the universe is made up of stories, not atoms -- muriel rukeyser, poet

Muriel's line inspired a MN friend to write this poem:

The winter is made up of warmth not cold
The body is made up of space not matter
The heart is made up of love not isolation


We are most deeply made
to find the warmth of connection even in the coldest moment
to be in the oneness of space not the solidness of matter
to synchronize our heartbeat with the hearts of others

Sometimes we just forget
in fear or confusion or longing
or in believing stories about separation and loss and lack

So perhaps our greatest work on planet earth in this new year
is to re - member to re - connect to re-live
that we are all one - that we are all connected

Perhaps we can start by listening to each others' stories
So let me begin by asking you to tell me yours
Perhaps the universe is made up of stories not atoms

I wish the few folks who follow me on Blogger and G+ would share some stories with me. I live for stories, and not just my own. I am not an egomaniac.

being ignored hurts grown ups too

treating someone like they and their feelings don't matter just because it is their sixtieth birthday is igoring them and the victim experiences an injury, emotional and chemical, in the brain.

Additionally, vilifying someone about their psychological disablity must cause a chemical, painful brain reaction even more intense than simply ignoring someone, such as saying in angry, vicious tones, "you are such a borderline' which this borderline hears as 'you are nothing, not good enough for me to treat humanely."

Feast of the Three Chick Magi

I choose to believe three important women decided to visit Baby JC and bring him gifts, following yonder star.  I am so done with males dominating my creation mythology.

Today, I declare Jan sixth the feast of the three royal chicks who visited Baby JC.

I'm as sweet as tupelo honey . . if you treat me well

This is what I wanted to Xmas, for someone to love me cause they see me as sweet as tupelo honey.  I am, you know.

Sendoff by Fleur Adcock

I love this short poem that tells a good story most of us have lived.

Send Off by Fleur Adcock

Half an hour before my flight was called
he walked across the airport bar towards me
carrying what was left of our future
together; two drinks on a tray.

The City LIghts by A. R. Ammons

A man introduced me to this poem, telling me he had first recalled it as being about radiance and that was why it reminded him of me. He thought I was radiant. It is a great poem. The guy introduced me to Ammons, who has become one of my favorite poets even if he is a guy.

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.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda

one's own dome of heaven

Kiefer created art that reflects the darkness in life but he also created art that acknowledged the beauty, majestic and magic of this life, this cosmos, this everything.

When SFMOMA did a retrospective of Kiefer's work, the brochure for the show had a postcard size image of a self portrait Kiefer did that is, in the 'real' picture, larger than life. The painting has Kiefer laying on the ground, on planet earth. The viewer gets a  sense of alost seeing the earth curving around from the patch of ground upon which Kiefer has painted himself.

He is beholding a shower of falling stars. His eyes are closed, as if he is soaking up the love of the stars, maybe also soaking up a moon bath. Have you ever gone moon bathing?  I have. It can feel quite lovely to be naked under a full moon and to be still and try to soak up the moon's light.

Well, in his painting, Kiefer is soaking up the stars' light and love, the radiance and glory of being a being in his glorious universe.

That's what I see.

They did not see posters of this painting, although I am sure they asked the lucky person who owns the original painting.

I cut off the picture and took it to a printer and paid $60 to have it enlarged. The one I have is five feet long. I love it. It hangs on the wall across from my bed so I see it a lot. I put it there to remind myself that I, too, live under the same starry heavens, and I, too, can behold my own dome of heaven if I choose. It reminds me to be joyful and happy.

I wish I had the nerve to order it eight feet long but that would have been much more expensive. As it was, sixty bucks was a wild splurge.

Kiefer had anoher painting in the show I very much loved caled "Everyone lives under their own dome of heaven." This one is small. It shows a small figure, who appears, altho he is very tiny so it is hard to see for sure, as an academic, as if giving a lecture on the dome of heaven, or how to create one's own!  This figure stands in a field and is surrounded by a blue dome, his dome of heaven.

This painting was reproduced on postcards but not as a poster, or I would have bought it. I took the ost card and made it as large as I could at a color copy machine at a Kinko-like place. Kinko's is gone, eh?    I learned how to use compouters and esp. Pagemaker at Kinko's. Good memories. A good business in its day. It is sad it is gone. FedEx just doesn't compare.


Some friends have an expensive, gigantic color printer to print art quality prints. The woman in this couple is doing great art. I want to work up the nerve to ask them to make me a larger print of "Everyone lives under their own dome of heaven". I think Kenoli could scan my print, which is about 8 by 10 into his copmputer and then make me a larger print. This one could not be too big. Too big would betray the artist's it=ntetion. Kiefer did not paint many small paintings. It matters that the dome of heaven is a small one.

Sometimes, on happy days, I imagine all the people I pass in the world waddling through the world with their own see-through but vaguely blue dome of heaven. Such a bubble could separate us from one another but I think domes of heaven are permeable and it is possible to blend domes when one connects with others. It would be an extra charge of all the love that is heaven.

parsifal would approve, for he is the Gral King, the king of the kingdom of love.

In a time of universal deceit . . . . . said George Orwell . . .

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."  George Orwell

This seems like a time of universal deceit. Up is down, down is up. Neocons destroy the post office with insane prepayment of pension liabilities for the next 75 years, so the post office sells off National Historic Register buildings built with public funds for peanuts, the real estate company who scored the real estate transactions just happens to be owned by the husband of a Democratic U.S. Senator from California. How much ya wanna bet the post offices get sold for a fraction of what they end up being worth to the men who get to buy them for chump change?  Our commons, sold off.

And once the post office no longer has beautiful buildings and its pension liability is funded for 75 years, they'll sell the whole operation and that corporation will plunder the pension funds, which taxpayers also pretty much all paid for and then they say "privatize the post office" and sell the whole shebang for peanuts to another well connected rich guy.

I could tell the same story over many things, like the private sweetheart deal Obama sold the drug companies in private before selling obamacare to the public or Wall Street and mortgage shysters getting rich while millions lost their homes and life savings and no one has gone to jail. A few gigantic companies pay what amounts to chump change fines.

So what is the truth?

if you have hurt someone . .

If you have hurt someone, don’t expect them to be elegant in how they deliver the message that they are hurt. Expect them to act like the imperfect human that they are. Hurt people act from woundedness, that's just how it is. Even if you hurt another unconsciously, they are still hurt and until you own what you did, acknowledge that you made behavioral choices that hurt them, they are going to keep trying to convey to you their hurt. Listen to their hurt, be sure you understand their hurt and then express regret. Don't tell criticize them for being hurt. Don't criticize them. Don't tell the person you have hurt that they shouldn't be hurt. Acknowledge what you did, whether it was conscious or unconscious, and express regret that the other person got hurt.  I do this.  I am quite sure I do.

Own up to having made your mistakes.  And don't yell at the person you hurt for feeling hurt.

snapdragons, zinnias, tomatoes and beans

I love to garden. Alas, I have no garden to garden.

My building has a rooftop garden, comprised of tubs. It is supposed to be run by the residents but, somehow, funded by the building's owner nonprofit or the property management company. No one wants to fund plants and plants, or even seeds, cost something. And tools cost something. Compost is free from Berkeley Parks but it has to be hauled.

How does a group of disparate neighbors, literally from cultures across the globe, decide what to grow? And what to do about unsupervised children who think it is fun to pluck green tomato buds and throw them off the roof just because it is fun to throw things and, I guess, imagine they might land on a person and unsettle the person?

One year, several years ago, I personally bought about 18 tomato plants. I reasoned that if I tended that many plants, including paying for food specifically for organic tomatoes plus hauling compost from the park service, that I might be able to enjoy just one or two home grown perfectly ripe tomatoes.

But a gal who lived in the building stalked the roof. As soon as any tomato, always still green, got bigger than a grape, she would harvest them for herself and her kids. All of us on the garden committee pleaded with her to let the tomatoes at least get ripe. We did not invite the whole building to feel free to take whatever they wanted, we pointed out. She was not free to just take them. She said if we were chumps and wanted to plant tomatoes in the open, she was going to take them. She did not seem to grasp our argument that she was plucking them before they were fully grown.

