fury

I was surprised and disappointed to get this note from you.

On 10/30/06, Marc Tognotti < marc@sfnan.org> wrote:

How are you doing? Well, I hope!

Re: this earlier comment of yours, I'm very interested to know your thoughts: "I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. ... at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process."


First, knitted into these comments I made about Kenoli's philosophy re: process, I came right out and wrote that I had already tried to write about it to you but it did not feel right to write about it. So I feel a little dissed that you ask me to write about it, ignoring my explicit declaration that it didn't feel right to write about it. Um, why don't you pick up the phone and ask me?! Secondly, I am sick of writing to you with no face-to-face. And third, I don't want to cope with face-to-face time with you even if you should magically find time for me, not if you think it is acceptable to call me adorable or tell me I am a gem and now I see that you can't send me poetry either. You can't do anything right in your interactions with me so it might be best to terminate all interactions. And, fourth, do you know how many questions I have asked you in various emails that you have not acknowledged or answered? And yet you write and ask me to do for you what you do not do for me, which is to answer your question, to give you my time and attention. I'm tired of this dynamic. I'm a bit creeped out that you never, like, want to TALK to me.

Here's another poem I thought of while musing on what a gem you are.


Call me a gem, call me adorable: it's all the same, isn't it? I told you I could not maintain our friendship if you persist in this behavior. I am very angry about what you wrote a few days ago, telling me it is up to me to deal with feeling diminished. First, of course I know that I am responsible for my reactions. Second, I thought I was asking you for help maintaining our friendship while I struggle. Also, I was very hurt by comments you made about my pain because I interpreted some of your comments to suggest that I was trying to avoid pain as if I were, well, not as 'evolved as you. I don't believe you know more about love than I do: far from it. I believe you are delusional. Well, I have lots to say but now I am filling up with anger and pain and I really don't want to spread my anger and pain in your direction. I have been in quite a lot of pain where you are concerned. I am tired of being in so much pain. I am feeling like a masochist, subjecting myself to this pain. I was, and remain, so hurt that you seemed to imply that I was trying to avoid pain in some kind of copout. I think I confront my pain as well as any human being could. And another thing. . . . well, I just don't want to say more and hurt myself, or, perhaps, you. I have tried to tell you a few things that I, like, really, REALLY want to tell you but I veer into anger. I'll try again sometime and send you my thoughts when I can write them out without gasping with pain (this is a good way to know if I have been unkind: if it hurts me to write it, I have probably said something I should not have said).

AND ALSO (I am a fury) reread what you wrote about why it 'irritates' when people call you adorable: you suggested that it diminishes you because, inter alia, the person declaring you to be adorable might be managing a power dynamic and they are calling you adorable to relegate you to a different power dynamic. I pick up on YOUR words and say, yes, this is what it feels like for me and then you brush me off, seize upon my choice of YOUR LANGUAGE and tell me I am responsibility for feeling diminished. I am still in a fury over your inconsistency and lack of fairness and your dismissiveness

This poem once thrilled me, especially during my high happy epoch, and I still recall it on occasion — like now.



I don't want you to share poetry with me anymore.

I don't want the kind of special friendship you offer me, marc. One of the central themes that I relied on as I raised Katie was that each of us gets to want what we want. We don't always get what we want, of course, but it is very important, I always taught katie (and I believe this) to let ourselves want what we want. I resent very much some things you have written about how you don't understand why Kenoli wants the kind of love he says he wants or that I want the kind of love I want. . . I really resent it that you have said I am conventional. Marc, your behavior at conferences is very conventional: get back in touch with me after you have treated men the way you treated me in May and the way you treated Marcela in August and then you might be able to convince me that you are doing something evolutional, beyond ordinary conventions of love. What I think you are doing is a classic ploy of the unhappily married man: you are looking outside your marriage for what you aren't getting at home and you are selfishly, albiet unconsciously, using women. I don't know if you had sex with Marcela although, of course, I assume you did not. No, you aren't looking for sex that you aren't getting at home: you are looking for soft, feminine women with whom you can be soft and get validated in ways I assume Karen does not validate you. it is okay for you to want what you want but I believe there are some aspects of denial in the story you tell yourself about what you are doing with women. Also, I wonder if you choose fat women to play your evolutionary love games because you do not see them as sexual objects and perhaps you think we have less feelings than more attractive women? There were times at Marconi when you draped yourself around Marcela: I was not the only person who noticed, of course. If you are being all 'new thought' about love when you act like that, why aren't you doing that to men? No, I am convinced you are working out some issues, just like all of us are working out some issues. . . . and you have every right to behave any way you choose. . . but I choke a bit on your claim that you are doing something new and fine related to love. . . how I chafe that you said i was being conventional. Yes, I want something conventional: I want someone to love and adore me in a committed relationship. It really hurt me that you wrote that about me being conventional: you aren't an idiot plus I have told you so much about my life. I am lonely and vulnerable and I want to change that. The same with Kenoli. It is so unfair for you to pontificate about loftier forms of friendship when you have so much in your life that I do not have: you have a mate, you have a home, you have a farm, you have work, you have relationships with your family, you are supported financially by a mate, you have people to share your life with. You have all the things conventional people want and it feels like a little slap for you to suggest that there is something wrong with me wanting these things because they are conventional. Yes, I've had a fine time writing to you but I don't want to keep it up: it is getting flatter by the day. The funny thing is that it wouldn't have taken much to keep me excited about writing to you: it's not like I am going to actually enter into a romantic relationship with you or any other male on the planet. It's not like I've asked you to give me much. But you have told me just one time too many that you'd LIKED to write to me but you don't have the time: give that line a rest, Marc. You have time to do everything you want to do. If you actually answered some of the questions I have asked you from time to time. . . well, I think I might have been able to shift the feelings that I have had. If you had treated me like a real friend instead of this special category you seem to have put me in. . . . I don't know. I just know I am hurting a lot and I am tired of hurting.

I know my request last week for you to stop telling me I am adorable was unreasonable. I have too many rules for what you can do that is acceptable.

And why the fuck am I wasting my time telling you this? What I think shouldn't matter to you at all because all that matters to you is what goes on inside you. After reading the things you wrote to me last week when you dissed me for asking you to not say I am adorable (calling me a gem is the same damned thing), the way you told me, basically, that I am on my own and you will not calibrate your behavior to help me. . . . well, I found myself thinking maybe I had it right when I tried to stay isolated from people. . . . I mean, after all, if all that matters is what goes on inside me, what are people for anyway? There is really no need to talk to others.

Love rays eternelle,


oh, yeah, right back at you. I'm not proposing that we aren't friends or that I won't love you a whole lot forever because I will. I'm just saying I've had enough.

You can write me tomes if you like and not get enough attention from me.

MT (=Mr. Tall)


I have a new label for you: the love ranger (as in the lone ranger). There is an element of danger to your love experiments, the way you go around unleashing the love in women that you pick out of the crowd. How do you know these women need what you have to offer? Why is it that you don't give it to men?

Well, you catch my drift.

I have been very sad for the last few days, grieving the loss of you. But for now, I can't maintain this friendship. If I had any doubts, they were dispelled when you wrote to me today and told me I was a gem. That demonstrated to me that you are going to go on being you: and of course you must go on being you. Well, I have to be me: I'm tired, I'm vulnerable, I'm lonely, i'm in pain and the energy that gets moving inside me related to you is just not working for me.

You know I am inexperienced in friendships with males.

Oh, here is something I have to address before we end our contact: you are a fool to be staying in your relationship with karen, esp. in the way you wrote about it, saying you are going to find love within the choices you have already made. I know anything I could say would just sound biased to you but I really think that as your friend I simply wince when I feel how this dogged choice really affects you. It is playing with fire to do what you are doing. Each day you are making choices that will affect future choices and making choices that limit you from your destiny. True, none of us can escape our destiny . . . . but we can, I believe, avoid a lot of tangles and brambles. I know it must sound biased but as your friend. I am aghast (and so, I think, is Kenoli) that you doggedly stay with Karen. I don't say this with an attendant fantasy that you would be available to me if you did: I am certain I don't have this fantasy. Sometimes I think you stay with her because you don't want to give up free rent, or give up the mission or the farm.

I may as well tell you what Mark Jones told me in our seven hour talk. I started to talk to you about this at Marconi. I said "Mark Jones said you have been encouraging me to love" and then you went off with Marcela. Geez, some folks might posit that you dashed off with Marcela to avoid the conversation: that is what it felt like to me. But then Mark told me that he has had platonic friendships w/women and sometimes inadvertently sent them

The Right Thing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—
The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.





