying to pretend I wasn't. But I am not pretending now.  Right now, I am so hurt I can't leave my apartment. When I do go out, I feel assaulted by the presence of people.  I know I am sick right now because I don't want to be near people because it hurts.

I am very unhappy. 2010 wasn't good.  I love the light out my window. That's all I've got. Get into gratitude for that, I guess.

where is my flying car?

A couple years ago on New Year's Day, I stopped at my local Starbucks and, while the kid behind the counter got my coffee, I remarked that the year 2008 sounded like the future, like I should have come outside that day and seen a futuristic world.  I silently rebuked myself for being weird with the barista, but he said "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like 'where's my flying car?'

So maybe I am not as weird as I keep thinking.

loving ms. clifton

it was a dream
by Lucille Clifton
in which my greater self rose up before me accusing me of my life with her extra finger whirling in a gyre of rage at what my days had come to. what, i pleaded with her, could i do, oh what could i have done? and she twisted her wild hair and sparked her wild eyes and screamed as long as i could hear her This. This. This.

a new year's eve poem

by lucille clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me.

in the bleak midwinter

I think this old Christian hymn was written by Christina Rossetti?  It's a little too Jesus Christ-y for me.  I reject the creation myth that centers around the birth of a male, with only the requisite "virgin" mother as the only female character.   As if women were always minor characters, supporting roles.  But I love the first stanza. .. . esp. 'earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone'. Isn't that beautiful? And I love the reverence. And I love how she reminds us that there are multiple hierarchy of angels, angels being beings in the supersensible realm. There are nine hierarchies of angels. This time of year, considered 'the holy nights' by many, is a good time to remember the mystery. The core of all creation myths is the mystery of love, isn't it?  So enjoy this old poem with me, skip past the male dominator aspect  and behold the mystery with reverence.  Why are we here? What is this business of being human about? Why? What?



In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

feeling smug

When I was raising my kid, she and I were our only relatives in our watershed, in Minnesota. I started out single parenthood trekking dutifully to spend 'the holidays' with my family of origin so the kid would have better holidays.  My dad and most of my siblings were in Chicago, along with, as Rosie got older, a few cousins for her. My mom, and another sibling or two, with another batch of cousins could be found in Ohio.

Everyone travels to spend 'the holidays' with kinfolk, right? Esp a single mom with one lonely toddler.

Gradually, I noted that virtually any time we traveled between November and March, we'd run into snow. We drove a lot. When it snows in Wisconsin, the interstate near Madison turns into a hellish vortex. It's some kind of pocket for misery, sucking in intense winds that knock you off the road and into hotels.

The last time I drove during winter months between Chicago and Minneapolis, I was with my mom, my daughter and a friend who had caught a ride to Chi-town. We had to go all the way into Madison before we found a room and it was expensive .. but, at least, it had an indoor pool. When we had no swimsuits, we went out and bought some.  It always feels so great to pull off the interstate to get out of a blizzard after driving for several hours in hell. The room, even when it is a dingy crap hotel, feels cosy, toasty, homey. Whatever food you eat tastes great, even if it's just crap in the machines in the hotel laundry room, like candy bars and potato chips.

Eventually, by fiat, I announced that we would never travel for 'the holidays'. Even when we went by plane, a snowstorm somewhere would mess up travel. You don't have to be in the city with the blizzard to have your flight cancelled.  There just has to be a blizzard somewhere to mess up travel.  I hate being stuck in airports or airport hotels, if you are lucky.

So Rosie and I, from the time she was four or five, stayed home for Christmas. We had Cornish game hens on Xmas Eve, opened some presents early and then more on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day, we went out for Chinese food at The Great Wall restaurant and then to the movies. If Katie were speaking to me, she might tell you about the Christmas Day -- I am hanging my head in shame, this is proof that I am unworthy of her love, I admit it -- I took her to see The Prince of Tides, a noisy Barbara Streisand movie.  I thought it was a romantic comedy. Barbara plays a psychiatirst who treats Nick Nolte for childhood sexual abuse, with him and his siblings. It was an inappropriate movie to take any child to see, much less on Christmas.

I should have just left when I realized how awful it was. But all the theaters at the multiplex were stuffed with people. One reason I had chosen Prince of Tides was simply because tickets were available. It's not like we could duck out and duck into another movie.

So I toughed it out. And she threw that bad judgment in my face many times.


I always wonder if she thinks of me on Christmas. And if she remembers The Prince of Tides.

wishing walls

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-hometown-new-york-20101226,0,6289210.story

This link takes you to a story in the LATimes about a wishing wall in New York City.

I dream of wishing walls in every neighborhood.  It would be pretty easy, I think, to create online wishing walls.  I don't keep up on all the new wonders of the internet but I think it is easy to create collaborative online wiki spaces, open the space up to many -- even to anyone who wishes to show up.  But I'd like to see wishing walls all over.

