Steiner on evolution

Lecture by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, October 2, 1916

In the lectures given here for some time it has been my task to draw attention to certain impulses, certain forces, which work in the souls of men and thence into all that these souls bring to expression in earthly life. I have pointed out how these impulses and forces developed at the dawn of modern spiritual life. Today, because I want to call your attention to a particular kind of modern spiritual striving, we will consider, once again, an important starting point for modern spiritual life, which we have already considered but which is one of the most important and essential of all. When we inquire into the forces that are at work in modern souls, we are compelled to recognize the importance and significance of this event in history. I refer to the whole destiny and development of the Order of the Knights Templar.

I should like, then, to put before you once more the picture of the Order of the Knights Templar in order to show how what proceeded from this Order worked on in broad streams which flow even into the feelings and perceptions of human beings of our own times.

We know that the Order of the Templars was founded in connection with the Crusades. It was, so to speak, an important accompanying phenomenon to that great event in history whereby the peoples of Europe sought in their own way to come nearer to the Mystery of Golgotha than they had previously been able to. The Order of the Templars was founded almost at the very beginning of the Crusades. Leaving on one side all that is known externally about the founding of the Order and the further course of its activity — you can easily read it in history books — we find that this Order of the Knights Templar, inwardly considered, expresses a specially deep approach to the Mystery of Golgotha on the part of modern humanity. First of all, a small number of souls who were faithful and devoted followers of Christianity gathered together at a place that lay near to the ancient Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and established there a kind of spiritual order. As we have already said, we will not consider now the more external side of the event, but will look at it from a spiritual point of view and turn our attention to what gradually began to live in the souls of the Templars.

In their blood, as the representative of that which distinguishes earthly Man, in their I, but also in all their feeling and thinking, in their very being and existence, these souls were, in a sense, to forget their connection with sensible physical existence; they were to live solely in what streams from the Mystery of Golgotha, and fight for the continuance of the strongest impulses that are connected with the Mystery of Golgotha.

The blood of the Templars belonged to Christ Jesus — each one of them knew this — their blood belonged to nothing else on Earth than to Christ Jesus. Every moment of their life was to be filled with the perpetual consciousness of how in their own soul there dwelt, in the words of Paul, “Not I, but Christ in me!” And in bloody and severe combats, in devoted work such as the Crusades demanded, the Templars lived out in practice what they had spiritually resolved. Words are impotent to describe what lived in the souls of these men, who might never waver in their duty, who, even if a three-times-stronger power confronted them on the physical plane, might never flee, but must calmly await death, the death that they were ready to endure in order to establish more firmly in Earth existence the impulse which went forth from the Mystery of Golgotha. It was an intense life of the whole human being in union with the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, when such an intense life is lived in the right rhythms, so that it can take its place in the whole stream of cosmic and earthly forces, then something of real significance develops out of such a life. I say advisedly "of real significance." For when such a consciousness as this is placed inwardly, mystically, and with a certain rhythm into all that goes on in the outside world, then Man can experience again and again how his own inner being is brought into connection with the divine and spiritual. 

But something else, something that has still greater effect, is developed when this inner experience is brought together with the course of external history and placed into the service of the course of events. And it was intended that what lived consciously in the souls of the Knights Templar should be in harmony with what had to be done in the attempt to regain power over the sacred grave. A deeply mystical life developed in this way among those who belonged to this so-called Spiritual Order, an Order which on this very account could accomplish more for the world than other Spiritual Orders. For when in this way a life that is lived mystically is also in connection with the life going on in the surrounding world, then what is experienced mystically streams into the invisible and supersensible forces of the surrounding world of that human being. It becomes objective — it is not merely within his own soul, but works on further in the course of history. Through a mysticism of this kind, it comes about that an experience of the soul is not simply there for the single human being, but turns into objective forces which were formerly not there in the spiritual stream that carried and upholds humanity. These forces come to birth and are there. When a person performs his daily task with his hands or with implements, he places some external material thing into the world. With a mysticism such as was unfolded by the Knights Templar, something spiritual is added to the spiritual “effects” of the world. And inasmuch as this took place, humanity was actually brought a stage further in its evolution. Through this experience of the Templars, the Mystery of Golgotha was understood, and also experienced, at a higher stage than before. Something was now present in the world, in regard to this Mystery of Golgotha, which was formerly not there.

The souls of the Templars had however at the same time achieved something else. Through this intense inward penetration into the Mystery of Golgotha they had gained the power actually to attain Christian initiation by means of the historical event. Christian initiation may be attained in the manner described in our books, but in this case it was attained in the following way: their external deeds and the enthusiasm that lived in these deeds drew forth the souls of the Templars, so that these souls, apart from the body, outside the body, lived with the spiritual progress of humanity and penetrated in soul and spirit the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. Many and deep experiences were then undergone, and not for the individual soul alone but for all humanity.

Then, as we know, the Order of the Knights Templar increased and spread, and in addition to the immensely powerful influence that it possessed spiritually — more in a supersensible manner than through external channels — it acquired great wealth. And I have already described how the time came for these external treasuries, which the Knights Templar amassed to greater and greater extent, to be converted into temporal power. I have told you how, through a kind of initiation with the evil principle of gold, Philippe le Bel was chosen to be the instrument who should oppose the Templars. That is to say, he wanted in the first place to possess their treasures. But Philippe le Bel knew more than most men in the world. Through what he had experienced he knew many of the secrets of the human soul. And so it came about that Philippe le Bel could be a fitting instrument in the service of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers whose aim and object it was to render ineffective the Templar Movement in the form it had first of all taken.

Philippe le Bel was, as we have said, the instrument of other, spiritual, Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic powers. Under the inspiration of these powers Philippe le Bel knew what it would have meant if, into the spiritual streams which flow through the world just as truly as do the outwardly visible events, if into these streams had been allowed to flow what the Templars had gained as knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha and as feelings and impulses of will connected with that Mystery. What had thus developed must therefore be torn away from the normally progressive divine-spiritual powers; it must be turned into other paths. To this end it had also to be brought about that something which could only live in the souls of the Templars should be torn out of the individuality of the Templars themselves. Just as that which the Templars had experienced in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha did not remain with them as individuals but was placed out into the general evolution of humanity, so now something else was also to be removed, as it were, from the individuality and embodied in the objective spiritual stream. And this could only be accomplished by means of a particularly cruel deed, by means of a terrible act of cruelty.

The Templars were committed for trial. Not only were they accused of external crimes, of which they were most certainly innocent — as can be proved on historical grounds, if one is but ready to see the truth — but they were accused above all of blaspheming Christianity, of blaspheming the Mystery of Golgotha itself, of worshipping idols, of introducing paganism into the Mystery of Golgotha, of not using the right formula in the act of consecration at the Transubstantiation, nay, even of desecrating the Cross. Of all sorts of other crimes also, even unnatural crimes, were the Templars accused. And hundreds and hundreds of them were subject to the cruel torture of the rack.

Those who committed them for trial knew what this torture on the rack meant. The ordinary day-consciousness of those who underwent this torture was suppressed, so that during the torture they forgot, in their surface consciousness, their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. But they had become acquainted — and this is the case with everyone who truly sees into the spiritual world — they had become acquainted with all the trials and temptations which beset a person when he really approaches the good divine-spiritual powers. With all the enemies who work out of the lower spiritual kingdoms and who want to bring Man down and lead him into evil, who are able to work in the impulses and desires and passions, and especially in hatred and mocking and irony against the Good, with all these the Templars had become familiar. In many an hour that was for them a sacred hour of their life, they had gained those inner victories that Man can gain when with open eyes he passes through the worlds that lie beyond the threshold of the world of the senses; for these worlds must first be overcome before Man can enter with strengthened powers into the spiritual worlds where he rightly belongs.

During their torture, the vision of the Templars that could look out over these spiritual worlds to which they belonged became clouded and dim; their surface consciousness was dulled, and their inner gaze was directed entirely and only to what they had experienced as something to be overcome, was directed to the temptations over which they had gained victory after victory. And thus it came about that, during the moments while they were actually being tortured on the rack, they forgot their connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, forgot how with their soul they were living in the spiritual and eternal worlds. And the trials and temptations which they had resisted and overcome stood before them like a vision while they lay stretched on the rack, and they acknowledged the very thing that each one for himself had overcome; they confessed it to be a custom within the Order. They confessed themselves to be guilty of just that over which they had again and again won the victory. Every one of these Templars was obliged to seem to be the man in him over which he had inwardly gained the victory, over which he had to gain the victory before, with higher forces, he could attain to the highest and holiest of all. (I speak of all true Templars — abuses can of course be found everywhere.)

All this the opponents knew. They knew that, just as on the one hand the Mystery of Golgotha had been placed out into the evolution of humanity as an influence for good, so now, in the same way, because the ordinary consciousness had been dulled, therefore what lived in this evil consciousness was by this means placed outside, objectified, and embodied in the evolution of humanity. It had become a factor in history.

Two streams were thus allowed to flow on into modern history: what the Templars experienced in their holiest moments, what they had worked out and developed within the progressing spiritual stream of humanity, but also what had been wrested from them by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, fetched up out of their consciousness in order to make it objective, in order to form it objectively and make it effective in the further progress of the centuries.

At this point a simple-minded person might easily put the question: Why do the divine-spiritual powers of providence allow such a thing to happen? Why do they not guide humanity through the course of history without Man's having to undergo such painful trials? Such a thought is “human, all-too-human.” It arises in the mind of one who can believe that the world would be better if it had been made not by Gods but by men. Many people may think this; they may think that, with their intellect, they can criticize the wisdom that works and weaves in the world. But such a way of thinking leads also to the very extreme of intellectual pride.

We human beings are called upon to penetrate into the secrets of existence, not to criticize the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. We must therefore also gain insight into the place and significance of the evil currents which are permitted by the wise guidance of the world. For if only the good were allowed, if good impulses alone worked in history, human beings would never be so guided in their historical evolution that they could develop freedom. Only through the fact that evil holds sway in the spiritual course of human history can humanity develop to freedom. And if the Gods were to turn away Man's gaze from evil, he would have to remain forever an automaton — he would never become free. Things are indeed so ordered in the progress of humanity that even that which causes the deepest sorrow is led at last to good. Pain is only a temporary thing — not that it is on that account any less great and deep. We must not deceive ourselves as to pain and fall a prey to some cheap mysticism that will not see the pain; we must be ready to partake in it, ready to sink ourselves in it, ready to pour it out over our own soul. But, at the same time, without criticizing the spiritual purpose and will of existence, we must also learn to understand how the most varied impulses of a positive and negative nature are introduced into the evolution of humanity in order that human beings may become not only good, but also free and possessors of their own impulses.