I finally reduced myself to begging, tearfully. I explained that I had bought 18 plants, already started to maximize the growing sesaon, i.e. to get more tomatoes. I explained I had bought special tomato planta foot, watered the tomatoes, and everything else growing in the garden (I also planted lots of beans, lettuce and spinach, and other things). I said "If you could just let me have one tomato out of the eighteen plants, I can accept tha tyou are going to take all the rest."

Laughing at me, looking at me askance with open scorn, she said "If you dumb enough to put your money into public plants, you aren't going to get any tomatoes. You have been stupid. It's not my fault."

I told her "You are not going to take any more of my tomatoes." She said "Try and stop me."

I tripped out all my tomato plants, leaving behind the two plants someone else had planted. I don't know if that stealing tomato woman stole any more tomatoes but she didn't steal any more of mine.

It wasn't like my 18 plants were going to get many tomatoes. Little boys, who are not supposed to be on the roof at all unless accompanied by an adult, loved to tear off the tiniest green buds of tomato and throw them off the side of the roof. For fun. The boys were wholly oblivious to the fact that they were stealing and damaging someone's effort and with no parents supervising them, as our leases require, there was no way to stop the boys. Management claimed, in written letters to parents, that households that allowed unsupervised minors on the roof would be evicted. Just imagine how easy a little kid could scoot over the not-high fence that lines the roof and fall to their death. How could a sane, reasonsible parent let their kids up on the roof? So okay, ten year olds aren't goingi to thoughtlessly jump but I have seen four year olds crawling on that fence. And the ten year olds destroyed most of my tomatoes. Any tomatoes that didn't get thrown over the side, that woman harvested before they were ripe.

"I just want one home-grown, vine-riened tomato from my 18 plants," I told her several times. "You can have all the rest." But, as I wrote above, she mocked my stupidity. "If you dumb enough to plant for me, I am going to take what you grow."  We had more exchanges.

I stopped gardening after I ripped out the tomatoe plants. If I wasn'at going toi be allowed one red tomato, I was not going to grow anymore for that selfish bitch. And she had three kids, setting examples for them, telling them in actions that it is okay to steal and okay to treat neighbors like dogshit on their shoes.

Since I withdrew from the garden group, other neighbors stepped in. New residents. One guy, clearly mentally ill (some of the units are set aside specifically for mentally ill, formerly homeless patients and he was definitely one of these residents!), he announced that the two year old persimmon trees, which, in two years, had, thus far, only yielded one persimmon, needed deep pruning. They were baby trees when bought. The buildilng did not invest in expensive, mature persimmon trees. How could two year old baby trees need pruning. He 'pruned off pretty much the whole tree but the central stalk. It remains to be seen if those trees will ever grow anything now. That guy was banned from gardening. He ruined some other things.

I go up there once in awhile, to see if there is any food I might like to pick. At least pluck some herbs. But whoever is doing the gardening makes such odd choices. No one has dared to plant a single tomato since that first year's debacle.  We could grow tomatoes up there if management would support the lease that forbids children under 18 up there alone. And get this:   the kids throwing food, like those tomatoes, over the wall, are caught on the security camera. Management has no excuse not to enforce the lease rules:  evict one family for not supervising minors on the roof, for damaging people's hard-worked food crop and kids would stop destroying food on the roof.

I had plantd beans all along the fence. Since I withdrew, they plant lots of beans, which can grow fast and grow prolifically so they are fun to grow for a big building, but no one, not one bean plant, has been planted along the fence since the days when I did it. Explailn that to me?  Why not use the fence?  When I used the fence, the fence was covered with bean vines and beans.

What else do they plant? two eggplant plants for 97 apartments? 

I tried to plant things tha would grow easily in quantity so every household could have some fresh vegetables from the roof. 18 tomato plants was just a start.

I also had started growing lettuce in the many more shallow growing tubs up there but now, those shallow tubs are full of scrawny flwoers that never bloom, are rarely green. We could grow enough lettuce in all those shallow tubs to give heads of lettuce to every apartment a couple times a month. Instead, they grow ground cover. Huh? Why that choice?

And herbs? Why don't we have a herb garden? That first year, when we met as a committee and decided as a group, we planned to have herbs growing year round. We could grow a ton of herbs in just one of the large aluminium watering tubs (these tubs were originally designed to feed large farm animals and are adapted for gardens). One tub could grow enough basil, chilis, parsley, cilantro, apazote and more, and enough for the whole building. But they don't.

A new friend in the building first tried to coax me back to the garden group. A few weeks later, I ventured up on the roof because some children had gotten past the locked gates and were running around a part of the roof with no fencing along the wall. Nothing to shield children, or adults, from falling six stories down. I saw them from my top floor apartment and went up to check out the situation before calling management. But this new friend had already gotten the manager, the children were ousted from the unsafe part of the roof. A janitor had left a gate unlocked to have an illegal smoke on our roof It is illegal to smoke anywhere on the roof because in Berkerley it is illegal to ever smoke with 25 feet of a residential window. Up on our roof, there are residential windows from the top residential floor within a few feet of anywhere on the roof:  so it is illegal to smoke up there, even if you are a janitor.  The janitor felt sheepish, seeing that leaving the gate unlocked had prompted those kids to go exploring. I understand the urge to explore. The photovoltaic panels are over where the kids were. When I first saw them out there, I hoped they were supervised and with a class about photvoltaics. But, nope, they were just kids from the building tempted into forbidden territory. No one fell off the roof but it would not take much.

Anyway, that day my new friend reported to me that maangement had turned off the water on the roof. New management.  I guess they felt they had to show improved budgets by using less water.

Ahem. You cannot grow vegetables in an area experiencing drought without watering the plants. The lemon trees will not grow lemons without wtaer. The orange tree will not grow oranges. And the persimmons, if the pruning fool did not kill them, will not grow persimmons without water. So my new friend had also given up on the garden.

"I couldn't stand all the bullshit" I said. "what is this you say, 'bull sheet'?" Her first langauge is Farsi so I explained that bull shit was shit from a male cow or cattle. I am not clear on exactly what a bull is other than it is male, right? Bullshit to turn off water.

We had the water protected from kids. Only members of th garden group had access to the spigot, which was locked away with a code. Kids would like to go up on the roof and spray one another with water on warm days but they coudln't, not when the spigot was kept locked. But now, the gardeneers have to find staff, which is often unavaialble. Our property managers ahve more meetings than any other organization ever, I have concluded. They post hours from 9 to 5 weekdays but I don't think actual humans are in the office more than four hours a week. And if they are having a meeting, they arent going to give you access to water on the roof.

Does it really improve how a property maaner loos to her boss if she reduces water usage so much that the garden dies?

The garden tubs all have water hoses right inside them. Our first property manager, also to save money, turned all of them off. When the building opened, the rooftop was beautifully landscaped with flowers intended to attracted butterflies and bees to pollinate our vegie tubs but when the water got turned off, all the landscaping on the roof died. All of it.

That was two managers ago. No history gets passed down. and these new property managers are kids. TWenty two? If older than 22, not by much. And wherever they went to college, they did not get trained to think very well. What educated intelligent person, even if they grew up in a very rough urban environment and never grew a plant, who doesn't know that plants need water?

If I had a garden, the first things I would plant would be snapdragons, zinnias tomatoes and beans. and then an herb garden. and Lettuce.kale, collard greens and chard. These all grow easily with compost, sun and WATER. Most imortant to me:  snapdragons and zinnias.

I like yellow snapdragons and pinky-yellow ones. and I like all colors of zinnias. I am not actually all that crazy about zinnias but they make nice cut flowers so I can have cut flowers on my table all summer.

Not here.