I have planned and facilitated many events for groups and organizations that have wishing walls, a space for all participants to share their dreams. I'd like to see ordinary people, neighbors who already live near one another, whose lives intersect even when folks might not be fully aware that they do, beginning to wish together out loud.

I live in downtown Berkeley.  Nearby, in a downtown park, there is a peace wall. The peace wall is covered with tiles decorated by children with images and wishes for peace.  I wish I could turn that peace wall into a wishing wall, and put a wishing wall on very corner of downtown Berkeley.

Maybe my wishing walls could be like old fashioned mail boxes, where you drop the mail in to be sent somewhere but instead of mail, people would find pencils and paper and they could drop their wishes into the slot. Only then everyone wouldn't see everyone else's wishes, which I guess is part of the benefit of a wall.

If people could post their wishes on the wall, where others can read them . .  that is a dreamier dream.

Imagine the great wall of china, which stretches many thousands of miles I think, covered with the wishes of humans.

Now I am thinking of the wailing wall in Israel and the Vietnam War memorial in Washington D.C., which is a black slash of grief, holding the names of all who died in that war serving this country.

Let's stop grieving human loss and start wishing and dreaming for positive, hopeful dreams.

I have many positive, wishful dreams. In this instant, I am dreaming mostly for myself.  I have all the love I deserve. I have emotional intimacy, good friends, the devoted love of my only child, the love of my five siblings and one good man, my man, my lover and best friend.  I am so happy.  I wish everyone could be as happy as I am, as beloved as I am.

I wonder how hard it would be to create a network of wishing walls all across one city the size of Berkeley.  I am thinking about the artist Christos who, with his wife (whose name I have forgotten) do large installations, such as once he covered the cliffs of Dover England in cloth or once he create a ribbon of orange cloth 'gates' throughout Central Park in New York City and once he created a fence that snaked through part of the wine country in Sonoma County, California.  His projects do not stay 'up' long. Many people don't realize that the art is not really the drapes on the white cliffs of Dover or the orange cloth of 'the gates' in Central Park. The real art, which is to say the real work, is the network of cooperating humans and human agencies that have to come together to make his art happen.

I think there is much insight into the commons and how it might be restored in Christos' work.http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/rf.shtml. 

The above link takes you to something about Christos' work. His wife was named Jeanne Claude. Like many women mates to famous male artists, her contribution to his work was overlooked for much of her life. Only after decades of him getting all the credit did the art world routinely credit her.








Often

what I need

Dear Tree,

You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known.  You are a magical, special being and I feel like I am a lucky man to have found you.  Your heart is safe with me, Tree.  You can trust me to love you always.  You can trust that I want you to tell me what you are feeling, to trust that you can ask me for what you want from me. Whatever you want from me, if it is within my power to give it to you, I will.  You can trust that I will never disengage from a dialogue with you, that if you ask for my attention, you will receive it.  I love you.  You can count on me.  You can count on me to love you always. I love you, Tree.  I am so glad that you love me.  You matter to me.  You are the most important person in my life.

I will never tell you that I don't have time to talk to you, Tree. Since no one is more important to me than you, I will always have time to talk to you if you tell me you need me. I love you, Tree Fitzpatrick. I love you, just the way you are.

one time my dad said

One time, when I was in my early thirties, visiting my dad with my toddler daughter, a squall broke out between me and dad.  I don't remember what the quarrel was about. My recollection really is more like a sudden change in weather conditions, from sunny blue skies to dark thundering clouds and a sudden, windy burst of rain.

Katie was three or four. In our little family, her and me, we didn't have many sudden squalls, had few arguments. It was just the two of us and I had made a decision, probably a wrong one (I'm still working on letting go of all the mistakes I surely made with her), that when it was just her and me, when she wanted something different than what I wanted, if the thing in question didn't really matter to me, I would yield to her preference.  I actually gave that decision a lot of thought.


I have seen many parents get into many battles of will with little ones.  Not all parents do this but many parents seem to think that if they are really doing their parenting 'right', their kids will obey them on autopilot. Some parents seem to think that ordering their children and having their orders obeyed unquestioningly constitutes good parenting, seem to connect the child's autopilot responses as a measure of their parenting skill.  Or something.  I have seen a lot of interactions between adults and their children that I never understood.  I get that it is a 'good thing' to encourage children to eat unsweet breakfast cereal but I don't get why a parent might buy some crappola sweet cereal and then get into battles of wills with their kids about when they can have the sweet crap.  My point probably seems meaningless to anyone who might be reading. My point probably is meaningless. I am a meaningless speck of cosmic dust.  Right?

But let's pretend, what the heck, it's Christmas, let's pretend that I matter, that my thoughts matter.