And so in the evolution and destiny of the Templars we see an impulse that is important for all the succeeding centuries of modern times. If it had been possible for the purpose of the Order to continue to be lived out with the intensity and strength with which it was at first lived out by the great Templars, succeeding humanity would not have been able to bear it. The speed of evolution had, as it were, to be checked; the stream had to be held back. But in this way it was made more inward. And so we see how, in the two streams we have indicated in modern history, deep inwardness of life developed alongside external materialism. For the Mephistophelian impulse, which Mephistopheles-Ahriman through his instrument Philippe le Bel dragged out by force, lived on. It lived on, together with many other things, in the materialistic thoughts and feelings of men and in all the materialistic impulses which appeared among mankind from the 15th to the 19th century. Hence it has come about that what we know as materialism has spread itself so widely over the soul and spirit of Man and over all his social life and has prepared the ground for the karma of our own time.

Had things not gone in this way, had the stream of materialism not been allowed to spread so far and wide, neither could, on the other hand, our connection with the spiritual world have become so deep and intimate. For indeed what the Templars had accomplished by entering in a living spiritual sense into the Mystery of Golgotha was not lost. It lived on. And the souls of the Templars — after their terrible experiences on the rack, fifty-four of them were put to death — the souls of the Templars who had under these circumstances passed through the portal of death were now able to send down from the spiritual world streams of spiritual life for those who lived in the succeeding centuries.

Fifty-four Templars were burned at the stake in 1312. Fifty-four souls went up into the spiritual worlds. And from that time on, supersensibly and invisibly, without its being outwardly perceptible to the facts of history, there began in European humanity a spiritual development that owed its origin to the fact that individual souls were continually being inspired from the spiritual world with what these fifty-four souls carried through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

Let me give you an example of this. It is one I have mentioned before, but I will now deal with it in more detail from another point of view.

Before the tragedy broke out in the Order of the Templars — a whole century before the year 1312 — Wolfram von Eschenbach composed his poem Parzifal. Working alone, or in a very small circle, Wolfram von Eschenbach produced this song about a soul who strives by means of inward purification to attain the life which the Knights Templar also held before them continually as their ultimate goal. In a wealth of picture and in wonderful imaginations, Wolfram von Eschenbach unrolls before our view the inner life of Parzifal, who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal. 

Now let us inquire: Do we see any important external result of Parzifal — who was for him the representative of the Templar ideal — in the historical development of succeeding times? We do not. In the further history of European humanity it was, as we know, Richard Wagner who first presented Parzifal again, and then in quite another way. But the spiritual power, the spiritual impulse, that was able to flow into the soul of Wolfram von Eschenbach — at that time still from the Earth — became in succeeding centuries for many others an inspiration from the spiritual world. And one who is able to perceive the mysterious connections between the life on Earth and the spiritual life knows that the impulses which were carried into the spiritual world through the destiny of the Templars flowed also into the soul of Goethe. It was not to no purpose that Goethe began in the eighties a poem which he never finished. It is significant that he began it, and equally significant that even he was not strong enough to bring to actual expression the mighty thought of this poem. I refer to the poem The Mysteries, where the Brother Mark goes to the lonely castle of the Rosicrucians and enters the circle of the Twelve. Goethe grasped — in his own way, of course — the fundamental thought which is also contained in Parzifal, but he was not able to complete it; and we may see in that very fact an indication of how all of us are standing within the same spiritual development which Goethe experienced in its beginnings, and at which we must work and work and work that we may be able to give form to these beginnings and make further and further progress in the penetration of the spiritual world. Goethe devoted to the first beginnings of this spiritual development the best powers of his existence; he let them flow into his Faust, where he set out to portray Man's connection with the forces of the spirit, which include for him the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian forces.

One who observes history concretely in its spiritual development can see quite clearly that into the soul of Goethe on Earth there followed from the spiritual world what the Templars — whose manner of death had been so cruel and so significant — had carried up into the spiritual worlds and, just because they had gone through the gate of death in this way, could pour down as inspiration into the souls of men. It flowed down, and if with more significance into Goethe's soul, it was not into his soul alone but into many others; and it continues to live, although but little noticed by human beings. The spiritual element in Faust itself still almost escapes notice in the outside world! It lives on, however, and is moving towards an ever richer life, and will have to become more and more fruitful if humanity is not to drift into decadence instead of evolving in an upward direction. But this lies in our own choice. In our age of time it is given into Man's own hands. The choice is set before him — and will be so more and more definitely — as to whether he will fall into decadence and continue to hold to materialism, or strive upwards into the spiritual worlds.

For we human beings, as we live on Earth, it is only in our physical body that we live a life connected with the Earth. The body that is woven of light and sound and life and is within this physical body — the so-called ether body — partakes not only in the life of Earth, but in the life of the cosmos. And when a human soul descends from the spiritual worlds to enter existence through birth, then, already before the event, forces are directed in the cosmos in a right way for the building up of the ether organism of the human being, even as the physical body of Man is built up from the physical forces and physical substances of Earth.

In the very simplest of Man's ideas lives pride and arrogance, and this is especially true in our materialistic age. In this materialistic age, parents actually believe that they place their children into existence all by themselves. And as materialism spreads, it will be more and more believed that it is the parents alone who bring the children to existence. Seen spiritually, it is different. Human beings here on Earth only provide the opportunity for something spiritual to come down to them. What a human being can do as a part consists solely in this: he can make ready the place by means of which an ether body that is being prepared from out of the far spaces of the cosmos may be able to sink down to Earth. This ether organism of the human being is just as much an organized entity as is the physical organism. The physical organism — we see how it has head, arms, hands, trunk, and all the parts that the anatomist and physiologist discover — for spiritual vision, this physical organism is shone through and glowed by the ether organism. 

The physical organism breathes in air, and breathes out air. The ether organism breathes out light, and this light it gives to us. And when it breathes out light and confers the light upon us, we live by means of its light. 

And it also breathes in light. As we breathe in and out air, so does our ether body breathe in and out. And when it breathes in light, it uses up the light, just as we use up air physically. (You may read of this in a passage in my Mystery Dramas where this secret of the ether world is unfolded dramatically.) The ether body breathes in light, uses up the light, and changes it into darkness, and can then receive into this darkness the sound of the worlds that lives in the Harmony of the Spheres, can receive into it the impulses of life. As we receive physical nourishment, so does the ether being that lives in us breathe light in and out. As we use up in us the oxygen of the air and make carbonic acid gas, so does the ether body use up the light, shooting it through with darkness, so that it appears in colors, so that the ether body shows itself to clairvoyant vision in waves of color. And while the ether body prepares the light for the darkness and thereby carries on an inner work of breathing, it lives, in that it receives this sound of the worlds and changes the sound of the worlds into the life of the worlds.

But what we receive in this way as our ether body comes down to us from the wide spaces of the cosmos, and it comes at certain times, from the far spaces of the cosmos. It is today not yet possible to show in all detail how the human ether body draws downwards on the paths of light when these paths are guided in a particular manner through the constellation of the stars at the time. For that to be possible, human beings will have to lift themselves to a higher stage of morality. For today, this mystery of the in-drawing of the human ether bodies on the paths of the light and on the paths of the sound of the Harmony of the Spheres would be misused by human beings in the most terrible way. For what is contained in this mystery would, if people of lower impulses wanted to acquire it, give parents unlimited power over the whole of their descendants. You will accordingly understand that this mystery of how the ether bodies come to the human beings who are incarnating — of how they come on the paths of light and on the paths of sound from out of the Harmony of the Spheres — will have to remain a mystery for a long time to come. Only under certain quite definite conditions can one learn anything of this mystery. For the failure to comply with the conditions would mean, as I have said, that parents could acquire a hitherto unheard-of power over their offspring, who might be completely deprived of all independence, of all personality, and of all individuality, and have the will of their parents thrust upon them. Wisely is this mystery hidden away for mankind in the unconscious and takes its course there in a good and healthy way, working through the will of the wise world-guidance.

Our ether body travels quite a different path from our physical body. After we have passed through the gate of death we still carry, as you know, our ether body for a few days; then we have to give it back to the cosmos. In the spiritual, in the cosmos, our ether body remains only as a picture for our own further life between death and new birth. It is incorporated into the cosmos in the most varied manner — in one way in the case of people who die early through some accident or otherwise, and in a different way in the case of those who attain maturity. But when one looks across into the world that lies beyond the threshold, one knows that both — the early death as well as the later death — have great significance in the whole cosmic connections. For our ether body that we give up continues to work on spiritually.

Fundamentally speaking, seen from a deeper aspect, we all grow old. Physically, one dies earlier and another later; seen from a spiritual aspect, we all become old alike. If we die early, our physical body comes to an end early; but our ether body continues to live on for the cosmos, and just because we have died early, our ether body has other functions in the cosmos than if we had died only later. When we count up the years that we live in physical and in ether body as human beings — we have the deeds on Earth that we accomplish in the physical body, and we have what we accomplish in the ether body also after death, and the life that we live there not for ourselves but for others, for the world — when we add up all this in its years, then we find that everyone lives to about the same age.

But when an event takes place such as happened with the Templars, something different again comes about from when it is only a case of the individual lives. The life that we lead as an individual remains within our own person; but there is also the life that can be objectively separated from us — as in the case of the Templars. On the one hand, what they were able to do for the continuance and spread of the Mystery of Golgotha and, on the other hand, what happened through the working of Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces for the impulse of modern materialism, all this also continues to live on as fragments of the ether body. But it is incorporated into the whole process of history. So that some of the life Man lives in his ether body lives on further with the human individuality, while some of it is incorporated into the course of history — when it has been torn away from the human being in the manner described. And the ether body is the means or medium whereby what a person lives in his soul so objectively that it can go out of his soul — whereby this may have, as it were, something to hold on to for its further life — it is the ether body that provides for this.

What flowed into the etheric world from the spiritual impulses of the Templars lived on etherically, and through this continued etheric life many souls were prepared to receive the inspirations that I have described as coming out of the spiritual world from the souls of the Templars themselves. That is what has actually been taking place in modern times.

Into what flowed from the souls of the Templars, however, there began to enter more and more that which flows from the Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses and is steeped in the Mephistophelian element, and which was inaugurated on the racks where the Templars were tortured, inasmuch as they were forced under torture to speak untruths about themselves. This fact — not alone, but as one of the spiritual grounds of modern materialism — has to be understood if one would acquire an inner understanding of modern materialistic evolution.

