the heart moves roomier

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.

I seek in my pulsing being

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

as I grow wiser

I am noticing, more and more, all the things my being and body probably has always known but which I have not always been conscious of.  I know things without knowing. Often knowing will come to me in a flash, often without language, just a quickly fleeting sense, a quickly fleeting knowing.

Like Rainier Wilke's panther, who knows something in a piercing flash that penetrates the panther and then is gone just as quickly as it pierced its message through the panther's being.

Increasingly, I notice. Increasingly, I know. Increasingly, I integrate these messages from the cosmos into my present life as human animal.

I sometimes wonder, but not too long, what my life might have been like if I had always been conscoius in this, for me, increasingly emergent knowing.

don't date a mystic woman

If you want the life you have, don’t date a mystic woman.
A mystic woman is a wild creature. She spends all her life seeking, for there is nothing else worth doing. She peers and gazes until she falls from the edge of the world, and into the next. Over and over. Each time she returns, she is a little different. What she sees must change her. She dies every moment. She is reborn every day. Can you even begin to fathom the terror and the faith commanded from such a being? Can you even begin to understand what such a life can do?

If you want the life you have, don’t date a mystic woman..
If you are comfortable and cozy, stay away. Whatever you have built around yourself to create comfort: it cannot stand in the blazing fire of a mystical woman. She is no trophy. She is no bodily pleasure-maker. She is the seer of souls. She is the womb that births the divine into the flesh and bone of matter. She doesn’t mean to burn your village to the ground, but she has seen what you are meant to become. You are not a peasant shearing sheep, as you have thought. You are a king dressed in rags who has amnesia.
If you want the life you have, don’t date a mystic woman.
If she touches you, and all the voices on the wind go silent, if you feel you are in a snow globe when you embrace her, she is your destroyer. She will destroy the false idol you see in the mirror. She will smash it open because it is your prison. If you wish to stay there, she will shatter you another way. She will leave.
If you want the life you have, don’t date a mystic woman.
Everybody wants the magic, but nobody wants the Mystery, the schooling: a thing that must be lived in a place where book knowledge has no meaning, for all books are manuals to the world you already know. That means, the well-honed intellect — the masculine theory of reason — will not save you, cannot free you. It is for a world whose time is over. The Mystery, by its very nature, must show you what has never been seen, never been written, never been known, because before you were forged, it was impossible. The arts of women have been called the dark arts for too long, and they are the keys to infinity. Infinite form. Infinite being. Infinite life.
If you want the life you have, don’t date a mystic woman.
If your dreams are not filled with the Mystery, you are better off with a normal life, because she will see things that are invisible to you. She will feel things that you cannot feel beneath the layers of numbness you have wrapped yourself in. She will call upon your true self, your real soul, and she will sing it down into you, into herself and life will open up, for this very moment...
Alison Nappi

I took the Christ out of Xmas!

I married in Sept 1979. I have been divorced from that man since 1985. But in the fall of 1979, pretty much pre-internet, my mother-in-law used to write me regular notes on stationary -- matching enveops and careful penmanship. She also wrote to my husband but sent her letters to him to his corporate job, using the excuse with no cause for it, that she was sure I would 'steal' her letters to him if she mailed the to our marital home. As if I would steal my husband's mail. Anyway, I maintained a correspondence with her because she was my new mother-in-law and I wanted to build a good relationship. Then, writing a chatty note about our Christmas plans, I ran out of space and when I signed off on my note, with almost no space left, I wrote "Marry Xmas, love Tree".

She called my husband as soon as she got that 'Xmas' and demanded he divorce me, proclaiming I was the devil. They were Catholics, who, technically, don't believe in divorce, eh? She said he was entitled to an annulment from a woman who took the Christ out of Christmas.

That woman seemed determined to not like me.

 We moved to my ex's hometown, had our daughter there and she chilled out about me. Some.  I had not really noticed that she had developed respect for my excellent parenting and, maybe, even some for me until my ex and I were legally separated.

 My former mother-in-law called me up and showed me startling, to me, kindness and then she bitch slapped it away. She said "I want you to know that I think you are a good mother, even a great one, and I hate to see him taking your baby away from you. I just want you to know I think you are a good mother but I have to take my son's side in this custody matter. Blood is thicker than water."

I think I hung up on her. Getting a legal separation and slapped with a custody law suit by a husband who worked 80 hours a week and went days without seeing our infant awake, much less having ever provided any real care for her was bad enough. I shocked my ex and his whole family when I fought back hard for my baby. It was as if they thought I would just roll over and give them my baby.

And, I swear to goddess this is true and that it is also true that I can see the humor in it, when my former mother-in-law said "I know you are a good mother but blood is thicker than water," I slammed down the phone and it felt great. I no longer had to politely endure her not-all-that-passive aggression. She was always giving me backhanded compliments that would have a kickback later.

I surprised my ex and his whole family by how hard I fought. I did anything I could to fight for custody of my infant. WTF had they been thinking, that I'd roll over and hand over my baby?

Hanging up on my former mother-in-law was one of my first overt indications that the gloves were off. Blood was indeed thicker than water. 

Come to think of it, blood between my daughter and I was never thick enough. If it were, she would have talked to me in the past fourteen years. I wonder if she has any realization of how it damaged me to have to fight for years for her and then fight for her wellbeing later when the incident happened.  I wonder if she ever considered that I didn't make the kind of money she dreamd of having, or provide the fancier life I could not afford, was because I prioritized her wellbeing. I never told her all that I faced vis-a-vis her father and his family because she was a child and I was a good mother.

 What to expect from a woman who takes the Christ out of Christmas?

my niece, my noodle, my little plum

In the middle of the night, I woke up with bad poetry dedicated to my niece Ruby dancing in my being. How I love the little dove. I love my niece-y noodle more than I love apple strudel. My nee-nu, my zagnut, my chocolate chew. I love her I love her I love her I do.

It all sounded a lot better at 4 a.m.

the goblin bee's sting

IF YOU WERE COMING IN THE FALL
by Emily Dickinson

If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile, and half a spurn,
As Housewives do, a Fly.
If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls—
And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse—
If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Dieman's Land.
If certain, when this life was out—
That your's and mine, should be—
I'd toss it yonder, like a Rind,
And take Eternity—
But now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee—
That will not state—its sting.

Big Heart

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 to impress the boy. 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.

Her Kind

Her Kind
by
Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.


oh my gosh, I love Sexton.

I'd love you to love me

audio below lyrics:  song first done by band Cheap Tricks in 1977. Great lyrics. Great poem. Great love song. It's what I want.

I want you to want me

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
I'm beggin' you to beg me

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me

I'll shine up the old brown shoes,
Put on a brand-new shirt
I'll get home early from work
If you say that you love me

Didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Ohh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Feelin' all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dyin'
Ohh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
I'm beggin' you to beg me

I'll shine up the old brown shoes
Put on a brand-new shirt
I'll get home early from work
If you say that you love me

Didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Ohh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Feelin' all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dyin'
Ohh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Ohh

Feelin' all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dyin'
Ohh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?
Ohh

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
I'm beggin' you to beg me

I want you to want me
I want you to want me
I want you to want me
....