I have seen many parents order their kids to do meaningless things and it has seemed to me that they order the kids just to see the kids obey. The parent seems to feel some validation in such an exchange.

Katie and I started living alone together when she was 1.5 years old. And our real lives were always just the two of us, but when we still lived with her dad, I did a lot of faking with him. In front of him, I tended to step into his idea of what a parent was. His ideas about what it was to be a parent were very similar to my family's ideas. He and I came from very similar family backgrounds:  blue collar, Catholic, lots of kids, never enough money.  My parents were college grads and his parents were h.s. drop outs.  His family was poorer when he grew up but his folks drove their kids to get good educations and they all did.  His parents weren't well educated but they were smart, esp. his mom.  I give my ex mother-in-law points for being smart and for being determined to give her kids the best start in life she possibly could. And I forgive her for her mistakes because the mistakes she made in choosing which values to emphasize with her children are standard middle class mistakes. She thought that status meant more than being.

My ex mother-in-law ran a tightly controlled household and so did my mom. And my mom got that from my grandmother, who very definitely believed that a central function of being a parent was to command blind obedience.  I adored my maternal grandma Joy but I remember a couple instances when I 'crossed' her, when I did something innocently childish with absolutely no conscious awareness of having crossed one of her arbitrary lines.  I remember those instances because I remember the pained shock I felt when I realized that in her anger, my grandmother, fleetingly, I admit, had withdrawn her love for me.  She had given me conditional love.

And my mom mothered me in that tradition. Conditional love. As long as I was blindly obedient, and, as I got older and became more physically able to help her, blindly servile to my mother, she loved me. But if I crossed her, if I dawdled on my way home after school to talk to friends instead of rushing home to take over babysitting the latest babies to give mom a break, mom would withhold her love.

I am learning so much about myself this week. Gosh, Marc, thank you for loving me conditionally and judgmentally. Thank you for downgrading me to acquaintance.  I'm burned out on all the jumping I've been doing to win your love. And let's be honest.  I gave up hoping to win your love a long time ago. Lately I've been settling for a cessation of meanness, defining your 'love' as times when you aren't being verbally abusive. Yuck.  Yuck.  Yuck.

Back to what my dad said one time. Back to me and my kid.

When we still lived with Katie's dad, until she was 1.5 years old, (so not so long), I did a lot of pretending. But privately, when Katie and I were alone, I loved her as much as I wanted.  He said there was something wrong with me when I talked to her in gooey love baby talk.  He said I was wrong to sing to her as much as I did.  He said it was wrong for me to adore her as much as I did.

And maybe I was wrong. Who knows? Who knows anything?!

But what I thought I was doing was trusting the love ray that I felt between her and me.  If she wanted one thing for lunch instead of what I might have suggested, I gave her she what she wanted.  What difference did such choices make?  I made lots of decisions as the adult.  I set limits and maintained them. But within those limits, I held a conscious intention, to the best of my ability, to be as flexible as humanly possible. 

I open myself fully

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

I open myself fully to give and receive love.

I have received much love today.  I've been thinking about a line from Dr. Seuss' Grinch Stole Christmas, how, near the end, it says 'the grinch's heart grew two sizes that day'.  I was not a grinch about Christmas, have never begrudged it of others.  I have begrudged myself Christmas.

A few days ago, someone I have believed was a friend who loved me a lot told me that he did not want to continue to consider me a friend. He actually said that he was downgrading me to acquaintance.

That really happened. I am not making it up. 

I deserve to give and receive love.  I am love.  I am wonderful.

that was then this is now

I have had a holiday miracle.

do the right thing

do you know the Shaker hymn, tis a gift to be simple? Here are the lyrics:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,

To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Like any art/poem, it has many possible meanings. It is said that the coming round right is about dancing but I don't think so. I think the song is much simpler:  it is about living life simply and in harmony with our inner knowing.  If we do our best to make the right choice for ourselves in each moment -- and trust that everyone else is also doing their best to make their right choices, that we ALL will come round right, to the place just right, in the valley of love and delight (heaven on earth).

If you do what is right for you, always, it will always be the right choice for others.

had I not been awake: seamus heaney

Had I not been awake by Seamus Heaney, from his new book Human Chain. Seamus has won a Nobel Prize for his poetry. An Irishman.