And so it came about that in modern times, while certain individuals were inspired with high spiritual truths, the general culture became more and more materialistic in character; and the eye of the soul grew dim for what now surrounds us spiritually and also for whither we go when we pass through the gate of death and whence we come when we pass through the gate of birth. More and more was the gaze of Man turned away from beholding the spiritual, and this was true in all the different spheres of life — the spiritual sphere, the sphere of religion, the sphere of social life. More and more was the gaze directed to the material world as it showed itself to his senses. And the result has been that, since the rise of modern times, mankind has fallen into a great many errors.

Again let me say I am not criticizing the fact, I am not passing judgment on it. Through the fact that errors found their way into human evolution, human beings have to experience these errors, and they will gradually come to see them — and, in overcoming them, get stronger forces than they could have had if the path to their goal had been implanted in them automatically. And now the time has come when this insight must be developed and human beings must see how, in all that is material, live impulses to error. Today Man is called upon again and again to make up his mind to see through the errors and overcome them.

It is not our intention to lay blame on anything that has happened in history; what we want to do is to look at history objectively. The events of modern times have brought it about that Man's thoughts and feelings run their course only in accordance with external physical reality, only in accordance with what Man experiences between birth and death. Even the religious life has gradually assumed a personal character, inasmuch as it aims merely at putting into Man's hand a means whereby he may find blessing in his own soul. The religious life of more modern times, that turns Man's gaze more and more away from the concrete spiritual world, is really permeated with the materialistic outlook. As has been said, we have no intention of casting aspersion on any event in history; the events of history must however be described in such a way that they may be rightly understood — that is, if the coming generation is not to fall into decadence but to take a turn and move upwards.

We see the stream of materialism flow on and, side by side with it, the parallel hidden stream; and then at the end of the 18th century we come to a tremendous event, an event the influence of which was felt throughout the whole of the 19th century and right on into the present time. At the end of the 18th century, we see the French Revolution spreading its currents far and wide over European civilization. Many things took their course in the French Revolution as the historians have described them. But in addition to the understanding one has already of the French Revolution, in addition to the impulse one has recognized as proceeding from it and working on in European history, we must also understand the spiritual effects of materialistic Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic impulses. The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal. (As I said before, we are not concerned with finding fault but with understanding the events of history.) The French Revolution strove for a very high ideal; and it strove for it in a time upon which still fell the shadow of the event I have described today, the event which left Mephistopheles-Ahriman mighty to send forth into European life the impulse of materialism. And we may say of the best of those who were responsible for the French Revolution that they believed in the physical plane alone. It may be that in their consciousness they thought they believed in something else. What people profess with words is however of little account; the important thing is to have a live consciousness in one's soul of what is really working in the world; and those who were responsible for the French Revolution were conscious only of the physical plane.

They strove, it is true, for a high ideal, but they knew nothing of the trinity in Man: the body that works by means of the etheric principle in the human being, the soul that works through the astral principle, and the spirit that works in Man to begin with through the I. At the end of the 18th century, Man was already regarded in the way that he is regarded — to his lasting harm and loss — by modern materialistic physiology and biology. That is to say, even if in a religious way men had some notion of a spiritual life and perhaps also talked about it, their gaze was really only actually directed upon what is lived out here in the physical world between birth and death — what is lived out here, that one can understand. (Even that of course is not yet entirely understood; nevertheless one can understand it when one directs one's attention solely to the external physical body.) What lives in the entire human being: that can only be understood when it is known that with the external physical body are united an etheric principle, an astral principle, and an I-principle. For even while we stand here in the physical world, there is living in us something that is of soul and spirit and that belongs to the spiritual world. Body, soul, and spirit are we here. And when we have gone through the gates of death, we shall again be threefold beings, only with another spiritual body. So that anyone who observes and studies Man living out his life as physical Man between birth and death is not studying the whole human being, and is bound to fall into error in regard to the whole human being.

The events that happen in the world must not be looked upon as erroneous in themselves. What makes itself manifest in the world is indeed truth; but the way in which Man regards it and turns it into deed and action often causes confusion. And confusion arose in the minds of men at the end of the 18th century, because everything was applied to the body, and ideals which only have meaning when Man is seen as a trinity were aspired to as the ideals for a purely physical “monon.” And so it came about that lofty and beautiful ideals were on everyone's lips in a time when men were not capable of understanding them, but only confused and falsified them, because they tried to comprehend them all together, believing as they did in the physical body alone. As a matter of fact, of the threefold ideal — Fraternity, Freedom, Equality — Fraternity is the only one that holds good for the physical body of Man. Freedom only has meaning when it is referred to the human soul, and Equality when it is referred to the spirit as it lives in Man, in the I. Only when it is known that Man consists of body, soul, and spirit, and when the three ideals of the end of the 18th century are referred: Brotherhood, to the body; Freedom, to the soul; and Equality, to the I — only then is one speaking in a sense and meaning that is in accord with the inner meaning of the spiritual world.

Brotherhood we can develop, inasmuch as we are physical human beings bearing physical bodies of the Earth; and when we accept Brotherhood into our social order, then for the social order on the physical plane Brotherhood is a right and true thing. Freedom Man can acquire only in his soul, inasmuch as it is with the soul that he incarnates on Earth. And Freedom only prevails on Earth, is only possible on Earth, when it has reference to the souls of men who live on the Earth in their social orderings, to the end that they acquire the faculty of holding the balance between the lower and the higher forces. When we are able, as human beings, to hold the balance between the lower and the higher forces in the human soul, then we develop the forces that can live here between birth and death, and the forces too that we shall need when we pass through the gate of death. So that alongside of the social order a soul order is necessary on Earth, wherein the souls of men may take their places individually and be able to develop the forces of freedom, which they can carry with them through the gates of death, but which they will only carry with them if, already here in this life, they prepare themselves for the life after death. That a true intercourse between souls shall be established on Earth, that souls shall be able to develop the forces of freedom, that all human events, great and small, and all attempts to give form to human activity and creation shall have as their aim Man holding the balance in his soul in regard to what lives and works spiritually — this must come to be an ideal. Man becomes free when he is in a position to acquire these forces of the soul in the external physical world, as he can acquire them, for example, when he is able to follow the beautiful forms that live in an art that really has its sources and beginning in the spirit. Man becomes free when there is an intercourse and communion between soul and soul of such a nature that the one soul is able to follow the other with an ever-growing understanding and with an ever-growing love. 

If it is a question of the bodies of men with which we are concerned, then Brotherhood comes into consideration; if it is a question of the soul, then we must look to forging those delicate and subtle links that arise between soul and soul, and that must find their way right into the structure of our life on Earth and must always work in the direction of engendering interest — deep interest in one soul for the other. For in this way alone can souls become free, and it is only souls that can become free.

Equality applied to the external physical world is nonsense; for equality would be uniformity. Everything in the world is undergoing change; everything in the world is compelled to be in number; everything in the world is obliged to come to expression in multiplicity and variety. To this very end is the physical world there, that the spiritual may go through a multitude of forms. But in all the multiple and manifold life of Man, one thing remains alike, because it is still in its beginning. The rest of our human nature we have carried in us since the Saturn time, the Sun time, and the Moon time; the I we have for the first time in this life of Earth. The I is only in its beginning. During the whole of our life between birth and death we come no further in the spiritual than to say to ourselves “I,” and to take cognizance of this I. We can only behold the I, either when through initiation we are outside the body here between birth and death, or when we have passed through the gate of death and it is given us to look back in memory on our Earth body and behold the I spiritually. But through this I all possible variety comes to expression here on Earth. And our life on Earth must be so constructed as to give possibility for all the variety that can enter Earth life in human individuality to come to expression. One human being manifests one individuality, a second another, and a third a different one again. All these individualities in their several workings are focused in a point, the point of the I. There we are alike, and through this focus-point where we are alike can pass all that we communicate to one another as spirits. The fact that we all have this I-point where we are alike gives the possibility for the development of mankind of a community life. That which is different in all of us passes through what is alike. Consequently, it is not the establishment of what is contributed by the single human individual to the whole stream of cosmic spiritual evolution that is achieved in spiritual equality; rather it is so that because what has placed us each into a different kind of life passes through our I, through the spiritual in us, it becomes something that can be shared by all, it flows on as a common good in the stream of cosmic evolution. Equality belongs properly to the spirit.

No human generation will understand how the three ideals of Fraternity, Liberty, and Equality can come to realization in the life of mankind unless they understand that Man carries in him this threefoldness of body, soul, and spirit. That people were unable in the 18th century and have continued to be unable throughout the 19th century to understand this was a result of the strength of the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian stream which entered modern evolution in the way I have described. The 18th century mixed up Equality, Freedom, and Brotherhood, and applied all three to external physical life. In the way it has been understood in the 19th century, it can only mean social chaos. And mankind will have to drift further and further into this chaos, if they do not receive spiritual science and spiritual life, which will lead to an understanding of Man as a trinity and to a reconstruction of Earth life for threefold Man.

Man had to go through materialism. His forces would have been too weak for the times to follow if he had not gone through materialism. For strange and amazing is the evolution of mankind. Let us look back for a moment to an event of the Lemurian epoch. We find there a certain moment in evolution — it lies thousands and thousands of years back — when the mankind of the Earth was quite different from what it is now. You will know from the descriptions I have given in Occult Science of human evolution on the Earth that the various impulses entered into Man only gradually. There was a moment in evolution when what we today call magnetic and electric forces established themselves within Man. For magnetic and electric forces live in us in a mysterious manner. Before this time, Man lived on Earth without the magnetic and electric forces that have developed ever since, spiritually, between the workings of the nerves and the blood. They were incorporated into Man at that time. The forces of magnetism we will leave out of consideration, and a portion of the forces of electricity. But the forces which I will distinguish as the electrical forces in galvanism, voltaism, etc. — forces that have taken deep hold in the culture and civilization of our time — these forces found entry in that far-off time into the human organism and united themselves with human life; and this very fact made it possible for them to remain for a long time unknown to human consciousness.

Man carried them within him, and for that very reason they remained unknown to him externally. The forces of magnetism and the other electrical forces we learned to know earlier. Galvanism, the electricity of contact, which has a much deeper determining influence on the karma of our age than is generally realized, was, as you know, only discovered at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, by Galvani and Volta. People give far too little thought to such facts as these. Just consider for a moment! This Galvani was dealing with the leg of a frog. “By chance,” as we say, he fastened it to the window, and it came in contact with iron, and twitched. That was the beginning of all the discoveries that rule the Earth today by means of the electric current. And it happened such a little while ago! People do not generally stop to think how it is that mankind did not come to this knowledge earlier. Suddenly this thought emerges in a human being, in a perfectly miraculous way; he stumbles on it — as it were, perforce. In this materialistic age of ours, we naturally never stop to think about such a thing. 