On 10/22/06 11:34 PM, "Tree Fitzpatrick" wrote:

I went to one of their conventions when I was doing corporate OD work. It was so,well, . . not me.

But,having said that, I think you and Kenoli should pitch a workshop to ODNetwork for next year's convention. I know a lot about how they pick presenters from working with Kathie. They are always looking to present different stuff. And it fits with my belief that you and Kenoli should look for the intersection between corporations and communities: to help organizations interface with all stakeholders, not just shareholders. A natural market for you.

Also, the time to write a business plan is long before you write a fundraising plan. I bet the OD work you and Kenoli are doing amounts to what I consider a biz plan. I'm not talking about a biz plan to be used for financing but one to set intention.

Also, I don't think I am ever going to have advice for your business. I'd like to have something to offer you guys because I want to spend time with you but I think all I have to offer is loving friendship. I have all kinds of ideas, some of them must be good, but I suspect you guys are doing just fine. You just need to hold steady and what you want will come to you. If I could have been of any use, it would have been in the OD work itself, mission/vision, clear intention, that kind of thing and you did not seem interested in including me in any of that work, which is just fine, it is your work, not mine.

Also, I have a fundamental philosophical disagreement with Kenoli's approach to process. I could talk to you about this sometime if you are interested. I've tried to write and tell you but it doesn't feel right to write it. It is a visceral thing but something I feel very deeply: at a fundamental level, I don't think Kenoli and I have compatible philosophies about large scale process.





--
Love rays,
Tree Fitzpatrick

http://thecultureoflove.blogspot.com/

. . . the great and incalculable grace of love, which says, with Augustine, "I want you to be," without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation. -- Hannah Arendt

Phone: 650-967-9260
1335 Montecito Ave #35
Mountain View, CA 94043

So, I'm in Canada, eh?

I am in Ottawa Ontario, staying with wonderful friends who are treating me like beloved family. Since I have no family, it feels great to be cherished, valued, feted.  I am thinking, just now, of Parsifal's first arrival at the Grail Kingdom. It is his destiny to be King of the Grail Kingdom, which is the Kingdom of Love, but he must first voice empathy for the then-sitting King who has a perpetual wound.  Is this wound an analogy for original sin? Must Parsifal offer empathy or simply acknowledge the Grail King's perpetual wound? Ponder, ponder.

In his first entry into the Grail Kingdom, which the young, new, untrained knight bumbled into, Parsifal was greeted with astonishing warmth, feted all night with many dancers, musicians, food.
All in the Grail Kingdom knew Parsifal's destiny, that he would ascend to happiness and love as the next Grail King.

First, he had to acknowledge he saw that Grail King already on the throne was wounded.

That Grail King had to be carried into the hall for the big party shown to celebrate Parsifal's arrivel. The whole kingdom was eager for Parisival to ask of the King, "What is it that ails thee?" and then P would ascend to the throne, giving the kingdom a needed, new king.

Although Parsifal had been raised in a shielded, protective way, for his mother hoped to keep him from his destiny as a knight. His father had been a knight and had died in far away lands without ever seeing his son. Parsifal's mother believed in the impossible. A mother cannot shelter her child from the child's destiny. It was Parsifal's destiny to be a great knight and the next Grail King.

So she had sent him off with a broken down horse, shabby clothing and no armor, hoping no one would take her son seriously and he would soon return home. He never returned home. He never saw his mother again.

When Parsifal set off, young, naive and untrained, he just went along, wherever his horse went was okay. The horse brought Parsifal to one kingdom and that one took him in. The king had a daughter and he immediately had an instinct that Parisfal would make a good husband for his princess daughter. Parsifal stayed with that king and his kingdom many weeks. And that first king tried to mentor Parsifal in the ways of knighthood.

That first king gave Parsifal some poor advice.  He told Parsifal that since he was so young and inexperienced, he should not ask a lot of questions.

When Parsifal witnessed the Grail King being carried on reclining bed into the Great Hall for Parsifal's welcoming party, Parsifal did, truly, have a question for that Grail King. P. wanted to ask 'what is it that ails thee?" but he did not because he was naive and untrained and he remembered the first king's advice, that he not ask too many questions. So P's moment to meet his destiny as Grail King passed.

When he awoke the next morning, no one was in the entire castle. All the people who had happily showered him with gifts, such as a fine steed and an excellent set of armor and all the women who had danced and parried with him were gone. His horse and aror remained. He walked through the castle calling out. When he was sure the castle was empty, he put on his armor and fine new clothing, mounted his fine new horse and left. The drawbridge from the castle to land was down. He rode across that drawbridge and when half way across it, it stopped and looked back but he could not see the castle.

He spent many years trying to find that Grail Castle again. He married. He visited the great Round Table in another kingdom. He searched and searched. When he was ready to step into his destiny, he came upon the Grail Kingdom again, just as unexpectedly as he had the first time. On his second visit, he had matured. He knew he should voice his empathy for the King's wound. So he did so.

As soon as Parsifal asked his question of the Grail King, rays of light appears on him. A throne was brought forth for him. A crown, a royal robe. and all in the great hall of the great castle bowed down before their new King.

I'm chewing my cud on Parsifal. I have a sense I might be ready for the message of Wolfgang von Eschebach's great, epic poem, published in the 14th Century but, previously, it had been told by roving storytellers for a long time.

I sometimes think I have discerned why this tale has arisen so strongly for me. I sat down to write this, hoping to find out. It slipped away.

poem for peace, last day of poetry month

Pray for Peace by Ellen Bass, in her book The Human Line

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.
Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.
Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.
To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.
Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.
Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.
If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.
And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas–
With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.
Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.
Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Humanity I love You by e.e.cummings

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you

I've been loving and loving and loving

a poem by Sir Paul McCartney

Yesterday it was my birthday,
I hung one more year on the line.
I should be depressed, my life is a mess,
But I'm having a good time.
I've been loving and loving and loving,
I'm exhausted from loving so well.
I should go to bed, but a voice in my head
Says, what the hell!

It was not my birthday yesterday. Mine is in August!

Ayn Rand and the deranged presidente

I just read a piece about Ayn Rand. Learned more about her than I care to know. I was wooed into reading the article because it had the absurd title of something like "how Ann Rand turned people selfish and greedy". Baloney. There have always been selfish, greedy people in this world and many of them gravitate towards others who are greedy and selfish.

I learned Alan Greenspan was one of her devoted acolytes, fyi.

I learned she surrounded herself with a nasty, gareedy, selfish, brutish and callous crowd -- people like herself.

The piece did not mention, but I already knew this, that as she aged, even though she had raged against Social Security and Medicare from its creation until she became very sick. She did not want her husband to lose all their assets as she died from lung cancer so she accepted Medicare.

Is there a better case for Medicare for all? Even the big kahuna libertarian hater, Ayn Rand, turned to Medicare as she aged.

And get this:  I learned that she had always been a heavy smoker and her acolytes all did whatever they could to emulate her so they mostly all smoked heavily. When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, intimates suggested she tell, at least, her closest circle of admirers so they might stop smoking. She refused. No reason to be kind to others, not for Ayn Rand, just because she was dying of lung cancer.

A couple years ago, on Christmas Day, I went to the Jewish museum in SF with a friend. There was a superb photo show on exhibit. I don't remember the photographer's name. He shot photos of iconic, famous people. His photo of Ayn Rand captures her evil, her essence of evil, so well that I was chilled in the instant I looked at it. I averted my eyes, not wanting to feel any more of her darkness. A great photo, however. One snap and she was perfectly captured.

The ugliness unfolding in the world was always here, held in check by many of the things Ayn Rand objected to:  social safety nets, environmental protection, equitable wealth distribution, government regulations to force the greedy to treat workers well. Bosh. Nonsense. Says our deranged presidente. If children are put to work in unsafe conditions, have no fear. There will always be poor parents desparate enough to send their poor children to work in unsafe conditions.

Will our deranged presidente allow regulations that would avoid another Trianagle Waist Shirt Fire?  That case was the first case in our Torts book. Many women, and some children, died because the employer locked them in to keep them working. No wasting time to pee, ya know?

How about this consideration? Ayn Rand wrote fiction. How can so many allegedly intelligent people profess they abide by her fictional beliefs? Even she did not actually abide by her own dark vision when she needed . . . government help.