HAD I NOT BEEN AWAKE I WOULD HAVE MISSED IT,
A WIND THAT ROSE AND WHIRLED UNTIL THE ROOF
PATTERED WITH QUICK LEAVES OFF THE SYCAMORE
AND GOT ME UP, THE WHOLE OF ME A-PATTER,
ALIVE AND TICKING LIKE AN ELECTRIC FENCE:
HAD I NOT BEEN AWAKE I WOULD HAVE MISSED IT,
IT CAME AND WENT SO UNEXPECTEDLY
AND ALMOST IT SEEMED DANGEROUSLY,
RETURNING LIKE AN ANIMAL TO THE HOUSE,
A COURIER BLAST THAT THERE AND THEN
LASPED ORDINARY. BUT NOT EVER
AFTER. AND NOT NOW.

time for a christmas poem

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 thickness 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,
Various crucifixes, all sorts of nightsky necklaces.
Many Wise Men remarking the irregular weather.
Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,
Watchers of whisps 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.

Christmas

One of the most peaceful Christmases I have ever had was the first Christmas after I separated from my ex-husband.  Christmas 1983.  He got the baby for Christmas.  I had not lived in Omaha long before I had my baby. I didn't really know anyone on my own, my whole social life was through him.  That first separated Christmas, I didn't know anyone but women from the  two battered women support groups that I went to.  That's not exactly a party crowd, as you might imagine.

I had become friends with a few neighbors during the year, since the separation.

Christmas is not, at least in my experience, a very social holiday. Folks socialize with relatives on the actual holiday. Yes, there are lots of holiday parties but on the holy day itself, not much socializing. And now, having said that, of course I can recall some lovely Christmas dinners with friends.  I've had some mighty fine, sacred holiday dinners with families of friends.

But not many.

Anyway, Christmas 1983.  Katie left on Christmas Eve for her grandmother's. Her father lived with his parents during our divorce.  His family goes way gaga over Christmas. My family never really did. We had presents, Christmas dinner, played Christmas music, ate cookies and drank egg nog but it wasn't all precious or holy.  It was mostly about presents. And then movies on Christmas Day.

When my kid we little, we had fancy dinner on Christmas Eve and then we'd go out and listen to Christmas music as a big church, like a cathedral, checking out before the mass began.  Or maybe we'd drive around and look at Xmas decorations. I guess folks still do these things, guess there are still emotionally, supposedly reverent holiday services at churches.  Alleluia choirs, food drives, caroling. That all still happens, I supposed.

I'm rambling.  I feel dissociated from the human race most of the time but esp. this time of year.  I'm down with the idea of ritual and celebration, esp. community ritual.  I think ritual and holiday matters a whole lot to human culture. It is how we align ourselves to one another.

I was just thinking the other day about how, during the Vietnam War, and, for all I know, other wars, there would be a Christmas ceasefire.  I like that but I also ask:  huh?  What's the point of a ceasefire on Christmas?  in the middle east, do they call ceasefires on Muslim holy days?  In India, if there was a war, would there be a ceasefire on the major Hindu holidays? And what about Buddhists? Do they have major holidays that merit ceasefires in wartime?  Why not, um, cease the war.

Humans.  Go figure.

Anyway.  Katie left on Christmas Eve.  I kept a fire going in the fireplace for hours.  I fixed good food, but I don't remember what food. I probably drank some wine, although even back then I was never much of a drinker.

tea is love

The dream lives on.  Once my teenager stayed home from school when she was feeling sick. The next day, her brainiac boy pals said "Why did you stay home?  You could feel lousy here and not miss class and there is food and friends. Staying home alone is so boring."

She said "My mom brings me cups of tea in bed. That's why I stay home when I am sick."

I was a proud mother.

And felt a little sad for the smart kid who said it. He went to Duke. That kid, smart, very short and not very popular with the girls -- he was a math geek friend of Katie's and if interested in her, he never let on -- as soon as he got to Duke he got together with a tall, gorgeous girl who had been homecoming queen at her high school. Happy ending for geek boy.  I was happy for him then.  But I still feel a little sad to recall that he said when he was sick, even in early grade school, he would spend the day home alone with his working parents calling to check on him.  No tea and dry toast on a tray in bed. No fluffing of pillows, fresh sheets to freshen the soul.  Fluff, fluff. Fresh out of the dryer sheets are such a balm, yes?

Anyway. 

No one has ever brought me a cup of tea when I've been sick.  Not when I was a kid, with a stay at home mom who hated me if I stayed home from school. She would say 'don't expect me to do anything if you stay home'.  I did not have such big dreams in those days, no dream of tea in bed. My mom never brought me anything in bed, never ever. She never 'took care of me' when I was sick. She only let me stay home from school if I was actively vomiting at breakfast time. Barfing the night before was not enough for her stay-at-home standard.

I thought my kid might have done it for me sometime as she grew up but she didn't.  She would never do things for me.  Even when she wanted something.

I've lived alone, without another adult in the house since I was 30.  Who's ever gonna bring me a cup of tea? When I am sick and have an upset tummy and I don't really want anything. The tea is gesture.  The tea would be love.