Maybe I will meet a man who will fall in love, own a garden and share it with me. That's the only way I'm ever going to get to garden again. I have been on wait ist for pubic garden lots for years and never gotten a nibble. I think the public garden lots go to insiders in the know cause the wait lsits don't move. Five years and not a nibble.  I haven't moved from the same spot on the list. Maybe no one gives up lots but i doubt that. People move, die and stop gardening. Spots open up and those with connections get the garden plots, I guess.

Sigh.  I have few friends in Berkeley who own yards. 

How I wish Ihad a garden. Growing things is important to the human spirit. It connects us to everything.

fire is the glue of the cosmos

Anselm Kiefer, a German artist whose work left a deep impression on me, was quoted in a major retrospecive of his work in 2006, saying 'fire is the glue of the cosmos'.  I like that.

Fire is light and heat, forging together different elements of the heavens.

We are in the heavens now. I am in the heavens. You are in the heavens.

I dare you to escape the heavens. You could not more escape the heavens than I could prove Marc does not love me, even though I don't believe he does. But I can't prove it. It is cheap, easy, to throw around 'I love you' when you are dumping someone. Is there any glue in that?

Step away from sad thoughts, Tree. Be happy. The sun is shining. The pool is calling. And people love me. An old friend called me on New Year's Eve. How's come I never think to call old friends on such nights?  I am not as selfless and kind as some. I become absorbed with my own suffering and forget that others suffer. This old friend who called has had some very hard challenges but she remembered me.

I am reminded of my favorite, obscure Lou Reed song. Here are some of the 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

Why can't I be 1/10th as cool as Lou Reed? or something better than me?

Men: women are giving you a gift

this quote is from http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/hesaid-how-narcissism-harms-your-relationships/

Men, when women tell you that you have hurt them, they are giving you a gift. Listen to them. Receive the gift. Learn how to be loving to them and you will be rewarded with love.

I [male speaking] learned from my partner that when women blame, shame or criticize men, it’s usually because the man won’t listen to them. They then have to escalate the delivery of their message. After a few frustrated attempts at telling you what you did to hurt them, their communication starts to sound and feel like emotional castration. Beneath their rising anger, women are trying to inform and inspire us to become more kind, loving and virtuous. It’s our own block-headedness that gets them so riled up. It’s as if someone is trying to hand you a gift, and you refuse to accept it, so they start pushing it in your face until you figure out that it’s good for you.
A woman, at her best, is a beacon of the truth. If you hurt her feelings, whether by unconscious mistake or a  narcissistic act, she will tell you about it, either verbally, or in non-verbal body language. The truth is often uncomfortable to hear, but when a woman tells you that she’s hurt, or someone else is being impacted by your insensitivity, it’s time to button up, quiet down your narcissistic ego, and be humble. In other words, shut up and listen. And if you’ve hurt someone, don’t expect them to be elegant in how they deliver the message.

what did you want for Xmas? do you have it now?

Did you have what you wanted all along?

I want company. I want to have fun socializing with people who love me.  I am having dinner this evening with some acquaintances but I wanted more.

When my daughter as young and would want want want things I did not want to give her, I would say "Katie, you have the gimmees." The gimmees was an illness, like the flu.  Saying that to her did not stop the gimmees but I felt better. Now I wonder what her experience was hearing me tell her that.

What did she want for Christmas this year? Did she get it? 

I want love, companionship, intimacy, family, fun, socializing. Love. I want love.

Occasionally, a friend will ask me if there is something I want at Christmastime. I tend to not think of anything I want. I have decided that from now on, if someone asks me if there is anything I want, even though they are offering to buy me a physical gift, I am going to talk about what I want.

I want love, commitment, companionship, sex, emotional and physical intimacy, family, fun, work, recognition. Love. Love sums it up.

The Lethality of Loneliness

The Lethality of Loneliness

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Mindful - poem by Mary Oliver

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

 

"Every night is secretly christmas night."

I ripped this off someone else on G+ . .. but I could not resist.

football: ritualized war game

I think I understand the phenomenon of being a sport fan, even a fan of commercial, for-profit teams that, unbeknownst to most members of the public, tend to extract quite a lot of public wealth from the commons under the guise of being an economic boost for a city. That's bullshit. Team owners threaten to take their teams out of town to extract money from cities. And cities balk because they are run by craven kiss ups who will serve anyone willing to make campaign donations and keep them

No more fake "I love yous" please. Love plays through

Recently, two people I have loved very much dumped me. I had behaved unkindly towards each of them, yes, indeed. Each of them have behaved unkindly towards me in the years we've each known the other. But these two fucking hypocrites never acknowledge their unkindness and they are horrified by mine.  Yes, I am an imperfect human.

Love abides. Love plays through. Love is like the old days before many football teams had domed stadiums and football games kept going even in frigging blizzards.

Love plays through.

tamales -- perfect Xmas food

I'm going to head to SF tomorrow to find some chicken tamales. It isn't Christmas for most Mexicans and some other latino cultures without some kind of masa food like tamales, pupusas, huaraches, etc. For me, it's tamales. Weirdly, my Irish dad loved tamales. When I was growing up in Chicago, in the fifties and sixties, there weren't a lot of Latinos. There are now!  My childhood neighborhood has all the signs on stores in Spanish.  My dad would have scoped out every tamale joint.

My challenge, tomorrow, is to find some because so many will be out buying tamales tomorrow. And which places sell the best ones?

When I lived in Mountain View, I bought tamales from a woman who sold them outside the Walmart. There was a bus transfer statin at the front of that Walmart. I didn't actually shop there. On Xmas Eve, or the day before, I'd go looking for the tamale lady. That gal make awesome tamales but she'd sell out fast.

All the good ones sell out fast. So do I arise early and just go to the Mission and wander?

Or do I skip tamales? They are gluten free, can easily be had dairy-free, so they fit my nutritional goals. And I want some.

The Mexi joint around the corner took orders until Dec 20th and I missed the ordering. I swung by today -- they aren't open tomorrow - and asked if they were selling to any who had not pre-ordered. Nope.

But in SF's Mission, there will be tamales available if I know where to look. Where to look?

"Remember that I am an ass."

"Remember that I am an ass."
The character, Dogberry,  said the above , in "Much Ado About Nothing"
Aint that the truth. I call upon anyone who ever loved me to remember that I am an ass. An imperfect human. A perpetually wounded Grail King.

Forgive me for being an ass and love me still.

Broken Hearts by Jeremy Reed

Broken Hearts

 There should be heart-shaped rooms in which we sit
 as a collective to repair
 the damage done by love, and half the night
 we'd exchange stories, share a common pain
 that's always different, but never less
 in how the ruin's total, like a house
 slipped off a cliff edge to the sea
 or like a turtle that has lost its shell
 but keeps on going, making tracks on sand
 to find a refuge up beyond the surf.
 We're all suddenly disinherited
 from little ways, familiar dialogue,
 security of someone there to share
 bad news, rejection, a red letter day,
 a downmood's tumble of blue dice,
 or someone there to celebrate a quiet
 in which the meaning is in being two
 without a need to speak. But out of love
 we seem to be falling down stairs
 that never terminate. He left or she
 took off with someone else, it's like the blow
 will never stop arriving in the heart
 as an impacted fist. We'd call the place
 Heartbreak Hotel, and hope to patch the scars
 of unrequited love and leave
 a little less in tatters, disrepair.
 I'll find the place one day, and book a room
 and talk amongst the losers of a face
 I can't forget, and of a special hurt
 bleeding like footprints scattered over snow.

-- Jeremy Reed    

Seamus Heaney . . . poet laureate of Ireland

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/opinion/for-seamus.html?smid=pl-share

I'm not Irish. Born in South Dakota.  I was raised to believe I am Irish, in a world where everyone's grandparents and great grandparents had been born in Ireland.

Seamus Heaney's poetry resonates powerfully in me. The NYTimes has a sweet little documentary posted about Seamus.

What does Santa Claus say?