Songwriters
Nielsen, Rick

Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

 

nothing shall dissuade me

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note;

But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise,

Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue’s tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone.

But my five wits, nor my five senses, can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,

Thy proud heart’s slave and vassal wretch to be.

  Only my plague thus far I count my gain,

  That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

~~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 141

Neither intelligence nor any good sense can dissuade my foolish heart from loving you.

gooey love

Gooey love:  the state people sometimes slip into when they know someone new and only see their radiance. Gooey love is superficial but often 'gaga' "I'm in love" love. It's not bad. It's just shallow.

Gooey love ceases as soon as the object of the gooey love shows evidence of being human, which, per force, includes human imperfection. Another way of putting it:  gooey love ends when the person only capable of gooey love sees the other's shadow. Another way of putting it:  gooey love ends, inevitably, because the person who practices gooey love can't go beyond gooey love to real, committed, love-around-all-impediments love.

Gooey love. No thanks.

someone senses I am okay?

Last night, our city council voted to approve a high rise that has major flaws and obvious corruption. Unfortunately, all the corruption is skillfully hidden so citizens can't prove what goes on in crony insider dealmaking.

Last night, the council heard a bunch of appeals, with the fix obviously in. The project fixer, a former city planning manager who reeks evil and an investment speculator who does not build high rises, he just buys land, hires a well connected fixer to get the build permit and then sells. And for all anyone knows, the former city staff turned fixer creep will also make money from whoever buy the now-permitted project and develops it. The construction company and actual developer might also give the fixer creep fat stacks to help them navigate city government as they tear up our downtown and cause years of disruption.

But that was not the highlight.

My highlight was small and very fine. A young man that I barely know, a guy who signed a petition for me once and then became my FB friend stood up to make a public comment. He had written out what he wanted to say on his smartphone. As he got near the front of the speaker line, he realized his anxiety disorder was going to prevent him from reading his own words.

So he asked me to read for him.

For a guy with a significant anxiety disorder to turn to me, feeling safe with me, to ask that small favor still has me floating, just a bit.

Someone senses I am good, eh?

war: a shot away; Love a kiss away

 The Rolling Stones came out with this in 1969. The lyrics seem timely now, maybe even more so than in 1969.

Oh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

Rape, murder!
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away

The floods is threatening
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or Im gonna fade away

War, children, its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
Its just a shot away
I tell you love, sister, its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Its just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away

my checkered lily

I have been thinking about a perennial  shade garden I used to own  .  and lovingly tend. This garden was deeply shaded and it took a lot of attention to have something blooming through the short, blooming season of Minnesota. My garden goal was to have something flowering at all times. I gradually learned that even in deep Minnesota winter, I could get snow drops, a hardy, tiny bulb plant, to flower in deep midwinter.

My immediate neighbors and I had a gentle competition to see who could get the first bloom to rise up above the snow crust. There are some bulbs that you can plant to get very early blooms. One of them is called snow drops. Amazingly, while most of the ground is covered in a few feet of snow, little patches of ground will melt, patches of earth will emerge right in the midst of deep winter and out will pop a tiny white flower, a snow drop.

All of us had snow drops planted throughout our yards. And we all patrolled, looking for the first snow drop to appear. When one of us found our first one, we would rush to the neighbors and have them come look. We were all always happy for each other.

After snow drops, come crocus.

And then, sometimes even before the crocus, there are some daffodils that will come up earlier than others. Right up through frost cover.

All of us on my street patrolled the garden stores looking for early bulbs.

I found two that Ty, my next door neighbor who, with his partner, once won a city-wide award from Minneapolis for his outstanding garden, had never heard of. I cannot tell you what a coup it was to find an early-blooming bulb that Ty did not know about.

I found something called a shooting star. It sometimes emerged before the snow drops. It started out looking like as a very small white flower. One might even think "oh, there's a snow drop" and then, it would shoot to about a foot long in a day or two, with the small, five-pointed star, white flower at the end. My shooting star did not come up every year that I lived in this house but when it did, it was spectacular. The way it shot up tall in a seemingly instant way was thrilling. And the fact that this cold happen when it was below zero cold still astounds me.

I also found something called a checkered lily. The checkered lily is absolutely amazing.  I found her at a garden shop, in a section for wild plants. Wild plants meant the plants on sale had been harvested in the wild.  This is not really good gardening. One should forage for wild plants out in the wild, not head on down to a garden shop.

My checkered lily was a bulb plant that usually broke through the winter frost during the January thaw in Minnesota. The checkered lily only bloomed a few days. If I had not patrolled my garden daily, I could have easily missed it.

The petals of that checkered lily looked checkered, like a checkerboard only in pale brown and pale pink tones. How did nature end up with those square checkers of color on a teeny tiny bulb that only bloomed briefly in bleak midwinter?

In order to keep that checkered lily thriving, I had to let it die back naturally, which was easy enough.

I learned one of my most important lessons in loving, however, when I learned that as the checkered lily died back and I exercised self restraint, resisting the urge to pull out its dead lines to make room for other plants, I had to sit back and do nothing. I had to let that plant live out its path.

Then, however, once the checkered lily had completely died back, other plants overcrowded it.

I learned to tenderly prune back the surrounding flower plants, learned to hold that tiny space for my checkered lily, for its future blooms.

I came to love imagining the plant, underground all year, waiting for its few days of gobsmacking beauty.

When I sold that house and moved away, I gifted my checkered lily to the guys next door.  they had loved it as much as I and we had no idea if the new owners would care about one tiny plant.

The new owners ripped out my entire shade garden and planted a boring, suburban-y front garden of srhugs and grass.

Not me. It had been a tiny garden, underneath a 100+ year old elm tree, which has since died and been cut down. With the elm tree gone, my shade garden would not have thrived. A shade garden is a different animal from a full sun garden.

But those new owners appeared to have no appreciation for the admittedly subtle efforts of a deep shade garden, no patience for the many briefly flowering bulbs I was constantly searching for and then tending.

I had lots of bulbs. But my favorte was, and remains, that checkered lily.

wanna be tough: show your heart to everyone

gimme shelter

This is a great rendition of the great song "Gimme Shelter". The lyrics seem more powerfully relevant today than when they were first written by the Stones.

we were never friends

After socializing with me for about seven years, a guy said "We were never friends. we are just two people who met at a conference."

We were walking from the SF Costco up to Market St so I could catch a BART. I had asked him to walk me to BART because it was an unfamiliar neighborhood, a not well lit neighborhood and it was dark, late in a winter's evening. And I am female. Most females are leery of walking alone along dark, unfamiliar streets.

 As soon as he said the above, however, I told him he didn't need to walk me to BART. I said I was just fine on my own but he wouldn't leave.  I had really wanted him to hop on his bike, which he had walked alongside me, and just get away from me.  He refused to go and I didn't want to argue.  I did have a fleeting fantasy of stopping at one of the bars along the street we were one, bars that seemed dive-y to me, and asking a bouncer to let me in and not let the guy I was with in, to say the guy I was with had been bothering me. I didn't do that because I have never been comfortable going into bars, especially dive-y ones, in sketchy neighborhoods with bouncers at the door. Truth told, I don't know what kind of bars were along that street. I only glimpsed inside a couple of the as doors open, light spilled out in the dark street and a big bouncer-looking guy was always at the door.