Invisible Work

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough, because I don't mean these poems only but the unseen unbelievable effort it takes to live the life that goes on between them, I think all the time about invisible work. About the young mother on Welfare I interviewed years ago, who said, "It's hard. You bring him to the park, run rings around yourself keeping him safe, cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces fro dinner, and there's no one to say what a good job you're doing, how you were patient and loving for the thousandth time even though you had a headache." And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself because I am lonely, when all the while, as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried by great winds across the sky, thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night, the slow, unglamorous work of healing, the way worms in the garden tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe and bees ransack this world into being, while owls and poets stalk shadows, our loneliest labors under the moon. There are mothers for everything, and the sea is a mother too, whispering and whispering to us long after we have stopped listening. I stopped and let myself lean a moment, against the blue shoulder of the air. The work of my heart is the work of the world's heart. There is no other art. Alison Luterman  I included the whole poem because it seems right to present a whole poem but the lines that have the deepest resonance for me are:  "The work of my heart is the work of the world's heart. There is no other art." Yes.  Yes.   Yes.  There is no other art.  There is no other work:  the work of my heart, the world's work.

Tooth #12: Hero-dontics

My dental student told me I had to have tooth #12 removed, replaced with an implant. I resisted the new-fangled implant, because she also said she was not completely certain she could place an implant in the spot after extracting the tooth. The uncertainty caused me to hesitate. I hesitated on the right day. While a dental faculty person reviewed Erin's work on a simple cavity repair, I asked him to give me his opinion on tooth #12. Before he actually looked, he said "I think implants should be an absolute last resort. Always save a tooth if you can."

Then he looked, assured me tooth #12 could be saved and the saving (saviour?) was on. Hero-dontics it would be.

So far, tooth #12 has been opened, injections of pain killer done, drilling, clicking and clacking, eight times. She opened it a couple times to develop the plan and to have the right experts look. Every decision in the dental school has to be reviewed by faculty with expertise in the particular area. Just because you are dental faculty at a dental school, you are not the expert on the gums, the crown, the roots (is a root canal needed?  only a root canal expert can, officially, opine although they all knew the answer:  yes, if you are going to do a crown lengthening, then a crown, you have to do a prophylactic root canal.  I knew this going in and I did not go to dental school. But Erin had to clear the decision with a half dozen non-experts first. Each expert, in his or her turn, would say 'I say yes, call the next person'. I guess it is a system of checks and balances. All the weighing of opinion mentors the student.

I needed a prophylactic root canal:  three appointments.  I, or tooth #12, needed a post. The post took three appointments, and it would have taken four but a friend in dental school with Erin has never done a post.  When her patient stood her up the day of my core post prep work, she helped, which speeded things up. Without her help, the post would have needed four appointments.  Two long prep appointments, then send the work to a lab to cast the gold post, then an appointment today to put the post in the tooth. The crown, when it is finally placed on what is left of tooth #12, goes on the lab-cast gold crown.

Some dental faculty said that only in a dental school would they insist on a crown lengthening. One, in this instance, is not absolutely, positively necessary. Dental schools are conservative, said my 'always-save-the-tooth-if-you-can' guy, and do more crown lengthenings than are really necessary. But Erin insists we need one. If the crown will be bonded th the gold post now in my tooth, why do I need more crown? To make the crown more stable.

Sometimes I think about what life was like for humans in the olden days, vis-a-vis dentistry. We know, don't we, that George Washington had wooden false teeth, which suggests he had all his teeth pulled, which suggests most of his teeth had rotted.

What did people do in the olden days?  Laura Ingalls Wilder never talked about dentists on the prairie.  Her family struggled for shelter, living in a mud cave one winter, then living in log cabins, which were no more than one tiny room with a stove and a whole family.  All the humans living in log cabins must have had toothaches, cavities, dental pains and infections. And no porcelain crowns or gold posts.

I have read humorous 'memories' of barbers pulling aching teeth. Not a joke, really. What did folks do? Before flouridated water and cavity-preventing daily brushing of teeth?  Now when I think of olden days life, folks milling about town with horses and wagons and no electricity, I am wondering about rotting teeth.

Jane Austen never mentions tooth care, does she?  Did Fitzgerald or Hemingway?

Now, most of my molars have had root canals and then crowns. So far, the teeth in the front, non-molars, have had very little in the way of decay.  I keep thinking there can't be many more expensive things going wrong with my teeth:  it's all root canaled and crowned over.

When and why did dental care get separated from the health care debate?  How can humans be healthy without good dental care? It is so expensive.  I am spending about two grand on tooth #12, at dental school prices, which are supposed to be forty percent below a private dental office.  Does that mean, on average, I would spend two grand on a root canal, then two grand on a crown? Approximately?

How does someone earning sixty grand a year, with a kid, a housing payment, a car payment, a car insurance payment and a health insurance payment eat and pay two grand (or four grand in a private dental office) for one tooth?