I can give you my loneliness

What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of ragged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my fathers father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mothers grandfather just twenty four- heading a charged of three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.
Jorge Luis Borges

what have you done to the world

Carol Ann Duffy – The Bees
This collection is well worth buying. I am choosing not a Christmas poem as such, but a lovely clever sad poem about the moon – well, by the moon, almost.
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.
Devoted as words to things, I gaze, gawp, glare; deserts
were forests were, sick seas. When night comes,
I see you gaping back as though you hear my Darlings,
what have you done, what have you done to the world?

keeping the stars apart

When I was in h.s., and also in my college years, I would stumble upon a poet or fiction writer I loved and proceed as quickly as possible to read everything they had published. Interlibrary loan helped.

In h.s., one of my literary discoveries was e.e.cummings. I loved his free form poetry. I began to secretly aspire to be a poet. My mother discovered my infatuation and openly and unkindly mocked me for liking such a trivial (HUH?) nothing of a poet. After that, I distrusted my own taste for a long time and moved as far away from poetry as I could get. I did not take any poetry classes in college, only fiction (and other subjects, of course. . . ).  My mother even mocked the poet's choice to spell his name in all small letters, which was a detail I quite admired. To dare to be who he felt like being seemed wonderful to me. Now, here I am, almost 64. No one will leave me when I turn 64. My nearest and dearest already have. Anyway, this poem pleases me A LOT.

This poem had me swooning the first time I read it and swooning each time I read it.  My mom mocked me for liking e.e.cummings. Her sting kinda lingers even now.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
ee cummings

poem for poetry month

I just read that a five year old Navajo/Kiowa boy was denied entrance to kindergarden because he has very long hair. In his culture, hair is sacred and not to be cut. I read that and, as happens to much in this too angry and too unkind world, it broke my heart. I thought "I should write a poem"; then I remembered this great poem by Jack Gilbert.

A Brief for the Defense. by Jack Gilbert

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.

Love and Its Meaning in the World

Love and Its Meaning in the World

A Lecture By
Rudolf Steiner
Zurich, 17th December, 1912
GA 143

Lecture given in Zurich, 17th December, 1912. Translated by D. S. O. and E. F. and S. Derry from a shorthand report unrevised by the lecturer. The original text is contained in the volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner entitled: Erfahrungen des Übersinnlichen. Die Wege der Seele zu Christus. (Bibl. No. 143.) The volume contains the texts and notes of fourteen lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in different places during the year 1912.

This English edition of the following lecture is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.

Copyright © 1972
This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:
Rudolf Steiner Press

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Thanks to an anonymous donation, this lecture has been made available.

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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The following lecture was given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience familiar with the general background of his anthroposophical teachings. He constantly emphasised the distinction between his written works and reports of lectures which were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for print. It should also be remembered that certain premises were taken for granted when the words were spoken. “These premises,” Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography, “include at the very least the anthroposophical knowledge of Man and of the Cosmos in its spiritual essence; also of what may be called ‘anthroposophical history’, told as an outcome of research into the spiritual world.”

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SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

The older we grow, the more we begin to love the wisdom revealed by life. In the wisdom revealed by life, man forms the seed of his next life as the spiritual core of his being ripens. But the deeds of love are not deeds which look for compensation in the next life. By everything we do out of love, we pay off debts. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. It is because men are subconsciously aware of this that there is so little love in the world. A soul must be very advanced before deeds can be performed from which nothing is to be gained for itself; but then the world profits all the more. Love is the “moral” sun of the world. Interest in the earth's evolution is the necessary antecedent of love. A Spiritual Science without love would be a danger for humanity. Without sense-born love, nothing material comes into the world; without spiritual love, nothing spiritual. Creative forces unfold through love. We owe our existence to deeds of love wrought in the past. To pay off debts through deeds of love is therefore wisdom.

As well as love there are two other powers: might and wisdom. To these two, the concepts of magnitude and enhancement are applicable, but not to love. The all-embracing attribute of the Godhead is therefore not omnipotence, not omniscience, but love. God is supreme love, not supreme might, not supreme wisdom. The Godhead has shared these two with Ahriman and Lucifer. Wisdom and might unfold in the world, but love is a unique, Divine Impulse. The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled as a counterweight to the impulses of might and of wisdom. Therefore anyone who knows the mystery of love can be a Christian. Spiritual Science must include this love — otherwise it leads to egoism.

The Mystery of Golgotha is a Deed of the Gods and a concern of the Gods. This Deed cannot be understood out of wisdom but only out of love. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil, man could not lay hold of the good. But through man's conquest of himself the unfolding of love has been made possible. The darkness has enabled the light to come into our ken.

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LOVE AND ITS MEANING IN THE WORLD

WHEN we say that at the present point of time in his evolution man must learn to understand the Christ Impulse, the thought may well occur: What, then, is the position of one who has never heard of the Christ Impulse, may perhaps never even have heard the name of Christ? Will such a man be deprived of the Christ Impulse because he has not heard the name of Christ? Is it necessary to have some theoretical knowledge of the Christ Impulse in order that Christ's power may flow into the soul? We will clarify our minds about these questions by the following thoughts concerning human life from birth until death.

The human being comes into the world and lives through early childhood in a half-sleeping state. He has gradually to learn to feel himself as an “I”, to find his bearings as an “I”, and his life of soul is constantly enriched by what is received through the “I”. By the time death is approaching, this life of soul is at its richest and ripest. Hence the vital question arises: What of our life of soul when the body falls away? It is a peculiarity of our physical life and of our life of soul that the wealth of our experience and knowledge increases in significance the nearer we approach death; but at the same time certain attributes are lost and replaced by others of an entirely different character. In youth we gather knowledge, pass through experiences, cherish hopes which as a rule can only later be fulfilled. The older we grow, the more do we begin to love the wisdom revealed by life. Love of wisdom is not egoistic, for this love increases in the measure in which we draw near to death; it increases in the measure in which the expectation of gaining something from our wisdom decreases. Our love for this content of our soul steadily increases. In this respect Spiritual Science may actually become a source of temptation, inasmuch as a man may be led to believe that his next life will depend upon the acquisition of wisdom in this present life. The effect of Spiritual Science may be an extension of egoism beyond the bounds of this present life, and therein lies danger. Thus if wrongly understood, Spiritual Science may act as a tempter — this lies in its very nature.

Love of the wisdom acquired from life may be compared with the flowering of a plant when the necessary stage of maturity has been reached. Love arises for something that is contained within ourselves. Men have often made the attempt to sublimate the impulse of love for what is within themselves. In the Mystics, for example, we find evidence of how they strove to transmute the urge of self-love into love of wisdom, and to let this love ray out in beauty. By sinking in contemplation into the depths of their own soul-life they strove to become aware of the Divine Spark within them. But the truth is that the wisdom which man acquires in life is only the means whereby the seed of his next life is unfolded. When a plant has completed its growth through the year, the seed remains. So it is with the wisdom acquired from life. Man passes through the Gate of Death and the spiritual core of being in its process of ripening is the seed of the next life. A man who feels this may become a Mystic and mistake what is only the seed of the next life to be the Divine Spark, the Absolute. This is his interpretation of it because it goes against the grain for a man to acknowledge that this spirit-seed is nothing but his own self. Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and others, spoke of it as the “God within”, because they knew nothing of reincarnation. If we grasp the meaning of the law of reincarnation we recognise the significance of love in the world, both in a particular and in a general sense. When we speak of karma, we mean that which as cause in the one life has its effect in the next. In terms of cause and effect we cannot, however, speak truly of love; we cannot speak of a deed of love and its eventual compensation. True, if there is a deed, there will be compensation, but this has nothing to do with love. Deeds of love do not look for compensation in the next life.

Suppose, for example, that we work and our work brings gain. It may also be that our work gives us no joy because we do it simply in order to pay off debts, not for actual reward. We can imagine that in this way a man has already spent what he is now earning through his work. He would prefer to have no debts, but as things are, he is obliged to work in order to pay them. Now let us apply this example to our actions in general. By everything we do out of love we pay off debts. From an occult point of view, what is done out of love brings no reward but makes amends for profit already expended. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. This truth may well be disquieting and men are lucky in that they know nothing of it in their upper consciousness. But in their subconsciousness all of them know it, and that is why deeds of love are done so unwillingly, why there is so little love in the world. Men feel instinctively that they may expect nothing for their “I” in the future from deeds of love. An advanced stage of development must have been reached before the soul can experience joy in performing deeds of love from which there is nothing to be gained for itself. The impulse for this is not strong in humanity. But occultism can be a source of powerful incentives to deeds of love.