That guy said many things that cut me over the years but it was telling me, after seven years, that we had never been friends, that we were no more than two people who met at a conference, that cut the most.

Well, there was also the time he said something else, a deeply negative characterization of me based on what could only have been his ignorance, a reference to something about my personhood. It was about an aspect of who I am that he had never talked to me about. When he uttered that insult, which I can't bring myself to type out, I asked him how he could know about that aspect of my past and he said he had done some internet research. In seven years, he had never talked to me about it.

Maybe he was right when he said we were never friends. Every friend I have ever had has talked to me about this aspect of my personality, the one this guy hurled at me in angrily abusive negative terms. He was always telling me that he never hurt me, that it was my responsibility to manage how I experienced his behavior.  I don't want to be as tough as one had to be to endure that guy's deeply unkind judgments about me.

 He was right. We were never friends. Friendship stays. Friends forgive.  This man could dish out unkindness but could not forgive it in me. he could be human, get angry, be verbally abusive but when I responded to his angry abuse with angry abuse, he shunned me.

When we got to Market Street, I again told him he could leave me. We were a few blocks from the closest BART and he insisted on walking me. Just as we approached the Civic Center BART, I said something about how hurt I was by his 'we were never friends' remark and he said, coldly it seemed to me, with no empathy and no lightness about him, "Then it looks like you have a choice to make."

 "Yeah, it does. I should choose to have nothing more to do with you but I can't."  Then I paused. He waited for me to finish what I was saying "I can't choose to have nothing to do with you because I have seen neon light rays dancing around your head like a halo, like magic. If I had never seen that, I would never speak to you again."

I don't know what his response to that was. He didn't say anything. It was dark. I was focussed on getting to the escalator to take me down to the subway. As soon as I stepped on the escalator, he hopped on his bike and was gone.

One of my great strengths, maybe my best gift, is I let things go.  If someone I consider a friend makes behavioral choices that hurt me, I might lash back while I am feeling the sting but I let things go. This guy seems incapable of letting go of others imperfections and unconscious of his own.

I can let things go.

 I have not yet found a way to accept the loss of someone with a white neon, pulsing light ray halo that wove through his hair.

hieroglyphic stairway

hieroglyphic stairway © Drew Dellinger

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do'
once
you
knew?

I'm riding home on the Colma train
I've got the voice of the milk way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately'
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent'
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I'm a hieroglyphics stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane'

a satellite circling earth'
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the procession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I'm riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I'm the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it's 3:23 in the morning
and I can't sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech
~ Drew Dellinger

to be happier . . .

love must be . . .

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
~Henry David Thoreau

love is the only alchemy

Love is the only alchemy

that transforms people.

It should be the

only religion too.

When one is loveful,

one is godful.

~ Osho

love is higher than opinion

Love is higher than opinion.  If people

love one another, the most varied

opinoins can be reconciled. . . this is one 

of the most important tasks for

humankind today and in the future: that

we learn to live togtether and

understand one another. If this human

fellowship is not achieved, all talk of

esoteric development is empty.
~ Rudolf Steiner

once my sister

Once, when my sister had just had her daughter, my niece Ruby, she came to the city I lived in to introduce me to her infant and to check out grad schools for herself. She had my niece when she was 28, unmarried, so on her own. She decided to go back to school to be a school teacher, reasoning that as a single mom she'd be glad to have the summers off.

My niece Ruby is now a full scholarship sophomore at Smith, so this story is from 19 years ago. BTW.

My daughter, Rosie, and I had some plans the evening my sister expected to arrive at my home. She had driven a few hundred miles. I had left a key to my home in the mailbox of a neighbor, with instructions so my sis could find the key.

The key thing worked out. Rosie and I went to our school evening assembly, Flannery showed up, found the key, hauled her baby and her stuff into my home.

And then my sister rearranged my furniture.

She had never been in my home before.

Who does that? Who goes into someone else's house, with their permission to enter and help themselves to food and the guest room, and then proceeds to rearrange furniture?

My sister said I had things all wrong. My home. My stuff. Wrong.

I remember biting my tongue. I remember wanting to make a snarky remark about how she had arranged her life all wrong, having sex without protection at her age, with a major jerk on a first date.
But I said nothing. And I left the furniture as sis had put it while she stayed with me.

how long forgiveness takes

what if we create a better world for nothing?! lol

cultural phenomenon I think is crazy

When I lived in Seattle, I got most of my prescriptions filled at the Walgreens a couple blocks from where I lived.  Eventually I changed pharmacies. Walgreens is a particularly conservative company. if you doubt me, go into one and look around for all the ways it proudly proclaims its wave-the-flag conservativism. Just look for images.

When I moved to California, first living in Mountain View, I used other drug stores but had the same experience, although this is changing.

I noticed, both in Seattle and then MountainView, that upon entering the store, one faced a couple aisles jam  packed with make up, hair dyes and other 'beauty' products. I had to walk that gauntlet, deliberately positioned to force me to go through it, to just pick up my insulin.

As I began to write this, I thought of the CVS I use here in Berkeley as well as the Walgreens and Target stores that also sell prescription drugs, that are each one block from where I live. What does it say about our contemporary corporatist culture that there are three chain drug stores within one block of my downtown Berkeley home?

And yet. And yet. None of these three stores, and admittedly Target does not promote itself primariy as a drug store (neither do the others anymore -- they each had grocery departments these days), have the beauty products gauntlet anymore. 

I am sure each of these three stores still has beauty product aisles but I don't know where they are.

I almost never enter the Walgreens.  I do pop into the Target once in awhile for I pass it the most. Having spent over 20 years living in MN, where Target began and where I actually knew members of the Dayton family that founded Target as an off shoot of their now-all-Macy's family department store Dayton's, I used to be quite the Target addict, buying all my household cleaning supplies, hardware supplies, toys, socks, clothing for my kid as she grew, office supplies. Now I don't really buy much of anything but the Target one block away is a tiny shop.

When this quick-shop Target first opened, I popped in to buy some Brillo pads. Or any other brand of soap filled wool pads. They didn't have any. This Target is mostly a purveyor of highly processed foods, a few token homages to healthy food like the display of organic bananas near the check out lane. Mostly they sell things Target had determined college kids want.

With Walgreens directly across the street from Target, it is easy, and shocking, to see that Walgreens charges more for just about everything than Target or CVS.

One day, I lost my glucometer late in the evening. I can't go overnight without my glucometer. I have to test all the time so I know how much insulin to inject. Maybe I could have gone to bed without testing but I needed a glucometer the next morning.

And yet Target, in spite of claiming to have a full service pharmacy, did not sell glucometers. Walgreens did, at price gouging cost. I bought one anyone. I would have bought my new glucometer at CVS but it was after ten, CVS closed. Target, focussed on college kids who seem to become more awake as the night grows older, stays open to eleven so, no surprise, the Walgreens across the street now stays open until eleven.