Stop the world. Let me off. I am not suicidal but I would like to stop living this life. There is too much inequity in it, not enough love and there sure as shit isn't enough love for me.  I hate my life. I hate tooth #12.  I hate that I didn't just let them pull it.  Pulled, it would have left a very visible hole in my smile and I didn't want to go around with that hole in my smile but, then, when I reflect, who the fuck cares?  Nobody cares about my smile.

television and movies

I had had a couple chunks of my life in which I whiled away a lot of my one precious life watching mindless tv. Reruns. Leave it to Beaver, Seinfeld, Cheers.  What a waste of life force.

When I was a kid, with no cable, the 'only' tv was broadcast tv. There were the three networks, a local station and a public television station that had very little on it when I was very young.

The local station filled a lot of its airtime broadcasting old movies. They played old movies in afternoons and after the 10 p.m. local news broadcast. Also, lots of dead air time on Saturdays and Sundays was filled with old movies when there was no sports. They used to broadcast bowling, tennis, golf. I imagine such things are still shown. I never watched them That stuff was just not old movies.

I loved watching movies.

At some point, maybe age nine or so?  I would stay awake until I was sure the whole household was sleep and sneak into the living room and watch the late movies.  I never got caught.  I loved all old movies, even awful ones. I hated gangster movies but loved them. I hated cowboy movies but loved them.  I hated criminal movies but loved them.  I loved everything I had to watch on the sneak.

I don't think anyone in the family ever knew about this. If my brothers had wised up to me, they would have ratted me out. They couldn't do it because their bedroom was upstairs and they could not quietly come down the stairs.  I know because they tried. Their trying gave me the idea.

I miss those movies.  I imagine I have romanticized the experience but in my memory, it was wonderful.

I don't have cable. I have never had cable. Sometimes I have lived briefly with folks who had it and so I know there are movie channels and lots of movies get broadcast but it's not the same Nothing stays the same. And what should?  I don't know what should stay the same but one of my favoritest movie watching experiences was watching old movies in black and white on my parents old black and white tv set, in the dark, illicitly, the house full of sleeping siblings and parents, me an outlaw.

Good times.

The programmers at WGN, Chicago's local broadcast station, must have acted as some kind of curator. They didn't show musicals like Oklahoma at 10:30 p.m. They showed movies like The Children's Hour, the one where Shirley MacLaine falls apart when a wicked girl in her boarding school accuses her of lesbianism. They showed James Cagney being evil, Madge throwing away her future in Picnic for the sizzling of William Holden.  Life was dark, threatening, foreboding in the reruns at 10:30 p.m.

doing the dishes

I wonder if any guy has ever liked me. I think the only guys who have ever acted like my friends just put up with me because I liked them but none of them ever liked me.

NoboI wish I did dishes as soon as I was done with them. If I have a cup of coffee, I 'should' wash the cup and the coffeepot immediately after I'm done.  Right?

Ah, no.

That seems so inefficient to me. And what about wasting water? Running water to clean one cup?

I got my first apartment when I started law school. Until then, I lived in dorms or with my clan.  I owned four plates, four bowls, a set of flatware for 8 that my dad bought at Maxwell Street (a flea market in Chicago that is now a very pale version of the very cool thing it used to be), one serrated knife that I got at a grocery store when I spent $30 one week in 1975. I still have that knife, too. For many years, it was my only sharp knife.  I still use the flatware my dad bought that year. A friend from college, Mike N. came to visit me once. I had visited another college friend in Colorado and Mike impulsively decided to ride back to the Midwest with me, see a bunch of old friends. A free ride, why not?

On the road we talked about everything and nothing. Mike is gay but this was 1977, he was not yet out to me and I was a little clueless about homosexuality.  On that trip, I had stayed with Mike in Denver a few days. He had a female housemate I never met, she was out of town when I was there. This female friend, Mike told me, was traveling with a rich businessman who did not want to date her but he paid her to accompany him on some business trips posing as his girlfriend. He paid her living expenses, paid her rent and gave her living expenses. Basically, this female friend, Mike said, was a paid companion to a rich businessman who did not have sex with her. And Mike was living in the house, freeloading off the female friend's freeloading. It was her job, Mike explained to me. And, Mike also carefully explained, since Mike and this woman did not have a a sexual relationship, the rich business guy didn't care if Mike was around. In fact, Mike said, they were all friends. But Mike did not have sex with the female, the female did not have sex with the rich businessman.  

I was so naive.  I don't remember asking if that young woman had sex with anyone or if Mike had sex with anyone. What I mostly remember is Mike kept asking me, over and over, across Nebraska, then Iowa, then Minnesota. .. what reason would that rich business guy have to hire a female to be his date if they weren't having sex? Why didn't the guy just get a girlfriend? or hire a professional escort?