Our egoism gains nothing from deeds of love — but the world all the more. Occultism says: Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world. Love is the “moral” sun of the world. Would it not be absurd if a man who delights in the flowers growing in a meadow were to wish that the sun would vanish from the world? Translated into terms of the moral life, this means: Our deep concern must be that an impulse for sound, healthy development shall find its way into the affairs of humanity. To disseminate love over the earth in the greatest measure possible, to promote love on the earth — that and that alone is wisdom.

What do we learn from Spiritual Science? We learn facts concerning the evolution of the earth, we hear of the Spirit of the earth, of the earth's surface and its changing conditions, of the development of the human body and so forth; we learn to understand the nature of the forces working and weaving in the evolutionary process. What does this mean? What does it mean when people do not want to know anything about Spiritual Science? It means that they have no interest for what is reality. For if a man has no desire to know anything about the nature of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon, then he can know nothing about the Earth. Lack of interest in the world is egoism in its grossest form. Interest in all existence is man's bounden duty. Let us therefore long for and love the sun with its creative power, its love for the well-being of the earth and the souls of men! This interest in the earth's evolution should be the spiritual seed of love for the world. A Spiritual Science without love would be a danger to mankind. But love should not be a matter for preaching; love must and indeed will come into the world through the spreading of knowledge of spiritual truths. Deeds of love and Spiritual Science should be inseparably united.

Love mediated by way of the senses is the wellspring of creative power, of that which is coming into being. Without sense-born love, nothing material would exist in the world; without spiritual love, nothing spiritual can arise in evolution. When we practise love, cultivate love, creative forces pour into the world. Can the intellect be expected to offer reasons for this? The creative forces poured into the world before we ourselves and our intellect came into being. True, as egoists, we can deprive the future of creative forces; but we cannot obliterate the deeds of love and the creative forces of the past. We owe our existence to deeds of love wrought in the past. The strength with which we have been endowed by these deeds of love is the measure of our deep debt to the past, and whatever love we may at any time be able to bring forth is payment of debts owed for our existence. In the light of this knowledge we shall be able to understand the deeds of a man who has reached a high stage of development, for he has still greater debts to pay to the past. He pays his debts through deeds of love, and herein lies his wisdom. The higher the stage of development reached by a man, the more does the impulse of love in him increase in strength; wisdom alone does not suffice.

Let us think of the meaning and effect of love in the world in the following way. Love is always a reminder of debts owed to life in the past, and because we gain nothing for the future by paying off these debts, no profit for ourselves accrues from our deeds of love. We have to leave our deeds of love behind in the world; but they are then a spiritual factor in the how of world-happenings. It is not through our deeds of love but through deeds of a different character that we perfect ourselves; yet the world is richer for our deeds of love. Love is the creative force in the world.

Besides love there are two other powers in the world. How do they compare with love? The one is strength, might; the second is wisdom. In regard to strength or might we can speak of degrees: weaker, stronger, or absolute might — omnipotence. The same applies to wisdom, for there are stages on the path to omniscience. It will not do to speak in the same way of degrees of love. What is universal love, love for all beings? In the case of love we cannot speak of enhancement as we can speak of enhancement of knowledge into omniscience or of might into omnipotence, by virtue of which we attain greater perfection of our own being. Love for a few or for many beings has nothing to do with our own perfecting. Love for everything that lives cannot be compared with omnipotence; the concept of magnitude, or of enhancement, cannot rightly be applied to love. Can the attribute of omnipotence be ascribed to the Divine Being who lives and weaves through the world? Contentions born of feeling must here be silent: were God omnipotent, he would be responsible for everything that happens and there could be no human freedom. If man can be free, then certainly there can be no Divine omnipotence.

Is the Godhead omniscient? As man's highest goal is likeness to God, our striving must be in the direction of omniscience. Is omniscience, then, the supreme treasure? If it is, a vast chasm must forever yawn between man and God. At every moment man would have to be aware of this chasm if God possessed the supreme treasure of omniscience for himself and withheld it from man. The all-encompassing attribute of the Godhead is not omnipotence, neither is it omniscience, but it is love — the attribute in respect of which no enhancement is possible. God is uttermost love, unalloyed love, is born as it were out of love, is the very substance and essence of love. God is pure love, not supreme wisdom, not supreme might. God has retained love for himself but has shared wisdom and might with Lucifer and Ahriman. He has shared wisdom with Lucifer and might with Ahriman, in order that man may become free, in order that under the influence of wisdom he may make progress.

If we try to discover the source of whatever is creative we come to love; love is the ground, the foundation of everything that lives. It is by a different impulse in evolution that beings are led to become wiser and more powerful. Progress is attained through wisdom and strength. Study of the course taken by the evolution of humanity shows us how the development of wisdom and strength is subject to change: there is progressive evolution and then the Christ Impulse which once poured into mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha. Love did not, therefore, come into the world by degrees; love streamed into mankind as a gift of the Godhead, in complete, perfect wholeness. But man can receive the Impulse into himself gradually. The Divine Impulse of love as we need it in earthly life is an Impulse that came once and forever.

True love is not capable of diminution or amplification. Its nature is quite different from that of wisdom and might. Love wakens no expectations for the future; it is payment of debts incurred in the past. And such was the Mystery of Golgotha in the world's evolution. Did the Godhead, then, owe any debt to humanity?

Lucifer's influence brought into humanity a certain element in consequence of which something that man had previously possessed was withdrawn from him. This new element led to a descent, a descent countered by the Mystery of Golgotha which made possible the payment of all debts. The Impulse of Golgotha was not given in order that the sins we have committed in evolution may be removed from us, but in order that what crept into humanity through Lucifer should be given its counterweight.

Let us imagine that there is a man who knows nothing of the name of Christ Jesus, nothing of what is communicated in the Gospels, but that he understands the radical difference between the nature of wisdom and might and that of love. Such a man, even though he knows nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, is a Christian in the truest sense. A man who knows that love is there for the paying of debts and brings no profit for the future, is a true Christian. To understand the nature of love — that is to be a Christian! Theosophy (see Note 1) alone, Spiritual Science alone, with its teachings of Karma and reincarnation, can make us into great egoists unless the impulse of love, the Christ Impulse, is added; only so can we acquire the power to overcome the egoism that may be generated by Spiritual Science. The balance is established by an understanding of the Christ Impulse. Spiritual Science is given to the world today because it is a necessity for humanity; but in it lies the great danger that — if it is cultivated without the Christ Impulse, without the Impulse of love — men will only increase their egoism, will actually breed egoism that lasts even beyond death. From this the conclusion must not be drawn that we should not cultivate Spiritual Science; rather we must learn to realise that understanding of the essential nature of love is an integral part of it.

What actually came to pass at the Mystery of Golgotha? Jesus of Nazareth was born, lived on as related by the Gospels, and when He was thirty years old the Baptism in the Jordan took place. Thereafter the Christ lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth and fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. Many people think that the Mystery of Golgotha should be regarded in an entirely human aspect, believing as they do that it was an earthly deed, a deed belonging to the realm of the earth. But that is not so. Only from the vantage-point of the higher worlds is it possible to see the Mystery of Golgotha in its true light and how it came to pass on the earth.

Let us think again of the beginning of the evolution of the earth and of man. Man was endowed with certain spiritual powers — and then Lucifer approached him. At this point we can say: The Gods who further the progress of evolution surrendered their omnipotence to Lucifer in order that man might become free. But man sank into matter more deeply than was intended; he slipped away from the Gods of progress, fell more deeply than had been wished. How, then, can the Gods of progress draw man to themselves again? To understand this we must think, not of the earth, but of Gods taking counsel together. It is for the Gods that Christ performs the Deed by which men are drawn back to the Gods. Lucifer's deed was enacted in the super-sensible world; Christ's Deed, too, was enacted in the super-sensible but also in the physical world. This was an achievement beyond the power of any human being. Lucifer's deed was a deed belonging to the super-sensible world. But Christ came down to the earth to perform His Deed here, and men are the onlookers at this Deed. The Mystery of Golgotha is a Deed of the Gods, a concern of the Gods at which men are the onlookers. The door of heaven opens and a Deed of the Gods shines through. This is the one and only Deed on earth that is entirely super-sensible. No wonder, therefore, that those who do not believe in the super-sensible have no belief in the Deed of Christ. The Deed of Christ is a Deed of the Gods, a Deed which they themselves enact. Herein lies the glory and the unique significance of the Mystery of Golgotha and men are invited to be its witnesses. Historical evidence is not to be found. Men have seen the event in its external aspect only; but the Gospels were written from vision of the super-sensible and are therefore easily disavowed by those who have no feeling for super-sensible reality.