And this is the reason why we can understand absolutely nothing at all of the real becoming of the Earth. The truth of the matter is as follows:

After mankind had passed the moment in the Lemurian time when it implanted into it, or received implanted into it, the forces that go through the wire today in electricity and work in an invisible manner in Man himself, after this time had passed, electricity lived inside the human being. Now, evolution does not proceed in the simple, straightforward way in which people are inclined to picture it. They imagine that time goes ever forward on and on into the infinite. That is an altogether abstract conception. The truth is that time moves and turns in such a way that evolution is constantly reversed and runs back. It is not only in space that we find movements in curves as in a lemniscate, but also in time.

During the Lemurian epoch, Man was at the crossing point of the lemniscate movement, and that was the time when he implanted into himself the principle of electrical force. He traversed the returning path in the Atlantean time and, in respect of certain forces, in the Post-Atlantean time, and arrived about the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century exactly at the point in the evolution of the worlds at which he was in the old Lemurian time when he implanted into himself from the cosmos the principle of electricity. There you have the explanation of how it came about that Galvani discovered electricity at that particular time. Man always goes back again in later times to what he experienced earlier. Life takes its course in cycles, in rhythms. At the middle of the materialistic age which had been developing ever since the 14th–15th century, mankind was standing at that point in the world through which he had passed long ago in the Lemurian epoch. And mankind as a whole in that moment remembered the entry of electricity into the human being, and thereupon as a result of this memory impregnated his whole civilization with electricity. The soul and spirit in Man found again what it had once experienced long ago.

Truths like this must be clearly envisaged again, for it is only with truths like this that we shall escape decadence in the future.

Under the influence of the inspirations of which I have been speaking to you today, certain minds came upon such truths. For the fact that people went on such paths was the result of the fact that many and different currents work in human evolution. If, for example, what the Templars wanted to attain had been the sole influence working in history, quite a different evolution would have resulted for Man. Through the fact that the other stream too — the Mephistophelian — has been intermixed with it (the Mephistophelian stream was of course also there from the beginning, but it was given new life by the destiny of the Templars), Man has been brought, in our time, into materialism just in the way that it has actually happened. These Mephistophelian-Ahrimanic forces are needed in the evolution of mankind. And, as I have said, certain great minds were led by the inspiration that comes from the Rosicrucian Temples and has its source in the spiritual world to recognize this principle of which I am here speaking.

Do not imagine that a great poet, a really great poet who creates out of the spiritual world, puts together his words in the superficial way that people often imagine they are at liberty to take them! No, a poet like Goethe, for instance, knows what is contained and implied in the Word; he knows that in the Word we have something that lets spirit resound through the person speaking. “Person,” did I say? Here we must remind ourselves that “persona” is a word that comes from the Latin for the mask that the actor carries and through which his voice sounds. “Personare” means to sound through. All this is closely connected with the evolution of the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Divine was the Word.” The Word was not in Man; nevertheless human personality is closely connected with it.

The whole evolution, as we have said, is carried forward inasmuch as not merely good forces are working, but others also. And a man like Goethe uttered in his Faust — even though in part unconsciously, nevertheless under inspiration — notable and great truths. When the Lord is conversing with Mephistopheles in the Prologue in Heaven, he says at last to Mephistopheles that He has no objection to his work and influence. He recognizes him and allows him his place in the evolution of the worlds. It is owing to him that there are such things as enticements and influences that must needs create what is evil. But then the Lord turns and directs his word to the true and genuine Sons of the Gods who bring forward normal evolution, and with whose working the working of the other stream is united. And what does He say to these true Sons of the Gods?

But ye, the genuine Sons of Heaven, rejoice!
In the full living beauty still rejoice!
May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

The Lord gives to His Sons the direct command to set in the world's places enduring thoughts! Such an enduring thought was placed into the world when the principle of electricity was implanted into Man, and Man was led back again to the enduring thought when he discovered the principle of electricity and implanted it into his materialistic civilization. Of immeasurable depth is the thought expressed in these lines:

May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

And it means a deep experience for the soul to feel that mystery of the “enduring thoughts.” For then we feel how in the world here and there the Eternal stands at rest in the form of an enduring thought, and we who belong to the world of movement are passing through what is being placed into seeming's changeful forms as enduring thoughts, as the beauty that weaves and works everlastingly reveals itself in order that we may comprehend it when the right moment comes.

And may a right moment also come for mankind in the near future, even as it is predestined to come if mankind is not to fall into decadence. May Man understand that he has to pass through the next point, which reverses materialism into its opposite, the point where the great thought of the spiritual world can ray into mankind. Preparation is now being made for this in those whose karma has allowed them to come to Spiritual Science. And it will be the continually recurring task of Spiritual Science to turn its work in this direction. For to the materialistic age that has found the enduring thought which in its newest form Ahriman-Mephistopheles has placed into modern evolution, to this materialistic age must be added what can be experienced in passing through a spiritual enduring thought. Spiritual Science must see to it that mankind does not omit to grasp this spiritual thought. Therefore also must we not grow weary in warning Man again and again, lest the moment of time for the comprehension of Spiritual Science slip by and be lost.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark

"It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don’t want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don’t want so much misery.
I don’t want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That’s why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling". -- Walking Around
---Pablo Neruda

I have faith in nights

"You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! -
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights." -- Rainer Maria Rilke

Darkness serves positive purpose. The human eye literally needs darkness so it can see at all for what the human eye sees is only possible when light is contrasted with darkness. And the human soul appears to need its nights of darkness, its time sitting in the fire. There are lessons in all nights of grief, all nights of darkness.

Icarus was not failing as he fell

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert who spent his final years in Berkeley

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

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

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

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

we must risk delight in these dark times

A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert, another early SF poetry artist that got overlooked.

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



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

Yes it is. It must be.

I intend to end up there

let's surface our country's abiding bigotry

My undergrad college, a 'little ivy' liberal arts college, had a freshman studies week where all freshman, before regular classes started, read a book or two. We had to read "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". In the Upper Midwest, Wounded Knee was local history, local nightmare.

Of course for the rest of my undergrad experience, I chose the courses, with some distribution requirements. I took mostly Spanish and Anthropology classes. But in my senior year, my college introduced a new-to-them program, a three trimester series (one could take one, two or three trimesteres) called "Irrationality". I took all three. My college prided itself on very small classes, except for science lecture halls with small lab groups, but for Irrationality they used that model and the Irrationality courses were taught by a variety of liberal arts profs: history, anthropology, political science. We'd have one large lecture, held in the science hall because that was the only large lecture hall on our campus and then two small group discussions.

We kicked off our year in Irrationality with the Holocaust. Those all male profs covered the Vietnam War, which had ended while I was in college. Most college kids I knew watch the fall of Saigon in the student union. In those days, nobody had tv's in dorm rooms. No one had computers. In those dark ages, there were no computers either. Most of us knew newly returned veterans and we all knew guys with low draft numbers who had enlisted so they coud serve. If the low draft lottery numbers enlisted, they could choose to serve in W. Europe.

During the Vietnam trimester, the third one in the 'Irrationality" trilogy, just weeks before I graduated -- and I was very timid in class in college, never volunteering to speak. I got over that timidity, eh? But week after week, was had studied war, genocide. And we had all read "Bury My Heart" our freshman year. Never a mention of Native American genocide. Never a mention of any blacks, not even MLK, Jr, who was still fresh in the memories of all college kids I knew -- we had all been freshman in h.s. when he was assassinated. But nary a mention of him in my undergrad years.

I don't remember racism or slavery ever coming up in college.

After seeing the  new film, The Long Shadow, I am angry that the overt racism upon which much of this nation's history has been built did not rate somewhere in my education.

So as the final weeks of my college life wound down and we kept talking about war -- men's wars -- and never really about anything else, I piped up and suggested maybe we could study sexism. "And why would we do that?" intoned my brilliant U. of Chicago History Professor (he had PhD from Chicago, I did not go there . .. ). I could have picked a different small group discussion prof each trimester of irrationality but I had taken "Intro to History" with him and I liked how very smart he was. He went on. "What is irrational about sexism?" Not yet defeated, I said "If women had some say in all the wars we have studied, I think there would have been less wars. I think women might change the course of human history." And that History prof, who knew me pretty well for I had taken, by then, five courses with him said "Like a typical female, you are speaking irrationally". Then, a second too late, he realized he had crushed me. I am sure I turned beet red. I remember feeling that it had become hard to breath. I never said another word to that prof and he tried to draw me out, even introducing feminism in some context as we discussed the Vietnam War.

My larger point: we never talked about this country's history of racism. We didn't even discuss MLK, Jr. and, geez, even in my all-girl and all-white-but-for-two-black-girls high school, we talked about MLK, Civil Rights (and the Vietnam War which was going on when I was in h.s.).

Truth told, I thought I had a very smart insight, that the war between the sexes was both irrational and pivotal to human culture, and certainly to human irrationality. Fuck that guy for shutting me down with his white male privilege.

someone explain this one, please

One day while heading south on Oxford STreet to go to the UC Berkeley Museum, the old lined cement slope at the SW corner of the intersection at Center and Oxford as full of people with their backs to me waiting to cross to the east, over to UC. So I called out "excuse me, I need to get past to cross the street." And a young woman saw me and said "Oh excuse me".

So then I assumed she was not a moron so when she moved out of my way she would not step in front of my scooter. But she did. I had started moving when she moved because I believed, likely a UC student, was not stupid. I had only one way to go and she had to wait for a light to go where she wanted. But she stepped wrong, into the path I had to go and she shouted out "You bitch. You rolled over my foot." she said it loudly. It was a warm day. I just kept rolling because she did not sound lilke she was in pain just indignant. I did not say anything because I thought her mistake was self evident but also because all I wanted to say aloud was to note how by stepping in front of my moving scooter instead of stepping aside, she had caused her own injury

But I just kept going. I don't go fast on my scooter so if she wanted more interaction, I was right there.

Here is my question: a guy or two in a pick up truck with open windows pulled up just as that young woman shrieked 'you ran over my foot". they had not seen the whole interaction. Yet when I got closer to the driver's open window, it was a warm day, the driver called me a fucking bitch. He didn't know what had happened. So why did he assume the disabled person on a mobility device was at fault?

