A few days ago, I introduced myself to Lawrence, a guy who has been turning up with me and Larry at Starbucks. Lawrence is getting, or, at least, so he said, a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. I always ask people 'what in?' when they say they are getting a doctorate. When I was fresh out of college, I wanted to go to grad school in English lit. I wanted to be a writer and I thought that would advance my goal. My dad pressured me to go to law school instead, telling me lawyers did a lot of writing. I have met quite a lot of lawyers who fell for the same feint. Yes, I have a doctorate but it's in law. That's like going to trade school. I am mildly envious of everyone who gets to devote several years of their life to research, even if it is meaningless research. Always and forever, I guess, I want a real doctorate to call my own.
Last Friday, I took my mother's pearls to a jewelry store in Palo Alto to have them restrung. I had a lot of fun with Ruth, who let me try on all the strands of pearls they had in the store, helping me choose the length. Twenty inches, we decided. Now I have to decide what to do with my leftover three inches of pearls. Another salesperson helped a good-looking, blonde young man who was picking up a diamond ring. Ooh-la-la! Right away I wondered, "Has he popped the question? If not, what's his plan?" I didn't ask him, though, because I was having fun with Ruth. Then, however, I overheard him say he is getting a doctorate at Stanford. I had to know, "What are you studying?"
He said, "Mechanical engineering."
"Then you must know Lawrence, a guy from my coffee shop."
"I don't know anyone named Lawrence. I don't know any grad students in my department who have time for coffee shops. Maybe your Lawrence is more advanced."
"Lawrence would be hard to miss. He is very tall, very good-looking and he is African American. There can't be too many guys like that in any PhD program anywhere."
Diamond-ring guy paused, considered, and, shaking his head, said, "There are definitely no African Americans in Mechanical Engineering named Lawrence." I did not press this guy but I wanted to ask him if there was a tall, good-looking African American with a different name. I didn't want to put him on the spot.
Ah-ha! I couldn't wait to tell Larry. This suggested to me, and, of course, to Larry that this so-called Lawrence has assumed a fake identity for Starbucks. Larry and I are rubes in the world of coffeehouse living. We go around telling people our real names. Larry is not Larry's real name. I named him Larry because he reminds me of a guy I knew in college and I gave him a name before we ever actually spoke to each other and he has amiably agreed to let me call him Larry.
Larry and I have decided to give ourselves a do-over. We are going to choose fake Starbucks names to use in our slacker, coffeeshop lives.
And don't you worry. We'll keep an eye out for this so-called Lawrence. We'll find out his story. Or not!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
aging not for sissies
A now-departed, close friend of mine, Kathie, loved to say 'old age isn't for sissies'. At fifty three, I am not exactly old, but I am keenly conscious of my aging related to my health. For quite a long time now, I have followed my health care providers advice, eating carefully, exercising, losing a lot of weight. I've been thinking lately of stories I've read in the media of guys who were fitness fanatics their whole life and they keel over dead with seemingly no warning. There seems little hope for me to improve my long term health if lifelong fitness buffs can drop dead running a marathon. Fretting, fretting. Fretting does no good, of course. All I can do is what I can do, take the steps that are available to me and choose to be happy no matter what.
There is an arcade game that has been on my mind. The version that I am specifically recalling is called "Rats in the Hole". There are nine holes with mechanical 'rats' that keep popping up erratically. The object of the game is to take the big hammer and whack the rat during the instant its head pops up, catching it before the head goes back down the hole. Each landed blow yields a point. Win enough points and you get to play the game another time for free. I have also seen this game called "Beat the Gopher". And other goofy names. It is, in my humble opinion, a violent, ugly game. Perplexingly, it seems to be designed for very little children, to get them started in the world of arcade gaming. It is easy to play, easy to win and parents line up their little kids so they have some success in the game arcade. I met this game whiling away happy days in amusement parks with my kid and it was the first game she was ever able to win. Whack, whack, whack. What was I thinking when I paid to let her play such a nasty game, beating back rodents!
I sometimes feel like my life is a game of "Rats in the Hole", that I am futilely whacking away at random problems as they surface, landing a few blows in my efforts at self care, but, ultimately, just like slot machines in Vegas, the odds are stacked against me. I cannot alter the nature of this dissipative universe with my puny little efforts. What else can I do but persevere and choose to be happy?
Now I'm thinking of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Good Night". I aspire to step into each moment as gently as possible. I do not think anyone should rail against the dying of light. It is my aspiration to greet each moment with love. It is my aspiration to surrender, never rail. On and on.
There is an arcade game that has been on my mind. The version that I am specifically recalling is called "Rats in the Hole". There are nine holes with mechanical 'rats' that keep popping up erratically. The object of the game is to take the big hammer and whack the rat during the instant its head pops up, catching it before the head goes back down the hole. Each landed blow yields a point. Win enough points and you get to play the game another time for free. I have also seen this game called "Beat the Gopher". And other goofy names. It is, in my humble opinion, a violent, ugly game. Perplexingly, it seems to be designed for very little children, to get them started in the world of arcade gaming. It is easy to play, easy to win and parents line up their little kids so they have some success in the game arcade. I met this game whiling away happy days in amusement parks with my kid and it was the first game she was ever able to win. Whack, whack, whack. What was I thinking when I paid to let her play such a nasty game, beating back rodents!
I sometimes feel like my life is a game of "Rats in the Hole", that I am futilely whacking away at random problems as they surface, landing a few blows in my efforts at self care, but, ultimately, just like slot machines in Vegas, the odds are stacked against me. I cannot alter the nature of this dissipative universe with my puny little efforts. What else can I do but persevere and choose to be happy?
Now I'm thinking of Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Good Night". I aspire to step into each moment as gently as possible. I do not think anyone should rail against the dying of light. It is my aspiration to greet each moment with love. It is my aspiration to surrender, never rail. On and on.
Friday, December 08, 2006
the day before Thanksgiving
On the day before Thanksgiving, I took myself out to breakfast at a Mexican restaurant near my apartment. This was my version of a Thanksgiving meal.
Los Portales turned out to have mediocre huevos rancheros. Mediocre and over-priced. I was the only customer in there around 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
When I ordered and said 'Huevos rancheros", the guy waiting on me said "Hablas Espanol?" It tickled me that he could tell by the way I pronounced huevos rancheros that I was fluent. Salvador spoke to me in Spanish after that. He said that as soon as I walked into his restaurant he could see that I was 'buena gente', good people. The guy definitely has the hospitality gene. He was so eager that I like his food, his culture and, I think, him. He flattered me over and over. He kept coming over to talk to me. It was wonderful.
Salvador is on wife number five. He told me about each of his wives, all of his six children and all of his grandchildren. Each of his wives was beautiful, even the one gringa he married. He never had kids with the gringa. All of his daughters are beautiful, too, but he is most proud of his son. His son is as big and as handsome as his father, I was informed. And the son is so smart! But what does it matter? All his children are beautiful. It was so lovely sitting there in the tacky, plastic booth watching the love in his eyes as he spoke of his family. Salvador was looking forward to seeing his whole family the next day for Thanksgiving. His wife does the cooking at home.
As he chattered along, he also kept peppering me with questions about me and my life. Soon he knew that I have a daughter in the hospitality field, that I just moved here from Seattle and how I happened to speak Spanish so well. Usually I tell people it is because my first lover was a Mexican, because it is gets a fun reaction. I found myself telling Salvador the whole story, which is that I majored in Spanish in college, reading and writing in Spanish for four years and studying at both a Mexican university and one in Bogota, Colombia. I am fluent in Spanish for good reason.
Then Salvador asked me if I knew any songs in Spanish. This is the first time anyone ever asked me that. I told him that I knew a couple. He coaxed me to sing them. And I did. I sang two songs and all the verses I knew. I was pretty good.
Salvador excused himself to answer the phone as I finished my last song. He came back in a few minutes, singing to me as he approached, a long song with many verses. It was a beautiful, dolorous song that captures something about the Mexican spirit. "No valle la vida" he sang. 'You are crying when you are born and crying when you die'. He sang the song with a show of emotion and a deep, quiet power. As I recall it, I am wondering if I imagined the whole encounter. I tried to take down the words but Salvador stopped me. He said that next time I came in, he would give me a CD with the song.
I am going back there tomorrow, with my laptop. If Salvador doesn't have the CD, which would be just fine, I am going to write down all the words to his song. I am sure he will be willing to sing it again.
Los Portales turned out to have mediocre huevos rancheros. Mediocre and over-priced. I was the only customer in there around 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning.
When I ordered and said 'Huevos rancheros", the guy waiting on me said "Hablas Espanol?" It tickled me that he could tell by the way I pronounced huevos rancheros that I was fluent. Salvador spoke to me in Spanish after that. He said that as soon as I walked into his restaurant he could see that I was 'buena gente', good people. The guy definitely has the hospitality gene. He was so eager that I like his food, his culture and, I think, him. He flattered me over and over. He kept coming over to talk to me. It was wonderful.
Salvador is on wife number five. He told me about each of his wives, all of his six children and all of his grandchildren. Each of his wives was beautiful, even the one gringa he married. He never had kids with the gringa. All of his daughters are beautiful, too, but he is most proud of his son. His son is as big and as handsome as his father, I was informed. And the son is so smart! But what does it matter? All his children are beautiful. It was so lovely sitting there in the tacky, plastic booth watching the love in his eyes as he spoke of his family. Salvador was looking forward to seeing his whole family the next day for Thanksgiving. His wife does the cooking at home.
As he chattered along, he also kept peppering me with questions about me and my life. Soon he knew that I have a daughter in the hospitality field, that I just moved here from Seattle and how I happened to speak Spanish so well. Usually I tell people it is because my first lover was a Mexican, because it is gets a fun reaction. I found myself telling Salvador the whole story, which is that I majored in Spanish in college, reading and writing in Spanish for four years and studying at both a Mexican university and one in Bogota, Colombia. I am fluent in Spanish for good reason.
Then Salvador asked me if I knew any songs in Spanish. This is the first time anyone ever asked me that. I told him that I knew a couple. He coaxed me to sing them. And I did. I sang two songs and all the verses I knew. I was pretty good.
Salvador excused himself to answer the phone as I finished my last song. He came back in a few minutes, singing to me as he approached, a long song with many verses. It was a beautiful, dolorous song that captures something about the Mexican spirit. "No valle la vida" he sang. 'You are crying when you are born and crying when you die'. He sang the song with a show of emotion and a deep, quiet power. As I recall it, I am wondering if I imagined the whole encounter. I tried to take down the words but Salvador stopped me. He said that next time I came in, he would give me a CD with the song.
I am going back there tomorrow, with my laptop. If Salvador doesn't have the CD, which would be just fine, I am going to write down all the words to his song. I am sure he will be willing to sing it again.
thinking about food
When my daughter was still in my life, she had an eating disorder. Her relationship to food, to sustaining her body, to keep herself alive, was broken. Over the last few years that I had Katie in my life, I believe her eating disorder caused her quite a lot of suffering. To a lesser extent, it caused me quite a lot of grief as well. I realized, as I tried to please my daughter around the complexity of maintaining our shared lives, I realized that feeding one's child is central to the act of mothering. So how do you mother a child that does not wish to eat? Someday, maybe, I will write more about my perspective on anorexia-bulimia.
I mentioned Katie's eating disorder to give a little context to a comment she made to me once after she had gotten very sick. "People think anorexics hate food, Mom. The truth is, we love food. We think about food all the time. We want it all the time. It hurts all the time that we can't have it. We love food."
I have thought about Katie's statement that anorexics love food a lot. In the past few years, I have worked hard to change my eating so I can manage my diabetes. My success is measured once or twice a day by testing my blood glucose. Days, weeks and, even, months would go by in which I would carefully follow my nutritionist's guidelines but no matter how carefully I ate, my blood glucose levels stayed high. It was very hard to deny myself carbohydrates day in and day out only to read on my glucometer that my blood sugar was still high.
I did lots of exaggerated things to change that blood sugar. For one whole month in the summer of 2004, I swear I didn't eat any carbohydrates. Welll, there are carbs in dairy. Carbs, for readers who don't know, turn into sugar once they enter your blood stream. Fruits are carbs. Bread, pasta, pastry, starchy vegetables are carbs. My nutritionist told me that there are more carbohydrates in a bagel than I should ever eat in one single day, ever again.
I mentioned Katie's eating disorder to give a little context to a comment she made to me once after she had gotten very sick. "People think anorexics hate food, Mom. The truth is, we love food. We think about food all the time. We want it all the time. It hurts all the time that we can't have it. We love food."
I have thought about Katie's statement that anorexics love food a lot. In the past few years, I have worked hard to change my eating so I can manage my diabetes. My success is measured once or twice a day by testing my blood glucose. Days, weeks and, even, months would go by in which I would carefully follow my nutritionist's guidelines but no matter how carefully I ate, my blood glucose levels stayed high. It was very hard to deny myself carbohydrates day in and day out only to read on my glucometer that my blood sugar was still high.
I did lots of exaggerated things to change that blood sugar. For one whole month in the summer of 2004, I swear I didn't eat any carbohydrates. Welll, there are carbs in dairy. Carbs, for readers who don't know, turn into sugar once they enter your blood stream. Fruits are carbs. Bread, pasta, pastry, starchy vegetables are carbs. My nutritionist told me that there are more carbohydrates in a bagel than I should ever eat in one single day, ever again.
here's something on my mind
I saw Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo on Saturday. SFMOMA is doing a small Herzog retrospective in conjunction with the Kiefer show. I am so eager to expand my thinking about Kiefer that I show up for the Herzog films, although I show up with some reluctance.
About ten years ago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis did a comprehensive retrospective on Fassbinder in conjunction with the Joseph Beuys retrospective. Day after day, for most of a month, I spent my evenings with Fassbinder. Before each film, I would roam the Beuys exhibit. It was a highlight of my amateur, art-loving life.
I would love to capture the fineness of that Fassbinder experience. I fell in love, anew, with the medium of film.
What SFMOMA is doing with Herzog is just not the same. They are only showing a handful of Herzog films. And the Herzog movies are spread out. Showing up every couple of weeks does not have the same impact of daily movies.
I am wishing I knew an art historian or two that could help me think about the art world's fascination with Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. Kiefer and Richter are widely considered the two most important artists working today. Both German. It must be significant that 'the two most important artists working today' are German. Off the top of my head, I think, of course, that these artists are examining, on our collective behalf, the legacy of irrationality played out by Hitler. The stream in human consciousness that made a Hitler possible is a stream within us all. It is easy to assume that 'the two most important artists working today' are working through this stream on our behalf. Is this a hopeful thing, to examine genocide from WWII? Does it heal the stream?
I have a lot to think about. Maybe that's why I've been writing so little.
Fitzcarraldo.
It is an amazing movie about an opera lover, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (the locals call him Fitzcarraldo) seeking his fortune in old-time Peru so he can build an opera house and bring Caruso to perform. A crazy, Irish dreamer. Business men are making fortunes all around Fitzcarraldo. Watching Fitzcarraldo yearning to join their ranks made me think of how I imagine semen seeks to penetrate the egg. I imagine sperm rushing out of a man into a woman and then hurrying into her vagina, on autopilot, seeking the egg. What becomes of these determined cells when they do not find an egg? What becomes of their determination if they find an egg but do not penetrate? Today I am thinking I understand what becomes of semen unable to implant: male energy. Sperm unplanted.
Fitzcarraldo is a fascinating movie. Fitzcarraldo buys an old steamer ship and drags it up a mountain and down the other side to another river. To make the movie, Herzog literally dragged an old steamer ship up one side of a mountain and down the other. Is art a good enough reason to destroy part of a rain forest? Like failed sperm, Fitzcarraldo's ship does not achieve his goal. He is a failure once again. But Herzog achieved his goal; his movie was made. Did Herzog achieve penetration?
During the whole movie, I was thinking about some of the monumental art created by males. I was thinking of James Turrell's big desert project and Robert Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty'. Donald Judd's Texas town thing.
I tried to think about monumental art created by women but, so far, I can't think of any female artist that uses the earth on a large scale to reveal her vision.
Mount Rushmore (well, we won't call it art but it is a monument to the unplanted sperm, eh?). The pyramids were surely created to sate some male ego, not a female one. Skycrapers.
What makes an artist like Herzog want to drag a steamship up one side and down the other? What drives a guy like Turrell to devote many years of his life creating an installation that has him carving up the earth? Why wasn't the earth good enough the way it was? What leads a single human being to have enormous visions and then to set out creating them, even if it means altering huge chunks of the planet? What's going on?
What was going on inside Hitler when he began to nurture his ideas about genocide? What made it possible for him to ever think he had a right to make his ideas real? What makes any of us think we have a right to create the lives we wish to have? And where does the line between our individual self and the collective get drawn?
I love Fitzcarraldo's quest, to have an opera house in the jungle. What is more romantaic than opera in the jungle?! I love Herzog's quest, to create monumental art. I love Smithson's Spiral Jetty.
I think, however, that this male energy to conquer and dominate has to be checked. I don't think it is very far from dragging a steamship up the side of a mountain to make a movie to fighting wars for oil.
Well, I'm running out of time. . . have to get to the pool. . . but this is one of the things I'm thinking about this week while I cannot write.
I don't mean to imply that there is something wrong with this male energy. I am wondering about it, that's all. Maybe stilling this energy instead of relentlessly unleashing it into the world is what males need to do to serve the human community. Maybe everytime a proud male thinks of a gigantic project, he should go on a silent meditation retreat until he gets over it. Maybe the human race can't afford all the conquering anymore.
About ten years ago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis did a comprehensive retrospective on Fassbinder in conjunction with the Joseph Beuys retrospective. Day after day, for most of a month, I spent my evenings with Fassbinder. Before each film, I would roam the Beuys exhibit. It was a highlight of my amateur, art-loving life.
I would love to capture the fineness of that Fassbinder experience. I fell in love, anew, with the medium of film.
What SFMOMA is doing with Herzog is just not the same. They are only showing a handful of Herzog films. And the Herzog movies are spread out. Showing up every couple of weeks does not have the same impact of daily movies.
I am wishing I knew an art historian or two that could help me think about the art world's fascination with Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. Kiefer and Richter are widely considered the two most important artists working today. Both German. It must be significant that 'the two most important artists working today' are German. Off the top of my head, I think, of course, that these artists are examining, on our collective behalf, the legacy of irrationality played out by Hitler. The stream in human consciousness that made a Hitler possible is a stream within us all. It is easy to assume that 'the two most important artists working today' are working through this stream on our behalf. Is this a hopeful thing, to examine genocide from WWII? Does it heal the stream?
I have a lot to think about. Maybe that's why I've been writing so little.
Fitzcarraldo.
It is an amazing movie about an opera lover, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (the locals call him Fitzcarraldo) seeking his fortune in old-time Peru so he can build an opera house and bring Caruso to perform. A crazy, Irish dreamer. Business men are making fortunes all around Fitzcarraldo. Watching Fitzcarraldo yearning to join their ranks made me think of how I imagine semen seeks to penetrate the egg. I imagine sperm rushing out of a man into a woman and then hurrying into her vagina, on autopilot, seeking the egg. What becomes of these determined cells when they do not find an egg? What becomes of their determination if they find an egg but do not penetrate? Today I am thinking I understand what becomes of semen unable to implant: male energy. Sperm unplanted.
Fitzcarraldo is a fascinating movie. Fitzcarraldo buys an old steamer ship and drags it up a mountain and down the other side to another river. To make the movie, Herzog literally dragged an old steamer ship up one side of a mountain and down the other. Is art a good enough reason to destroy part of a rain forest? Like failed sperm, Fitzcarraldo's ship does not achieve his goal. He is a failure once again. But Herzog achieved his goal; his movie was made. Did Herzog achieve penetration?
During the whole movie, I was thinking about some of the monumental art created by males. I was thinking of James Turrell's big desert project and Robert Smithson's 'Spiral Jetty'. Donald Judd's Texas town thing.
I tried to think about monumental art created by women but, so far, I can't think of any female artist that uses the earth on a large scale to reveal her vision.
Mount Rushmore (well, we won't call it art but it is a monument to the unplanted sperm, eh?). The pyramids were surely created to sate some male ego, not a female one. Skycrapers.
What makes an artist like Herzog want to drag a steamship up one side and down the other? What drives a guy like Turrell to devote many years of his life creating an installation that has him carving up the earth? Why wasn't the earth good enough the way it was? What leads a single human being to have enormous visions and then to set out creating them, even if it means altering huge chunks of the planet? What's going on?
What was going on inside Hitler when he began to nurture his ideas about genocide? What made it possible for him to ever think he had a right to make his ideas real? What makes any of us think we have a right to create the lives we wish to have? And where does the line between our individual self and the collective get drawn?
I love Fitzcarraldo's quest, to have an opera house in the jungle. What is more romantaic than opera in the jungle?! I love Herzog's quest, to create monumental art. I love Smithson's Spiral Jetty.
I think, however, that this male energy to conquer and dominate has to be checked. I don't think it is very far from dragging a steamship up the side of a mountain to make a movie to fighting wars for oil.
Well, I'm running out of time. . . have to get to the pool. . . but this is one of the things I'm thinking about this week while I cannot write.
I don't mean to imply that there is something wrong with this male energy. I am wondering about it, that's all. Maybe stilling this energy instead of relentlessly unleashing it into the world is what males need to do to serve the human community. Maybe everytime a proud male thinks of a gigantic project, he should go on a silent meditation retreat until he gets over it. Maybe the human race can't afford all the conquering anymore.
upon awakening
I woke up thinking about the time I went out of town for a month, with my car sitting in Minneapolis. When I got back, it would not start. The college kid who lived across the ally from me came over to help. He sprinkled a little gas on my carburetor and the car started.
For several months, I have spent most of each day writing. When there is no keyboard at my fingertips, I am writing in my head most of the time.
On Saturday, someone said something to me and I have been unable to write since. The few lines in this post, for example, have been taking me a long time. Normally, words fly out of me faster than I can type and I type very fast.
I'm trying to sprinkle a little gas to get myself going.
For several months, I have spent most of each day writing. When there is no keyboard at my fingertips, I am writing in my head most of the time.
On Saturday, someone said something to me and I have been unable to write since. The few lines in this post, for example, have been taking me a long time. Normally, words fly out of me faster than I can type and I type very fast.
I'm trying to sprinkle a little gas to get myself going.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
a new character in my internal reality
I have to think this through, of course, but it came to me in the pool this morning that a new character has emerged inside of me. Wonder Man. I have to do my research, of course, but, off the top of my head, I am thinking "Why Wonder Woman but, to the best of my limited knowledge, no Wonder Man?"
Wonder Man is wonderful.
Wonder Man is wonderful.
Monday, December 04, 2006
an interesting dream
In the dream, I was saving a little girl from danger. The chase to save her was a bit chaotic.
Then the girl disappeared into a building, maybe some kind of temple. But it could have been a dance studio. She ran in and disappeared, like a rabbit into an unseen rabbit hole. I followed her into the space, I went from outside to inside, and I was in a cavernous room with a nice wooden floor. Most of the walls were all windows. One interior wall was solid. The sunlight streamed in softly, with no glare, very nice.
The little girl that I had been trying to save was gone but there was a miniature person in the room, a person the size of a large baby, maybe an eighteen-month-old. This person was Asian. At first, I admit, I thought it was a baby. While I still thought it was a baby, this creature rolled all over that wooden floor. The sounds it made seemed to be a combination of language and anxiety-laden shrieks. The small creature would roll, stop, utter a bunch of sounds that may or may not have been language, and then the creature would roll some more. Sometimes this being would also sail through the air, ping-ponging off the walls and ceiling, just as it rolled along the floor. Think three-dimensional zigzags. Red neon light rays seemed to hang in the air for a few moments after this creature has winged by so the room had a misty sense of faint red light rays, fading away gently.
The movement of this creature, especially the light rays, was fascinating. It was also vaguely frightening. What kind of creature was this? What had happened to the little girl I was saving? And why had I stumbled into this odd scene?
Finally, I sent word, by kything, to another woman to come see what I was seeing. By thinking thoughts, I could communicate to other people by simply directing my thoughts where I wanted them to go. Madeleine L'Engle called this kything in A Wrinkle in Time. I kyth a lot in my dream life. Also, I believe, in my real life, that our thoughts send out real vibration and that, more or less, we are all always sending thought vibrations out from ourselves to the world, to the people in our world. This thinking, of course, is not always done in language, especially in my dreams. In this culture, most people want to slip into the fallacy that all thoughts take place in language but, of course,they do not.
"I need for you to come see this," I told the other woman in my dream. This other woman was also trying to protect the little girl. "This is so weird. I need someone else to come see it." I had a painful yearning to have someone else see the odd Asian creature shrieking, bouncing and zinging through the room. I wished to be validated. I did not want to be alone in the weirdness.
This other woman came to me. As she approached, I said, in English, "You just had to see this," and I gestured towards the moving being. I did not want to be alone in the face of the odd zone I was in. I was so glad she came to be with me.
As I said 'You just had to see this", the creature came to an abrupt stop. We saw that it was a miniature man, not a baby. The man spoke to me. At first, the sounds he made were incomprehensible. Before I could signal that I did not understand, he began to speak to me again, this time in Spanish. In Spanish, he said, "You are in my domain now. You will speak Mandarin or Spanish or I will smite you." As this small being spoke, he seemed to tremble with power. For just an instant, I thought he was angry with me but as I focussed on the way his being seemed to vibrate, I realized that he was so powerful that power just coursed through him. He didn't turn on this power vibe: it was just who he was. When I had this realization, it soothed me. I know this dynamic well for I am a very powerful being, I quite often give off greater charge than I intend to. Sometimes I am just radiating power and people, of course, project their own meaning onto the power surge. I have never understood how to manage this aspect of my being. I wanted to capture this dream to remember a coupole of aspects of the dream: this is the main thing I wish to remember. I want to remember that the miniature Asian man's whole being trembled with his power. I want to remember the subtle, visceral reaction I had to it: at first, I felt fear, just for a brief moment. Then I realized he was not angry, just being his powerful self.
When he told me I could not speak in English in his domain, I began to speak to him in Spanish. We were not speaking with our voices. We carried on the whole conversation without using our physical voices. We spoke silently, sharing thoughts back and forth. In Spanish thoughts, I asked him if I could explain to the other woman that she could not speak in English. He said I had to explain it to her in Spanish. "She does not speak Spanish," I said. "That doesn't matter. You cannot use English."
Next, I turned to the woman and said, in broad, badly-accented Spanish, speaking with exaggeration, "Tu no habla English". . . I said English to make it sound American, instead of pronouncing it 'inglez', which is much softer than English. "Aqui", I said the Spanish word for 'here' broadly again, and I gestured to the ground, to indicate 'here', "No inglez aqui". She understood me well enough.
"Where is the little girl?" I asked the very little man, in Spanish, without speaking with my mouth. Silently. He was, perhaps, twenty inches tall.
"There is no little girl. She was a daemon I created to bring you here. I want to see you."
I wish I could go on writing and tell you why he wanted to see me but the dream ended.
I have seen this tiny, Asian man before in my dreams. A long time ago, perhaps twenty years ago, I met him.
In this other dream, I was walking on a rising slope, in a soft, hilly landscape. The area was lush and had an aura of abundance. Flower-covered meadows were all about. Small, beautiful homes doted the hills. Birds sang. Butterflies fluttered. The sun radiated. I was deeply happy in a fine, mellow way. With each breath I took, I seemed to breath in a rich contentment that emanated throughout my being. I was very happy.
As I came over the rise, I saw that there was a structure that looked out of place. The houses that doted my landscape were curved, blending into the roundness of nature, made out of clay. This structure at the top of the hill was wooden, with sharp corners. It looked ancient. The wood was weathered and gray. It looked as if a gentle breeze could break it apart, as if nothing held each piece of wood to the next. The little building was small, a few feet wide, a few feet high, with a door to one side. Next to the door was a tiny, Asian man. He was gesturing to me, beckoning me to enter the portal.
I was drawn to the man, not the portal itself. I gave no thought to going through the door. I was so attracted by the little man's energy that I would have done anything he asked me to do. I thought that when I crossed the threshold, this man and I would still be together and I would find out something about him.
Once I crossed the threshold, however, the ancient man and his ancient, wooden doorway disappeared. I was in another lush, verdant landscape but one very different than the soft, rolling hills I had just left. I was near the top of a very high mountain, with a full range of gigantic mountains unfurling as far as my eye could see. These mountains were sharp and craggy, with patches of green. Some of the mountains were obscured from view by layers of mists hanging in the air. I could see clusters of homes dotting this landscape, too, giving me a sense that this world was alive with people.
I was disoriented. One moment, I had been walking in a familiar, soothing landscape and the next moment I was in another world. I turned back to ask the little Asian man why he was showing me this but that was when I learned that both he and the wooden portal were gone. There I was, on a new path, with nothing to do but go forward.
In this morning's dream
Then the girl disappeared into a building, maybe some kind of temple. But it could have been a dance studio. She ran in and disappeared, like a rabbit into an unseen rabbit hole. I followed her into the space, I went from outside to inside, and I was in a cavernous room with a nice wooden floor. Most of the walls were all windows. One interior wall was solid. The sunlight streamed in softly, with no glare, very nice.
The little girl that I had been trying to save was gone but there was a miniature person in the room, a person the size of a large baby, maybe an eighteen-month-old. This person was Asian. At first, I admit, I thought it was a baby. While I still thought it was a baby, this creature rolled all over that wooden floor. The sounds it made seemed to be a combination of language and anxiety-laden shrieks. The small creature would roll, stop, utter a bunch of sounds that may or may not have been language, and then the creature would roll some more. Sometimes this being would also sail through the air, ping-ponging off the walls and ceiling, just as it rolled along the floor. Think three-dimensional zigzags. Red neon light rays seemed to hang in the air for a few moments after this creature has winged by so the room had a misty sense of faint red light rays, fading away gently.
The movement of this creature, especially the light rays, was fascinating. It was also vaguely frightening. What kind of creature was this? What had happened to the little girl I was saving? And why had I stumbled into this odd scene?
Finally, I sent word, by kything, to another woman to come see what I was seeing. By thinking thoughts, I could communicate to other people by simply directing my thoughts where I wanted them to go. Madeleine L'Engle called this kything in A Wrinkle in Time. I kyth a lot in my dream life. Also, I believe, in my real life, that our thoughts send out real vibration and that, more or less, we are all always sending thought vibrations out from ourselves to the world, to the people in our world. This thinking, of course, is not always done in language, especially in my dreams. In this culture, most people want to slip into the fallacy that all thoughts take place in language but, of course,they do not.
"I need for you to come see this," I told the other woman in my dream. This other woman was also trying to protect the little girl. "This is so weird. I need someone else to come see it." I had a painful yearning to have someone else see the odd Asian creature shrieking, bouncing and zinging through the room. I wished to be validated. I did not want to be alone in the weirdness.
This other woman came to me. As she approached, I said, in English, "You just had to see this," and I gestured towards the moving being. I did not want to be alone in the face of the odd zone I was in. I was so glad she came to be with me.
As I said 'You just had to see this", the creature came to an abrupt stop. We saw that it was a miniature man, not a baby. The man spoke to me. At first, the sounds he made were incomprehensible. Before I could signal that I did not understand, he began to speak to me again, this time in Spanish. In Spanish, he said, "You are in my domain now. You will speak Mandarin or Spanish or I will smite you." As this small being spoke, he seemed to tremble with power. For just an instant, I thought he was angry with me but as I focussed on the way his being seemed to vibrate, I realized that he was so powerful that power just coursed through him. He didn't turn on this power vibe: it was just who he was. When I had this realization, it soothed me. I know this dynamic well for I am a very powerful being, I quite often give off greater charge than I intend to. Sometimes I am just radiating power and people, of course, project their own meaning onto the power surge. I have never understood how to manage this aspect of my being. I wanted to capture this dream to remember a coupole of aspects of the dream: this is the main thing I wish to remember. I want to remember that the miniature Asian man's whole being trembled with his power. I want to remember the subtle, visceral reaction I had to it: at first, I felt fear, just for a brief moment. Then I realized he was not angry, just being his powerful self.
When he told me I could not speak in English in his domain, I began to speak to him in Spanish. We were not speaking with our voices. We carried on the whole conversation without using our physical voices. We spoke silently, sharing thoughts back and forth. In Spanish thoughts, I asked him if I could explain to the other woman that she could not speak in English. He said I had to explain it to her in Spanish. "She does not speak Spanish," I said. "That doesn't matter. You cannot use English."
Next, I turned to the woman and said, in broad, badly-accented Spanish, speaking with exaggeration, "Tu no habla English". . . I said English to make it sound American, instead of pronouncing it 'inglez', which is much softer than English. "Aqui", I said the Spanish word for 'here' broadly again, and I gestured to the ground, to indicate 'here', "No inglez aqui". She understood me well enough.
"Where is the little girl?" I asked the very little man, in Spanish, without speaking with my mouth. Silently. He was, perhaps, twenty inches tall.
"There is no little girl. She was a daemon I created to bring you here. I want to see you."
I wish I could go on writing and tell you why he wanted to see me but the dream ended.
I have seen this tiny, Asian man before in my dreams. A long time ago, perhaps twenty years ago, I met him.
In this other dream, I was walking on a rising slope, in a soft, hilly landscape. The area was lush and had an aura of abundance. Flower-covered meadows were all about. Small, beautiful homes doted the hills. Birds sang. Butterflies fluttered. The sun radiated. I was deeply happy in a fine, mellow way. With each breath I took, I seemed to breath in a rich contentment that emanated throughout my being. I was very happy.
As I came over the rise, I saw that there was a structure that looked out of place. The houses that doted my landscape were curved, blending into the roundness of nature, made out of clay. This structure at the top of the hill was wooden, with sharp corners. It looked ancient. The wood was weathered and gray. It looked as if a gentle breeze could break it apart, as if nothing held each piece of wood to the next. The little building was small, a few feet wide, a few feet high, with a door to one side. Next to the door was a tiny, Asian man. He was gesturing to me, beckoning me to enter the portal.
I was drawn to the man, not the portal itself. I gave no thought to going through the door. I was so attracted by the little man's energy that I would have done anything he asked me to do. I thought that when I crossed the threshold, this man and I would still be together and I would find out something about him.
Once I crossed the threshold, however, the ancient man and his ancient, wooden doorway disappeared. I was in another lush, verdant landscape but one very different than the soft, rolling hills I had just left. I was near the top of a very high mountain, with a full range of gigantic mountains unfurling as far as my eye could see. These mountains were sharp and craggy, with patches of green. Some of the mountains were obscured from view by layers of mists hanging in the air. I could see clusters of homes dotting this landscape, too, giving me a sense that this world was alive with people.
I was disoriented. One moment, I had been walking in a familiar, soothing landscape and the next moment I was in another world. I turned back to ask the little Asian man why he was showing me this but that was when I learned that both he and the wooden portal were gone. There I was, on a new path, with nothing to do but go forward.
In this morning's dream
Sunday, December 03, 2006
more and more
More and more, I am confused by everything. I feel cut off, on the outside. I am a spy in the house of normal. Yes, one might query, what is normal anyway? Indeed. I can tell you, only, that I am not normal, I am not whole, I am not like other people.
This time of year is most especially alienating to me.
Other people seem to have their lives, well, peopled with people. Conversations, luncheon parties, plans. But me, I spend my days alone, in a kind of silence. Things are never really silent here inside me because I am always talking to myself. But people rarely actually talk to me.
I have a lot of fine encounters with people at bustops and in coffeeshops. Why? Because this is where I intersect with other humans. I don't see people in their homes. I don't make dates to get together. I go along all year mostly content with being alone virtually all the time.
But this time of year, I begin to bleed. It starts, of course, with Thanksgiving. Everyone, yes, everyone who knows me, knows I have been alone on Thanksgiving since I lsot my daughter but no one has invited me to share that day with them. From my perspective, I feel like there is some magic elixir that other people know about that makes them worthy of face-to-face.
I have lots of friends who read my emails. And a very few who write them back to me. I have friends who read this blog. People love me.
But somehow, and I know I am to blame, I am always alone.
There is something about me that others can see that I do not see that says "Stay away from her, leave her alone, she is not an object for your attention of affection."
This time of year is most especially alienating to me.
Other people seem to have their lives, well, peopled with people. Conversations, luncheon parties, plans. But me, I spend my days alone, in a kind of silence. Things are never really silent here inside me because I am always talking to myself. But people rarely actually talk to me.
I have a lot of fine encounters with people at bustops and in coffeeshops. Why? Because this is where I intersect with other humans. I don't see people in their homes. I don't make dates to get together. I go along all year mostly content with being alone virtually all the time.
But this time of year, I begin to bleed. It starts, of course, with Thanksgiving. Everyone, yes, everyone who knows me, knows I have been alone on Thanksgiving since I lsot my daughter but no one has invited me to share that day with them. From my perspective, I feel like there is some magic elixir that other people know about that makes them worthy of face-to-face.
I have lots of friends who read my emails. And a very few who write them back to me. I have friends who read this blog. People love me.
But somehow, and I know I am to blame, I am always alone.
There is something about me that others can see that I do not see that says "Stay away from her, leave her alone, she is not an object for your attention of affection."
Monday, November 27, 2006
Ode to Things
I HAVE A CRAZY
Crazy love of things.
I like pliars,
and scisssors.
I love
cups
rings
and bowls -
not to speak, of course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the infinite
ly
small-
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.
Oh yes.
by Pablo Neruda
I did my undergraduate honors thesis on Neruda. I was a fiery feminist but it did not occur to me to do the thesis on a chick poet. Times have changed since 1975.
I love all things, too, by the way. All of them.
Crazy love of things.
I like pliars,
and scisssors.
I love
cups
rings
and bowls -
not to speak, of course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the infinite
ly
small-
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.
Oh yes.
by Pablo Neruda
I did my undergraduate honors thesis on Neruda. I was a fiery feminist but it did not occur to me to do the thesis on a chick poet. Times have changed since 1975.
I love all things, too, by the way. All of them.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
A Thanksgiving lesson or two
Holiday memories are dancing through me. This might be a good sign.
I'll tell a Thanksgiving story, since it's turkey time.
My daughter had never been around a baby before Isabelle joined our family. Katie was always crabbing when Isabelle was around. "Don't ever expect me to babysit!", Katie liked to exclaim, even though no one ever asked her to. "Rugrats, that's what babies are. I'm never going to have kids!"
Margaret and I always thought Katie was jealous of our adorable Isabelle. Katie did not remember that we had doted on her as much as we then doted on the Bibbster. We probably worshipped Katie even more attentively because she was the first niece. Katie was a fine, fine specimen of super deluxe babyhood, I assure you.
Until Isabelle came along, Katie was the only girl that my sister, my brother David and I adored unreservedly. Suddenly, she had to share our definitely doting hearts with the gorgeous plumpling/interloper, Isabelle Valentine.
Oh my gosh, I.V. was a stunning delight. She was also a super deluxe baby. All the babies in my clan are super deluxe babies. Isabelle was born with the most hair I've ever seen on a baby, dark and curly. Her eyes were big and blue. Nowadays, she is blonde but back then, she had thick, dark hair.
Isabelle openly adored Katie. In her little world, Katie was the only other child. I always thought that Isabelle noted that Katie was from her generation, not mine, that she and Katie had bonds of young femalehood or something. Katie was the closest person in size and age to Isabelle. Plus Katie was a teenager, cool and vivacious. Katie is a natural brunette with big brown eyes but at the time of this Thanksgiving, she kept it blonde with foiled highlights (that I paid for).
When Katie walked into the room, Isabelle only had eyes for her. When Katie would flounce up to the top story of our house, her private domain, Isabelle would follow her to the bottom of the curving stairwell and cry out for Katie to pay attention to her. We kept the stairwell blocked when Isabelle came over because otherwise, even though she could barely crawl, she intrepidly tried to climb up the stairs after her cousin. Our curved stairway was particularly treacherous because the stairs were open: our darling delight could have fallen.
At this time, Isabelle was not exactly talking. She was making lots of lovely sounds and all of us, even Katie, had no trouble carrying on intelligent conversation with Isabelle.
It was so adorable the way Isabelle adored her big cousin Katie. It was equally adorable how Katie believed she had no use for Isabelle.
Until Isbee's first Thanksgiving.
Isabelle was nine months old. There are many schools of thought on what is the most perfect age of a baby. My sister says that I think every age a kid can be is perfect, she says I have no objectivity in this regard. I confess to a slight bias about nine-month-olds although two-year-olds dazzle me, of course. And three year olds. Nine-month-olds are all roly-poly perfection. They light up if you smile at them. They interact verbally, albiet not so much with words. And they let you bury your face in their tummy so you can make them laugh and as they laugh, they tend to crab your hair with their chubby fists and wrap their plumply perfect legs around your head as well and when they laugh at what you are doing, you are in a perfect heaven.
Isabelle's first Thanksgiving had a tense beginning. My mother had come to Minneapolis to spend Christmas 'with the girls'. Margaret and I should have known better but we had little fantasies that our mother would morph into a good grandmother and gitchee-goo our daughters. We are still waiting for mom to pay attention to our kids and ourselves. as it happens. But for some reason, probably because Isabelle was new and my sister's fantasies about a real grandma were freshly minted, we had invited mom to spend Thanksgiving with us.
Mom arrived a couple days early. On the day before Thanksgiving, with Katie at school, Margaret, Isabelle and I took Grandma to The Mall of America, the ultimate shopping experience. We stopped at a Starbucks and while my sister was in gettingn our lattes, mom picked a fight with me. I don't remember what she said, just that I was blindsided by her cruelty. "Mom," I said calmly, "I am not going to rise to your bait. We are going to have a great day together."
When my sister returned to the car, Mom twisted around to face her in the backseat and said, "Your sister's mental illness is in full bloom today. Hoo-boy, it's going to be a rough day."
"What did you do, Therese?" asked Margaret. She handed round our coffees, questioning with her eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I didn't do anything and, as I just told Mom, we can put this behind us and have a good day together."
"Your sister is lying. She picked a fight with me when you weren't here and now she wants to wiggle out of it."
I was crying by now.
"Well," said Margaret, "I wasn't here but can't we just put whatever happened behind us and do as Tree says and just have a fine day together?"
Mom was temporarily defeated. I think this was the first time she had ever blindsided me and I had not freaked out. In the past, I would have responded to her verbal abuse with heaps of my own invectives. In the past, I would have been screaming insults and my sister would have believed mom when she said I was acting crazy. But when Margaret had gotten pregnant with Isabelle and the rest of our unhappy clan disowned her, I had invited her to come live in Minneapolis so I could help her and have her and the baby near me to love. We were still uncertain with each other, after a lifetime of seeing each other through our family's dysfunctional lens but by the time mom showed up for Isbee's first Thanksgiving, Margaret and I were friends, perhaps for the first time in our lives.
"Shall we go to the mall? Or go home?" I asked, dangling my keys in the air.
"Let's go to the mall. I think Isabelle wants to meet Santa Clause," said my sister, gurgling as she spoke and nuzzling our Bibbsey.
We made our way from St. Paul to the freeways leading to the great Mall of America. There was an awkward silence in the car. I can't speak for Margaret but I was praying that I would remain calm, that we would get past the unhappiness and, yes, still have a nice day.
Mom took a sip of her latte, which was piping hot. "What is this?!" she snarled, "This isn't what I asked for."
"Yes it is, Mom," said Margaret cheerfully. "I asked you if you wanted regular coffee or a latte and you said you wanted a latte. That's a latte."
"Well," mom said, still snarling. Her lip actually curled. "This is not my idea of coffee." Then she rolled down her window just a few inches and stuffed the cardboard coffee cup out the small opening. We were on the freeway, going at least fifty miles per hour. The hot coffee whipped back on the car, a light spray coming back into the car. Mostly on mom.
"Your sister is crazy, your sister is unwell, I can't drink that coffee, I can't spend the day with your crazy sister, I can't live another day being the mother of your crazy sister," mom spoke in a kind of chant, with hysteria rising in her tone. She went on and on, her claims grew wilder, as did her voice. She was hysterical. She started screaming, "Let me out of this car immediately. Stop this car right now."
It was horrible, especially since Isabelle, our darling, was in the backseat hearing it. I was still on a freeway, driving fast. I told mom I would pull over at the next exit, that I would take her back to my house or wherever she wanted to go.
She started trying to open the car door, as we zoomed along. She was twisting and turning and moaning. She was shrieking and with each breath she said something unkind about me. Only me.
When I came to an exit ramp, I pulled off, stopped the car and turned to Mom and I said, "We are in Bloomington, which is a long way from my house. You can get out if you want to but I will take you back to the house, Mom, if you would like me to."
"Take me back to the house."
I did. We all sat in a stony silence.
When we got to my house, I gave her a spare set of keys and told her to make herself at home, that I was not going to come in and listen to her abuse. This was literally the first time in my whole life that I did not get sucked in by mom's behavior. Until this day, after a life time of conditioning that started in my crib, I always believed her when she said her unhappiness was my fault. I had never seen her so hysterical. It seemed to me that when I remained calm, she flipped out, as if I had altered the nature of her reality or something. I was crying, hard, as I waited for everyone to get out of my car. "You really can't talk to me this way, Mom. It's not right. We both need time to calm down." This was also new behavior: normally, once mom and I got triggered, I would have been railing at her a long time, out of control, unable to compose myself, unable to stop ranting until I grew exhausted.
My sister took her daughter and rushed to her car, fleeing the scene.
It felt great to drop her off and pull away, to take care of myself instead of her. It was an early, unfamiliar taste of my personal power to feel calm while my mother was being mean to me.
I stayed away for just an hour or so. When I got back to my house, mom had packed and left. Both my sister and I were shocked, that she would be so disruptive with a holiday and the kids.
When mom got back to Chicago, she told her side of things to my brother Dave, who made several angry phone calls to yell at me for ruining his holiday. My sister got on the phone and told David it was not my fault but my mom has blamed me for every thing that ever went wrong ever in our entire family's history all my life and this was all David knew. He added to my suffering when he told me flatly that he did not believe me and he did not believe Margaret, that he knew that I had been my crazy, destructive self.
Margaret and Isabelle came over Thanksgiving morning, as we had planned. We readied our feast together. At first, I think, Margaret and I were acting cheerful and chipper for the kids benefit. In our family, until this point, every holiday was punctuated by some crazy scene like we had experienced the day before. I don't think either one of us had ever experienced simply going forward and forgetting the ugliness of the fight. As the day unfolded, as we settled into adoring Isabelle and Katie and fixing dinner, we realized we were having a very nice day.
Katie, in full-blown adolescence, stayed upstairs most of the day. But there was a balcony on her floor that overlooked most of our living space. She talked to us from time to time as she moved about her part of the house.
The smell of our meal filled the house. Our love for each other helped us push the ugliness away. We stopped clucking about what had happened with mom. David stopped calling to yell at me.
Katie finally came down, just before we sat down to dinner.
As she plopped onto the sofa, right next to Isabelle, she was all smiles. My Katie has the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. She wore braces for about four years and I loved her smile the best when she had braces. She would look all cool and sophisticated and then smile, revealing the braces and she looked young and vulnerable and not at all grown up. In my mind's eye, as I recall this day, Katie had the braces on but in real life, her braces were gone by the time she started high school. Anyway, she smiled my beautiful Katie's smile, as she slid next to her infant cousin.
Isabelle instantly began glombing onto Katie, patting her, cooing, seeking Katie's attention.
Katie looked around, questioningly.
"You don't know what to do, do you?" I said to her.
"What do you mean?" Katie said.
"You don't know what to do with a baby. Let me show you."
I came over to the girls, knelt down in front of Isabelle, pulled her down so she lay flat on the sofa and I buried my face in her tummy. Isabelle gurgled her delight and wrapped her hands and legs around my head. After a few moments, I pulled my head back and then buried it once more in Isabelle's tummy.
"You try it." I said to Katie. "I call this 'the tummy test'. Isbelle, can Katie test your tummy?" It is also possible to blow on the baby's tummy, right on their skin, if you really want to have fun.
And she did. Katie buried her face in Isabelle's tummy. This made both of the girls very happy. They played like this until we sat down to eat.
After dinner, I offered Katie another lesson. I showed her how to play peekaboo with a baby. Again, Katie played with Isabelle.
Isabelle was ecstatic. She had been worshipfully watching Katie for months and Katie had never before given her much attention.
Soon the girls, my lanky teenager and our crawling infant were romping through the house, with Katie calling "I'm going to get you!" and Isabelle squealing in flight but also delight. Over and over, Katie would 'get her', take her down on the floor, bury her face in her tummy and then start all over.
When Margaret and Isabelle left, Katie said, "You know, Mom, I always thought that people played with babies for the babies' sake. I found out today that people play with babies for themselves, not for the babies. That was so much fun."
My mother raised six children (I use the word 'raise' loosely) and I don't think she ever figured out that she could have fun with her kids, for her sake, not just ours.
I'll tell a Thanksgiving story, since it's turkey time.
My daughter had never been around a baby before Isabelle joined our family. Katie was always crabbing when Isabelle was around. "Don't ever expect me to babysit!", Katie liked to exclaim, even though no one ever asked her to. "Rugrats, that's what babies are. I'm never going to have kids!"
Margaret and I always thought Katie was jealous of our adorable Isabelle. Katie did not remember that we had doted on her as much as we then doted on the Bibbster. We probably worshipped Katie even more attentively because she was the first niece. Katie was a fine, fine specimen of super deluxe babyhood, I assure you.
Until Isabelle came along, Katie was the only girl that my sister, my brother David and I adored unreservedly. Suddenly, she had to share our definitely doting hearts with the gorgeous plumpling/interloper, Isabelle Valentine.
Oh my gosh, I.V. was a stunning delight. She was also a super deluxe baby. All the babies in my clan are super deluxe babies. Isabelle was born with the most hair I've ever seen on a baby, dark and curly. Her eyes were big and blue. Nowadays, she is blonde but back then, she had thick, dark hair.
Isabelle openly adored Katie. In her little world, Katie was the only other child. I always thought that Isabelle noted that Katie was from her generation, not mine, that she and Katie had bonds of young femalehood or something. Katie was the closest person in size and age to Isabelle. Plus Katie was a teenager, cool and vivacious. Katie is a natural brunette with big brown eyes but at the time of this Thanksgiving, she kept it blonde with foiled highlights (that I paid for).
When Katie walked into the room, Isabelle only had eyes for her. When Katie would flounce up to the top story of our house, her private domain, Isabelle would follow her to the bottom of the curving stairwell and cry out for Katie to pay attention to her. We kept the stairwell blocked when Isabelle came over because otherwise, even though she could barely crawl, she intrepidly tried to climb up the stairs after her cousin. Our curved stairway was particularly treacherous because the stairs were open: our darling delight could have fallen.
At this time, Isabelle was not exactly talking. She was making lots of lovely sounds and all of us, even Katie, had no trouble carrying on intelligent conversation with Isabelle.
It was so adorable the way Isabelle adored her big cousin Katie. It was equally adorable how Katie believed she had no use for Isabelle.
Until Isbee's first Thanksgiving.
Isabelle was nine months old. There are many schools of thought on what is the most perfect age of a baby. My sister says that I think every age a kid can be is perfect, she says I have no objectivity in this regard. I confess to a slight bias about nine-month-olds although two-year-olds dazzle me, of course. And three year olds. Nine-month-olds are all roly-poly perfection. They light up if you smile at them. They interact verbally, albiet not so much with words. And they let you bury your face in their tummy so you can make them laugh and as they laugh, they tend to crab your hair with their chubby fists and wrap their plumply perfect legs around your head as well and when they laugh at what you are doing, you are in a perfect heaven.
Isabelle's first Thanksgiving had a tense beginning. My mother had come to Minneapolis to spend Christmas 'with the girls'. Margaret and I should have known better but we had little fantasies that our mother would morph into a good grandmother and gitchee-goo our daughters. We are still waiting for mom to pay attention to our kids and ourselves. as it happens. But for some reason, probably because Isabelle was new and my sister's fantasies about a real grandma were freshly minted, we had invited mom to spend Thanksgiving with us.
Mom arrived a couple days early. On the day before Thanksgiving, with Katie at school, Margaret, Isabelle and I took Grandma to The Mall of America, the ultimate shopping experience. We stopped at a Starbucks and while my sister was in gettingn our lattes, mom picked a fight with me. I don't remember what she said, just that I was blindsided by her cruelty. "Mom," I said calmly, "I am not going to rise to your bait. We are going to have a great day together."
When my sister returned to the car, Mom twisted around to face her in the backseat and said, "Your sister's mental illness is in full bloom today. Hoo-boy, it's going to be a rough day."
"What did you do, Therese?" asked Margaret. She handed round our coffees, questioning with her eyes in the rearview mirror.
"I didn't do anything and, as I just told Mom, we can put this behind us and have a good day together."
"Your sister is lying. She picked a fight with me when you weren't here and now she wants to wiggle out of it."
I was crying by now.
"Well," said Margaret, "I wasn't here but can't we just put whatever happened behind us and do as Tree says and just have a fine day together?"
Mom was temporarily defeated. I think this was the first time she had ever blindsided me and I had not freaked out. In the past, I would have responded to her verbal abuse with heaps of my own invectives. In the past, I would have been screaming insults and my sister would have believed mom when she said I was acting crazy. But when Margaret had gotten pregnant with Isabelle and the rest of our unhappy clan disowned her, I had invited her to come live in Minneapolis so I could help her and have her and the baby near me to love. We were still uncertain with each other, after a lifetime of seeing each other through our family's dysfunctional lens but by the time mom showed up for Isbee's first Thanksgiving, Margaret and I were friends, perhaps for the first time in our lives.
"Shall we go to the mall? Or go home?" I asked, dangling my keys in the air.
"Let's go to the mall. I think Isabelle wants to meet Santa Clause," said my sister, gurgling as she spoke and nuzzling our Bibbsey.
We made our way from St. Paul to the freeways leading to the great Mall of America. There was an awkward silence in the car. I can't speak for Margaret but I was praying that I would remain calm, that we would get past the unhappiness and, yes, still have a nice day.
Mom took a sip of her latte, which was piping hot. "What is this?!" she snarled, "This isn't what I asked for."
"Yes it is, Mom," said Margaret cheerfully. "I asked you if you wanted regular coffee or a latte and you said you wanted a latte. That's a latte."
"Well," mom said, still snarling. Her lip actually curled. "This is not my idea of coffee." Then she rolled down her window just a few inches and stuffed the cardboard coffee cup out the small opening. We were on the freeway, going at least fifty miles per hour. The hot coffee whipped back on the car, a light spray coming back into the car. Mostly on mom.
"Your sister is crazy, your sister is unwell, I can't drink that coffee, I can't spend the day with your crazy sister, I can't live another day being the mother of your crazy sister," mom spoke in a kind of chant, with hysteria rising in her tone. She went on and on, her claims grew wilder, as did her voice. She was hysterical. She started screaming, "Let me out of this car immediately. Stop this car right now."
It was horrible, especially since Isabelle, our darling, was in the backseat hearing it. I was still on a freeway, driving fast. I told mom I would pull over at the next exit, that I would take her back to my house or wherever she wanted to go.
She started trying to open the car door, as we zoomed along. She was twisting and turning and moaning. She was shrieking and with each breath she said something unkind about me. Only me.
When I came to an exit ramp, I pulled off, stopped the car and turned to Mom and I said, "We are in Bloomington, which is a long way from my house. You can get out if you want to but I will take you back to the house, Mom, if you would like me to."
"Take me back to the house."
I did. We all sat in a stony silence.
When we got to my house, I gave her a spare set of keys and told her to make herself at home, that I was not going to come in and listen to her abuse. This was literally the first time in my whole life that I did not get sucked in by mom's behavior. Until this day, after a life time of conditioning that started in my crib, I always believed her when she said her unhappiness was my fault. I had never seen her so hysterical. It seemed to me that when I remained calm, she flipped out, as if I had altered the nature of her reality or something. I was crying, hard, as I waited for everyone to get out of my car. "You really can't talk to me this way, Mom. It's not right. We both need time to calm down." This was also new behavior: normally, once mom and I got triggered, I would have been railing at her a long time, out of control, unable to compose myself, unable to stop ranting until I grew exhausted.
My sister took her daughter and rushed to her car, fleeing the scene.
It felt great to drop her off and pull away, to take care of myself instead of her. It was an early, unfamiliar taste of my personal power to feel calm while my mother was being mean to me.
I stayed away for just an hour or so. When I got back to my house, mom had packed and left. Both my sister and I were shocked, that she would be so disruptive with a holiday and the kids.
When mom got back to Chicago, she told her side of things to my brother Dave, who made several angry phone calls to yell at me for ruining his holiday. My sister got on the phone and told David it was not my fault but my mom has blamed me for every thing that ever went wrong ever in our entire family's history all my life and this was all David knew. He added to my suffering when he told me flatly that he did not believe me and he did not believe Margaret, that he knew that I had been my crazy, destructive self.
Margaret and Isabelle came over Thanksgiving morning, as we had planned. We readied our feast together. At first, I think, Margaret and I were acting cheerful and chipper for the kids benefit. In our family, until this point, every holiday was punctuated by some crazy scene like we had experienced the day before. I don't think either one of us had ever experienced simply going forward and forgetting the ugliness of the fight. As the day unfolded, as we settled into adoring Isabelle and Katie and fixing dinner, we realized we were having a very nice day.
Katie, in full-blown adolescence, stayed upstairs most of the day. But there was a balcony on her floor that overlooked most of our living space. She talked to us from time to time as she moved about her part of the house.
The smell of our meal filled the house. Our love for each other helped us push the ugliness away. We stopped clucking about what had happened with mom. David stopped calling to yell at me.
Katie finally came down, just before we sat down to dinner.
As she plopped onto the sofa, right next to Isabelle, she was all smiles. My Katie has the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. She wore braces for about four years and I loved her smile the best when she had braces. She would look all cool and sophisticated and then smile, revealing the braces and she looked young and vulnerable and not at all grown up. In my mind's eye, as I recall this day, Katie had the braces on but in real life, her braces were gone by the time she started high school. Anyway, she smiled my beautiful Katie's smile, as she slid next to her infant cousin.
Isabelle instantly began glombing onto Katie, patting her, cooing, seeking Katie's attention.
Katie looked around, questioningly.
"You don't know what to do, do you?" I said to her.
"What do you mean?" Katie said.
"You don't know what to do with a baby. Let me show you."
I came over to the girls, knelt down in front of Isabelle, pulled her down so she lay flat on the sofa and I buried my face in her tummy. Isabelle gurgled her delight and wrapped her hands and legs around my head. After a few moments, I pulled my head back and then buried it once more in Isabelle's tummy.
"You try it." I said to Katie. "I call this 'the tummy test'. Isbelle, can Katie test your tummy?" It is also possible to blow on the baby's tummy, right on their skin, if you really want to have fun.
And she did. Katie buried her face in Isabelle's tummy. This made both of the girls very happy. They played like this until we sat down to eat.
After dinner, I offered Katie another lesson. I showed her how to play peekaboo with a baby. Again, Katie played with Isabelle.
Isabelle was ecstatic. She had been worshipfully watching Katie for months and Katie had never before given her much attention.
Soon the girls, my lanky teenager and our crawling infant were romping through the house, with Katie calling "I'm going to get you!" and Isabelle squealing in flight but also delight. Over and over, Katie would 'get her', take her down on the floor, bury her face in her tummy and then start all over.
When Margaret and Isabelle left, Katie said, "You know, Mom, I always thought that people played with babies for the babies' sake. I found out today that people play with babies for themselves, not for the babies. That was so much fun."
My mother raised six children (I use the word 'raise' loosely) and I don't think she ever figured out that she could have fun with her kids, for her sake, not just ours.
all wifi all the time
Here in Mountain View, there is free google wifi all the time, even here at the bus stop. How cool is that?!
I sheepishly confess that I am going to wait thirty minutes to take a bus home. It's a ten minute walk and I started to walk it but I should be in bed, not roaming the streets of this beautiful city. Usually I walk but I feel weirdly weak. Why am I writing all these little blog bits. It's like I have my primary relationship with my blog.
I sheepishly confess that I am going to wait thirty minutes to take a bus home. It's a ten minute walk and I started to walk it but I should be in bed, not roaming the streets of this beautiful city. Usually I walk but I feel weirdly weak. Why am I writing all these little blog bits. It's like I have my primary relationship with my blog.
I feel hungover
I feel like my body is full of bad chemicals. I am queasy, achey and sluggish. I overslept. Should I drag myself to the pool? I'm gonna but I won't push myself once I am in the water. If, after a few laps, I don't feel better, I'll stop.
I must be sick, which would explain why I sat around and cried as hard as I can cry for a long time last night. I haven't cried like that in a long time. My first thoughts upon awakening this morning were about giving away Katie's Samantha. "I can't give away Katie's Samantha," I said to myself. "She's gone," I next heard myself say, "It doesn't matter what you do with Samantha. Let them both go." Then I began this day crying.
No wonder I feel lousy.
Update: I went swimming and stopped after ten laps. I must have the flu. I feel awful.
I must be sick, which would explain why I sat around and cried as hard as I can cry for a long time last night. I haven't cried like that in a long time. My first thoughts upon awakening this morning were about giving away Katie's Samantha. "I can't give away Katie's Samantha," I said to myself. "She's gone," I next heard myself say, "It doesn't matter what you do with Samantha. Let them both go." Then I began this day crying.
No wonder I feel lousy.
Update: I went swimming and stopped after ten laps. I must have the flu. I feel awful.
Monday, November 20, 2006
back in the pool
It is cold and wet in Mountain View. A mist gives everything a dreamy aura. I pretend the day holds mysteries especially for me.
It is going to be so cold when I strip down to my swimsuit and plunge into the pool.
It is going to be so cold when I strip down to my swimsuit and plunge into the pool.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
to market to market
to market to market
to buy a fat pig
then home again, home again
jiggity jig
This little ditty from my childhood is clacking through my thoughts this morning as I head out to my weekly farmers market.
to buy a fat pig
then home again, home again
jiggity jig
This little ditty from my childhood is clacking through my thoughts this morning as I head out to my weekly farmers market.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Claude Debussy
I had an art buddy in law school. His name was Gary. Between college and law school, Gary had worked in a NY City gallery that represented Jasper Johns. He did not consider me an adequate art buddy: I didn't know anywhere near enough about art compared to him. But it was slim pickings in law school. So he and I spent a lot of time hanging out in galleries and museums. One of our favorite habits was to pour over art books at Gary's apartment (he lived in a bona fide penthouse overlooking downtown Minneapolis: Gary was rich) and Gary would give me lectures about art. He needed someone to tell all his knowledge to and I drank it thirstily.
While Gary delivered his lectures, he also played a lot of classical music. I fell in love with Debussy and Gary made fun of me, telling me Debussy was femmy, romantic music and I was a sap to love Debussy. He said the fact that I loved Debussy was a sign of how ignorant I was. I was a sap in those days because I should have told Gary to fuck off but I didn't because he was my art buddy. Ever since then, I've been ashamed of my dirty secret: I love Debussy's romantic smaltz. I longed to point out to Gary that he was the one who owned and played Debussy in the first place but I was shy and shame-based. Now that I am thinking back, I think Gary was an asshole but he hid it with with his erudition and urbanity.
Right now I am loading a bunch of Debussy onto my iPod. I can't wait to listen.
Gary owned a Jasper Johns. The penthouse, the Johns, the Debussy. . .
While Gary delivered his lectures, he also played a lot of classical music. I fell in love with Debussy and Gary made fun of me, telling me Debussy was femmy, romantic music and I was a sap to love Debussy. He said the fact that I loved Debussy was a sign of how ignorant I was. I was a sap in those days because I should have told Gary to fuck off but I didn't because he was my art buddy. Ever since then, I've been ashamed of my dirty secret: I love Debussy's romantic smaltz. I longed to point out to Gary that he was the one who owned and played Debussy in the first place but I was shy and shame-based. Now that I am thinking back, I think Gary was an asshole but he hid it with with his erudition and urbanity.
Right now I am loading a bunch of Debussy onto my iPod. I can't wait to listen.
Gary owned a Jasper Johns. The penthouse, the Johns, the Debussy. . .
we need darkness to emerge into order (out of chaos? or into?)
A story in today's Chronicle (this post originally written in Nov 2006), reprinted from the LATimes, by Thomas H. Maugh II caught my attention.
'Dark energy, the enigmatic force that is causing the universe to expand, has been present as a constant for at least 9 billion years, a finding that eliminates many theories' about it. This finding supports but does not prove Einstein's idea of a cosmological constant that explains the balance between the expansion of the universe and the gravitational pull of stars and other matter. He theorized that there is a repulsive form of gravity (dark energy)that exists in space. Einstein abandoned his theory but it got renewed interest when dark energy was discovered in the 1990's.
. . . Dark energy is analogous to dark matter in that scientists have extreme difficulty seeing it and measuring it. They can only infer its presence primarily by measuring its effects on visible matter. Dark energy accounts for 70% of the total energy in the universe, scientists believe. (Wow.)
There are three views of dark energy, the article said. One is similar to Einstein's cosmological constant (don't you just love that phrase: cosmological constant!), that dark energy remains a constant in the cosmos. The second theory posits that dark energy is similar to electromagnetic fields and proposes that its strength changes. The third theory is that we don't understand gravity yet.
If we aspire to think clearly, it is possible to see beyond the phrase 'dark energy' and see that these scientists are talking about a beautiful phenomenon in our cosmos. Shakespeare wrote, somewhere, 'there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so'. This line has always stayed with me because I believe it deeply. I read the article I am writing about on my way to SFMOMA today. I read it before I overheard the tour guide say that Anselm Kiefer's work is full of darkness. I didn't have time before the Herzog movie to mention the article. I walked into the museum thinking about the great beauty in Kiefer's darkness only to hear that docent say that there was little beauty in Kiefer's work. She actually said scholars have written that there is little beauty in Kiefer's work. Gasp. Here I am drowning in the beauty of his vision, if not the physical beauty of his work (his work is visually breathtaking).
For me, Kiefer's most beautiful works are his darkest ones. I mentioned last week that I especially love his piece "The Hierarchy of Angels". I wrote about my inner experience but I did not describe the piece. It happens to be the one work in the Kiefer retrospective that I have spent a lot of time with so I have had a chance to develop an inner relationship with it. Kiefer's "The Hierarchy of Angels" belongs to Walker Art Center and it was on view throughout all the years I was a tour guide at the Walker. I didn't usually use the piece in my tours, unless it was an adult tour, because at first glance, the piece seems to represent Armageddon, complete desruction of civilization. It is the title of the piece that reveals its light. The piece itself is, especially at first glance, very dark. It is a gigantic canvas, darkly abstract. In its abstraction it gives off an aura of great destruction. If one wants to project post-WWII Germany's struggle with the legacy of Nazi-ism (sp?), the piece is very dark. There is what appears to be an old propeller from an airplane. When you look at the rocks scattered on the canvas, it is possible to see these rocks as bombs dropped by the plane. If you think the rocks are bombs and the propeller is a war plane (this is an entirely reasonable reaction to have), then the piece is about a past or, perhaps, a future armageddon.
One of the many perks of being a tour guide was that I could slip into the museum before it was open to the public, under the guise of finalizing details for a tour, and enjoy the art in silence and privacy. There was a bench in front of 'Hierarchy of Angels' when it was on display at the Walker and I would often sit in front of it and go up and down the hierarchy of angels. Not many Americans know the full hierarchy of angels, although some of the hierarchies are referenced in the great hymn by Christina Rosetti called 'In The Bleak Midwinter". She does not mention all the hierarchies but she mentions several, which is more than most people do. Most anthroposophists have studied the hierarchy of angels because Steiner wrote about them. Being a serious student of Steiner, and vividly aware that I needed angels, or supersensible beings, to help me get through this life, I was magnetically drawn to Kiefer's 'Hierarchy of Angels".
We still have to deal with the title Kiefer has chosen for the piece. He portrays dark energy with the propeller, the rocks, the sense of destruction but he has called this piece "The Hierarchy of Angels". Each rock, which might still be seen as a bomb, is labeled with one of the hierarchies. What if Kiefer is suggesting that beings are spread out in the universe, spiraling through the heavens? What if he is suggesting that these little beings were 'dropped' here and there by, what, what force might that be? If Kiefer is suggesting that beings were dropped here and there, not just any beings but the entire hierarchy of angels, well, Kiefer's vision is not dark, not at all. And we cannot ignore the title. Surely angels are light. He titled this dark, visually grim piece with an uplifting, light-filled name: angels! And he paid homage to the hierarchy of angels. That's a lot of light piercing a dark cosmos, the whole hierarchy of angels.
If we know anything about the hierarchy of angels, as it was originally written by Dionysius the Areopagite in the fifth century , we know that the man who first wrote about the nine hierarchies of angels believed that the angels moved through the cosmos in a kind of spiral. Then the propeller becomes, perhaps, the dark energy that moves the cosmos in its spiral, moving the hierarchies of beings that are in the universe to help its destiny unfold. The name of the piece lifts it out of dark energy and into the inherent radiance of the cosmos. Thus it is absolutely not a dark piece.
If the scientists in the newspaper article that caught my attention today and Kiefer are correct, then there is more dark energy in the cosmos we find ourselves in than there is light energy. Does this portend darkness for the known universe? Only if we associate the word dark with evil. It is my belief that any darkness, be it the dark energy embedded in the cosmos and studied by astrophysicists or the darkness in human hearts that lead to things like the Holocaust, can always be transformed. No, I take that back. I go further. I believe all darkness will always be transformed. Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Dark energy is good. It is that simple.
I don't know where I am going with this. I am lonely for companions in my journey. My individual cosmos is not peopled with very many people. I have to find my thinking partners in artists I will never meet. Nobody I know (yet: he is coming, I affirm my man will appear) has time to listen to my thoughts or hang out in art museums with me watching old movies or, even, reading all the stuff I'm writing in this blog. The blog is a tiny representation of the writing I am doing daily.
SFMOMA mounted a major retrospective of Anselm Kiefer's work just as I moved to CA. I went to the show at least once a week the whole time it was up. It was gobsmacker. I literally spent several hours in the galleries every time I went and I have made it a lifelong practice to never spend more than an hour at an art museum. I go to museums frequent, take in a few pieces deep into my being. I can only hold so much. I am unlikely to ever see a major Kiefer retrospective again so I soaked it up as best I could while I had the chance.
Out of all the artists' whose work I have loved, I love his the most. I knew, before that Kiefer retrospective, that the human eye literally needs darkness in order to be able to see. What we actually 'see' is the contrast between light and dark. Without darkness, we see nothing. I dove into the surface of darkness in Kiefer's work because his larger message is that light is what matters. His work fits the Jack Gardner poem I have left on my blog, the one I have just shut down but for about six posts. And so does the moving story in the Heather McHugh poem I left up, the one about the man burned with an iron mask on his face so he could not speak. The poem is on the blog, you can read it. The Catholic Church burned a man to death because he did not beleive what they told him to believe. And poetry, the poem reminds us, is what that burned-to-death man was thinking but could not say while he burned.
There is so much darkness around us. I am lost in darkness now, as anyone who actually cares about me knows. I am lost and no one can help me. I have to find light, or not find it. And that is basically the essence of Anselm Kiefer's work, certainly the essence of Gardner's 'Brief for the Defense' (still here on this blog) and McHugh's moving poem that I have left on this blog. Read those poems. Attentively. Please.
'Dark energy, the enigmatic force that is causing the universe to expand, has been present as a constant for at least 9 billion years, a finding that eliminates many theories' about it. This finding supports but does not prove Einstein's idea of a cosmological constant that explains the balance between the expansion of the universe and the gravitational pull of stars and other matter. He theorized that there is a repulsive form of gravity (dark energy)that exists in space. Einstein abandoned his theory but it got renewed interest when dark energy was discovered in the 1990's.
. . . Dark energy is analogous to dark matter in that scientists have extreme difficulty seeing it and measuring it. They can only infer its presence primarily by measuring its effects on visible matter. Dark energy accounts for 70% of the total energy in the universe, scientists believe. (Wow.)
There are three views of dark energy, the article said. One is similar to Einstein's cosmological constant (don't you just love that phrase: cosmological constant!), that dark energy remains a constant in the cosmos. The second theory posits that dark energy is similar to electromagnetic fields and proposes that its strength changes. The third theory is that we don't understand gravity yet.
If we aspire to think clearly, it is possible to see beyond the phrase 'dark energy' and see that these scientists are talking about a beautiful phenomenon in our cosmos. Shakespeare wrote, somewhere, 'there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so'. This line has always stayed with me because I believe it deeply. I read the article I am writing about on my way to SFMOMA today. I read it before I overheard the tour guide say that Anselm Kiefer's work is full of darkness. I didn't have time before the Herzog movie to mention the article. I walked into the museum thinking about the great beauty in Kiefer's darkness only to hear that docent say that there was little beauty in Kiefer's work. She actually said scholars have written that there is little beauty in Kiefer's work. Gasp. Here I am drowning in the beauty of his vision, if not the physical beauty of his work (his work is visually breathtaking).
For me, Kiefer's most beautiful works are his darkest ones. I mentioned last week that I especially love his piece "The Hierarchy of Angels". I wrote about my inner experience but I did not describe the piece. It happens to be the one work in the Kiefer retrospective that I have spent a lot of time with so I have had a chance to develop an inner relationship with it. Kiefer's "The Hierarchy of Angels" belongs to Walker Art Center and it was on view throughout all the years I was a tour guide at the Walker. I didn't usually use the piece in my tours, unless it was an adult tour, because at first glance, the piece seems to represent Armageddon, complete desruction of civilization. It is the title of the piece that reveals its light. The piece itself is, especially at first glance, very dark. It is a gigantic canvas, darkly abstract. In its abstraction it gives off an aura of great destruction. If one wants to project post-WWII Germany's struggle with the legacy of Nazi-ism (sp?), the piece is very dark. There is what appears to be an old propeller from an airplane. When you look at the rocks scattered on the canvas, it is possible to see these rocks as bombs dropped by the plane. If you think the rocks are bombs and the propeller is a war plane (this is an entirely reasonable reaction to have), then the piece is about a past or, perhaps, a future armageddon.
One of the many perks of being a tour guide was that I could slip into the museum before it was open to the public, under the guise of finalizing details for a tour, and enjoy the art in silence and privacy. There was a bench in front of 'Hierarchy of Angels' when it was on display at the Walker and I would often sit in front of it and go up and down the hierarchy of angels. Not many Americans know the full hierarchy of angels, although some of the hierarchies are referenced in the great hymn by Christina Rosetti called 'In The Bleak Midwinter". She does not mention all the hierarchies but she mentions several, which is more than most people do. Most anthroposophists have studied the hierarchy of angels because Steiner wrote about them. Being a serious student of Steiner, and vividly aware that I needed angels, or supersensible beings, to help me get through this life, I was magnetically drawn to Kiefer's 'Hierarchy of Angels".
We still have to deal with the title Kiefer has chosen for the piece. He portrays dark energy with the propeller, the rocks, the sense of destruction but he has called this piece "The Hierarchy of Angels". Each rock, which might still be seen as a bomb, is labeled with one of the hierarchies. What if Kiefer is suggesting that beings are spread out in the universe, spiraling through the heavens? What if he is suggesting that these little beings were 'dropped' here and there by, what, what force might that be? If Kiefer is suggesting that beings were dropped here and there, not just any beings but the entire hierarchy of angels, well, Kiefer's vision is not dark, not at all. And we cannot ignore the title. Surely angels are light. He titled this dark, visually grim piece with an uplifting, light-filled name: angels! And he paid homage to the hierarchy of angels. That's a lot of light piercing a dark cosmos, the whole hierarchy of angels.
If we know anything about the hierarchy of angels, as it was originally written by Dionysius the Areopagite in the fifth century , we know that the man who first wrote about the nine hierarchies of angels believed that the angels moved through the cosmos in a kind of spiral. Then the propeller becomes, perhaps, the dark energy that moves the cosmos in its spiral, moving the hierarchies of beings that are in the universe to help its destiny unfold. The name of the piece lifts it out of dark energy and into the inherent radiance of the cosmos. Thus it is absolutely not a dark piece.
If the scientists in the newspaper article that caught my attention today and Kiefer are correct, then there is more dark energy in the cosmos we find ourselves in than there is light energy. Does this portend darkness for the known universe? Only if we associate the word dark with evil. It is my belief that any darkness, be it the dark energy embedded in the cosmos and studied by astrophysicists or the darkness in human hearts that lead to things like the Holocaust, can always be transformed. No, I take that back. I go further. I believe all darkness will always be transformed. Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Dark energy is good. It is that simple.
I don't know where I am going with this. I am lonely for companions in my journey. My individual cosmos is not peopled with very many people. I have to find my thinking partners in artists I will never meet. Nobody I know (yet: he is coming, I affirm my man will appear) has time to listen to my thoughts or hang out in art museums with me watching old movies or, even, reading all the stuff I'm writing in this blog. The blog is a tiny representation of the writing I am doing daily.
SFMOMA mounted a major retrospective of Anselm Kiefer's work just as I moved to CA. I went to the show at least once a week the whole time it was up. It was gobsmacker. I literally spent several hours in the galleries every time I went and I have made it a lifelong practice to never spend more than an hour at an art museum. I go to museums frequent, take in a few pieces deep into my being. I can only hold so much. I am unlikely to ever see a major Kiefer retrospective again so I soaked it up as best I could while I had the chance.
Out of all the artists' whose work I have loved, I love his the most. I knew, before that Kiefer retrospective, that the human eye literally needs darkness in order to be able to see. What we actually 'see' is the contrast between light and dark. Without darkness, we see nothing. I dove into the surface of darkness in Kiefer's work because his larger message is that light is what matters. His work fits the Jack Gardner poem I have left on my blog, the one I have just shut down but for about six posts. And so does the moving story in the Heather McHugh poem I left up, the one about the man burned with an iron mask on his face so he could not speak. The poem is on the blog, you can read it. The Catholic Church burned a man to death because he did not beleive what they told him to believe. And poetry, the poem reminds us, is what that burned-to-death man was thinking but could not say while he burned.
There is so much darkness around us. I am lost in darkness now, as anyone who actually cares about me knows. I am lost and no one can help me. I have to find light, or not find it. And that is basically the essence of Anselm Kiefer's work, certainly the essence of Gardner's 'Brief for the Defense' (still here on this blog) and McHugh's moving poem that I have left on this blog. Read those poems. Attentively. Please.
I missed my star
A Ritual to Read To Each Other
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
—William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
—William Stafford
It was an awesome movie
Stroszek.
I'm not sure how to spell it but wow.
The film is 'famous' for its closing scene of a dancing chicken. The dancing chicken is worth the price of admission, tis true.
But.
Wow. Gosh. Golly. Jeepers.
There is an amazing scene in which a doctor takes the main character to the preemie department in a hospital. He picks up a brawling, naked, red infant that actually looks like a bona fide premature infant. Gosh, how was Herzog allowed to film such a new human being, screaming at life?! I bet it was a new baby but not an actual preemie. The doctor is trying to encourage the leading man and he picks up the crying baby by its hands, using only his two forefingers. The baby grasps firmly on the doctor's forefingers, screaming nonstop. "Look," says the doctor, "This baby is fighting for its life. Look how it hangs on. You can hang on too." Watching that little baby, screaming so hard, turning itself so red, I had a faint perception that I was watching something other than a human, that I was watching "A BEING" adrift in this cosmos. I had a sense that we are all odd creatures like the ones in the bar scene of Star Wars or like the dancing chicken, perhaps. We are all vulnerable, tender and hanging on.
I cried. Tears of joy. How fine to be a creature that can create and/or behold the razzle, dazzle greatness of life. The art of the scene with the premature baby was a fine as art ever gets.
The little baby reminded me of visiting a college boyfriend who had had an emergency appendectomy. He was bored in the hospital and I said "Let's go look at the babies." We did. At first Bob said "We can't do that, that's just for the people who have babies." I said, "Let's go and find out" and to out delight, we were allowed to look at the babies. You might think the new babies are the main show but, speaking for myself, I also got deep pleasure watching the new relatives adoring the new babies. The whole show was awesome.
I was unsure about Herzog before today but on my way out, I bought a ticket to see Fitzcarraldo next.
I am happy once more.
I'm not sure how to spell it but wow.
The film is 'famous' for its closing scene of a dancing chicken. The dancing chicken is worth the price of admission, tis true.
But.
Wow. Gosh. Golly. Jeepers.
There is an amazing scene in which a doctor takes the main character to the preemie department in a hospital. He picks up a brawling, naked, red infant that actually looks like a bona fide premature infant. Gosh, how was Herzog allowed to film such a new human being, screaming at life?! I bet it was a new baby but not an actual preemie. The doctor is trying to encourage the leading man and he picks up the crying baby by its hands, using only his two forefingers. The baby grasps firmly on the doctor's forefingers, screaming nonstop. "Look," says the doctor, "This baby is fighting for its life. Look how it hangs on. You can hang on too." Watching that little baby, screaming so hard, turning itself so red, I had a faint perception that I was watching something other than a human, that I was watching "A BEING" adrift in this cosmos. I had a sense that we are all odd creatures like the ones in the bar scene of Star Wars or like the dancing chicken, perhaps. We are all vulnerable, tender and hanging on.
I cried. Tears of joy. How fine to be a creature that can create and/or behold the razzle, dazzle greatness of life. The art of the scene with the premature baby was a fine as art ever gets.
The little baby reminded me of visiting a college boyfriend who had had an emergency appendectomy. He was bored in the hospital and I said "Let's go look at the babies." We did. At first Bob said "We can't do that, that's just for the people who have babies." I said, "Let's go and find out" and to out delight, we were allowed to look at the babies. You might think the new babies are the main show but, speaking for myself, I also got deep pleasure watching the new relatives adoring the new babies. The whole show was awesome.
I was unsure about Herzog before today but on my way out, I bought a ticket to see Fitzcarraldo next.
I am happy once more.
Live from SFMOMA
I am waiting for another Werner Herzog movie. I don't even know the name of it but I am trying to see all the Herzog movies which are being shown in conjunction with the Kiefer show. The choice of Herzog was all wrong for Kiefer. A Fassbinder retrospective would have been better. Actually, it should have been Wim Wender. Or, better still, a careful selection of German filmmakers. Herzog bores me, really, but I can't to to Kiefer movies so I keep coming, waiting for something to be revealed.
But I digress.
I opened my laptop to write about something that just happened in the museum. I was walking through the Kiefer show and came upon a tour lead (sp?) by a museum docent (I assume). I stopped to listen to her. Aghast, I listened to her talk about how Kiefer is widely regarded as a very dark artist, that his work is all about the German legacy of Hitler and there is little beauty in his work. From a museum docent?! Presumably, the museum trained her,presenting her with the museum curator's view of Kiefer. It is now an hour later and I am still sputtering inwardly.
Kiefer about darkness?! No, no, no, he is about beholding the everpresent light in the darkness, which is very beautiful.
Then this docent said "Kiefer has said he does not understand beauty. I just read a quote about beauty that I will leave you with since I can't leave you with Kiefer's thoughts on beauty. "Beauty is something that grabs the attention, touches the spirit and confuses everything."
I asked her to cite the author. She didn't remember who said it. Then I said "Kiefer has grabbed my attention, touched my spirit and left me less confused."
I hope this Herzog movie is better than the one I saw last Saturday.
On a bright note, I got to watch the Phil Collins movie all the way through. I am in love with all peoples. Everyone is so tender, vulnerable, fragile and striving towards light. I kept imagining that myself getting up in the darkened gallery where the Collins' film runs in a continuous loop and dancing with the British rock music. I kept wishing I had a friend with me who would get up and dance with me. There is absolutely no reason for people to note dance in there. I'll tell you who I really wanted to dance with: my daughter around age ten.
But I digress.
I opened my laptop to write about something that just happened in the museum. I was walking through the Kiefer show and came upon a tour lead (sp?) by a museum docent (I assume). I stopped to listen to her. Aghast, I listened to her talk about how Kiefer is widely regarded as a very dark artist, that his work is all about the German legacy of Hitler and there is little beauty in his work. From a museum docent?! Presumably, the museum trained her,presenting her with the museum curator's view of Kiefer. It is now an hour later and I am still sputtering inwardly.
Kiefer about darkness?! No, no, no, he is about beholding the everpresent light in the darkness, which is very beautiful.
Then this docent said "Kiefer has said he does not understand beauty. I just read a quote about beauty that I will leave you with since I can't leave you with Kiefer's thoughts on beauty. "Beauty is something that grabs the attention, touches the spirit and confuses everything."
I asked her to cite the author. She didn't remember who said it. Then I said "Kiefer has grabbed my attention, touched my spirit and left me less confused."
I hope this Herzog movie is better than the one I saw last Saturday.
On a bright note, I got to watch the Phil Collins movie all the way through. I am in love with all peoples. Everyone is so tender, vulnerable, fragile and striving towards light. I kept imagining that myself getting up in the darkened gallery where the Collins' film runs in a continuous loop and dancing with the British rock music. I kept wishing I had a friend with me who would get up and dance with me. There is absolutely no reason for people to note dance in there. I'll tell you who I really wanted to dance with: my daughter around age ten.