The Mystery of Golgotha as an accomplished fact is one of the most sublime of all experiences in the spiritual world. Lucifer's deed belongs to a time when man was still aware of his own participation in the super-sensible world; Christ's Deed was performed in material existence itself — it is both a physical and a spiritual Deed. We can understand the deed of Lucifer through wisdom; understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha is beyond the reach of wisdom alone. Even if all the wisdom of this world is ours, the Deed of Christ may still be beyond our comprehension. Love is essential for any understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only when love streams into wisdom and then again wisdom flows into love will it be possible to grasp the nature and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha — only when, as he lives on towards death, man unfolds love of wisdom. Love united with wisdom — that is what we need when we pass through the Gate of Death, because without wisdom that is united with love we die in very truth. Philo-sophia, philosophy, is love of wisdom. The ancient wisdom was not philosophy for it was not born through love but through revelation. There is not such a thing as philosophy of the East — but wisdom of the East, yes. Philosophy as love of wisdom came into the world with Christ; there we have the entry of wisdom emanating from the impulse of love which came into the world as the Christ Impulse. The impulse of love must now be carried into effect in wisdom itself.

The ancient wisdom, acquired by the seer through revelation, comes to expression in the sublime words from the original prayer of mankind: Ex Deo Nascimur — Out of God we are born. That is ancient wisdom. Christ who came forth from the realms of spirit has united wisdom with love and this love will overcome egoism. Such is its aim. But it must be offered independently and freely from one being to the other. Hence the beginning of the era of love coincided with that of the era of egoism. The cosmos has its source and origin in love; egoism was the natural and inevitable offshoot of love. Yet with time the Christ Impulse, the impulse of love, will overcome the element of separation that has crept into the world, and man can gradually become a participant in this force of love. In monumental words of Christ we feel love pouring into the hearts of men:

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

In like manner does the ancient Rosicrucian saying resound into the love that is wedded with wisdom: In Christo Morimur — In Christ we die.

Through Jehovah, man was predestined for a group-soul existence; love was to penetrate into him gradually by way of blood-relationship; it is through Lucifer that he lives as a personality. Originally, therefore, men were in a state of union, then of separateness as a consequence of the Luciferic principle which promotes selfishness, independence. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil man could not lay hold of the good. When a man gains victory over himself, the unfolding of love is possible. To man in the clutches of increasing egoism Christ brought the impulse for this victory over himself and thereby the power to conquer the evil. The Deeds of Christ bring together again those human beings who were separated through egoism and selfishness. True in the very deepest sense are the words of Christ concerning deeds of love:

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

The Divine Deed of Love flowed back upon the earthly world; as time goes on, in spite of the forces of physical decay and death, the evolution of mankind will be permeated and imbued with new spiritual life through this Deed — a Deed performed, not out of egoism but solely out of the spirit of love. Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus — Through the Holy Spirit we live again.

Yet the future of humanity will consist of something besides love. Spiritual perfecting will be for earthly man the goal most worthy of aspiration — (this is described at the beginning of my second Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation) — but nobody who understands what deeds of love truly are will say that his own striving for perfection is selfless. Striving for perfection imparts strength to our being and to our personality. But our value for the world must be seen to lie wholly in deeds of love, not in deeds done for the sake of self-perfecting. Let us be under no illusion about this. When a man is endeavouring to follow Christ by way of love of wisdom, of the wisdom he dedicates to the service of the world only so much takes real effect as is filled with love.

Wisdom steeped in love, which at once furthers the world and leads the world to Christ — this love of wisdom also excludes the lie. For the lie is the direct opposite of the actual facts and those who yield themselves lovingly to the facts are incapable of lying. The lie has its roots in egoism — always and without exception. When, through love, we have found the path to wisdom, we reach wisdom through the increasing power of self-conquest, through selfless love. Thus does man become a free personality. The evil was the sub-soil into which the light of love was able to shine; but it is love that enables us to grasp the meaning and place of evil in the world. The darkness has enabled the light to come into our ken. Only a man who is free in the real sense can become a true Christian.

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Note 1:

In connection with the use of the word “Theosophy”, the following passage is quoted from Rudolf Steiner's Introduction to his book Theosophy:

“The highest to which a man is able to look up he calls the ‘Divine’. And in some way or other he must think of his highest destiny as being in connection with this Divinity. Therefore that wisdom which reaches out beyond the sensible and reveals to him his own being, and with it his final goal, may very well be called ‘divine wisdom’, or ‘Theosophy’. To the study of the spiritual processes in human life and in the cosmos, the term Spiritual Science may be given. When, as is the case in this book, one extracts from this Spiritual Science those particular results which have reference to the spiritual core of man's being, then the expression ‘Theosophy’ may be employed to designate this domain, because it has been employed for centuries in that direction.”

thanks by w.s.merwin

Thanks

By W.S.Merwin  

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water thanking it

standing by the windows looking out

in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks we are saying thank you

in the faces of the officials and the rich

and of all who will never change

we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us

taking our feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

thank you we are saying and waving

dark though it is

W.S. Merwin, "Thanks" from Migration: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by W.S. Merwin.

Our world in stupor lies: Auden

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; 'I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work,' And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the dead, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenseless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

wild woman in Irish myth: my people, me!

Grief and anger as a stimulus for transformationThis is a post from Dr. Sharon Blackie's blog. She is a mythologist, psychologist and writer.
https://theartofenchantment.net/2016/11/10/the-wild-woman-in-irish-myth/

It seems that everyone knows about the wild men in Celtic mythology. The enigmatic Brittonic figure of Lailoken, who almost certainly, somewhere along the line, became conflated with Merlin, leading to the legend of Myrddin Wyllt, the wild man of the woods. Suibhne Geilt, Mad Sweeney from the old Irish tale Buile Shuibhne (‘The Frenzy of Sweeney’): the subject of a fine body of poetry which extends from Yeats to Heaney. It’s a story we seem to have seen before: everybody knows about the men, but somehow, nobody focuses on the women.

So let’s take a look at Mis, the most colourful and original wild woman of Irish mythology. (There are no great poems about Mis, but I’d like to think there will be, some day.) Mis was the daughter of Dáire Dóidgheal, a powerful ruler from Europe who set out to invade Ireland. He landed with a huge army in Ventry, County Kerry, and a fierce battle followed which lasted a year and a day. Dáire was eventually slain by the hero-warrior Fionn mac Cumaill, which ended the battle. Mis came down in the aftermath to look for her father, and found only his dead body, bleeding, on the beach. Mis was overwhelmed by grief, and flung herself across her father’s body, licking and sucking at his bloody wounds to try to heal them, just as an animal might. When this failed to restore him to life, madness overcame her and she rose up into the air like a bird and flew away into the heart of the Sliabh Mis mountains.

Mis lived in the mountains for many years, and grew long trailing fur and feathers to cover her naked skin. She grew great sharp claws with which she attacked and tore to pieces any creature or person she met. She could run like the wind, and no living thing was safe from her. They thought her so dangerous that the people of Kerry created a desert stripped of people and cattle between themselves and the mountains, just for fear of her.

The king in those parts, Feidlimid Mac Crimthainn, offered a reward to anyone who would capture Mis alive. No-one accepted, for fear of Mis, except for a gentle harper by the name of Dubh Ruis. Dubh Ruis enticed Mis out of hiding, and made love to her. He coaxed her into a pool and, over a period of days, washed away the dirt and scrubbed away her feathers and fur. He combed her hair, and fed her, and made a bed for her. And eventually, he brought her back to civilisation, and married her.

This is some of what I wrote about Mis in If Women Rose Rooted:

Sometimes, madness seems like the only possible response to the insanity of the civilised world; sometimes, holding ourselves together is not an option, and the only way forwards is to allow ourselves to fall apart. As the story of Mis shows, that madness can represent an extreme form of initiation, a trigger for profound transformation.