That one night, I was glad Walgreens was open, glad I could ease my anxiety and get a new glucometer right away.

Anyway. None of these drugs stores has the make up and other 'beauty' supplies at the front of the store. Since I am no longer forced to run that gauntlet, I don't know where the beauty aisles are, or even if these stores have beauty aisles.

I used to run that gauntlet, which would have hundreds of different lipsticks and hundreds of different eyeshadows and other make up products whose names I have not retained. What do they call the liquid women put over their faces to give their facial skin a more even color?  I remember the word blush.

What came to bother me most about those beauty care gauntlets was this:   I would think about the fact that all those crappy products were made by humans who relied on their jobs making crap.  I would think about the packaging, polluting our home planet. I would think about the warehouse employees, the truck loaders, drivers and unloaders, the pollution from the transportation as well as the pollution from the manufacturing. I would think of women everywhere thinking that their own natural beauty needed crappy products to enhance their beauty.  I would see a goddamned mess.

And then, on my more eoyore days,  I might glance around at the rest of such crappily corporate stores and think about all the crap sold, all the packing that will be polluting our waterways and especially our oceans. I would think of an endless wave of humans dependent on what were likely mostly crappy jobs enabling this, imho, insane manufacturing, marketing and consumption.

Air fresheners:  plastic, chemicals, crap.

Cleaning products: loaded with toxins that end up in our drinking water sources.

Energy wasted, both physical energy and human energy.

Human dissatisfaction with themselves.

All I buy in CVS, and it is not a great store but I need my insulin, is prescription meds and toilet paper.

I think I could buy toilet paper cheaper on amazon but I just can't bring myself to do that. Toilet paper already wastes a ton of this planet's resources to land in a store, or in an Amazon warehouse. I can walk one block, each way, to buy mine. I don't need to be responsible for trucks hauling my toilet paper one more time, polluting my home commons one more time.

When I used to menstruate, I had taken to using cotton flannel menstrual pads that I laundered and reused over and over.  I guess I could use cloths instead of toilet paper, then launder them. But what about the water, soap and use of those natural resources?

Life is complex and getting more so, eh?

the shadow of free speech

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.
~~ Isaac Asimov

everything not of love . .

naughty or nice: out of control

did you think it was going to be that way forever?

I met a man with whom I felt a deep, loving and forever connection about ten years ago.  We entered into an intense email exchange that lasted a couple years, although the volume diminished after the initial burst of writing.

I did not know that he had gooey love relationships with many women.

I live in a silo of my own thoughts. I do not have multiple, gooey love relationships with several men, juggling men like balls. Having emotionally intimate interactions with several males at the same time would leave me confused, anxious and overwhelmed.

I want one emotionally and physically intimate life partner. And I thought this guy was a possible such partner. I didn't think so instantly but I did come to believe he was 'the one' within a few months.  

That man has severed all ties to me, shunning me. Shunning is a cruel practice but he gets to act however he chooses to act.  He didn't just pull back from getting close to me. He erased me like I am nothing and always was nothing to him.

Anyway,  at some point along the way in this relationship, this man asked me "Did you think things were going to stay as they were forever?" I thought that he was alluding to the frequent, sometimes intense level of interaction that we had shared. And, yes, I did think it was going to stay emotionally intimate forever, grow more intimate and then more so until we were cosy long-time life partners.

I don't want, or need, a lot of emotional intimates. I want one mate. And, yes indeed, my idea of a life mate is I tell him all about everything and he tells me.

And yes indeed, I did think it would last forever. But even if we had not remained close forever, I very much believed we were forever friends.

 Not.

tapping into my phoenix code

Tapping into my PHOENIX CODE
"She’s opening her phoenix code.
That is because she’s ignited a sacred fire inside her that holds the fire of the sun. It’s burning to ashes all that is untrue in her life.

No one else but she herself can now shine the light to who she’s becoming. She’s always looked for mentors and idols to emulate. Not any more.
She’s evolving into a woman who is unique. No one in her world really fits the template for who she is becoming. Her path is singular, specially laid out for her. She’s realising that at this time she has to fall back on herself to mould, forge and craft her new self.
She did have heroines and heroes in her life, but the more she’s maturing, the more she’s acknowledging her own awesomeness. This is new for her, re-creating herself from her own example. Her work with ending the cycle of victimhood and coming into a deep honouring of herself, is birthing this new being. This time round, her imagination is powerfully by her side, showing her who she truly is.
She’s living in times of transition, and she’s excitedly stepping into this unfamiliar journey that is beyond standards, beyond regular & normal. Even beyond ideal. If she needs a teacher or mentor now, she’s choosing the one who will teach her how to tend her own sacred fire.
The key to owning all of herself, is to be her own source.
She’s remembering the art of reincarnating in the same body.
The more she stands in her own singularity, the better she fits into her world.
Sukhvinder Sircar

transforming power of relationship

those people that stay in and go through the fires of love and are willing to grow beyond who and how we have been and awaken via the transforming power of relationship

where troubles melt like lemon drops

First, I have to say I so love the lyric 'where troubles melt like lemon drops'. A great artist wrote this song.

Second. I have read that the musician playing and singing this version called up the recording studio owner at 3 a.m. and asked if he could come in and record something he had a good feeling about. The musician was so polite that the owner said yes. At 3 a.m.!
Life should always work like that. Inspiration. Kindness. Eagerness to create soothing beauty.

eeyore

our culture demands happiness. in general.....people do not like people who are not cheery, upbeat, positive. it is rare to include the Eeyore's in our world. but it is the Eeyore's who have the most love and compassion and patience for those who are suffering. and, as we open our hearts to those who are in pain, we make this a more beautiful world.

I will come and find you

I WILL COME AND FIND YOU WHEN THE LOVE
I FIND INSIDE MYSELF IS EQUAL TO WHAT YOU OFFER
I will come and find you when the love
I find inside myself is equal to what you offer,
I have been so afraid in that outer world
in which you found me; one thing I know
that I do not need to ask you to wait.
I only want to tell you that here in the center
of my strength I am everything you have seen.
I will come in late September when the light
inside me and outside of me has changed utterly.
All of this will come true….
Excerpt from 'SEPTEMBER' :
From THE SEA IN YOU:
Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love’
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
Now Available at davidwhyte.com

i've said this for a long time!

Anger is a call for love. War is a call for love. Unhappiness is a call for love. Loneliness is a call for love. Smiles are calls for love. Sadness is a call for love. Jokes are a call for love. Misogyny is a call for love. Violence is a call for love. Terrorism is a call for love.

Of course, being humanly imperfect, many often confuse calls for love as being something other than what they really are.

We are either extending love or seeking it, calling for it, asking for it -- not always in positive, pleasant, easily palatable ways.

It is the ugliest calls for love that most need to be answered with love. In my opinion.

more harm than good

"Listening to someone with only cursory attention can do more harm than good. It unconsciously communicates your disinterest and so you won’t be surprised when a distance, a forgetting, develops between you.
What really makes someone feel seen and loved, is when you listen with the fullness of your presence. Presence is a kind of silent vow to our inseparability. And at some future point, when you hand back the other’s pieces, which you have been carrying as your own, to say, ‘I remember this,’ then the tenderness of your intimacy grows."
by Dreamwork with Toko-pa (http://eepurl.com/jtRaL)

anyone who knows me

great poem by Audre Lorde

I was going to die, sooner or later,
whether or not I had even spoken myself.
My silences had not protected me.
Your silences will not protect you….
What are the words you do not yet have?
What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day
and attempt to make your own,
until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
We have been socialized to respect fear
more than our own need for language.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen?
Then push yourself a little further than you dare.
Once you start to speak, people will yell at you.
They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal.
And the world won’t end. And the speaking will get easier and easier.
And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision,
which you may never have realized you had.
And you will lose some friends and lovers,
and realize you don’t miss them.
And new ones will find you and cherish you.
And you will still flirt and paint your nails,
dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said,
“If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.”
And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty
that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth.
And that is not speaking.
by Audre Lorde

waiting to be kindled

There is a candle in the heart of man,
waiting to be kindled.
In separatoin from the Friend,
there is a cut waiting to be stitched.
Oh, you who are ignorant of endurance
and the burning fire of love --
Love comes of its own free will
it can't be learned in any school.

~~ Rumi

I still hear his thoughts sometimes, feel his feelings

You can hear the other person's silent thoughts.

There is such depth to the connection
that you can feel and hear what the other is thinking

I have found my man, my mate.
I can hear his thoughts sometimes
feel his feelings
but he does not trust
he is gone
I still hear and feel him.

You can hear the other person’s silent thoughts.

With soulmates, there is such depth to your relationship that you can feel and hear what your partner is thinking, even if it is not verbally expressed.
- See more at: http://theunboundedspirit.com/17-signs-youve-found-your-soulmate/#sthash.lfNQ1npd.dpuf

You can hear the other person’s silent thoughts.

With soulmates, there is such depth to your relationship that you can feel and hear what your partner is thinking, even if it is not verbally expressed.
- See more at: http://theunboundedspirit.com/17-signs-youve-found-your-soulmate/#sthash.lfNQ1npd.dpuf

I want your sun to reach my raindrops

Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky
And you lift me up out of the two worlds.
I want your sun to reach my raindrops,
So your heart can raise my soul upward like a cloud
~~ Rumi

love awakens this way

From Rudolf Steiner: "The way to the heart is through the head. Even love is no exception to this. When it is not the mere expression of the sex drive, it is then based upon the mental pictures which we make for ourselves of the loved one. And the more idealistic these mental pictures are, the more blissful is the love. Here also the thought is father to the feeling. One says: Love makes us blind to the weaknesses of the loved one. The matter can also be grasped the other way round and it can be maintained that love opens the eye in fact for precisely the good qualities of the loved one. Many pass these good qualities by without an inkling, without noticing them. One person sees them, and just because he does, love awakens in his soul. What has he done other than make for himself a mental picture of something of which a hundred others have none. They do not have the love because they lack the mental picture."

Or as Rumi sings:
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you,
Not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
They’re in each other all along.

a heart-shaped hot tub and my pure joy

During a road trip from the Upper Midwest to the West Coast with my daughter, who was eight or nine at the time, we made an agreement that we'd stay every night in a motel or hotel with a hot tub. I think it was not outdoor pool weather. And, as the sole driver, driving as far as I could stand it each day, the hot tub was a great way to end our long days cooped up in a car.

My fortieth birthday took place on that road trip. We ended the day in Lovelock Nevada. I don't remember why we stopped there. I don't recall any outstanding features of Lovelock. I do recall that our somewhat dumpy 'hotel' had a small casino, with slot machines all over the place and gaming. Minors couldn't go into the casino and I have never gambled. We would have liked to go in and see what the first casino we had ever seen was like but Rosie's age kept us out. Just as well. I have always been afraid to gamble. My dad was a compulsive gambler and his betting on the ponies caused a lot of misery in my childhood.

This was nothing like a Vegas casino. It was dreary, shabby and, at least to me and Rosie, depressing.

We couldn't find another place with a hot tub. Or maybe I was really tired. Or maybe I wanted to stop early because it was my fortieth. I don't remember why we ended up in that dumpy hotel.

I remember it seemed to be a former metal-walled building that had been converted into hotel rooms. It was a weird building in every way.

Oh, now I remember. We had pulled in because a sign for that dump said it had hot tubs.

Now, up until then, we had mostly stayed at Holiday Inns that had indoor pools with hot tubs alongside those indoor pools, sorta like mini beach vacations in those not-so-fancy hotels.

We had enjoyed our hot tub thing on that road trip.

When we checked into the hotel in Lovelock whose sign bragged about hot tubs, we learned that the hot tubs were 'in room' hot tubs and the only hot tub room left was the honeymoon suite. As the desk clerk told me about that honeymoon suite and its in-room hot tub, she said the honeymoon suite also came with a 'free' bottle of champagne. I said "Obviously we aren't on a honeymoon but it is my fortieth birthday. We'll take it. I should drink champagne today. And I definitely deserve a hot tub."

Now, only now, for I have not thought of that honeymoon hot tub in decades, I realize we might have kept shopping for another hotel. It was the free champagne, combined with my fortieth birthday, that had me thoughtlessly paying for the honeymoon suite.

The champagne was, of course, very very cheap. Twenty+ years ago, it probably cost less than five bucks retail. But that meant it had low alcohol content. I have never been much of a drinker. Rosie virtually never saw me drinking alcohol, other than an occasional beer when we visited my brother and his partner.

I don't know about other honeymoon site hot tubs, but the one in that honeymoon sweet was heartshaped. And shallow.

The clerk had explained to us that it was heart shaped and shallow. As soon as we saw that hottub, we realized the clerk had been trying to warn us away from that shallow hot tub. It was obviously shallow for honeymoon sex. Not a hot tub for a mom and her kid.

We had wanted to sit and soak in at least a couple feet of hot, roiling water. That heart-shaped hottub was, at most, six inches deep. It probably would make for a pleasant session of passion with a lover.

We put on our swimsuits, for Rosie and I did not soak nude in hot tubs together anywhere. We got in the tub and got out immediately. We didn't speak of the fact that the tub was clearly designed for sex but it was obvious.  Both of us felt awkward. I didn't verbalize my thoughts, i.e. that I thought it was designed for sex. She was, like, eight. I didn't talk to my kid about sex at that age -- or hot tub sex ever -- but I especially did not do so at age eight. Sure, I talked to her about sex as she got older and started dating. We had 'the talk'. And Rosie knew about sex.

To compensate for my fortieth birthday hot tub fail, I resolved to drink that cheap champagne. I knew it wouldn't get me drunk. It was too cheap to be anything like real bubbly.