Berkeley CA sees itself as the beginning of the disability rights movement. Berkeley folks believe curb cuts came from Berkeley.  Curb cuts matter a hella lot. Folks on mobility machines could not go far without curb cuts. Berkeley uses the relatively recent yellow dotted curb slopes but it has not replaced all the old, grooved cement curve cubs. There are many of the old cement ones:  the further into poor parts of town you go, the more you see the old, battered cement curb cuts.

Puzzlingly, most of the black tar crosswalks in downtown Berkeley are some of the choppiest ground in town. Water sewer issues bring crews along that tear up the streets and then the holes they made to do their work get covered with sloppy, uneven tar. Then an electric crew might come along, dig a hole and, again, a tar patch. Tar patch upon tar patch. And all these tar partches lump up, crack, crumble with all the cars and trucks rolling by. Most of the street crossings downtown are really treacherous for me on my electric mobility scooter. But street repair is not, at all, a priority in Berkeley.

I have heard city council reps, some of them in office a very long time, laughing about how pointless it is for residets to report a dangerous intersection. Honest to goddess, they chortle as they say "I have dangerous intersections in my district that I reported five or more years ago and the city street repair department has never even ackowledged my reports to the about such intersections, Haha"  after that, other councilmembers also reported how the relevant city department for road repairs blows the off. and they all laughed. Ha ha ha. How much ya wanna bet the streets near all councilmembers and the ayor are well paved.

North Berkeley is the upscale part of town,  Friends of mine who own homes in N. Berkeley speak in puzzlement about how their streets are repaired frequently even when there are no discernible potholes of lumpy tarred and cracked up patches.  Oh well. Ha ha ha.

a mighty will paralyzed

"The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke

His gaze against the sweeping of the bars
has grown so weary, it can hold no more.
To him, there seem to be a thousand bars
and back behind those thousand bars no world.

The soft the supple step and sturdy pace,
that in the smallest of all circles turns,
moves like a dance of strength around a core
in which a mighty will is standing stunned.

Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides
up soundlessly — . An image enters then,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs —
and in the heart ceases to be.

- English translation by Stanley Appelbaum

This is one of Rilke's most popular poems.  I have returned to it many times. 

In my thirties, I think, I, out of the blue, decided the panther was my 'power animal', that something about a panther reflected something about me.  Maybe I went to some kind of workshop at which everyone was encouraged to choose a power animal. In a guided meditation, I 'got' that the panther was my power animal. This happned long before I met Rilke's panther.

This morning, I woke up just at dawn. When I first looked outside my window, it was a night sky.  I tossed around a bit, checking to see if I was awake for the day, glanced outside again, just seconds later, and it was day.  And as I lay there, in a lickety split quick moment, I thought of this poem, seeing, for the first time, that this poem might make a good metaphor for how the will of the people seems somewhat paralyzed these days.

Our politicians no longer work for the people. Our politicians ignore the will of the people.

So many Americans have flashes of hope, hope that things will get better. A curtain slides open, the hope pierces people's hearts and then it dissipates. Hope gone.

who speaks for human species?

"We have heard the rationales offered by the super powers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species, who speaks for Earth?" - Carl Sagan​

catalpa flashbacks

Long ago and far away, I owned a house on a huge, double lot. And on this lot, there were some trees. Pine trees and silver maples. Green shrubs hugged the base of the house.  Alongside our house was an entire lot, big enough for another house but it had only grass and a couple mature maple trees, plus a row a tall shrubs acting to block the noise from the street alongside that lot.    The maples were mature and majestic, with spectacular fall color shows. Silver maples, however, have a shallow root system, making it difficult to grow the kind of suburban lawn that most people aspire to. Plus, the shallow root systems make it hard to mow your crappy lawn. The roots jam your mower.  Our trees provided deep shade, which added another challenge to my then-husband's fantasy of thick, lush, green sod. I loved the silver maples but, also, I hated them because I had to listen to the he-who-shall-not-be-named whined about the grass. I will never write his name but I'd like my readers to know that if I had to give him a name, it would be mathafucka.

The root system of our silver maple trees came above the ground, making it impossible to grow the kind of fantasy all-American lawn most Americans want. Or used to want. My ex husband wanted one.The motherfucker. The word rolls happily off my tongue when used to refer to him but I won't use it again, having now provided a sketch of his values and personality.

There were no catalpa trees on our land.

My neighbor across the street, however, also had a huge, double lot. Her double lot was covered with catalpa trees.

Did I mention that although he-who-shall-not-be-named complained constantly about the lawn that he never did any yard work? He worked  sixty hours a week in his big-shot job. When I was lucky, he worked more than that.   He watched sports when he was home, expected his meals on the table, his laundry done. And, the jerk, he'd patrol the house, inspecting it to see if I had cleaned properly. He mostly came home to eat, sleep and dominate abusively. The yard work, in our little family, was woman's work. My work.

The lawn mower terrified my baby, then my toddler. First, I had tried to mow the lawn while she was napping, fretting that she might wake up and need me but I would not hear her over the mower. This meant that I mowed the lawn in little bitty snatches of time. So I was eternally mowing the goddamn lawn. This meant the lawn was never all mowed at the same time. This gave my then-husband something else to berate me for. He said I should just let the baby cry as long as it took me to mow the lawn in a manner he considered proper. It was proper to mow the whole lawn all at once. The extra lot was all lawn and the main lawn had hard to mow grass, mired amidst the tree roots that came up to the surface for water. I could not work outside for two hours, unable to hear my baby crying inside the house while I was out with the roaring lawn mower.

The lawnmower was much more powerful than we needed. I had wanted a push mower. He acted like the lawnmower reflected his manhood and had bought one, over my objections, that was particularly loud. Very manly. As I have said, I did all the mowing.

Mowing the lawn was a pain in the neck with a baby but raking leaves with a baby was fun. Before she could walk, I would just prop my Rosie near me and chatter to her nonstop. I really liked to talk to her about the wind.

"Let's be quiet, honey," I often said to her, "Let's just be as still as we can and think about what we feel."

Then I would pause to listen expressively, the expression being for her benefit. "Did you feel that?" I would exclaim, "Did you feel that movement on your cheek? Did you feel your hair move? I saw your hair move. I felt my hair move."

I paused a lot, to give her a chance to think about what I was saying, to think about the air. "You feel the air moving, honey," I would say. "Isn't that amazing? You can feel it but you can't see it. Oh, Rosie," I would conclude, "Life is full of things you can feel but you cannot see."

"When you feel your hair moving, that is the wind, honey. Can you say wind?"

It never mattered to me that my daughter could not talk back. I talked on and on. I felt compelled to talk to her about everything. I believed I was imparting meaningful things to her with my nonstop chatter. Even when she did not understand what I said, she felt what I felt. She felt my love for her, my attention. And she did communicate back, just not in language, not at first.

"Look at the tree, see how the branches and leaves move? That's the wind, honey, moving our trees."

"See the leaves blowing away? What is making them move?"

We had great conversations while I raked leaves. We had great conversations while we did everything. I was scintilating. She was mesmerized.

Left to my own choices, I would not have raked any leaves, and especially not the catalpa leaves. The lawn was a wipe out anyway, because of our shallow tree roots. I wanted to let the leaves stay on the lawn. I did not care about the grass, although I was very invested in my vegetables and flowers.  My husband, he who I shall not name but I will use an accurate adjective to refer to him:  my motherfucker of a husband insisted I rake all the leaves, even the catalpas that blew from across the street. They were not even our leaves.  The catalpa leaves were so thick that they might have wiped out what little grass we had between our shallow, on-the-surface, tree roots.Easy for motherfucker to insist I rake them; he did no yard work at all.

My life raking catalpa leaves was short-lived. As soon as my ex and I separated, I never raked leaves again in that house.

While I still raked, just for two falls, I put Rosie in a lavendar sweater outfit, pants and matching top with a hood. The hood had a white ball on a string, attached near the crown of her head. That fluffy white fabric ball would bounce around her head and I loved the intensely gorgeous perfection of the contrsaat of the white bobbing ball, her rosy cheeks and her dark brown eyes, with the lavendar hood. An exquisitely beautiful visage.  Her pink to red cheeks beamed out of the hood, mittened hands waving. She seemed intently focused on me, still the center of her existence at that time.  Remembering her on those chilled fall days, her rosy cheeks, her big brown eyes following me, evokes one of my sweetnest memories of being with her.

We loved to rake the maple leaves, which are easy to gather into large piles. We loved to tumble in them. My job was to gather all the leaves into piles on our driveway and then my husband would help me bag them. It is much easier to bag leaves with two people. It was a challenge to get those piles because Rosie loved to mess them up. We loved fall. We loved all the time we spent together. Or so I thought.

Just about the time Rosie and I finished raking our maple leaves, the catalpa leaves would begin to fall.

Catalpa leaves are gigantic, often twelve inches or more at their widest tips. And catalpa leaves are thick. Catalpa leaves are a misery to rake. They stick to the rake. I would make just one small swath with my rake, the rake would be full and if I wanted to continue raking, I would have to stop, after just one swipe with the rake, two swipes tops, and then have to pull the leaves off the rake before I could rake more. I had to tear off the leaves, put them in a pile or in a bag, and swipe again. Again and again. It was tedious, hard work. And exhausting. Imagine trying to gather dozens of cubic yards of anything but only able to gather a few cubic inches at a time.

Nowadays, a person might use a leaf blower. Not back then.

When I raked the catalpa leaves, I vented my frustration to my daughter, who was the best listener I ever knew before she learned to speak. After she learned to speak, she still liked to listen to me. Until she became a teenager.

"I remember reading about Nancy Drew's yard having catalpa leaves," I told Rosie, "When Nancy Drew had catalpa leaves, they sounded beautiful. I read about them and longed to see catalpa trees. When I was a little girl, I used to wish our house in Chicago had catalpa leaves just like Nancy Drew. But oh, no, my dear little girl, I was wrong. Nancy Drew was wrong to love her catalpa trees. Catalpa trees are one of god's curses, my honey bunny. Don't ever saddle yourself with catalpa leaves. You've been warned."  Even now, it gives me great amusement to remember the one-sided, brilliant arguments I presented to my one and two-year-old.  I was always giving valuable life lessons like the catalpa leaves lessons.

Of course I didn't really think I was giving her meaningful lessons in my words. I did believe, fervently, that I was giving her lessons with my constant attempts to expand her world, open her up to consider things like the invisible wind and, most importantly, the lesson that I loved her and liked her enough to focus on her.