When my daughter was 18 months old, experiencing her first 'real'  Xmas, she was talking and even in full sentences but brief sentences. I would encourage her, or at least I imagined I was encouraging her to talk, by asking questions repetitively that she knew the answer to. AT age 18 months at Xmas, I kept asking "Santa Claus says 'ho ho ho', honey." then a long pause and then I'd ask "What does Santa Claus say?" And every time, and I think I asked a few hundred times, she would say "Ho ho". Then I would say, "Santa Claus says 'ho ho ho', ho ho ho, honey, not ho ho, but ho ho ho."  I would have sworn she was being funny, playing a trick on me. She was always very smart. She knew the difference, I was sure, between ho ho and ho ho ho but she never once said the word three times. And believe me, I tried and tried.

So ho ho HO, Merry Christmas.'

The year before, at age six months, she mostly slept through Xmas although the Christmas tree lights seemed to please her. She was oblivious to Santa Claus but aware that some fuss was in the air at six months.

At eighteen months, she knew who Santa Claus was and, I am positive, she knew he said "Ho, ho, HO!". To tell the truth, I loved it that she would not say that third 'ho', loved her stubbornness.

Now her stubbornness is not quite so charming.

But ho ho ho, anyway. Merry Christmas.

She could sing most of the words to Jingle Bells. I just didn't believe she did not get the distinction between 'ho ho' and 'ho ho ho' but gol-dang, she never once said 'ho ho ho'. And she laughed a lot after she said 'ho ho'. 

I would give anything to hear her say 'ho ho' in the soft, whispery tones of my long ago baby.

Ho ho.

Help someone's soul heal.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd." - Rumi

Hat tip to the friend who shared this Rumi quote on her FB wall.

snow in San Francisco

©A week or two ago, I rented a citycarshare car that just happened to be across the street from San Francisco City Hall.  The ground all around SF City Hall just happened to be covered in snow. Some kind of celebrating ritual civic cvent was going on. Lots of people were dressed as old fashioned carolers and elves. Or something. I didn't look closely.

Lots of adults were there to show kids snow.  I find that depressing. A couple hours drive east into the Sierras and those kids could see real snow.

It didn't look or seem like real snow because as soon as it was blown, it began to melt into icy lumps. It wasn't cold enough to not melt, either.

Weirder than the snow was all the people in costumes, which didn't had a discernible theme.

So that was it? Snow on the ground in front of city hall?

When I returned my car, someone had parked in my private parking spot. Citycarshare cars live at specific spots. The signs saying it was not a parking spot for any other car were quite large.

I was all bah humbug, called the emergency line who told me where I could leave the car. I asked him to call SF traffic enforcement and get the car towed and given a big fat fine. Scrooge herself, eh?

I once saw snow in downtown San Jose, too, when I lived in Silicon Valley. The snow there was pathetic, inferior to the SF city hall mounds I saw recently.  It's much warmer in San Jose. Still, mountains with real snow are an hour or two away. If parents want their kids to see snow, why don't they go see snow in nature?

My Christmas spirit is flagging.  I wanted to offer to extend my rental and drive some of those kids to see real snow.

if you want to give me a Xmas gift -- poetry. Seamus Heaney would be lovely

Or Alice Oswald.

Or that guy who used to be US poet laureate . . . what's his name?   -- Billy Collins. for some reason, I love his stuff, which evokes Seamus Heaney for me, actually. And chick poets work for me. I just discovered an old lady chick poet .. . Heather McHugh.

It's kinda awful that so many male poets spring to mind. Jack Gardner, who was based in Berkeley when he died recently, is a poet whose works I don't own and would like to.

I see how women are not given the same respect as male poets by my blog. I can see when a post is clicked on and read and when I mention a male poet, the post always gets more posts than when I mention a chick poet. Don't tell me gender discrimination or feminism is wrong. Screw equalism. I'll be all for equalism when women have equality with men.

I have a few Billy Collins and a former friend gave me one of his books. He even read me a poem over a birthday lunch. This was a few years ago when he loved me and showed my birthday a little respect, unlike this year when he treated taking me out for my birthday like an inconvenient chore that dragged him to the East Bay. I can hump it to SF to see him but he has to combine work with seeing me if he is going to bestir himself to the EB.  My birthday disappointment still rankles, I suspect it still rankles because I lost the friendship because I did not pretend I wasn't hurt.  I can't do suppressing my emotions, which sure seems like the key to success in this fucked up world of corporate dominated values systems.

I ramble.

No one is fretting about what to give me for Xmas.  #1 choice, a book by Heather McHugh, a completed works if it exists. Then, sorry women, a Jack Gardner. Man, Gardner could write poems.

If someone wants to give me the stars, give me some reconciliation with my baby.

I spent five days in Santa Fe with an old friend who knew me as Katie's mom. I told this friend that I had seen Katie wearing one of my old necklaces, I had the matching earrings and I was considering sending the earrings to Katie. the friend spoke in an angry voice, almost snarled as she said "Why would you do that?"

Tears stung my eyes. Why would I do it? I felt defensive and wrong but then I pulled myself together and remembered why. Because I love her, I am her mom and the earrings match a necklace that she clearly loves for she posted it in so many photos,wearing it. I should send her those earrings today.

had I not been awake by Seamus Heaney

Had I not been awake
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.


©I tend to repost beloved poems. Poems are not meant to be loved only once, just like lovers do not make love only once.

I love this one and it feels at least tangentially related to winter solstice, holy nights and even Santa Claus. If I am not awake, I miss so much.

I never considered becoming a poet and now I think that's who I am supposed to be. George Eliot has a famous quote that says 'it is never too late to be who you were supposed to be". Could it possibly be true that it is ot too late for me?

Happy Yalda Night: a Persian solstice celebration

©My friend, Farsi, is from Iran. I got this from something she posted:

Happy Yalda night! (December 21st)  Shab-e Yalda "Birth of Mithra", or Shab-e Chelleh (Persian:Shabe Chelleh: "Night of Forty") is the Persian winter solstice celebration which has been popular since ancient times. Yalda is celebrated on the Northern Hemisphere's longest night of the year, that is, on the eve of the Winter Solstice. Depending on the shift of the calendar, Yalda is celebrated on or around December 20 or 21 each year. Yalda has a history as long as the religion of Mithraism. The Mithraists believed that this night is the night of the birth of Mithra, Persian angel of light and truth. At the morning of the longest night of the year the Mithra was born. Following the fall of the Sassanid Empire and the subsequent rise of Islam in Persia/Iran, the religious significance of the event was lost, and like other Zoroastrian festivals, Yalda became a social occasion when family and close friends would get together. Nonetheless, the obligatory serving of fresh fruit during mid-winter is reminiscent of the ancient customs of invoking the divinities to request protection of the winter crop.

So eat some fresh fruit tomorrow.  Well, today!! and be grateful for Mithra, the Persian angel of light and truth. Mithra, I invite you into my life. I need all the light and truth possible.

Merry Christmas from Joni Mitchell

When I was young, Joni Mitchel spoke to me more than most singers. I was also way into Bonnie Raitt. Their styles are significantly different but both of them hit the spot for me. I wore out records by them.

Merry Christmas.

moon poem by Robert Frost

By Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

Ive tried the new moon tilted in the air
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
As you might try a jewel in your hair.
Ive tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
Alone, or in one ornament combining
With one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
By walking slowly on some evening later
Ive pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
And brought it over glossy water, greater,
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

a moon poem by poet Carol Ann Duffy

Carol Ann Duffy – The Bees
The Bees is a whole book of poems that I have not yet read. /this is just one poem. Give someone you love the book sometime, even yourself.