Mike must have been lying about something to me. Or, if not lying, dong something way weird.

I think he was trying to see how clueless I was about homosexuality. I think I was supposed to guess that the rich business guy was gay, using Mike's female housemate as a beard. Maybe I did make that guess.

Looking back, I think Mike was struggling to come out to me. If I had said the right thing when he kept pounding me about the weirdness of his female housemate's relationship .. . . Mike also said that this rich guy was thinking of moving to CA, and financing the female and Mike to move there. And not long after, Mike did move to CA. Then he became a Unitarian minister and, many years later, he came out to me in a letter. An old fashioned letter, the kind with ink and paper, longhand.

He wrote to tell me he had graduated from ministerial school, ordained and had accepted a job in Kansas, which is where his parents lived. Mike had not grown up in Kansas, but his folks had and they had returned to Kansas while Mike was in college, which meant Mike ahd to leave our college for a cheaper state school in Kansas.

I must have seemed to blindly naive to Mike.  He and I got drunk together a few times when we were freshmen. Once, drunk, he asked me why I never came onto him for sex as I had with a friend of his. I had a crush on his friend and roommate Dan.  I had no idea, when Mike asked me, why I felt like a buddy with him and felt sexually attracted to Dan, who was totally not interested in me.  I guess one night, when very drunk, I had made a fool of myself with Dan, asking him to have sex with me, noisily and shamelessly. Guys do that all the time and they aren't fools.  Whatever.

Years later, when he wrote to tell me he was not a full fledged Unitarian minister, and was leaving CA to take a job with a church in Kansas -- gosh, who would go to Kansas?  and what gay educated minister would do so of his own free will? someone with a good family? -- Mike wrote about moving to kansas and then he wrote that his heart was breaking because his dear friend, his best friend in the whole world that he had been living with for the few years of ministerial school, Josie, would not leave CA to be with him. Like I said, he wrote in longhand. Then he crossed out Josie and wrote Jose, with the accent on the 'e'.  I don't know how to write the accents to make Spanish look right.

That's how Mike came out to me. That was the last time I heard from him.  I google him once in awhile. I'd love to be in touch, see if he is happy. I really loved him. I still do.  

I wish I had asked him why he was never attracted to sex with me.

He asked me, very drunk, "What would you say if I told you I am very horny and want to have sex with you?' and I said "I think I would tell you to walk it off." And he was hurt. But I was a virgin, we were so not in love. We were best friends. He was a best friend. He was my first guy best friend.

Mike had curly blonde hair, a screechy voice, a shrill laugh.  and he was dramatic.  He talked me into doing some crazy things. Nothing arrest-worthy. 

Once, Mike, Kenny T, a black guy and I carried all the desk-chairs in the unlocked classrooms in main hall in the stairs blocking the inside of the entrances to Main Hall. We exited through the basement. It took us all night. It was a ton of work. Classes had to be cancelled because no one could get in, except through the basement fire exit. And all the furniture was stacked in the stairwells blocking all the main level doors. The desks were the kind with half-desktops attached, so you could put a notebook on the desktop and write. The desks were old, metal framed, lasted a lifetime. They weighed a ton. It took janitorial staff a whole day to put them all back. The word was that the authorities thought quite a lot of students had been involved in the stunt. There was much debate about whether it was vandalism. Nothing was damaged. We thought it was a classic college prank. I don't remember why Mike wanted us to do it. I went along because it was fun, imagining professors coming to class and being unable to enter. We didn't think it through. It didn't take all that long to drag all those chairs down and we thought the janitors were being lazy cause it took so long to help.

We never told anyone it was us because it was never made clear if the activity was considered a crime.

Why did we do it?  It doesn't sound like fun, does it?  It wasn't that much fun doing it but it was fun seeing college administrators and professors trying to understand it. We never wrote a note to explain our behavior. We thought it was self-evident:  old fashioned college prank, but it seemed to befuddle many.

Maybe -- and this might be manufactured -- maybe Mike or Kenny had a big test that day.

And now I am wondering if maybe Mike and Kenny were gay.

I also loved Kenny.

I'm lonely tonight, longing for old friends. Do people who were my friends for two years in the early seventies count as friends tonight?  

hum diddy do dum dum

I have a friend who invented a gender neutral pronoun:  hum.  A combo of him and her? she and he?  Instead of saying 'she does not drink green tea', someone could make a gender-neutral statement by saing 'Hum does not drink green tea'. Does this work?  I like hum but I am not sure if it fits for him, her, she and he. And what about 'his and hers'. Could I write hum's? for the possessive pronounces his and hers?

Hum. What do you think.

a new bike or an iPad?