… Mis is the original wild woman, that archetypal madwoman who lives deep within each of us. She speaks for us all: for the rage which we cannot express, for the grief which eats our heart out, for the voices we have suppressed out of fear. This old story shows us a brutal descent into darkness during which all illusions are stripped away and old belief systems evaporate, and in doing so it suggests that the extremities of madness or mental breakdown, with their prolonged, out-of-control descent into the unknown, might offer us a path through which we can come to terms with the truth. Like other legendary geilta (the Irish word for madwomen) Mis is driven to extremity in her grief, shape-shifting into bird form, flying away into the hills and woods, growing fur and feathers, eating wild and raw food, leaving the intolerable world behind her. But a geilt cannot emerge from her madness and come back to the world until she has achieved some kind of personal transformation. Through her ordeal – her removal from society and her time spent in the wilderness – she must find a way to reclaim a more authentic sense of identity and belonging. She finds it with the help of a man; she finds it in the union of the masculine and feminine.

So, there we have her: Mis. The furious feminine, all fierce hag energy, wailing her grief into the mountains. A necessary fury, a transformative fury.

I love the story of Mis; I believe it contains a necessary lesson for women in these times. Sometimes, anger and grief is a necessary precursor to transformation. Sometimes, we need to let the wild woman rage. To grow feathers and fur, and run wild through the woods. Sometimes, we need to bite. To stop being nice and talking about love and light and thinking that we can make the world a better place just by pretending that it’s so, or that we can make Donald Trump a better man by sending him love and light through the ether. (Yes, I’ve seen that proposed as a solution to yesterday’s catastrophe by women I’d expect to know better. It beggars belief.) These are dark days in our history, and dark days for women. If women want to change that, we need to take hold of that pure, honest energy which fuels our necessary rage and grief, and use it next for transformation. Find the hag energy. Use it. Transmute it; transform it. It’s what all good alchemists do, and women are born alchemists.

What I particularly like about the story of Mis is that her transformation comes from bringing together both male and female energies. Dubh Ruis is a gentle man; he literally loves her back to life. Like Mis, women can’t do this work alone. Fortunately, there are still good men out there, and I believe that between us, we can do the great work of turning the base metal of a decadent and decaying culture into gold.

Halloween with Katie Kat Joy

My mom was fixated on always making homemade costumes for her kids. These were not slap dash outfits. My mom would buy patterns, fabric and then spend a few hours sewing our costumes. I usually won first prize at our church's halloween party.  the one year I did not win was my favorite costume. I was Glenda the Good Witch, according to my mom, but, unlike Glenda, who dazzles in pink or lavendar in The Wizard of Oz, mom put me in shiny, sparkly black clothing with a heavily beaded cape. I think the cape might have actually been an adult fancy-dress cap, the kind one would wear to a formal attire event. Mom probably picked it up at a garage sale, for she never wore that cape. My mom never went to a formal event, as far as I know, not once I was born.

I even won the year I had to wear a costume I loathed. Mom made me a full blown nun costume, with all the layers that robed nuns wore in the early sixties, plus a large wooden rosary to signal the piety of my pretend St. Therese, the little flower of Jesus. As I walked around the church fellowship hall, parading before the judges, many of them nuns, I knew I would win and I hated that I would win. I hated, most of all, that my mom was steadily pressuring me to declare that I wanted to be a nun.

I loved my Glenda the Good Witch costume, although I knew going as a black-dressed Glenda made my chances of winning slim. None of the judges noticed that I shimmered, in black. No one got that I was Glenda. I looked like an ordinary witch, dressed in black. Still, I loved wearing that shimmering, veltvet and balck sequined cape, pretending I was a good Glenda, even dressed in black.

I remember begging my mom to let me sew on some pink and purple sequins but mom was invested in her Glenda vision. And, in the hindsight of more than fifty years, I am happy some other girl in my age  group got to win top prize one year. I won all the other years until I aged out of Halloween costumes.

So, once I had a daughter, naturally, I made my daughter's costumes, but I was not as dedicated to making everything from a pattern and fabric. I made Katie's costumes but not with sewing patterns. I made her outfits out of cleverness.

One year, when she was two, my sister gave Katie an outfit perfect for a calypso dancer.  It was a two-piece cotton knit dress, with slanting hems for the top and also for the skirt. The outfit was way too big for Katie when she received it. By the time it fit her properly, several years later, Katie refused to wear the somewhat odd two piece.  It still seems endearing to me that Katie's then-college-age aunt had bought her a funky, but way oversized, outfit. And it seems even more endearing to me that I saw its poential as a Carmen Miranda costume. It had a top that had ruffles on the sleeves and showed some bare belly. The skirt was slanted in length. It was supposed to go from knee to heel but Katie was too small for the outfit so we had to hitch it up. The cotton fabric had wild flowers printed on it. And all I had to do was tack up the skirt so it didn't trip her when she walked.

I bought a bright blue kerchief, to match the main color of the calypso dancer outfit.  I tacked down that bandana so it could be pulled onto Katie's head like a hat. And I bought a bunch of small plastic fruit that I stitched by had onto that kerchief hat.  Carmen Miranda! Carmen alays wore fruit atop hats on her head as she danced. And Carmen Miranda wore ruffling, slanted hem skirts that sworled and flashed a little leg as she moved.

I put the largest, brightest pink bangle earrings I could find on her ears. I made her cheeks as rosy red as I could, using lipstick to get them very bright. I used heavy eyeshadow, but no eye liner. I had to make do with the very limited make up I had on hand, not knowing, back then, that one can buy Halloween costume make up, I made do with what I had.

Oh, and from Goddess only knows where, I had found a big fat chunky beaded hot pink necklace that draped down to her navel -- and her navel was just a bit exposed by the weirdly slanted weird top. The bright pink jumbo beads were a surprisingly effective detail, making the whole outfit pop.

She looked awesome. I still have photos of that costume. She won a prize at the Children's Museum Halloween party that year. And I sent her out trick or treating on Halloween with her dad dressed as Carmen Miranda. I guess it was his turn to take her trick or treating.   He must have had his own ideas for a costume. He returned her to me in regular clothes, no make up and her Carmen Miranda outfit dumped in a bag like it was fit for the trash.

Somewhere along the way, I found a photo of her dressed up in kinda sexy kitten costume. I get the kitten ears, the whiskers eyelined onto her face but I never would have put my two year old in a skin tight, leopard pattern thing comparable to a bathing suit plus black tights. That leopard print cat outfit was lined with 'fur', although not real fur. It was actually  kinda sexy and she was two.  Age inappropriate. I never said aloud, to anyone, that I thought her sexy kitten outfit was age inappropriate because that costume happened during the divorce years. I could never say anything about her father, to her or to anyone, that did not seem to sound like bitterness. Was I jealous of that costume, the sexy kitten? No way, although I may have resented that his family rejected my very clever Carmen Miranda get-up. That hat with the tiny plastic fruit tacked onto it was genius.

He was entitled to pick her outfit, of course, for his turn on Halloween, although I imagine his sister the spastic medical doctor, the hag who, praise Goddess, never had children of her own to destroy, probably picked it out. Or his daffy mother. Both those women would think nothing of sexing up a two year old for halloween. And Katie's pose in the one photo, which I also still have if anyone doubts my description, appeared to be coached:  she was slinking it up for the camera. A two year old slinking?

Geez, couldn't they have had her come to my door in costume and say trick or treat? You know, act like her other was a part of her life and her Halloween? Nope.

That Carmen Miranda costume was awesome. Homemade. And easy peasy to put together.

It was just about as awesome as the time she was a punk rocker, with black and white pipe cleaners stuffed into a pony tail on top of her head to evoke the idea of a mohawk, which was the rage for punk rockers in the early eighties.

She won the prize for best costume in her age group for the punk rocker, as a Halloween party at the Children's Museum.  As I have written elsewhere, whenever someone asked her "Honey, you look great. what ar eyou supposed to be?" She answered "I am Strawberry Shortcake."  I had painted half her face white, the other half black, with a black star on the white eye side and a white star or skull or whatever my drawing ability was up to, on the black side. I bought a bunch of cheap chains at a real hardware store that sold chains by the foot and draped her with chains. She wore an adult white male t-shirt, painted with a skull and crossbones and black leggings.

She looked totally awesome as a punk rocker.