Darlings, I write to you from the moon
where I hide behind famous light.
How could you ever think it was a man up here?
A cow jumped over. The dish ran away with the spoon.
What reached me were your joys, griefs,
here’s-the-craic, losses, longings, your lives
brief, mine long, a talented loneliness. I must have
a thousand names for the earth, my blue vocation.
Round I go, the moon a diet of light, sliver of pear,
wedge of lemon, slice of melon, half an orange,
silver onion; your human sound falling through space,
childbirth’s song, the lover’s song, the song of death.

a moon poem at the full moon

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket
And you listening.
A spiders web, tense for the dews touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
Moon! you cry suddenly, Moon! Moon!
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.
–Ted Hughes, from Wodwo (1967)

Mr. Hughes was married to Silvia Plath.

The Collected Works of Anne Sexton

©

Sometimes I feel uncomfortable sharing Sexton's poems. She wrote a lot about sex, altho always sexy love, not just sex. Erotic, that might be the word. She was a then-rare female poet that wrote erotically.

Last winter, I had one of the best social outings of my whole life. My friend Marc came over to see me in Berkeley. I made soup that happened to turn out especially well. You know how it is with soup when you don't follow recipes. With his fist taste, his eyes widened, his beautiful blue eyes, he smiled and said 'the broth is particularly tasty'.   It was.  I have made many batches of the same soup since but never achieved the height of that broth.  Sigh.

Then we walked over to Moe's. When he secretly moved to San Francisco, hiding his move from me while regularly assuring me that he loved me unreservedly, he moved in secret. I was very hurt that he moved in secret. And he wouldn't tell me where he lived for eight months. That hurt me too.  I loved him too much, though, to refuse to see him even though he had hurt me. He had hurt me other times in the past, I had let him know I was hurt and that just pushed him away, typically for very long stretches.  He doesn't seem to see that disenaging is a form of retaliation, an unkindness.  I am supposed to be hurt, say nothing, choke down any treatment he deigns to bestow and if I assert myself and squeak out "But your behavior hurts me" he withdraws more.

So it was a kind of miracle that he came to my home for soup.  In the past, he had flatly refused to come to my home, telling me he was afraid of me, afraid to be alone with me. He once said if I wanted to be alone with him, I should rent the party room in my building. How would he be safer alone in the party room than alone in my living room? And  what exactly did he fear I might do?  I had already known him six years at this point and had not, and still have not, made any sexual passes at him. What did he fear?

Anyway. When he made his secret move to SF, he sold 25 boxes of books to Moe's. They pay more if ou take store credit so he took a huge store credit. I suggested after my soup that we walk over to Moe's and maybe I'd find a book or two to buy, give him the money and he could convert some of that store credit into cash.  I didn't erally want to buy any books. But I did buy two books. The Collected Works of Robert Frost and The Collected Works of Anne Sexton.  He paid with his store credit. He also bought a bunch of books, including ones about mushrooms. Sigh again. I had asked him to go mushrooming with me. He disclosed that day at Moe's that it had been a great year for mushrooms and he described going up north to forage. I asked him "Did you go alone?"  "No", he said, "I took a friend."  A knife in my heart, that friend. Why not go mushrooming with me? What's wrong with me?  I bet her went with Her Holiness. the saintly psychotic who has neve spoken a harsh word to him, the perfect pragon he sometimes has sex with. But me? he is afraid to give me a hug. years went by without a hug. As he left after a miserable sixtieth birthday lunch this past August, I impulsively asked for a hug. I instantly regreted it. His hug was awful. He has hugged me happily, eagerly, in years past. He has aked for hugs in years past.  But this August, on that fateful last day that I will ever see him because he treated my sixtieth birthday like an irritating scheduling detail and not a milestone birthday, he put one hand on each of my arms for a second. Less than a second if that is possible. He did not actually give me a hug. It sure seemed like he was afraid to just give me a hug.

The Big Heart by Anne Sexton

© I copyright my words, not Ms. Sexton's poem, of course.

The Big Heart by Anne Sexton. . . When I was in law school, I had a phase when I was obsessed with Yeats and Sexton. I once found Sexton's Collected Poems, used, for seven dollars in a book store near the U. of MN and I remember that I caressed the book standing on the ladder in that bookstore, loving it even before I hopped down and paid for it. I wonder what happened to all my poetry? I was obsessed with Yeats because the boy I was then in love with was obsessed with Yeats. I never won the boy but I had a good time with Yeats. I made my mother give me Yeats Collected Works for Christmas. Yeats?!   Mom had never heard of Yeats and thought my request was silly. I had to argue for it. How I wanted that book! And how I love Yeats. 

Seven dollars was a lot for a used book in the seventies but it was Sexton, after all.

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

Various Portents by Alice Oswald

this is my official favorite Xmas poem.  Ms. Oswald is a British poet who does a lot of gardening,sees nature more clearly than most. If you haven't heard of her, that goes with being a poet.

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.

Lyrics to hymm: 'In The Bleak Midwinter"

The lyrics, by the poet Christina Rosetti  -- way Christian but still a great song

In the bleak midwinter, 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 midwinter, 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 midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, 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.

give the Goddess room to work

Let go.

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." Dr. Seuss

I like this quote and it fit above. XO to me. Merry Christmas to all. For the first time since my daughter left me 12 years ago, I actually feel like Christmas. I might even listen to my friend Lana's favorite Christmas album, which is on youtube and she posted the link.

Merry Christmas. I'm smiling.

Festivus, a festival for the rest of us

According to the Seinfeld show, Festivus should be held on Dec 23rd. It is a festival to air grievances.

I'd love to participate in a Festivus gathering, love to vent any grievance, large or small. Awesome.

The most revolutionary thing one can do -- Rosa Luxemburg

“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

- Rosa Luxemburg

poem by Wendell Barry

willing to die
you give up your will
be still
until
moved by what moves all else
you move


I love this poem. I did a two-year training at Sunbridge College, back in the dark ages of the early nineties. We began each day when we were in session (we were in session intermittently throughout the year) with eurythymy. One three-week summer session, we worked with this poem, among other things, every day. So the poem became embedded in my whole being.

Everytime I think of the final clause, you move, my whole being 'moves' with the eurythymy gesture for move. Or, more precisely, the eurythymic movements for the sounds of 'm' 'o' 'v' and 'e'. We would m-oo--ve in a powerful forward thrust. We moved.

I sure wish I would move off the energy I am in these days.

Surrender. I surrender.  Find my will, eh? The will to move.

Never chase love

Never chase love, affection or attention. If it isn't given freely by the other person, it isn't worth having.

I need to get this hardwired into my being.

eat only real food

Look at the ingredients of food you buy:  if there are unidentifiable chemical-sounding ingredients, don't buy it and sure as heck don't eat it. No one knows what putting chemicals into our bodies throughout our lifetimes does to our bodies but we keep doing it for the god of corporate profits.  Take back your freedom to eat real food.

It does take more work.  I actually cook every day again.

I get into ruts, but wholesome, whole food ruts. Right now, mushrooms and greens are my favorite go-to, quickie dinner. I still can hardly believe I consider a plate of mushrooms and greens braised in garlic-infused olive oil to be a truly great meal. It is a truly great meal with high satiety factor, densely nutritious and it takes less than ten minutes. The clean up is easy:  one pan, which I clean as soon as I plate my meal.

Today I am moving into new territory: I am going to make polenta with mushrooms.

Yeah, I'm on a mushroom kick.

Sisyphus on glucose & insulin

©Occasionally, I wake up feeling like I drank too much the night before, wicked sick hungover like I used to feel in college when I would drink too much. I guess I also 'drank too much' at a few parties in law school but I have not been drunk since then. In recent years, I have not drunk at all.

Around 2002, I went to my first ten-day silent retreat.  They ask you to agree to various rules for the ten days, including no alcohol. No alcohol in a silent retreat center where you have no privacy is easy. It got me thinking though:  I realized that I usually felt a little hungover if I had just one glass of wine. One glass of beer seems okay. And biodynamic wine doesn't make me sick. Any other form of alcohol, in tiny amounts, and I feel sick hung over the next day. I feel lousy. One of the many things I thought about when I was not meditating purely, i.e. I was thinking thoughts instead, was "Hey, I could stop feeling sick hungover if I just dropped drinking."

So I did. I had never gone 'out for drinks'. Never gone to bars. Rarely served alcohol in my home. But when offered alcohol socially, I drank.  By the time I gave it up, I was probably only drinking occasional glasses of wine at very occasional parties. I have it in my mind that I drank a glass of wine at a holiday party but I don't really get invited to anyone's holidays so that's a fantasy.

Happily, I immeidately realized "Hey, I don't have to wake up feeling lousy just cause I had a glass of cheap wine." There has to be something in the chemicals of many boozes that my body doesn't like, my sensitive, delicate, princess-and-the-pea self.

Do you know the story of the princess and the pea? A queen wants to be sure her son the prince marries only a genuine princess so she has beautiful young maidens spend the night in their castle sleeping on top of a dozen feather beds with one pea on the bottom. The true princess, the queen asserts and the prince evidently concurs, will have a sleepless night because she will be so delicate that she can't sleep because of the lump the size of a  pea in her mattress. It has a happy ending. They find such a delicate flower, a beautiful young woman unable to sleep well because of the lump in her bed.

Heck, if I had been subjected to that pea test, I would have just slept around the pea lump. How big could it be? How small was the bed? A set up if ever I heard one. Not that fairy tales have to be all logical but the princess and the pea lacks logic.  I'da never been chosen to be fine enough for a prince. Maybe true royalty is stoic!

I also lack logic so I am not really criticizing. I'm just saying.

I awoke just now feeling wicked sick hungover. I feel like throwing up might help me feel better. I was sure this meant I had experienced low blood sugar overnight. And I might have, a few hours ago. I think very low blood sugar feels like a sick hangover. By the time I tested my sugar at 6:30 a.m., it was 140, which is only very slightly elevated and definitely not low.

I bet anything, however, I went very low around 2 a.m. I felt to sick upon awakening. Now I know what this feeling is: dangerously low glucose. Gotta be more careful. It is a constant thing, monitoring glucose and insulin.  I keep thinking I have adapted but then I see myself ignoring it some days, then I get sick and being careful starts anew.

Sisyphus on glucose and insulin.

Alabama Shakes: why can't boy & girl be friends?

a brief for the defense

A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert, another early SF poetry artist that got overlooked.He crossed the threshold here in Berkeley, where he lived a long while after traveling the world over.

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.



And now this is me talking:  it is really worth years of sorrow, and deep loneliness is sorrow for me, to hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowbow slowly rows by?

damaged metabolism, Wendall Barry

©My weight issues are complicated by having been misdiagnosed as a Type II diabetic when a new endocrinologist, about a year ago, confirmed I am Type I. 12 years misdiagnosed. and for another 12 years before that, I took  meds that damage the body's metabolism, with no warnings that one side affect is serious weight gain. I ballooned up on those drugs, sent myself ceaseless message of self hate. I used to wonder if I was sleep-eating but as the only adult in my home, I was the only person who brought in food and it didn't disappear so it was unlikely I was eating unconsciously. Note:  years later when my teen daughter became anorexic/bulimic, I would certainly notice when large quanities of food disappeared overnight.

At a ten day silent retreat once, on the final day when they let you talk, a bulimic living with her parents had taken the retreat just to get away form food cause she couldn't afford any medical treatment (altho if so sick she could not work, and she was, she was likely eligible to be disabled and get on Medicaid and even Medicare . . . another story). I told her I was pretty sure I knew within just a week or two when my daughter's eating disorder got serious. The young woman panicked, wondering if her parents 'knew'. She pressed and pressed me to tell her how I 'knew'.

I told her I did not see how a parent living with a child could not know. Either you see your child is losing weight rapidly or you notice massive amounts of food disapearing. You don't bring in groceries into your own home, and then see they have disappeared and not notice, IF you are living consciously. I suggested that maybe her parents didn't know but that could only be because they were in denial. The poor gal pressed and pressed me to tell me exactly what I noticed. She was so panicked to think her parents might know.


I don't see how someone could live with their child, even an adult college grad child, and not notice if mass quantities of food disappeared from the kitchen overnight most nights. That young woman was positive her parents didn't know. I said "If they don't know, they don't want to know. It's called denial." Poor thing. She couldn't wait to get home and look for signs indicating whether her parents 'knew'.

Some think anorexia-bulimia are different disorders but many medical experts see it as the same disorder, at different ends of the spectrum. Food addicts likely fit into the spectrum. Many bulimics are fat, many are not.  When my daughter stops starving, she invariably slides into binge eating, unless, I imagine, she is in recovery programs and taking very good care of herself. And I sure hope she is, of course. Once she shared an apartment with a non-lover guy (the guy was gay) and she would often eat every bite of food in the house, even things that are unpalatable, like a jar of relish. Then she ate a box of laxatives.  When my daughter got into better treatment programs -- the quality of eating disorder treatment ranges greatly, as in most things -- she was told that eating laxatives as she did turned some of her organs into messy sponges, causing permanent damage from the harsh chemicals in the laxatives. Knowledgeable docs could exam her for two minutes and know she was binge-purging.  Her roommate would be so angry. He'd get up for breakfast and there was no food in the house. He was abusive to her, apart from issues of her binging on his food. Several years ago, he contacted me on this blog asking how to get in touch with her. He said he was in recovery and wished to make amends to her. I was glad to hear it but I could not tell him how to contact her. Now I know where she works. I think he found her anyway.

Eating disorders are like alcoholism in that one is in recovery forever but never fully recovered.

For many, bulimics can be hard to spot. Some bulimics gain weight, even with lots of purging. But some don't. And some eating disorder experts now consider folks who compulsively overeat but do not purge to also be bulimics, bulimics who don't purge.  Some bulimics appear normal size but they maintain that appearance of normality through purging, which is wicked hard on the body.  Your spleen, liver, pancreas, etc. all become like sieves and spongey if you are putting a whole box of laxatives through your body every day.  Other bulimics make themselves vomit and all the vomiting destroys their teeth:  the stomach acids are wicked hard on tooth enamel.

So do I have an eating disorder?  I don't think so. I believe prescription drugs have destroyed my metabolism, which caused rapid weight gain in my early thirties. Once a human body develops lots  fat cells, our evolutionary biology is designed to hang onto the fat for survival, which is why folks lose and, so often, easily regain.

I very genuinely do not believe I have an eating disorder. Maybe I am in denial. Denial is tricky. I believe I have a damaged metabolism. Three of prescription drugs I took daily for over ten years have had class actions won against them for causing the onset of diabetes and this happens because the drugs affect our metabolism. And recently, I have seen ads on my gmail mailbox informing me that Lipitor is being sued in class action because it is now believed to cause the onset of diabetes in some women. I don't think I fit that criteria because the women who develop diabetes on Lipitor tend to be slender.  I did take three drugs for over ten years that have also been been sued by class action and the petitioners won, proving the drugs damage metabolism and seem to contribute significantly to the onset of diabetes.

Can such damage be healed? And if so, how? Not more drugs, that's for sure. And not the typical highly processed American crap diet.

I don't think about the damage prescription drugs have done to me too much. It's hard to know where who I am, how and what I ate and how drugs I took for over ten years affected my body.  My metabolism is definitely very damaged.

On the bright side, I am down 90 pounds from my all time high. I haven't been at my all time high in many years but my set point seems to still be a pretty high one, a fat one.  I can get down much lower than where I am now but I quickly bounce back to my set point.

So. I am way down but still fat. And I would like to move through the world as a not-fat person.  I've been obese about 30 years. I've always thought I'd lose it. I have lost a lot but I can't seem to get to onederland, which is below 200.

And being fat is, by no means, my only issue.  I am lonely, with poor support in my life.  I am so unhappy. I long for a life partner but I am not really fit to be someone's life partner.  I don't see how a person can be happy and well if they are as isolated as I am. I am so vulnerable these days that I am not really fit to form close bonds with anyone.