One nice thing about talking incessantly to an infant is that it is not necessary to stop and explain things like who is Nancy Drew unless you feel like it. Rosie was always willing to listen to whatever I had to say. She trusted me, at this stage in life, on all things. She didn't need to know that Nancy Drew was a teenage sleuth in a series of mysteries targeted to young, female readers. What could she do but trust me, as she sat in her walker under one of our old maple trees and I raked leaves, talking almost nonstop.

"Catalpa leaves are horrible," I often complained. "And do you know what is the worst?" Rosie always wanted to know the worst. She signaled this longing to me telepathically. "The worst is that all these goddamn leaves are not even ours, honey. These leaves belong to the neighbors. Every year these leaves blow across the street, into our yard. By every right, the neighbors should come over here and rake them. But no, oh no, they do not. They shirk their duty, my little one. Don't ever shirk your duty, my little Rosie. Well, don't ever own catalpa trees but if you should ever be so foolish, well, then be a good neighbor and gather your own goddamn leaves, wherever they may blow. Just ask your neighbors where you need to rake. I am sure they will happily accept your raking help."

Sometimes, when making indignant speeches about those cursed catalpa leaves and the negligent neighbors who did not help me, I spoke as loudly as I could, as if the neighbor would hear me and come over and help. It was fall. Windows not open. Plus that neighbor had a full time job and I usually raked her catalpa leaves while she was at work, while the whole neighborhood seemed empty except for me and my kitty kat, my cocoa bear, my cake cup. My Rose.

It was not necessary to explain things like 'shirk your duty' to Rosie. I knew that if I spoke to her intelligently, she would catch up. And she did. She had near-perfect scores in English on her SATs.

I made a decision as soon as Rosie was born that I was going to talk to her exactly like I talked to everyone else. So I said 'goddamn' to her. I also said things like bullshit, fuck, and damn, except never in front of her dad because he would have been furious. We left him when Rosie was a baby but we stayed in the house a few years. Once he moved out, I stopped raking leaves. Rosie still helped me grow flowers and vegetables, of course.

Pat Clark was the name of our neighbor who owned the cursed catalpas. Sometimes,  Pat would sometimes stroll across the street while I was raking her catalpa leaves to say hello. Pat was a very tall woman and she had a way of looking regal, whatever she did. She would cross her arms, settle back on her feet and say from on high "It just isn't fair that you have to rake all these leaves. They come from my yard, after all."

"Well, Pat," I would say, "You are welcome, feel perfectly free, to rake these leaves. Here, you can use my rake. Rosie and I will sit and watch. I could use a break. Rake as much as you want!"

Pat would laugh, shift on her feet again and stroll back home.

"Did you hear that?" I would exclaim to my Rosie, "Even she knows it isn't fair that your poor mother has to rake these cursed leaves! Don't ever own catalpas, my little pretty."  I so appreciated Rosie's unspoken but passionate support for the injustice of those catalpa leaves.

Catalpa leaves will choke a lawn. If you care about lawns, which I do not and did not. You have to get them up if you want any grass.

I hated catalpa leaves.

Now I can find  lots of catalpa trees in Northern California. They are beautiful trees with lovely flowers in the spring. Great shade trees.  Nancy Drew was right. Nancy had spoken of their great shade. As I walk around, I crunch on the leathery, thick, cursed things. Since I don't have to rake them, they are beautiful to me once more. As I crunch along, I have mental conversations with my baby Rosie, telling her that it is okay to enjoy catalpa leaves now that her mother does not have to rake them. I remember the many, perfect shades of rosy her cheeks usually looked when we did yard work. I remember that her cheeks grew red when she helped me shovel snow. I remember the spring I planted dozens of zinnias. When I weeded my zinnias, two-year-old Rosie would help me but two-year-old Rosie could not distinguish the weeds from the zinnias. She followed me as I moved along my zinnia border, and she pulled up all my zinnias. She was so proud to help. When she was asleep, I went out and planted new plants.  I never told anyone before this that I replanted flowers after my dumpling dolly helped me by pulling out all my starter flower plants.

Sitting on the ground with her, talking about the beauty of flowers, nattering on about the miracle of growing things, how we could put seeds in the ground, water them and the sun and other forces would cause the seeds to grow. More things she could not see but which were real, for she could not see whatever force made a flower grow, she could only see the growing.  I spoke of these things hoping to get her to sense into this majestic world, to get her thinking about a seed breaking open, growing, stretching towards sunlight. Like babies do. Like plants do. Like all of creation does.

I have come back to the present. I remember that I am walking on catalpa leaves without Rosie. I find myself wondering if I imagined her. Maybe only the catalpa leaves were real and she a figment of my imagination? Am I a figment of my imagination too? Being her mom is, or was,  so central to my sense of self and my sense of self got shattered when I lost her. Now I have to invent myself again and I don't want to invent a new me. I want to be Rosie's mom. The hardest aspect of losing her, I think, is the way it plays with my memories. I have what I am calling memories of what it felt like to love her while I raked those damn leaves and talked to her about everything. Inside these memories, I was a warm, loving, good mommy. Did I make that up? Maybe loving Rosie was a story I made up. Maybe I was a horrible mother and I made up memories of being a good one. These kinds of thoughts don't make me as sick as they used to but they are often with me. The  catalpa leaves brought them on this time.

My daughter told me, the day I dropped her off at Cornell, which I helped make possible in a million ways, she said "Now that I am in the Ivy League, I don't want to have anything more to do with you."  That was the last time we saw one another until, on a trip to my hometown of Chicago recently, where she lives these days, I went to her office building just so I would know where my kid spends some of her life. Just to have an image of her in a place, safe, happy. Things went awry, she became aware I was there and she threatened to have me arrested for trespassing.

interspecies communication

I met this man and within about three minutes, we had exchanged the fact that we both had a fib. I went on to list all the other stuff I have but that was it for him.  Still, I listed all my chronic health woes:  cardiomypathy (what is that?), arthritis that hurts more all the time, type one diabetes and it is sometimes wicked hard to manage it, a history of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary emboli (DVT/PE), a bum left knee that an orthopedist recently told me definitely needs a joint replacement but he won't do the surgery on someone with my significant history of DVT/PE. I even tried to wheedle that guy a bit, although he was the most matter-of-fact doc I have ever consulted. I could see he was happy to rapidly tell me, rat-a-tat-tat that based on my report health history, he would not do my surgery. Three minutes, tops. I am sure that guy is a great and efficient surgeon. But, he said, the risk of me developing a clot with knee replacement surgery were very high and the risk of my death very high also. I almost said, but did not, that I wouldn't mind dying and if I died because of surgical complications, well, that would be like a free pass sin-wise but, somehow, I did not think Dr. Very-efficient would have cared to hear my petulance.

This guy with the afib patiently let me list all my health issues and I have left some out and then he almost exloded in excitement. "You have to educate yourself about afib, you can't count on your doctor."  Hey, I interjected sometime in our exchange, you don't have to tell me. I diagnosed my last DVT and my Afib should have been obvious to my doc. It wasn't obvious to me because I had never heard of afib or its symptoms.

"That's right," he said, almost happily, "You have to educate yourself."

"When I began to experience tightness in my chest while doing my daily lap swims, I just thought it was what getting old feels like."  I am not that old, not really. But he kept nodding and politely listened to me prattle on.

And finally, he got to talk a lot. He has been an endurance athelete all his life and, he now knows, endurance atheletes have more heart problems, especially a fib, than everyone else. So I mentioned I've swum laps nearly daily most of my life but that I am not an endurance swimmer. Footnote to self: does the 18 months I swam two whole hours every single day but Christmas count as endurance swimming? And what came over me to get me swimming two hours a day for 18 months? But I did not mention the two hour swim thing. It happened years ago.

He says there is a book full of good info that was written to endurance atheletes with a fib but it is loaded with good info and reading it might save my life. At the very least, he said, it will educate you about your illness.

I sighed and said "Okay, I'll definitely read it" and I just definitely ordered it. It is not available through the library, not even interlibrary loan. What? Endurance athletes with a fib don't merit an educational library book?!!

And then I told him the story about my epic battle with Maggie's cat, how I cat sat three weeks and that cursed cat expected me to get up at 4 am and fit in the kitchen while she ate breakfast. Three weeks? Nope. I had cat sat for long weekends and accomodated that cat but with three weeks spreading before me, by day three, I was done with the 4 a.m. kitchen visits. And that damned cat sat outside my closed bedroom door and caterwauled shriekishly until I did get up. And I would grow more stubborn with each cat shriek so I tended to leave the bedroom around 10 a.m. I could, after all, write and surf from behind that door.

More to the story but this story is about making the guy laugh and winning a bet.  In the cat story, I mentioned that Maggie had hired an interspecies communicator to have the communicator ask the cat if I was an acceptable cat sitter. I couldn't believe the cat told that interspecies communicator I was acceptable. That cat was feral and really only liked Maggie. If the cat scratched me, and she did, even when I was brushing her dutifully every day as maggie had instructed, that cat would leave claw lines on my arms. Not gonna rise at 4 a.m. for a feral cat who hurts me over and over.

The guy, and he told me his name but I don't remember it (should I add memory loss to the list?  Nah, I remember everything, even that which I would love to forget. . . my cursed memory), guffawed when I said 'interspecies communicator'. I said if there are interspecies communicators on Whidbey Island, I am positive there are some right here in Berkeley. So he pulls out his smartphone and looks it up. Sure enough, there are many search results.

He laughed and asked "You don't really believe in interspecies communication, do you?" To which I responded "Have you heard of St. Francis of Assisi? Do you think he was the only one ever in the history of humankind?"  "Of course I have heard of St. Francis of Assisi. I just never heard of any other interspecies communicators." After he showed me a screen filled with websites for interspecies communicators, he said "May I have your phone number?" and he gestured with his phone, indicating, I thought "as long as I have it out".

I said "well, okay, but the interspecies communicator is one of my all time best stories. I might not be able to top it if we get together again."

And the whole time I nattered away, talking too much, not asking about him so much, I wanted to ask what was his endurance sport and did he happen to be a medical doctor for he sure seemed very knowledgeable.

We compared our impressions of our respective cardiologists. Are people old when they both have cardiologists? He has no endocrinologist, no pain specialist. It didn't come up but all geezers have a gastroenterologist for their colonoscopies, right? And everyone has a primary.

He has had two ablations. When I was in the hospital back in Feb, my cardiologist mentioned ablation in passing but, whodathunkit, I improve rapidly. No ablation for me so far.