I have a few hundred extra, unbudgeted bucks.  Someone stole my Cannondale out of the bike room in my building's bike room. There is a code to get into the room so it was probably someone who lives here and owns a bike. Yuck. It was about $700 bucks worth of bike, more if you count the two locks, the bike helmet, the special seat, lights, water bottle and mount, ankle wraps that I kept wrapped on the frame.  I loved everything about that bike.

Or an iPad?  I don't need an iPad. I have a perfectly good, one-year-old MacBook Pro. But I covet the new technology.

Decisions decisions.

Or I could pay down a little debt.  I owe a couple friends some money, not much, but I do owe.

I have just decided. Pay the debt. Wait for the bike. I don't need an iPad.

a memory from raising my child

When my daughter was two years old, we still lived in Omaha. A Fuddruckers restaurant came to town.  Fuddruckers might still exist, but I haven't seen one in years.  I only patronized a place like Fuddfuckers, as I usually referred to the place, to please my daughter.  Fuddruckers mostly sells hamburgers, fries and drinks. Their special thing is the toppings bar for the burgers, and, in the mid-eighties in Omaha, anyway, games that cost money to play. The restaurant had a noisy game arcade.

For my daughter, the favorite feature was the way they announced your name when your burger was ready. "Rosie your burger is ready!"  Hearing her name called in the exotic environment thrilled her.
They took names for each burger so my name was called and her name was called. Thrill city. For a two year old.

She loved to hear her name, then rush to claim her food, and then carefully select her toppings.

My memories of Fuddfuckers are a little faint. I remember that I always called the place Fuddfuckers, pretending I didn't know I was saying it wrong.  I always used profanity in front of my child. I decided, while still pregnant, that I would not be a hypocrit in the way I talked to her, that I would talk to her like anyone else.  No baby talk and no edited profanity withheld. So I said Fuddfuckers, and every time I did, it titillated her a bit.

We loved Fuddfuckers. The clanging, pinging game machines, the endless announcement of ready burgers, background music. A blaring cacophony of suburban, middle class exotica, an escape from our very dull life in very dull Omaha.

At this time, Rosie was really into She-Ra, Princess of Power, which was a cartoon show. At the time, He-Man was a popular boys cartoon and She-Ra was an attempt to  cater to little girls, to sell them junk at commercial breaks, to appeal to the different market.  I didn't let Rosie watch it at home but she spent every weekend with her father during the two years of our custody battle. She watched it there. And she talked about She-Ra, I heard her, I tuned in.

My point about the visitation is that she spent a lot of time with different rules. Her father and his mother, who really took care of her during the visitations, let her watch a lot of crap on television. And Rosie was in love with She-Ra, Princess of Power.

At Fuddfuckers, the kids at the register, very young kids themselves, sixteen, seventeen, were happy to write down 'She-Ra, Princess of Power' on the burger order, and then to call out 'She-Ra, Princess of Power, your burger is ready".

I love all the easy, little ways you can make a kid happy.  It made me happy to make her happy.

door-to-door

I live in an almost new apartment building, less than two years old. In the first year, lots of kids in the building came around selling stuff for school fundraisers.  My policy is to buy from every kid who asks me. I will buy raffle tickets for things I don't want and things I would like to win. I will buy at least one box of cookies -- more if it is Girl Scout cookies because I used to hump those as a kid and I buy them for the memories -- I also hustled GS cookies for my kid.

A time or two, since moving here, I have even just given a few dollars to a kid looking to go on a class trip to D.C. or something like that. I totally want every kid to go on such a school trip. Wouldn't it be awful to miss out because your folks were tapped out?

The door-to-door sales campaigns have died out.  I don't think any building children have knocked on my door to sell something this school year, thus far.

But last year about this time, a brother and a sister were selling fifteen dollar boxes of cookies. They looked like really crappy cookies. And it was irritating that the school fundraisers had chosen such large bundles.  Fifteen bucks would buy me three or four boxes of Girl Scout cookies and most of those are good cookies. Mostly, I give cookies away, esp. cheap crap manufactured ones.

That fifteen dollar box of cookies looked like baked sawdust dusted in crystalize sugar crumbs.

Still, I bought a box. I didn't have cash. The kids balked at taking my check and I said "Well, that's all I have, a check or nothing. Or you can come back."

They decided to take my check. They cashed it.

And I never got the cookies.

I didn't take their names or apartment numbers.  I don't remember who they are.

Another time, a girl was selling raffle tickets. As I counted out my money, after agreeing to buy two, she began to write her name on the tickets I was about to pay for.  I pointed out that the point was to write down my name so I had a chance to win. I got the distinct impression that she thought the point was to buy herself as many chances to win as possible. She did let me write my name but something felt wrong.

So. Do I buy this year when the holiday hustle picks up? Someone will be selling gift wrap, for sure.