The reason she told everyone, when they asked what she was supposed to be, that she was Strawberry Shortcake, was because she had begged me to buy her one of those cheap boxed costumes at Target In those years, such a bit of junk was mostly a mask with the cartoon character's face and then a very cheap vaguely princess sheath. Cheap junk, the kind of costume my mother had trained me to scorn.

Katie must have had much faith in me. And rightly so. I nearly always gave her what she wanted but my punk rocker idea was so clever that I couldn't give it up, esp. for a cheap boxed junky thing from Target.

Now my mom, in her prime, probably would ahve bought a sewing pattern for Strawberry shortcake and sewn a strawberry sprigged dress for Katie and made her a wig with red yarn, then made freckles on her face with eyeliner pencil. I could have done that, sure, but the punk rocker idea was just too good to give up.

I did make it up to her. I found a very large doll cradle at a garge sale in scruffy shape. I cleaned it up, paitnted it white and made a mattress, blankets and pillow for her actual Strawberry Shortcake doll.

I have a photo of Katie in her strawberry sprigged nightgown, for I made matching night gowns for Strawberry and Katie, and Katie tried to get in that doll cradle. It ws a large cradle but Katie was too big for it.

I wonder if she remembers that I made her matching nightgowns for Strawberry? And what about the matching outfits I made for her American Girl doll Samantha?  My sister stole that doll and all its accoutrements. I had told sis she could go into my brother's storage and take Katie's books for sis's kids but sis just took everything for a child, including all her Samantha stuff and Katie had a lot of Samanta stuff, even the official brass bed.

Katie also tried to get in Samantha's brass bed, and she bent it. We never quite got the kink out but no matter. It was only a doll bed and she was such a good little girl.

I made Katie and Samantha very fancy Chrismas dresses one year. I worked so hard on those dreses. I even had-sewed stretchable seam binding on the inside seams so the dress was as well made on the inside as on the outside, like a real rich girl. Samantha was, in the stories that came iwth her, very rich so I wanted Katie's Samanatha Chrismas dress to be tailored like a rich girl's tailoring.

I wonder if she remembers that I used to make her matching clothes for herself and a few of her dolls?

How can she just dump me when I did so many lovely things for her?

Oh, I just now remembered what I set out to write about. My initial point was brief:  on Halloween, I would let Katie eat as much candy as she wanted, even if she wanted to eat it all. She would always get wild on her sugar high and I reasoned that aif she ate it all in a day or two, the nights of sugar highs would end sooner. Many parents voiced opprobrium for this choice but katie loved it. And it wrked for me, getting the sugar out of our lives quickly.

I can hear her now, running through our house in Minneapolis, squealing from all the sugar, and she would keep saying "Really? You mean it, I can eat another candy bar?" And I would feel a bit like the Queen of Sheba and so purely loving and generous as I said "Really, I mean it. Eat all you want".

And I would silently pray that she ate  it all fast.

some parents doled out one piece of candy a day but that seemed wrong to me. That kept a kid on sugar for months, at least until the Chrismas crap snacks kicked in.






For the great Hlloween snowstorm of, I think, 1992 (maybe another year) Ktie nad I were staying temporarily with joni and Cary. We were supposed to move into our new home on Nov 1st but after the Halloween blizzard, or moving company called and said "We will get to you last, it will be at least a week, maybe more, because your stuff is in storage. all our other customers are under pressure to get out of spaces that have new folks moving in. With your tuff in storge, you are not a priority."

And then Katie and I trudged to the Lilnden Hills retail strip, most just to get out, but we bought some food. And Ktie was shocked when I bought the last large plastic sled at the hardware store. Everyone in that store was sorry that ad not spotted and nabbed that large, plastic, purple sled. Katie thought I bought it to give her a luxury pull all the way back to Joni's.

I never told her that I bought it so I could buy a 12 pack of diet coke and pull the diet coke home. It was a very long sled, plent of room for her and th diet coke.

The day was marred in one regard:  I bought three packs of Byerly's frozen wild rice soup, one for me, one for Katie and one for Joni. I bought some other soup for Cary because she usually made a show of being a vegetarian and that wild rice soup had chicken or ham in it. Cary was angry. I tried to give her mine, she turned up her nose. I did not enjoy that soup. And when we went back the next day to buy more for Cary, the store was basically sold out of everyting. It was just a neighborhood shop, not a full blown grocery store.

The kids sang Christmas carols while trick or treating in a full blown blizzard. I enjoyed that.

Many tol dme Katie's costume was racist. I had put on my beautiful, elaborately patterned Huajacan poncho, a large Mexican straw hat and painted a mustache on her face, for it was not a feminine costume and I wnted to signify maleness. But many folks said it was racist. How is making your kid look like a mariachi player with a mustache racist?

I loved being a mom. Loved all such complications of life.

I sed to hope, so happily and fervently, that I'd be a grandmother some day. Now I sincerely believe I would keel over dead if I were to learn I have a grandchild I ahe een denied a relatinship with.

I'm never going to get over losiong Katie and I feel my unrelenting heartache sapping years off my life. And that's okay by me. I'm ready to go. Give me my Katie or give me deth. Please

Auden's Funeral Blues

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

An old, much beloved, friend of mine is facing his mother's death this week. I have shared e.e.cummings "I carry your heart in my heart" to remind him that his love for his mother and her love for him will always buoy him. I will directly share this poem with him once she has passed.

I knew this friend in Minneapolis. He came to some of the five-day intensives my biz partner and I offered in the eighties. And he occasionally helped me out with some childcare. Katie liked him and was glad when he would pick her up from her great AfterCare program at the YWCA. then he'd either take her to his house, which was a cornucopia of delights for any child of any age or else take her to our house. And he would buy her sme frozen yogurt at the corner of Lake and Hennepin.

I remember so well how good it felt knowiong my little girl was in such sweet, loving hands.

And Craig, the friend I am writng about, hit it off with my mom. Not many hit it off with my challenging mom although my mom regularly said that as an artist, she felt she had much in common with 'the gays'. My baby bro is gay and mom lived with him and his partner for many years and she often voiced that lunkheaded line about how, as an artist, she had a special connection to gays. My bro and his long-gone, longtime life partner (he's dead but they broke up before he died. . . ). Craig was in the Minneapolis Gay Men's Chorus. He invited my mom to come see his Christmas show and she made a special trip to Minneapolis to see that show. She visited us regularly and Katie and I were not her only kin in the area. My mom's parents grew up in Minnesota and mom (and me, I guess) till have lots of blood kin in MN. In the early days of mom's clan, there was no birth control and always big families. Thirteen kids. Nine kids. And then they all had kids so the list of relatives neverending.

But that one time mom came to see Craig. When I ased her why she made a special trip just for one gay men's chorus show, she repeted her grating line about as an artist, she had much in common with 'the gays' but she also said, and no one who knew him, or knows him, would ever deny this, Craig is a sweet peach.

So his mom must be a super sweet lady if she raised such a sweetie.

I wonder if my Ktie remembers Craig. I also wonder if she has any appreciationo for the intereting parade of humans we shared our lives with. No suburban vanilla for me. I think she longed for upscale, suburban vanilla but, geez, how many people does she know ever had a deformed dwarf named Cheryl as her babysitter? And does it ever cross her mind that by exposing her to the wide range of humans that I did that I was opening her world in ways few children get.

I love this Auden poem.  Maybe Katie will read it when she learns I have died. Although how would she learn of my death? No one in my life now even knows her name.  Everyone knows I have a daughter who shuns me named Katie but no one I know knows her last name. Why would they?

moonlight

I ducked out of my evening date early, the event I attended just didn't grab me. He was angry and wouldn't go out to eat. If I have any talent that amounts to being at agenius level, it is finding easily angered men. Or maybe men get more easily angry at fat women, like they are thinking "hey, you are fat so I can treat your shabbily".

Anyway, feeling bad and wanting to cheer myself up, I remembered that the movie "Moonlight", based on the play called "Black Boys Look Blue in the Moonlight", a picture that has been called full of poetic grace, is showing at the Embarcadero Center. It will turn up in Berkeley eventually. I hope. I hope. I hope.

I don't like to go to movies in SF and pay for BART when I live within a block of three multiplexes that tend to get all the movies eventually. But there I was, going home alone, which was not what I had anticipated, and feeling, um, incomplete. I so totally wanted to walk to the Embarcadero Center and see Moonlight. Well, I wrote that wrong. If I were a person in a Marc Chagall painting and I could have floated down market and then cut over to the Embarcadero Center, I really wanted to see the movie. I didn't know the show times. My knees creak all the time these days and I sincerely believe I'm going to end up getting a new left knee. I limp. I am in serious pain.

So if I had the magic ability to fly or the magic ability to stop my left knee from painfully creaking and if Moonlight was showing soon to the time I was on Market Street, I wanted to go. I had my iPad so I could have found free wifi, like at the Westfield Mall to see the film show times.

Then I got to a BART statirway. I couldn't see an elevator to BART. There are almost never any down escalators down to BART tations. My knees hate the tall stairwells required to get into the bowls of our underground transit system. I have to take the steps two feet on each step, like the old lady I am.  teps don't hurt. My pride is hurt, as people always rush by me. So far, no one has said anything unkind about my slow teps. And I usually use a BART elevator or escalator.

I was at some BART steps. Moonlight was still about four blocks away. I still didn't now when it started. And I knew I could be home and live it up with some lemon sparkling water and a green smoothie. So, because I really am a stiff old lady, I hobbled down those stairs, then hobbled to my building once I got to Berkeley. And I'm thinking about the smoothie.

The way smoothies happen for me if I have to think of all the ingredients for a little bit of time:  let me see, I have to think, is there kale? I like kale better than spinach in a raw smoothie. Do I have lemon? Check. Kelly gave me four of her abundant meyer lemons a day or two ago. Apple?  Check. I actually bought a frozen bag or organic apple slices -- in hindsight, a foolish choice, since it is apple season and pink ladies are tasty and these apples have no name. But they have convenience. Who needs convenience with an apple and a smoothi in a Vitamix?  I just cut the apple in half and toss it in. I just cut a lemon in half and toss it in. I toss in some fresh finger, rind and all. Cinnamon if I think of it.

I have done my thinking. Time to make, then drink, my greens.

I had kinda stopped doing raw green smoothies, because I was very sick for several months. Very very sick. But now I am back on coumadin and transitioning back on is hard. I had to eat a stable amount of greens daily and I don't eat stable mounts of greens. I just toss in whatever I feel like. Or, when braising spinach in garlic infused olive oil (yum!), I don't measure. I use a whole lot cause it cooks down.

But my coumadin test are all over the place and it isn't fair to my dear primary doc to take up her time.

A secret:  I love my primary care doc, in a perfectly platonic way. I left her for another primary doc last year and when I told her he actually said "We should get together for lunch." Aww. . . . shucks.

I left her because no one was monitoring my coumadin. and, bless my doctor, she doensn't know how to monitor couadin like Gwen did, the nurse practitioner who monitored my coumadin for years.

Isn't this a dull, run-on post? someone who loves me recently said even my most rambly, run-on messes always have something good in them. Cutting out everything but the good is the work of writing that I skip and why I don't submit.  I won't edit. It's boring. The fire of first draft is awesome sauce. Editing is boring.

Anyway. If Moonlight doe not turn up in Berkeley by this coming Friday, I'll make a date with a friend in SF and see it at the Embarcadero Center and pop for the BART costs.

SF is every bit as charming and beautiful as everyone thinks but I don't hang out, don't get to savor the city, explore its endlessly fascinating neighborhoods. I need a boyfriend. For SF adventure. And please, goddess, let him have a car so we can take impulsive drives in the country and go camping with ease.

Helga, The Thorn Witch and Katie

Frida was way cool. A visionary artist, she overcame severe physical crippling, took female lovers openly when no one did that openly and painted what she saw in her own being, painted things no one had ever seen. But she also endured open, chronic abuse from her husband, Diego Rivera. Not my idea of a female role model to mend the damage of endless princess fairy tales.

Do you know the Tomie de Paolo book, Helga's Dowry? Helga is a troll, beautiful by troll standards but poor so the cute troll she crushes on tells her he must marry a troll with money, a fat dowry. She, Helga, goes out and generates great wealth and then, sure, the pretty boy wants her.  As she went about acquiring her fat dowry, the troll king took notice and he fell for the powerful woman. She rejected pretty boy before the king proposed, accepted the king and lived, one hopes, happily ever after.

That was my first feminist take on princesses that I read to my Katie. I give it to any little girl who crosses my path. So if you are expecting a chick grandchild, send me your address, and I'll give the baby Helga's Dowry. An oldie these days but still a goodie, imho.

For Katie's first 2.5 years, we lived in Omaha. I all but haunted the one good children's book store in Omaha, prowling for female protagonist children's picture books. A proud day was the day the book store owner told me my determination to give Katie different female book characters had her whole staff more aware of the need for books for girls. There were other bookstores and I haunted them all and all the clerks in them knew what I wanted:  female protagonists for children's books. This was pre-internet when one could not just google to find what one wanted.  One shopped.

Another favorite, and I have a spare copy already, but it is a little more advanced, like age 3 for smart kids: The Thorn Witch. Oh my gosh, Katie and I loved that book. She took it for show and tell in her kindergarden. The kindergarden teachers would read any books the children brought. After school that day, Katie morosely told me that the teacher read it all wrong, that she didn't know how to use the voices that I used. I was a proud mama that day and until Katie complained about the teacher reading in monotone, I did not know Katie loved how I gave every character their own voices, in every book.

My daughter loved me then. What happened?

Imagine me reading this line with a screechy, shrieky, loud voice "You stole my blackberries and now you have to pay for them. Now, will you come quietly or will I have to carry you in this?" and then I would wave an imaginary gunny sack, just like the one on the page of the book,  in Katie's face. She giggled and snuggled me a little closer every time I waived (waved?) that imaginary gunny sack at her. In the book, The Thorn Witch is threatening to put Charlotte in the gunny sack but Charlotte capitulates and walks along as she is told.

Violet and Charlotte had picked blackberries for a pie to contribute to a Halloween party. Turned out the Thorn Witch lived in the blackberry brambles.

Long story short, at the end, the girls make another blackberry pie for the Thorn Witch, then give her the recipe. TW thanks them and said "I had no idea you could make anything so delicious with my blackberries."

There's more to this. There were four books in the seires. I bought all of them. And I have gifted sets to a few little girls over the years. The Thorn Witch  is, hands down, the best book about these rag dolls turned into little girls.

you carry me with you

"You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you; I wished for your existence. You will always be a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage."
-Anais Nin

This reminds me of the great e.e.cummings poem "I carry your heart with me, I carry it in my heart". Or something like that.

medicine for melancholy

Medicine for Melancholy is the name of the first picture directed by Barry Jenkins, director of a new, very interesting-sounding movie, Moonlight. Jenkins is a black man and he tells stories of blacks. Medicine for Melancholy is on Netflix streaming, set in SF. I recommend it.

Moonlight is based on a play called something like "Black Boys Look Blue in the Moonlight". It got a majorly enthusiastic review in the NYTimes. I can't wait until it opens in Berkeley, which it surely will soon.

In the NYTimes, the director talks about his frustration that it took eight years to put out a second film.  I guess his genius needed some incubation.

His first film, Melancholy, was interesting, especially since it is set in SF eight years ago, when the rising housing crisis had already purged so many blacks out of SF and the male character in the movie really cares about this purging. The female is a harder read. For me.

I don't see the medicine in Mr. Jenkins first picture but I am eager, eager eager to see Moonlight, said to be poetic, lyrical, visceral and tough. Like life?

Might I but moor

Wild nights - Wild nights!
Were I with three
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -
To a Heart in port
Done with the Compass
Done with the Chart
Rowing in Eden

Ah-the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!

~ Emily Dickinson, "Wild nights - Wild nights"

I lived in Amherst, MA for two years. I visited ED's home several times so I could go into her room, see some of her small handmade books of poems she bound together with ribbon, imagine her gazing out the windows in her bedroom, imagine her sitting at the top of the stairs when her family had company. She seldom  joined the company but would listen to all the conversation just behind the door at the top of the stairs.

What I wondered about the most, and there is no answer for this, is whether or not she ever had sex.  She did have at least a couple friendships with males for which she felt passion but it would have been so far out of her cultural values to have been anyone's lover. And there are no letters to indicate she had lovers. Then again, she asked her sister, Lavinia, to burn all the correspondence she had received over her lifetime when she died. And Lavinia did. Were there declarations of love in some of those burnt letters? or indications of more details of the very few males she, at least, had crushes on.

She loved some men.  Did she make love to them physically?

I decided, standing in her bedroom one time, that she never did have sex but being the finely wired being that she was, she understood passion, sex, love and joy.

No one knows.