The guy who challenged me on whether or not interspecies communicators was a real thing says a fib shows up in all kinds of ways and that's why I have to educate myself on this illness, because there are so many different ways it shows up and I have to know what to look for, docs won't tell me.

food expiration dates and easy peasey

Ocean salt crystals taste better than chemicalized table salt. Once you go to real, chem-free salt, it would be hard to go back. Himalayan salt is expensive at Whole Foods and always when sold in jars but I buy it in bulk at the most amazing grocery store I have yet seen. It is in SF, is owned by a worker collective and it has the largest bulk food section I have ever seen. And everytime I go there, which is not often for it is a long trek, the bulk section is bigger. Bulk teas, bulk pastas, all spices in bulk, bulk kimchi and multiple flavors of kimchee, bulk dried fruits, blik endless flowuers (grown rice flour, quinoa flour, wheat flour, almond flower, coconut flour and on and on. Bulk candies, bulk nuts. And the packaged foods are so interesting. There are always totally new products that I never heard of until I saw them at Rainbow Foods in SF, the collective. I don't buy any packaged foods for they are priced SF high for all the rich techies, I guess. But the bulk foods have decent prices plus if you want dried persimmons, they seem to be the only game in the Bay Area for them.

My first pink Himalayan salt buy came after I had bought some salt crystals from the Irish sea. It was okay salt but pink Himalayan salt really does taste better. And it has some minerals in it that one doesn't get in many foods.

Taste real, unchemicalized salt (I think the chemicals make the salt avoid clumping and make the salt shake smothly) and you won't go back.

My first foray with Himalayan salt was a four ounce jar of pink crystals that cost $20 at Whole Paycheck. But it took me over two years to use it up. Then I decided, what the heck, I should use up my Irish sea salt crystals. But I bought a stash of bulk Hiamlayan salt at Rainbow, gosh, maybe two years ago.

I've been waiting to use that yummy Himalayan salt again and I did so tonight: thick slices of heirloom tomatoes, pink salt ground on the tomatoes, thin slices of fresh mozzarella.

My approach to food I eat at home, and I pretty much only eat at home, grows increasingly minimalist. And my favorite meal just now is tomatoes, salt, fresh mozzarella and, if I am feeling energized and I remember I have some fresh basil, I chop some basil finely and put some on my mozarella covered tomatoes. A cold easy lazy delicious and almost carb-free meal. Easy peasy.

karma … misfortune

Understanding "misfortune" through understanding Karma:
"The whole feeling and attitude of soul that must emerge from a true understanding of karma, is one which makes us realise when, perhaps some misfortune befalls us as consequence of an earlier weakness in the life of soul — that if this misfortune had not come about, the weakness would have persisted. Looking into the depths of our soul, we must realise: It is good and right that this misfortune has come upon me, because it has enabled a weakness to be eliminated. […] That man alone faces misfortune aright who says to himself: ‘If it has occurred because of an earlier weakness, it is to be welcomed, for it will make me conscious of the weakness (which expressed itself perhaps in some definite failing); I will now eradicate the weakness, I will be strong again.’ […] In a case, on the other hand, where a misfortune befalls one as the first step in karma, the right attitude is to say to oneself: If we were always only to encounter what we wish for ourselves, such a life would make us out and out weaklings! One or two earthly lives might continue to be comfortable and easy through the fact that only that would befall us that we desired for ourselves — but in the third or fourth life a kind of paralysis of soul and spirit would supervene, and no effort to overcome obstacles would arise in us. For, after all, obstacles would not be there for us to overcome unless the unhoped-for, the undesired came upon us."

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 224 – The Forming of Destiny in Sleeping and Waking – Bern, April 6, 1923

first job after college

I worked for the year between graduating from college and starting law school. I worked for a nasty man who had a vile temper and made no effort to not throw angry abusive tantrums if he felt like it.

In those days, phones were plugged into the wall with official phone company installation and a phone company line. Once, Peter angrily demanded I get him a cup of coffee. This was in 1975 and I was a confirmed feminist. I had talked to him during my interview about how I would not do coffee. It was a trending thing for other young adult women I knew in 1975.

When Peter screamed "Get off your ass and get me a cup of coffee" I said, calmly, demurely, "I don't do coffee. We talked about that."

He ripped his office phone out of the wall, ripping the fat phone company cord and threw the phone at me. Not a phone like today. PHones in those days, which were all leased from phone companies, were clunkier, heavier.

That phone sailed out his office door and whizzed by my head.

"Now will you get me that coffe?" he nastily shouted.

"I don't do coffee."

Then I did get up and run to the ladies lounge. That job was in an old fashioned building. The women's room on our floor, where our small business subletted a suite, was huge, with many stalls plus a large lounge with sofas, coffee tables and mirrors. And in front of the mirrors, a few chairs. I guess when it was designed women cared about checking hair and make up. It was like a women's restroom lounge in old movies, the kind with an attendant only no attendant for mere data entry or typist females.  But lots of room.

I took naps on those sofas. I hid in that lounge whenever Peter was an asshole. He did not dare enter the ladies room! Not in 1975. Plus he would have had to walk past about 40 women, each at their own little data entry equipment desk. And they all heard his angry tantrums.

He was only angry with me, as if it was part of my job description as his assistant.

When he learned I had not only been accepted to law school but I fully intended to actually go, moving to Minnesota, he fired me. I was relieved. I was going to quite in a few weeks. Not having a job freed up my time to execute my move. Starting law school seemed so huge to me! And, having always leaned into lawyerly thinking, I actually thought, as he was firing me, that I would be able to collect unemployment benefits!

it turned out that I was not eligible for unemployment benefits right away.  One had to work X number of months and I missed the cut off.

Oh, and I had integrity. When the right number of months passed soon thereafter, I was a full time student and I wasn't supposed to get unemployment benefits if I was a full time student.

But I was eligible the summer after my first law year. When he learned that I was indeed eligible and that it would cost him, he sounded like he was spitting nickels in rage. That mofo called me up to scream, 9 months after we had parted company.

When he calmed down, he said I was the smartest person he had ever met and he'd hire me for the summer if I wanted to.

No thanks!  I did a clerkship without pay, collected unemployment.

And when I resumed grad school in the fall, I reported my return to full time school to my unemployment.

Then my dad was angry with me. He said I should have kept taking the checks until they ran out. "How would they know you are in school?"

By then, a year of law school under my belt, I could think of several ways they would know, all connected to my social security number, grants, loans, bank accounts. Plus taking unemployment I was no longer entitled to was fraud and could have become cause to deny me admission to the bar.

The bar association in MN and everywhere, I hope, frowns seriously on overt dishonesty in lawyers.

Getting ten or twelve weeks of unemployment the summer after my first year was sweet, helping to make up for all the angry abuse I had suffered working for that pig.

Once, after I had been working for him a couple months, and he knew I was living with my father, he said "What do you do with all the money I give you?"

Without missing a beat, I said "You don't give me any money, Peter. You pay me for the work I do and I am a good worker."  He did not press. I was ready. I wanted to say the amount he paid me was pathetically low. I got paid $750 a month. Many gals I knew just out of college did office support work as they tried to find their way after college. Unless they had rich parents with good connections to more professional level jobs. Lots of women my age started out as admin assistants, a verbal upgrade from secretaries. When Sandra Day O'Connor graduated from Stanford Law, when she applied for some jobs, the HR department said they did not hire female lawyers but she could apply as a secretary. Ha!

When I did graduate from law school, Land O'Lakes was looking for a staff attorney. I phoned about the job and I was told, seriously, that Land O'Lakes did not hire female lawyers but I was welcome to apply to be a secretary.

The going rate for gals with fresh college diplomas doing office support work was a grand a month and that pig Peter had the nerve to ask 'what do you do with all the money I give you"!

I did not tell him I was living at home to save up for law school.  I didn't tell him I had applied or been accepted to a few law schools until I was getting ready to give two weeks notice.

My lucky day when the jerk fired me.

use the love window

There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.

The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

--Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century

denial

I think most people are in denial about our descent into distopia. I think humanity can pull out of its downward spiral, yes. I think it is going to get a whole lot uglier before it gets better. I think humanity's recover will take a long, long time.

just one flesh we can wound

I have come into this world to see this:
The sword drop from men’s hands
Even at the height of their arc of rage
Because we have finally realized
There is just one flesh we can wound.
Hafiz

how to untighten karmic knots

Forgiveness untightens the karmic knots and opens up new opportunities.

get yer hot peanuts at Sears!

My mom usually took me with her when she left the house for errands but left my two brothers behind. My brother Chuck, one year older and my brother Joe one year younger would half fend for themselves and half be under the nominal supervision of a neighboring mom, as in "if something goes wrong, you can call Mrs. Danaher".

My took me, and continued to take me along with her even as I had more brothers and she left the little ones at home with the big ones, because my older brother, Chuck the Fuck, was usually cruel to me. He liked to physically attack me, did our Chuckie. He also hada hideous talent for verbal abuse.

So. When mom had to go to once a week evening trainings for being a Girl Scout leader, even though the women were asked not to bring kids along, she brought me with a book, coloring book or something to occupy me. I would sit in the back of the room and try to be invisible.

I often tried to be invisible in my childhood. And I thought I was pretty good at it.

What I liked most was when mom ran errands and took me, but no brothers.

and how I loved to go to Sears with her. I got my first bra at a Sears store, fitted by the salesperson, my mother oddly, to me, disengaged from this often important event in a girl's life. I felt shame that my mom did not want to see me in any bras. she told the clerk to decide what fit me.

Mom liked wallpaper. She was capable of poring over wallpaper books for what seemed, to little girl me, very long sessions. I would look at wallpaper books for awhile but grew bored.

And that was when my payoff for going to SEars would appear. It would appear when mom wanted me distracted and away from her, if possible. She would give me ten cents and tell me to go to the hot nuts case, where a few kinds of hot nuts, kept hot under heat lights, were on sale by the pound. Salted Spanish peanuts must have cost .30 a pound in those days because ten cents bought one third of a pound.  In our family, snacks were divvied out so all got an equal share, and that equal share was usually very small. But one third of a pound of hot salty peanuts was an amazing score, even when mom ate some. And another payoff:  telling my brothers about the peanuts. My bros would be jealous and insist that next time, mom should make me save them a fair, even share of my peanuts.

My mom only rarely showed me even slight favoritism. I can't speak for any favoritism she might have shared with my brothers. But one third pound of hot salty Spanish peanuts was a luxurious as my childhood got.

And yes, I take no pride in this disclosure, I showed off to my brothers about the peanuts.

I loved those hot peanuts. I loved eating them. I loved feeling their warmth in my pocket when mom and I left Sears and waited for a bus to get us home. The heat would end around the time I finished that snack.