Rosie was uneasy, worried that I would get drunk. The idea of a drunk mother frightened her, I guess.  I kept assuring her I wouldn't get drunk, pointing out that I was spreading out my few glasses of cheap wine, explaining that it was very cheap and even read the alcohol content level off the label.  I drank a glass or two before we headed to the bleak diner. And I drank a glass or two after. And I did not get drunk.

It was, all in all, a tacky fortieth birthday.

All the other hot tub hotels we stayed at had been a fun experience.

Now, whenever I remember stories from our shared past, I wonder if I had any awareness of what her actual experience was. Was she always hiding her real self from me?

I do wish I had recognized her anxiety about the champagne but I was not driving, the wine was not enough to get me drunk when drunk over several hours. And it was my big 4-0. I drank it, by golly.

That night, that hotel choice, was an epic fail.

As I have written this, I have heard the buzzing and beeping of slot machines.  Yuck.

Not, all things considered, one of my better memories of road trips with my cake cup. But any memories of hanging out with my Rosie still imbue me with joy. She is still my pure joy.

will flow willfulness

I am engaged in an act of willfulness, which is not quite the same thing as engaging my will. I am clinging, not entirely through my free will, to some pain and that pain is clinging to me.  I am stubbornly, doggedly, even unrelentingly, holding onto something I cannot change but I want something to change.

I am making myself ill, with heart attacks symptoms enduring for a few weeks now, in my willful inability (refusal?  I have prayed to let go and I cannot).

I am so sure that what I want is right. My certitude is killing me. And sometimes I am hoping it will.

Ack.

No flow.

Underneath my unhappy willfulness is the hardest certitude I have yet to know. I am so sure I am right, yet wholly unable to do anything. I can't have what I want. I can't let go.

I know why pain shoots up my left arm, why I become so fatigued I can barely stand up, why I sweat profusely.  I am very stubbornly holding onto my certitude, which, for all my dogged certainty, is a failure to trust that my good is unfolding exactly as it should. It may be killing me for real but I can't let go of what is working me.

I am unhappy. And sick.

maybe this is my now or never

Women can have subtle symptoms indicative of a heart attack. And women's heart attacks, or heart challenges, are usually very different than men's.

In 1995-6, I had a series of heart attacks that I did not recognize as heart attacks at the time. I would feel a lot of chest pressure and then I would vomit, the pressure would be gone and I forgot about it. this happened at least three times and these episodes would begin while I was seated, doing nothing.

In the past couple weeks, maybe longer, I keep having serious pain in my upper left arm. At first I thought I have pinched a muscle or propped my arm in an uncomfortable position while typing on my laptop, which I often do in bed. So I ignored the arm pain.

I have also noticed very subtle heart palpitations, so subtle that I tell myself I am imagining things.

And, of late, sometimes I feel just fine and am able to walk through my life feeling well but, now and then, I can suddenly become so deeply fatigued that I feel I can barely walk.

Today, I had some books due at the library on the next block. I felt so weak that I used my shopping cart to haul a few books one block. By the time I got to the library, I was sweating profusely, my clothing feeling soaked and I was so weak I kept stopping to rest every few feet.  I had intended to keep going, walking another half mile to Trader Joe's, but I just could not do that much moving so I just came home. A two block walk and I stopped to rest several times, stopped to rest in the lobby of my building before taking the elevator up.

I entered my apartment, dropped off my coat right inside the door, rolled my cart out of the way and just about fell into bed.

Yesterday, walking to the bus stop after a great session with my writers'  group, a four hour long session that was still going when I left to catch a certain bus, I got out of breath and when I got to my bus stop, I noticed faint heart palpitations, I could heard my heart thumping and my shirt pulsed from it. Again, I told myself it was nothing.

Then the arm pain was back today, coupled with the intense fatigue and the sweats.

I have been thinking each time I have had any such symptoms "the next time it happens, I'll call my doctor". So I did. I asked to be given an appointment. My doc not in the office today but I talked to a doc for a good amount of time. She concluded as I knew she would that I needed to go to an ER.

I told her I didn't think I had enough energy to get myself to an ER and asked if tomorrow was good enough. She said "I am recommending you go to an ER right now. I don't think you should wait."

I don't want to go to the ER.

My arm pain has spread a bit, now it goes from the middle of my left upper arm to my shoulder and towards my neck. I am reclining, so resting. My glucose levels have been fine all day, for I have been closely monitoring them.

When I feel unwell, I always think it is about my diabetes but this is not about my glucose levels of insulin needs. Being a diabetic puts me at a higher risk.

I asked this doc, who I have never met, if I couldn't just be referred to a cardiologist and make an appointment. if I go to the ER, they'll keep me there for hours and end up telling me to see a cardiologist.

I'm not going to an ER today. We'll see if I feel like going tomorrow. I doubt it.

I am hearing friends and doctors warning me that if I don't take care of my health, my quality of life can be lowered quickly.

I am not at any real danger of a clot, for I am on an anticoagulant.

I don't even have someone to give as an emergency contact. That's one aspect of gong to the ER I hate. I have a couple Berkeley friends who would drive me to a hospital right now, if they are not tied up. But I don't have anyone who cares if I live or die or live in debilitated health condition.

Maybe it's my karmic time to go.  I feel too sick to get dressed, go out in the cold and get to a hospital. I feel too sick to be in an ER for hours .They don't monitor my glucose, telling me it's up to me. If I need to eat, the ER I use will not give me food, telling me to self manage. I just don't want to deal.

I am hearing my mom singing, in a snotty sing song tone"
nobody loves me
everybody hates me
I guess I'll go eat worms.

Good old mom. She would say that to me if I voiced any kind of unhappiness of displeasure, mocking me. When she sang that, I felt great shame and even humiliated, like I was a freak to be unhappy. And I was ashamed that my mom mocked me.

My mom was not cut out to mother. I cannot recall a single time in my childhood when I was distressed and my mom responded with simple kindness. And if, goddess forbid, I had to stay home from school, perhaps because I was vomiting from a flu birus, my mom would park me on the sofa in the living room, put a tray table with water at my side and tell me she had lots of work to do and I could not bother her. She also forbid me watching TV, telling me letting me watch tv would encourage me to fake being sick. And with my mom, you were only sick enough to stay home from school if you were active vomiting at the time you had to leave for school. If I had a fever, she said I wasn't sick enough to stay home.

When I was allowed to stay home because I was sick, mom would disappear into the basement for the whole day. We lived, then, in a huge house. The basement was also huge and had been converted into a rental unit, with oak floors, drywall. It did not feel like a basement at all. A full kitchen, full bath. Our laundry room was down there, and our mangle. My mom used to mangle clothes instead of irioning them until her mother's hand-me-down mangle died.

I suppose she had a lot of laundry, with, when I was seven or eight and home propped up on that sofa, she had four kids, a husband and herself. So laundry. She wouldn't even come up and offer me lunch. She said if I was sick, I would just vomit whatever I ate.

So I hated being sick. Staying home sick was like being bombarded with loud torture music, and the music was telling me "nobody loves you, not even your mom, eat your worms".

My daughter almost never got sick. She hated to miss school, especially when she was still in Waldorf. Once, in h.s. she stayed home sick. Her prep school had all day food buffets that came with the fat tuition My sister subbed there one day and she said the food was amazing. But one of the very infrequent times my Rosie felt unwell and felt she had to stay home (I don't remember her eve vomiting from the flu -- from an eating disorder, yes, later on she barfed sometimes but mostly she purged with laxatives or just starved). Rosie would get very painful menstrual cramps and a few times, she was in so much pain she wanted to stay home. My kid hated staying home from school so she must have been in pain.

So this one day in h.s. (she only went to h.s. for two years, then started college at sixteen), she tayed home. Probably from her painful cramps, for which her pediatarician actually gave her prescription painkillers. But a teenager likely didn't tell her chums at school she was home because she was doubled over from cramp pain. I don't know what she told her pals. But when she returned the next day, her friends teased her about staying home. All of them had two working parents and staying home sick meant staying home alone. Rosie had never stayed home alone while sick. On those rare days when she was sick, I waited on her all day, bringing her cups of tea and, now and then, pieces of toast to try to entice her to eat something easy.

When her schoolmates teased her for staying home, they said "Why not just come to school You ca strech out on a sofa, get tea from the cafeteria and be sick here.

She said "My mom brings me cups of tea to my bedside. I love her bringing me those cups of tea."

I might be having a heart attack and I have no one to tell. My kid doesn't care. A college dance teacher, someone she knew for two years and few classes because Rosie's eating disorder was roaring and it got too hard for her to dance. Wendy Shifrin was athe dance instructor, who sure looked anorexic.  Wendy died recently and Rosie posted something on her memorial page. She keeps in touch with such tangential ties in her life but has disowned me.

It is so hard to believe I have any value when my child, to whom I gave and gave and gave, and sacrificed quite a lot financially and work-wise for, would not care to know her mother might be having another heart attack.

I wish I would fall asleep tonight and not ever wake up. So I am defnitely not oging to the ER today. I will give my destiny a chance to take me out tonight. Maybe I'll go tomorrow but I don't think I will. We'll see.

criminal trials and jury duty

I have just received a summons for jury duty. So far, and I get a summons every year, when I call, as instructed, the day before my day on 'duty', I get the message that I am not needed. My day to start jury duty, this year,  is three days before Christmas. I doubt if any big trials will get going then. I probably won't have to serve but it would be fine with me to be on a jury. I don't do Christmas. That week is very painful for me. I'd love to be absorbed in someone else's criminal or financial misery. Wouldn't it be cool to sit on a big environmental law case?  As if.  Judges would rarely want to open a long trial just before Christmas, am I right?!

And I doubt if any smart lawyer would want me on a jury. I'd actually like to sit on a jury, and especially for a long, complex trial. A business litigation trial would bore me. A criminal trial would break my heart and bruise my soul. I might be an okay juror for business but any good prosecutor should reject me.

I did two clerkships in law school for two different criminal defense clinics. I was excited by the idea of a career in a courtroom and criminal defense was a fast ticket to court appearances. And later, when in private, solo practice, I did lots of misdemeanor defense, a few 'minor' felonies.  When you hang out your solo shingle, you take what comes in the door.

During those misguided years when I targeted a career in criminal defense, I regularly sat in on trials for major felonies, such as homicides and aggravated rapes. I sat in to learn from the attorneys, not to hear about the crimes.

One of the worst aspects of criminal defense work is, for the most part, you are dealing with criminals. Whatever they were being prosecuted for was never the only crimes they had committed. And career criminals just aren't all that great to be around.  Most of my clients casually talked about all the crimes they 'got away with', crimes they never got arrested for. And most of my clients never denied their guilt for whatever charge I helped defend.  I know some people are wrongly convicted but I never repped any innocents in criminal defense work.

One summer, clerking for a private nonprofit criminal defense clinic that only accepted major felonies, believing that most public defenders were not up to the task of providing effective defense  for major felonies for indigent clients. Major felonies meant violence. I spent a whole summer clerking for rape cases that involved vicious violence. Not just ordinary rapes. And this clinic pretty much only accept black men accused of major felonies as clients because our justice system is much harder on black men.  I spent the whole summer defending rapists, who had committed very violent rapes and thus rising to the status of being eligible for this clinic's great lawyers for free.  The clients whose cases I worked on spoke freely to me and their lawyer about the rape they were charged with and had committed. They expected to be found guilty and go to prison but they fantasized we could get them lower sentences. The lawyer I clerked for, who went on to be a state supreme court justice, never plead out major felonies against black clients. He had a true calling to pursue justice.  They schmoozed their lawyers, and their white, blond law clerk sitting at the defense table before jurors for each trial, right next to the accused rapist. How harmful could the accused be if that young blonde woman felt safe next to him day after day?  I was used, a bit, by the attorney I worked for al that summer but he was also a great mentor.

gosh, as I recall that summer, I am chagrined to recall my racial naivete. Sure I understood black men got arrested more, got charges with more serious charges but it was all a bit diffused for me. And I was still a bit intimidated about speaking to judges, clients and practicing lawyers.

I'm rambling.

During the few years I did some criminal defense work and whiled away days when I had no work watching the rising stars in the criminal defense world of the city I was then practicing in, I realized it is highly probable I would never, as a juror, vote to convict most accused felons. Every time I sat through a major felony trial to watch the star lawyer, I realized I would not have voted to convict.  I realized that my training as a lawyer lead me to always see the possibility of doubt. I realized that my reasonable doubt was a far higher standard than most juries used.

I realized I would make a poor juror after sitting through a first degree homicide trial. Some lonely, geeky guy had managed to have a few days with a girl and even have sex with her. Then she dumped him, flaunted the fact that she was sleeping with someone else and the defendant killed her. He got convicted all right.  The evidence that he had killed her was irrefutable. Maybe I could have voted to convict for manslaughter but first degree murder, in that state, at that time, required a clear finding of intent to commit murder. And I just couldn't allow myself to believe the defendant deliberately set out to kill her. I thought he was out of his mind in his emotional pain, that he had gone to quarrel with her and had not had the legally required intent to murder her.

I also realized few laymen would have drawn the very fine distinctions about the defendant's emotional state when the jury came back with their guilty verdict. I was truly surprised, even shocked. I had been sure they would have found him guilty of manslaughter or, maybe, second degree homicide. I no longer remember the gradations in that state's legal code between manslaughter and second degree murder.

I sat in the courtroom observing my thoughts, my empathy for the defendant, my disinclination to find him guilty of intent to kill. And I realized no good prosecuting lawyer should ever allow me on a jury. And all criminal defense lawyers should want me.

Heck, I once represented, at the first clerkship I had in law school, a teenager who had robbed a card shop. A dumb little crime unlikely to yield the kid the kind of money he wanted. You don't see card shops much these days and this wasn't a mall card shop. It was a dinky, neighborhood cardshop, the kind you wondered how they managed to stay open. A place like that never had a lot of cash.

So the kid goes in, demands the cash, the cashier hands it over. The kid, high, was waiving a switchblade with a surgical-sharp blade at the girl behind the counter and, because he was high, stupid and violent, he slashed her cheek. She had handed over the cash. She had not given him any resistance. Why did he give her cheek a very long gash that left a scar that would have required lots of plastic surgery. And I doubted that a gift shop cashier, especially back in the seventies, had health insurance, much less good health insurance so she was not going to get the plastic surgery.

That kid evinced no sense that he had done anything wrong.  He actually bragged about slashing her cheek, oblivious when we explained to him that because of that razor slash, he was going to spend a lot of time in prison.

I felt lots of empathy for that razor slashing criminal, even though he showed no remorse. He seemed almost animal-like, almost free of any emotions I recognized. It was heartbreaking to see that he had as little care for himself as he had for that girl he had slash with a razor.  When I would think about how the guy didn't seem to care for himself, I then would conclude he had grown up uncared for and uncared about. And that bruised my whole being. And then I would think hopeful, prayerful thoughts for his victim, pray that she was loved and cared about so she would survive and find her way back to her life without too much lasting wrong.

Who wants to deal with that kind of inner dialogue while making a living?

Not me.

I had defended the slasher, who still in high school, but being a bit young and dumb myself, I kept going in the direction of criminal law, still dazzled by the prospect of spending lots of time in courtrooms. I loved the stage, the public speaking. I loved knowing the rules of court inside and out, feeling competent and smart.

Eventually, and in hindsight I berate myself for having taken so long to reach this conclusion, I realized I was miserable interacting with criminals. Once I had that come to Jesus moment, I never did any criminal defense but drunk driving. This was before Mothers Against Drunk Drivers reformed the way our justice system dealt with drunk drivers. When I 'defended' drunk drivers, I took a fat fee for entering the accused guilty plea, 'bargaining' his sentence down to a big fine, probation, license suspension but no jail time. The prosecutors in that city would have given the drunk drivers that same deal without me but lots of folks are afraid when arrested for drunk driving and wanted a lawyer's support. I did all the things I was supposed to do. I reviewed the prosecutor's file to be sure he had evidence for a conviction and then, always, the prosecutor I caught on a given day would give me the same deal. That was for first offenses. The deal: a fat fine, one year license suspended and that was it.

I quickly learned, doing that easy DUI defense work, that almost anyone could get one charge of drunk driving and never drive drunk again. I learned that anyone who came back with a second charge of drunk driving, which required more complicated defense, the person was an alcoholic, unrepentant and would offend again. Those cases, I referred to the guys I shared my office suite with.

Once, after I had told an interstate trucker I didn't want to take his case, because he had already had his driver's license suspended in several states. He would just get a driver's license in another state and he kept on driving. He drove for a living, putting lives at risk every time he drove drunk. And this guy always drove drunk.  I told him I couldn't help him, that his record in other states would be before the court and he was going to jail. I was surprised when he still insisted he wanted me to defend him. He offered me a lot more money than I usually charged. I felt okay taking his money, for I had made it clear to him that I didn't think I could help him. And I didn't help him. He was repugnant to me. Oh, I did what I should have done as his attorney but I could not magically keep him out of jail. His mere existence repulsed the judge, the prosecutor and anyone versed enough to know, when hearing his long list of DWI's all over the country while driving drunk through America.  And I had made full disclosure:  he was going to jail this time. And that was when I moved away from drunk driving, easy-money cases. Nowadays, I think it is hard, if even possible, to get a professional trucker's driving license in multiple states after drunk driving convictions. I hope it is.

When I practiced law, I kept finding I hated every kind of case I got. Family law? Shudder. Business conflicts? A lot like family law.

Nowadays, many people say to me "why didn't you do environmental law?" First, in 1979 when I graduated from law school, the field of environmental law was barely a twinkle in the profession's eye. The few jobs that existed then were extremely competitive. Secondly, environmental law, if one is pro-environmental protection, is a Sisyphean task and you are always in a fight. Lawyers are in a fight, always repping someone with a serious conflict. Some folks see this as noble work and I think it is. It just wasn't the right work for me.

I finally concluded that anything I could do within the law involved a fight. A dispute. A conflict. A quarrel. And I accepted I didn't have the stomach for it.

Estate planning? I never did that, other than a few simple wills but I have heard plenty of horror stories of how ugly people can get fighting over mom's estate. Shudder again.

Tax law? Tediously dull to me.

Bankruptcy law? Ibid.

I had wanted to join the Peace Corps and, upon my return to the states, get a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. Dad said "There are no jobs for that. go to law school and you will never starve."  I was 22, fresh out of college, more naive than the average new college grad and I loved my dad. I let him bully me into law school.

If I had broken free and joined the Peace Corps, my entire life course would be unrecognizable from the life I have lived.

If I could turn back time, I would.  Of course, I cannot.   Sigh. People my age can and do join the Peace Corps but they would reject a type one diabetic. Dreams deferred are dreams denied, eh?

take delight in this wisdom

spirit triumphant!

"Spirit Triumphant! Flame through the weakness of faltering, fainthearted souls! Burn up egoism, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!" — Rudolf Steiner

dear santa, you judgemental bastard!

watch my rising

soup, poetry, waistbands

One time, my former friend Geo came over for a visit. I made soup that day, one of my all time best soups. He tasted it and said the broth was great with many interesting nuances. It was.  I wish I knew what I did that day. I have no memory of which spices I used.

We visited a bit in my living room, ate that awesome soup and then walked over to Moe's, a great used book store where Geo had sold 20 boxes of books and had accepted store credit instead of cash. You get more 'money' with store credit but it defeats the point of downsizing. You just buy more books.

Anyway, I had offered to buy a couple books, have him pay with his store credit and then I would give him the cash.

We walked over. That was one of the sweetest walks I have had. Ever.  We had both been working to lose weight, had both been succeeding. The time before that walk that I had seen him, I had showed off a pair of dress slacks that had not fit me in years but, slimmed down, they fit again. On that walk, we both almost skipped along, happy to be side by side, when he stopped, pulled up his jacket and then pulled out the waistband of the slacks he wore. He said "See these pants? A few months ago, they were too small!"  We laughed and almost skipped on.

At Moe's, I went to the poetry section, he to the philosophy. I was done quickly so I went upstairs to the philosophy section and saw he was on his smart phone, reading emails or something. I went back down, not wanting to rush him.

I quite dislike it when friends use their cell phones when they are, ostensibly, spending time with me. Using that phone upstairs in the philosophy section was still intruding into our time together. If he hadn't been on the phone, for who knows how long, we would have finished sooner. Not that we were in a hurry. It was time we could have spent together.

One thing I am coming to accept is that Geo didn't actually want to spend time with me. Why he spent any at all with me will likely remain a mystery.

I watched him a few minutes, scanning his smart phone with his hand, then went back down to poetry and then popped up again a few minutes later. He was off the phone, looking at books. He didn't buy any that day. He was looking at some of the many books he had sold in those 20 boxes, seeing how much Moe was going to get for them.

The walk home was just as lovely, although no one showed off their weight loss. Plus walking home from Moe's is downhill.

That was a lovely outing, from soup to poetry to waistbands.

I wish I could just let it go