I know many people find support at support groups. And the world is full of them. Which ones are aright for me? And when I am as vulnerable as I am just now, going to any event with other people around is overwhelming.  I keep thinking if I just had a couple best friends, like I always used to have.  But I am too shakey to develop new friends.

I read somewhere, once, that someone with borderline personality disorder is a bit like someone with no skin. That makes me think of a burn victim, also someone without skin.  When I am emotionally unwell, I have no skin and I am unfit to be around others but i can't get well in isolation. Chicken. Egg.

I feel like I am the emotional equivalent of a quadriplegic -- not to downplay the serious nature of being a quad. I feel I can't control anything in my life so I hunker down in my home like I'm in a bunker, holding on to just survive. Just surviving is not enough.  I don't feel I am living a life worth living. But who wants to befriend someone in excrutiating emotional pain.

I just remembered an exchange I had about 8 years ago with someone i met at a conference. I wrote to him that I felt excrutiating pain and he wrote back in what I am sure was unintended condescension telling me something like "Tut tut, I am sure excrutiating it an exaggeration."  I think he felt uneasy imaging me in excrutiating pain so he just tried to erase my truth, like he was editing a paper only I had shared my truth. I am often in excrutiating emotional pain. It is very hard to love someone in the kind of pain I get into. But I am lovable. And with understanding and caring and love, I can, do and have formed some rich, loving, lasting friendships. Just not lately. No new hones.  I have peopple who love me but they mostly live far away. The few locals that 'love' me spend little, if any time with me and time with people is what I need.

Around and around I go. What to do?

Have you ever done a major housecleaning project and as you work on the project, everything reaches a point of chaos and it is easy to feel overwhelmed? But you know if you just keep going, doing one thing at a time, order will be restored?  I feel like my emotional and social lives are in a damaged, chaotic state but at any moment, things could improve. And in the meantime, I can eat carefully, exercise and maintain my physical health as best I can.

Maintaining my emotional health seems impossible when I am as isolated as I am but going to groups is just beyond my capacity. So I sit. Which reminds me of a lovely verse by the farmer-poet-essayist Wendall Barry:

willing to die'
you give up your will'
be still
until'
moved by what moves all else'
you move

I am being still, waiting to be moved. It's hard work.

We--tell a Hurt--to cool it, by Emily Dickinson

The Black Berry—wears a Thorn in his side—
But no Man heard Him cry—
He offers His Berry, just the same
To Partridge—and to Boy—

He sometimes holds upon the Fence—
Or struggles to a Tree—
Or clasps a Rock, with both His Hands—
But not for Sympathy—

We—tell a Hurt—to cool it—
This Mourner—to the Sky
A little further reaches—instead—
Brave Black Berry— 

©I am not a poetry scholar, altho lately I have been thinking I might be a poet. I am making some serious poetry attempts. Not necessarily serious poems, either by tone or talent, just serious in my effort.

And I am not a literary critic or analyst.

But I love this poem and I esp. love my interpretation of it. I believe Dickinson uses the blackberry as a metaphor for how fragile we humans are. The blackberry surrounds itself with thorns, is prickly in order to be able to grow. Without prickly brambles, birds and other animals would make off with all the blackberrires. It's perfectly okay for animals to eat blackberries. Food is not on earth just for humans.

I think the central line, and theme, of this poem is "We-tell a Hurt-to cool it". She beautifully descrbes how blackberries make their way but in doing so, she also describes how tender humans, surrounded by prickles of protection, make their way. And sometimes, when hurt, we have to tell our hurts to cool them.

Brave Black Berry. Brave humans for taking chances to love, to seek to be loved, brambles gnarl our path. Pricks can hurt us. And, being human, we can voice our hurt and lessen it. We tell a hurt to cool it.

Cheryl's rose quartz ball: feeding her heart

©My now-deceased friend Cheryl got $100 for Xmas. She knew right away what she wanted to buy:  a ball of rose-quartz. She had just visited Lynn, then my business partner. Lynn owned many crystals. One was a very large rose quartz ball, perhaps 6-7 inches in diameter. It was big.  Cheryl had slept with it during a visit to Lynn's when Lynn still lived in Balltimore. In fact, on my next visit, I insisted on sleeping with that same rose quartz. Lynn tried to talk me out of it. I only realized tonight, as I considered writing this post about Cheryl's rose quartz shopping trip, that Lynn had not really wanted me to sleep with her rose quartz ball. I insisted. Lynn said "it is cold too sleep with it, you won't like it" and I said "Nonsense, I will warm it up." And I did warm it up.  I think Lynn did not want my energy sleeping with her rose quartz.  I missed that cue and insisted on sleeping with it because Cheryl had spoken of how much she had loved sleeping with it. Why Cheryl and not me?

It was cold sleeping with it, but only at first. It warmed up. I never felt any special energy with it.  Lynn was, and I am sure still is, a very powerful woman. She probably put a block on the rose quartz for me!  Cheryl spoke of the great dreams she had, the powerful energy she had felt sleeping with that big rose quartz ball. For me, nothing.

Just after Christmas,  Cheryl asked if I would be willing to drive her to the rock shop in my car. This involved taking her non-motorized wheelchair, with me collapsing it, putting it into the car, taking it out and then lifting Cheryl into it. Work, but work I was happy to do.

To go in her motorized wheelchair, she needed her gigantic delivery van with a ramp. And the only van with with a ramp for her 300 pound electric wheelchair was her van, which meant she would have to drive. The only place to lock down her wheelchair in her van was at the driver's position, which had a tiny steering wheel with a doorknob-like handle on it to facilitate steering. Cheryl had very short arms and she could not manipulate a regular size steering wheel so part of the customizing of her gigantic van involved putting in a tiny steering wheel and then making the gas and breaks accessible near that steering wheel, accessible to her very short arms. Cheryl had explained to me that sometimes she liked to go out in a regular car like regular people.

Cheryl, now deceased, was a deformed dwarf with an extremely rare genetic disorder. The deformity was not merely being a dwarf. She had a regular human's sized head, her arms and legs were too short for her small body. On her tiny body, her head loomed large and many saw her as a freak.  Cheryl could have been in those old, gruesome circus freak shows. She was very strange looking and lived life in  a 300 pound wheelchair. Between her different appearance and the wheelchair, she was isolated from what she imagined was regular people, from ordinary living. She had mostly friends who were also very disabled. I got to know most of her disabled friends. Most of them came to our intensives over time. Quads, paraplegics, lots of cerebral palsies. I learned that all of them longed for social connections with normal people but they rarely achieved such connections. Coming to our intensives, during which participants tended to form deep bonds and then continue in the ongoing weekly community gatherings we held year round, allowed Cheryl's disabled crowd to form some close friendships with people living in normal bodies.  Cheryl and her private care attendant eventually became my main babysitter.  I sometimes wonder what my daughter thinks of that time in her life, from age five to seven or eight when her main babysitter was a deformed dwarf and a young man with mild cerebral palsy. On her own, Cheryl could not babysit because if something had happened to Rosie, Cheryl could not pick her up or tend to a cut. But Tim could.

Her arms were so short that she could not reach anything so she could not reach into the fridge to get a soda. She could not reach a stove to prepare meals. She had a 24/7 365 private care attendant. She could not get in and out of bed on her own. Or in and out of the bathroom on her own.  I believe the unmatched head and limbs were related to her genetic disorder, which was Morquio's Syndrome. The average lifespan for someone with Morquio's Syndrome is 18 years. Cheryl died when she was 32.  With Morquio's Syndrome, the bones in the body very slowly deteriorate, sorta melting away.

Cheryl had multiple spinal fusions in her life because the bone around the spinal cord protects the entire nervous system. People with Morquio's Syndrome usually die when their spinal cord has disintegrated and their spinal cord collapses and the person becomes completely paralyzed. Our spinal cords are fragile, delicate and integral to life.

I drove Cheryl's van a few times. We could put in a regular driver's seat. If Cheryl was on any outing in the van, she had to drive because the only spot for her 300 pound chair was at the driver seat.

For some reason, she asked me to take her out 'like a normal person' in my car. This meant more work for me. I had to lift the regular wheel chair in and out of the car and it was not light. And I had to lift Cheryl in and out of the car. She was not light. Having lived a sedentary life, she was very heavy.  It's not like she could exercise.  She looked like the size of a young child but she weighed over 100 pounds. A lot for me to lift.  I dropped her getting her out of the car at the rock shop. She was very nice about it, especially considering that it was late December in Minnesota. I dropped her onto ice and snow.  She said as long as I didn't mind her weight, she didn't mind getting plopped in the slushy snow.  I felt bad but not for long. Cheryl was too happy to be out on what she called a normal friend outing, in a car, not in her gigantic van.

Nowadays, minivans can be retrofitted to accommodate electric wheelchairs but Cheryl had gotten a retrofitted, jumbo delivery van before the dawn of minivans.  Voc rehab would give disabled folks in wheelchairs retrofitted vans so they could work. Lots of folks told voc rehab they wanted to work, got the vans and then stopped working because all they had really wanted was the van.  I imagine scoring a retrofitted van from voc rehab is a lot harder nowadays.

Anyway.  I could say more about that van, and esp. the surreal experience of navigating a gigantic van with super-hyper-power-steering from a five inch steering wheel. The wheel was so small I had to use the doorknob-like stub on it, too, because the span was too small for me to use as a steering wheel, too small for me to turn it without the knob. The knob was for Cheryl, because her very short arms could not turn the tiny, five-inch steering wheel without the knob.  The gas and brake pedals were hand-operated, right next to the tiny steering wheel. Surprisingly, I got used to the weird driving set up quickly. All cars should have such sharp, easy steering.

We got into  the crystal store. Cheryl knew exactly what she wanted. If the store had any rose quartz ball for $100 or less, she was going to buy it. It had one, one that was about three inches, maybe 3.5 inches, in diameter. It was actually perfect for Cheryl since she was very small. It was about as big, proportionally, to her, as Lynn's big ball was to Lynn. Lynn's rose quartz ball was about six inches in diameter. And that was, ultimately, what Cheryl wanted, to be like Lynn.

That's all we did. I picked her up, loaded, unloaded, loaded, unloaded. The wheelchair was hard to unload and load. Cheryl was hard to unload and unload.  Cheryl's joy at being in my shitty old car -- I think I still had the Geo Metro at that point and it was on its last legs, chugging just barely -- and being out in the world like, as she kept saying, a real person, and spending her $100 Xmas gift from her parents on something they strongly disapproved of was worth the slight burdens.

Cheryl squealed delightedly as she told me her parents would be appalled to learn what she had spent their $100 Christmas gift on. This added, I think, to the joy of owning a rose quartz ball.

I can hear Cheryl laughing, smirking, giggling about how she had told her mother she was going to spend the money on a rose quartz ball. Her mother was upset, said it was a waste of money to buy something Cheryl didn't need.  What was she supposed to do?  Be practical with a present?

She was being practical, I told her.  She was feeding her heart.

I get to want what I want: purple flourite is not rose quartz

©Katie and I often hung out in a crystal shop. It surprises me that I don't see many crystal stores here in hippie-dippie N. California. There is a shop on Telegraph, a dingy shop that is uninviting, sells only small bits of crystals. I have not seen a good "old-fashioned" crystal/rock shop in the Bay Area. A crystal is not something I would easily buy online.  I respond with deep visceral responses to stones; that's how I know when I have to buy one. Or should buy one.

I guess a couple of the street vendors on Telegraph sell rocks but, again, it's mostly small ones.

This crystal shop Katie and I used to go to was on University in Avenue, just across the freeway from Minneapolis, near where the Minnesota Women's Press had its offices.

This shop I remember sold smaller crystals but not teeny bits of things. Who wants a chip of rose quartz? Everyone wants, at least, a piece big enough to fold inside one's hand and be unseen, right? That's pretty small. Little bits of stone are boring. Still, if it is all you can afford, go for it.

This rock shop played New Age music, had each crystal displayed reverently as if it was an art gallery and not a rock shop. And it separated the kinds of stones.

One year, post-Thanksgiving, Katie and I stopped in to browse. We almost never bought anything. People used to give ue crystals.  No one gives me crystals today. Gee, I wish someone would. I love receiving crystals.

My former business partner, Lynn, once gave me a tiny, very faintly pink piece of rose quartz. She said she saw an angel in the stone. And so did Katie and I. I wonder what happened with that one. Katie took some stones with her to college. Maybe she took that one. It is not one I would have readily released. Altho at one point, just before I turned fifty and I was going to kill myself before I turned fifty, I sent Katie a lot of stuff, reasoning there was no one near where I lived that would send my things to my child. So I tried to send her anything of value. I was deadly serious and my use of the word deadly is not intended as a pun; it is intended to indicate that I was, quite literally, deadly determined to end my life.

I guess I may have sent some crystals to Katie then. And I also remember giving away some of my bigger ones to the Spirited Work silent auctions.  Our former friend Joni had given me a big hunk of brown flourite for Xmas one year. Joni, unable to resist bargains, had found a stash of big hunks of brown-hued glourite for sale and bought them all. So everyone she loved got a hunk of flourite.

I never liked that flourite, altho I felt guilty that I did not like it.  I think its provenance had something to do with my dislike. If Joni had bought me any crystal because she felt called to buy it for me, I would have treasured it and likely still have it. But she bought a stack of bargain stones. Boring.

Anyway, one year in the lead-up to Xmas, Katie and I were in a great crystal store in St. Paul. We knew all the clerks and the owner because we liked to hang out. It was run by childless lesbians who always seemed to love Katie.   With Christmas in the air, Katie lingered, as she always did, over the many large, inviting pieces of rose quartz. I was in another section, drawn to some other stone. I don't remember which stone I was drawn to, only that I was not feeling the rose quartz.

Besides, we had a huge hunk of rose quartz, a really big one. And a bunch of little ones. And Lynn's tiny one with the angel in it.  I was not feeling rose quartz that day.

Katie said "I know, Mom, I will buy you some rose quartz for your Xmas present."

I said "I don't want rose quartz. I want some of this."  I want to say I wanted rhodochrosite cause that stone is really hot for me but I don't think I ever saw any rhodochrosite in that rock sthop. Rhodochrosite is somewhat rare in USA rock shops. I ask every time I pass one and if a shop has any, it's little bitty bits.  So, altho this is kinda boring, I think I told Katie that day that if she got me a crystal for Xmas, I hoped it would be amythyst. Boring, I know.  I don't really remember which stone I said I was gravitating towards. I only remember not feeling the rose quartz that Katie was gushing over. Her offer to give it to me was loving and joyful.

She said "But I want to buy some rose quartz.!!!" kinda in a whine.  Plaintive, y'know?

I said "You can give me rose quartz if you want to and if you do, I will treasure it because it came from you but, Katie, my love, I get to want what I want. You can give me what you want but if you want to give me what I want, you will give me some of this."

I remember now. It was a cubist chunk of purple flourite. It was not amethyst. It was purple flourite. She did end up buying it for me. I wonder what happened to it?  It's lone gone.

Then the shop clerk said "Excuse me, I hope it doesn't seem like I am eavesdropping but the store is small and I can't help but hear you. I always enjoy listening to you and you daughter. You are so good with her. What you just said, telling her she could buy you what she wanted but that you get to want what you want was brilliant."

I was flattered.

Then the sale person said "If you ever need a babysitter, I'd love to babysit for you. For free.  You and your kid seem to cool. I'd like to spend time with your daughter."

I guess I did not welcome her offer, although I remember internally feeling grateful and internally I was already thinking of when I might use her offer. She did not give me  a phone number or her name so I think I concluded her offer was not fully genuine, that she was just having fun hanging out with us.