So Sears has always meant hot salted peanuts for me.

Another mom trick for when we went downtown. Sears was near our South Side home. Downtown trips were less common. We always had lunch in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field's, back when there was only one Marshall Fields and it was on State Street, Chicago's main downtown street. How I loved lunch in that walnut lined tea room. To my childhood self, it was the height of refinement and fine dining.

After we finished shopping, and we only shopped at Field's, as we waited for our first bus home (we had to transfer at Archer Ave), mom would go into one of the big downtown movie theaters, where they used to show all movies first and going to the movies at these movie palaces was also a special outing but not one I recall ever experiencing. I heard tell. Mom would go in and buy me a bag or box (no tubs back then) of hot buttered popcorn.

It was so lovely, munching on hot buttered popcorn on a cold Chicago afternoon.

And, once again, I had something to show off to my brothers. Mom always told me not to tell. I always did. I had very little that my brothers coveted. To the best of my recollection, Chuck covereted my hot peanuts and my hot buttered popcorn.

Joe was okay.

And another thing we did on these outings, which seemed to keep my brothers from joining us, is we went to the Chicago Art Institute. We went to that museum at least once a month. Mom saw it as a girl thing. My bros had no interest in art.

The Chicago Art Institute has (or had, for all I know) a dark room filled with lit vitrines filled with miniature rooms. Each room would have furniture from a particular era in furniture design, each window a room. Sometimes two rooms stop one another. It was called the miniatures. Mom often left me there alone while she looked at grown up art. Imagine leaving a child alone in a darkened exhibit.

I loved that miniature room. I would pore over the details of each room, imagining children in those rooms living lives very different from my own. Happy lives.

I dreamt of swimming

I've been swimming laps for about forty years. I don't often remember my dreams. I wish I remembered my dreams all the time, no matter what the dreams are about.

Last night, I dreamt of myself swimming laps in a outdoor pool when it was dark outside but the pool, of course, was lit.

I also dreamt of a large polar bear that used to be at the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, MN. The poor polar bear had a small, cold pool alongside its designated space. That poor bear swam in an elliptical pattern endless, all day long. I never went through that zoo without seeing that polar bear endlessly making his small elliptical run, again and again. And again and again. Usually people gathered with their kids to watch that bear.

I could not bear to watch that bear. If I paused and watched him take just one of two laps in his, maybe, 15 foot pool, I swear I would feel that bear's despair, his lost mind that moved him to swim in a tiny space, over and over and over.

I wanted to ask that bear's keeper, but never found any bear keepers, if the bear stopped to eat. It must have. Even bears driven insane by their captivity have to eat.

Around and around that elliptical pattern, all in the water. He would stick his face out of the water at the same point of each lap, to get air.  Polar ears gotta breath.

As I dreamt about that polar bear endlessly looping in a too-small-for-it pool, I suddenly was swimming myself in a dark pool, with some lights overhead. My pool was 25 yards  The pool I was in in my dreams was cold. Between the darkness and the cold, I was disoriented.

And a message came to me:  keep going.

Then, with a kind of pop, my dream ended and I realized I had been dreaming of myself swimming up and down, up and down. As I actually do just about every day. Only not in the dark. I swim in a clear pool, for realsies, during daylight.

Was that Como Zoo polar bear keeping going, seeing no other way forward but his elliptical spin around his very cold pool?

In real life, whenever I saw that pool, I could not look at that swimming polar bear after the first time. I sensed he had lost his mind, or whatever the bear equivalent of losing one's mind might be. His eyes showed torment and his perpetual motion all day seemed like desparation, as if he were trying to swim back to his real life.

I am trying to swim back to a life I never have lead, swimming to a state of love.

love ourselves

I hear whole world weeping in my heart

No wonder I have heart failure. I carry my burdens and the burdens of this world. We are all one.

the love ranger

The Love Ranger is a contemporary knight, riding a motorcycle. Say, the Road Warrior rides a motorcycle in the movies of that name. The first Road Warrior movie is the one that penetrated me. As these movies got more Hollywood, I lost interest. When Tina Turner held battles in a Thunderdome, I gave up on the franchise of Road Warriors.

My knight, the Love Ranger, wears protection like knights of old. He wears a kind of armor to protect himself if he has an accident. One is so vulnerable on a motorcycle so wise motorcyclists wear a kind of armor.

My knight seeks the Grail, which is love and community -- not some magical chalice, like many Hollywood movies suggest. The Grail is a community to act as a container for love and self reflection.

And the Golden Tunnel is definitely a Grail light, iluminating and brilliant.

the golden tunnel

"Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns, 

it calls me on and on across the universe." ~ John Lennon

This quote that I just came upon has reminded me of my golden tunnel. Sometimes, but not just now, I get into a space and energy I call 'the golden tunnel'. In the golden tunnel, it can seem that everything upon which my eyes, heart or mind light upon shimmers with dazzling, golden light.

I love the golden tunnel.  It calls me on and on to love and happiness.

we must risk delight

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.

one need not make sense

The City of Berkeley did an online funding campaign to buy 20,000 posters that read "Berkeley Stands United Against Hate". I put one on the front and one on the back of my mobility scooter. I reoved the front one quickly because it got all smushed and it bugged me. The one on the back is still on there. I tend to forget it is back there until someone, nearly always, with only one exception thus far, makes a supportive comment, cheering on Berkeley's rejection of hate.

Yesterday I had to take care of an errand at my local Social Security office (needed new card!). As anyone who ever enters a Social Security office know, even those with 'appointments', there is usually a long wait. I go into my SS office with a book, expecting the wait. And my expectations were met yesterday.

Some guy, who seemed homeless and who eventually convinced me he is mentally ill, rushed in. If you get a number at Social Security and you are not present when it is called, you lose that number and have to start over. This guy rushed in and shouted his relief that his number had not yet been called.

Then he pulled out an elaborate map of something that seemed related to recent political uproars here about free speech. His map, handmade, had circles with words, and lines connection some circles. He pulls it out to show the security guy, who politely acted like he was listening.

But the crazy guy thought he heard his number -- he did not -- so he put his map of Berkeley's politics and/or emotions away and rushed to a service window. When he discovered he had not been called, he came back to the waiting room and just happened to sit next to two very beautiful young women who are, I gradually learned, from Barcelona. These young women were polite to the guy but they also did what I gradually did:  they ignored him.

"You gals look too young to need Social Security", he said to the young women, loudly and pointing at them. They leaned into one another and seemed to glance around for clues on how they might behave.  I weighed in saying "Maybe they need a Social Security card."

And with that, he stopped haranguing them, for he had been haranguing them.

I wanted to say "You look very young to be receiving Social Security. Is it disability you get?" because he looked to be in his thirties, early forties tops. But I did not. While I was sure the security guy would have intervened if the crazy guy had become obstreperous towards me, I exercised some judgment and kept quit.

Then, crazy guy (hereinafter CG) noticed the "Berkeley Stands United Against Hate" sign and shouted to me "I thought the sign was going to read 'Berkeley Stands United against Truth' because it does, you know.

I offered no response. I have learned, through many attempts to befriend homeless people that the schizophrenics are often incoherent, often angry. I thought this guy was looking for someone to rant to and I did not want to attracted more of his attention.

But, hey, CG, fuck you for muttering that Berkeley doesn't are about the truth.

CG did go into a rant to no one in particular about how corrupt and too-liberal Berkeley is. He cited just about all the white supremacist talking points one hears these days.

Once again, I wanted to say something, such as "if the politicians people with your views succeed in their agenda, they will be eliminating disability, and if you are on disability (I am 100% sure he is), whatcha gonna do?" Once again, I kept these thoughts to myself.

I can feel great compassion for the mentally ill, especially the homeless ones. I don't think this guy was homeless because he had no stuff and he did not smell. But he was crazy. And since he was at SS office and his apparent youngish age for SS, he must be on disability. So he's one of the good mentally ill:  he has accepted his limitations and accepts government help.

So weird, but consistent with being mentally ill, that he spews white supremacist and nazi end social service rhetoric. But that's one of the benefits of being crazy:  one need not make sense.

sun-kissed and grateful

Today, I.so.did.not.want.to.go.swimming.  I had a big silent tantrum with myself, telling myself I didn't have to go and what is the harm is skipping a day. 

A couple years after living in CA, but when I had been swimming every single day but Christmas for most of those years, I became very depressed. On a visit to Seattle, I made an appoinmtnet with my borderline therapist at UW -- she even gave me a two hour slot, cause we had not talked in a couple years.  And she did not charge me for that appointment!

And she asked me the perfect intervention question:  "Can you think of something in your life that changed just before you became aware of being depressed?"

And, bingo, my depression lifted with my answer. My answer was, and this seems obvious in hindsight but Melanie's question triggered my awareness, "The thing that changed is I began to skip swimming a day here, a day there, then more."

Since then, and that was almost ten years ago, I remind myself of that exchange with Melanie every time I want to skip a day in the pool.  It usually works, getting me to swim that day.

This morning, even trying to nudge myself to the pool with Melanie's question did not move me.

And then this thought popped into my head "My friend who loves me spent $350 so you can go swimming every day. Get out there today as payback for her gift."

And, of course, for I would not be writing this if I had given into my inertia/resistance today, I went swimming.

I love swimming in any weather. Cold, dark rainy days are great, partly because the pool has almost no one in it. Lots of folks don't go swimming in the rain. Today, however, it is very sunny and, for the Bay Area, very hot. Hot and sunny are my all time favorite swim conditions.

It was your kind, generous gift that got me in the pool. My face feels lightly sun-kissed now.  I love how the sun can 'kiss' my skin and that kiss moves with me through the rest of the day.

and I love me.

And I love the friend who, for the third year in a row, gifted me my membership where I swim.

broken human souls

The stands out in contemporary life, is that there are so many broken human souls. Human souls who are struggling, who don’t know what to do with their lives, who keep asking themselves:  what should I do now, what does life want from me? People who start this or that but find no satisfaction therein. There are more and more such problematic personalities. How does this come about? This happens because there is something lacking in the way people are educated. We educate our children without awakening the forces that will help them to tackle life.  What helps to prepare people for life is the opportunity to imitate during the first seven years of life; that he can follow a worthy authority up to the fourteenth year; and that up to the twenty first year he learns to love in the right way –  because these forces can no longer be developed later. What human beings miss when certain forces that need to be developed during specific years of youth, are not awakened, turns them into problematic personalities. We need to understand that!

Source (German): Rudolf Steiner  -GA 296– Die Erziehungsfrage als soziale Frage – Dornach, August 10, 1919 (page 49)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger