the alien bar scene in Star Wars & a prayer to my angel

I have not seen all the Star Wars movies. I resisted seeing any of them, even the first.   I am not overly fond of science fiction.  I did, eventually, watch Star Wars, primarily because I kept hearing so many cultural references to it, years after the first movie came out, and I wanted to get the references.

My favorite scene is the bar scene on a planet that is not Earth. Hans Solo has landed to fuel up his space ship but also to make a vital connection. He goes to a bar known for making connections. In this bar are all kinds of beings that do not look like humans. To Hans, all the odd beings just look normal to him.

And the main point of the scene, for me, is that he is trying to make a connection to advance on his path, to get where he thinks he needs to go.

I feel like I am trapped in a bad bar scene, or waystation, waiting for my life to move forward but not moving at all. Stuck. What am I missing? What do I fail to see?

I ask my guardian angel to give me blunt clues because, as she knows, I tend to miss the subtle ones.

free blankets in soap boxes & free toasters from banks

In the nineteen thirties, I think, one marketing trick for laundry detergent, at least one laundry detergent company, was to put 'free' blankets inside the soap boxes.

I know about this because my grandmother had a white blanket with roses that she got free in a box of laundry detergent.  That blanket got misplaced.  I mentioned it to my Great Aunt Effie, my grandmother's baby sister, and Effie gave me an identical blanket.

I love this blanket. It's worn. And it was cheap to begin with so it is full of pills. It it a layer on a chilly night. I basically use it as a sofa blanket when I type on my sofa. It's not warm. It's pretty and sentimental.

Remember when banks would give you things like toasters or comforters when you opened a savings account?

I once moved my savings account so I could get a comforter. Not a down one but a thick one that would keep a person warm. Then I offered it to my aunt the nun who was working in a very poor parish and working to help the poor. She said "If you give me the blanket, I will probably give it away." That was fine with me. I had not seriously believed my aunt needed a blanket. I was a little indignant that she had not understood I had given her the comforter because I knew she needed things to help the poor she helped. Duh.

My aunt the nun is no longer a nun. When I was 47, she married an Episcopalian priest she met while attending a Jean Houston program. It was love at first sight but the guy was married. They decided he had to keep his commitment to his wife and songs, so my aunt took a job in Guatemala to get over him.

A few years later, that Episcopal priest turned up in Guatemala to propose. His wife had decided she was a lesbian and was divorcing him. A clean, ethical break for the priest. He was free to marry my aunt, who quickly left her order, with her order's support.

empathy

Keeping Things Whole

Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

 Former U.S. poet laureate Mark Strand died today. This is one of his most beloved poems.

The myth of progress manifested in tool form.

“Wilderness can be saved permanently,” claims Ted Kaczynski, “only by eliminating the technoindustrial system.” I am beginning to think that the neo-environmentalists may leave a deliciously ironic legacy: proving the Unabomber right.

The Unabomber opens his book with these four premises, which the author of the Orion article agrees with. Kingsworth describes reading the Unabomber and how he found himself agreeing with him.

Here are the four premises with which Kaczynski begins the book:

1. Technological progress is carrying us to inevitable disaster.
2. Only the collapse of modern technological civilization can avert disaster.
3. The political left is technological society’s first line of defense against revolution.
4. What is needed is a new revolutionary movement, dedicated to the elimination of technological society.

The above quote is from an Orion Magazine article by Paul Kingsworth. Link to the whole article below.

Another quote from this great article:

“Romanticizing the past” is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future. But it’s not necessary to convince yourself that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers lived in paradise in order to observe that progress is a ratchet, every turn forcing us more tightly into the gears of a machine we were forced to create to solve the problems created by progress. It is far too late to think about dismantling this machine in a rational manner—and in any case who wants to? We can’t deny that it brings benefits to us, even as it chokes us and our world by degrees. Those benefits are what keep us largely quiet and uncomplaining as the machine rolls on, in the words of the poet R. S. Thomas, “over the creeds and masterpieces”:

The machine appeared
In the distance, singing to itself
Of money. Its song was the web
They were caught in, men and women
Together. The villages were as flies
To be sucked empty.
God secreted
A tear. Enough, enough,
He commanded, but the machine
Looked at him and went on singing.

Another quote from the Orion piece:

We are not gods, and our machines will not get us off this hook, however clever they are and however much we would like to believe it.

civilization is going to collapse, so what to do w/ourselves?

I don't agree with Kaczinsky's criminal attempt to harm people he believe were contributing to our collapse but I agree with what Kingsworth:  Kacinsky was onto something right.

You are that lumiosity

Ignorance can be compared to
a dark room in which you sleep.
No matter how long the room has been dark,
an hour or a million years,
the moment the lamp of awareness is lit
the entire room becomes luminous.
You are that luminosity.
You are that clear light."
-Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

blind and clueless

A former acquaintance abusively told me several times that I am blind and clueless.  When I indicated I did not like being negatively characterized as blind and clueless, he would express disbelief that I was offended by his negative characterization. Only this guy has his charm act down pat so he charmingly chided me for taking offense at what he characterized as his harmless characterization.

I am an INFJ, deeply intuitive, severely gifted intellectually. I usually get the feedback that I seem more tuned in than most people, that I pick up on all kinds of details that few others notice.

I am so not blind and clueless.

When someone negatively characterizes me, or anyone other than themselves, they are engaged in self-disclosure. Listen attentively when someone you have mistakenly believed was your friend tells you what is wrong with you. They are telling you about themselves.

So the man who told me I am blind and clueless was really telling me he is blind and clueless.

This man also frequently told me he did not trust me. Translation:   he was telling me he is not trustworthy. And, as it turned out, he was not. I genuinely believed he was my friend. We've all heard the old saying 'with friends like that, who needs enemies'.  Some people, apparently, feed like vampires off the strength of others, deriving a sense of their own value by putting others down and then, seeing they have deflated the other, they feel a false inflation of their own value.  I guess. I am speculating. I don't really know why anyone could, so wrongly, see blindness and cluelessness in me.

I am notorious among my friends for noticing everything.  I have friends who are internationally recognized communication consultants who are amazed at all the things I notice, and these are people that notice most things, too.

Once, when a friend and I were convening a four-day weekend, residential event, someone went through most of the rooms where people were staying, during the dinner hour, and stole money from most purses and wallets. The group was very upset and even fearful, wondering if a stranger had come to the retreat center. The loss of the money was less upsetting than the idea of a stranger staking out our group, watching us and carefully choosing dinner time to steal from most of us.

So my co-convenor and I gathered to talk about it. She had absolutely no idea who could possibly have violated the privacy of most of the group. For me, it was instantly obvious.

A new participant in this community, for this was an ongoing experiment in community that met four times a year for four-day residential retreats, had dragged her unwilling fourteen year old daughter to the gathering. This new participant had just finished her college degree and had been promising her daughter for quite some time that after graduation, the mother and daughter would have a weekend getaway together. When this woman heard about our gathering, she wanted to attend it and she, disingenuously, imho, told her daughter "this will be out special time together".

But it wasn't a special time together. The new participant aggressively made a big presence in our group, took over lots of circle time blowing her own horn. And she did not spend any time with her teenager.

I, convening that weekend, paid closer attention than I might have if I were not convening. I saw the teenager was angry, upset and unhappy to be at this adult and, to her, boring gathering.

When I heard someone had stolen money from most of the participants, I knew instantly that it was the teenager.

When my co-convenor and I gathered to assess how to manage the anxiety that was alive in the whole group, I said "It's so-and-so, the teenager, she's mad at her mama."  My co-convenor, a beloved friend,  and also a hugely successful communications consultant who has worked all over the world, published popular books on group dynamics models and dialogic models, almost gasped and she exclaimed "I never would have gotten that!"  She didn't have to say that she knew I was right. We both felt the certainty that I was right. That teen was angry with her mother for dragging her to a boring adult gathering. The kid might have been okay with spending a weekend in the woods. I think what rankled the kid was her mom had said "This is out getaway together" when the mom was totally absorbed by the event and ignored her daughter. Probably a pattern in their ongoing lives.  This mother had a tendency to suck up all the attention she could.

The next time the group met in full circle, it came out that it was the girl.  The group did not talk about her motives.  Everyone was empathetic and many participants shared stories of having stolen, esp. as a young person. No one suggested that the girl had stolen from most of the participants to act out anger towards her mother. But that's what it was.  Mad at her mama.

A blind and clueless person would not have seen, instantly, that the thief was that kid, mad at her mama.

The kid fessed up on her own. No one had to confront her.

I couldn't understand why the whole community had not instantly realized it had been that teenager. Her anger at her mother was boiling over. The girl had disrupted our large circles, sucking up a lot of attention from all of us because, I surmised even before the theft was discovered, she wasn't getting the attention she wanted from her mother.  It was obvious to me.

Then again, I had endured an angry teenage daughter.   I had relevant experience?

Black Elk Speaks v. Guns Germs and Steel

For my college freshman orientation program, the first book I was assigned to read in college was Black Elk Speaks. I wrote a post about Black Elk Speaks a few days ago.

I have had a nagging urge to remember something and I remembered what I was trying to remember just now.

My daughter also had an orientation at college. I believe the transfer students, which she was, and freshman all read the same book:  Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.

I remember recoiling in my being at the book Guns Germs and Steel. I considered reading it, to have a sense of what my daughter was learning. I don't think she ever read it, actually. Some guy she was seeing just before she left for Ithaca found it fascinating.

1971:  as a college freshman, my first book was Black Elk Speaks

2001:  as a transfer student in orientation, my daughter, all the new transfers and all the freshman were assigned Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.

I don't think I could read a book called Guns Germs and Steel even if I were paid a hundred dollars a word. I suspect the name tells me all I need to know:  guns, germs and steel have shaped human civilization.

Black Elk Speaks offered a way forward. Guns Germs and Steel seemed wrong to me.  I wonder why my daughter's college chose the book it chose. I thought the choice did not bode well for my child.

I am grateful I went to a university that had all its freshman read Black Elk Speaks. We also watched an Ingmar Bergman film during our freshman studies program, my introduction to foreign film.

THANK THANK THANK THANK: poem

THANK   THANK   THANK   THANK
PRAISE       PRAISE     PRAISE
THANK   THANK   THANK   THANK
CELEBRATE THE DAYS


A thank for mandolins and cheese
A thank for wine and honeybees
A thank for fellows deft and quirky
A thank for stuffing in the turkey

A thank for pixies trolls and faieries
A thank for Bloody and Holy Marys
A thank for angels and for knaves
A thank for rumors with their waves (a reference to the band Rumors of the Big Wave)

A thank for art and dance and words
For cooks and cocks and hummingbirds
A thank for queers and queens and cuties
and one for brawny hot patooties

A thank for those whose love is firm
A thank for hardon and for sperm
A thank for friends and food like this
and every taste of simple bliss

THANK   THANK  THANK   THANK
PRAISE       PRAISE     PRAISE
THANK   THANK   THANK   THANK
CELEBRATE THE DAYS

James Broughton 1992

you never looked so alone, Billy Collins

Embrace by Bill Collins

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
her hands grasping your shirt
her fingernails teasing your neck
from the front it is another story
you never looked so alone
your crossed elbows and screwy grin
you could be waiting for a tailor
to fit you with a straight jacket
one that would hold you really tight.

do I dare to eat this peach? or write about my real life?

If I am going to write a memoir of my actual life, instead of  limiting myself to happy or funny memories, I will have to write stories I can barely access.  I am going to write about my hesitations and anxieties in an effort to write my real story.

When I got divorced, I was, and this surprised me, concerned about being a divorced Catholic.  I had given up on Catholicism when I was in my teens. When I married a man who had also gone to Catholic school all his life, including his undergrad and MBA programs, I slid back into going to church and acting like a Catholic. 

I was very unhappy in that marriage. Church was surprisingly soothing. As a child attending mass a lot, I had never really connected spiritually. Going to Catholic school, having parents active in parish life, my Catholic world was cultural.  Irish Catholic cultural.

I was surprised, during my brief marriage in my late twenties, to find solace at Sunday mass.  My husband, who talked all the time about his Catholicism rarely went to mass. I soon reached the point where I never missed.

When we separated, I talked to my parish priest about becoming a divorced Catholic.  He gave me what is probably good advice.  He told me that a divorced Catholic had to wait a few years to file for an annulment. He suggested that I write my annulment petition then, as soon as I had separated.  He suggested writing it might be cathartic plus it would spare me from reliving the answers years later.

So I did start to write my annulment petition in the early weeks of my legal separation from my husband.  I wrote and wrote and wrote, answering each question I depth.

I was probably 20 pages into my annulment petition when I realized I was writing the fake version of our lives that my ex-husband and I had invented to cover times when we had gaps in employment or had been fighting ferociously.  We had so smoothly told fake versions of our shared life that I was smoothly writing it down for ‘the Vatican’. 

When I realized I wanted a divorce from my false narrative, I dropped the idea of annulment. And that was when I truly stopped being a Catholic.

There, you see, I just wrote another inaccurate piece of my past.

I did completely drop Catholicism from my heart and soul. I was raising a child, however.  When she and I were able to move away from Nebraska, returning to Minnesota where I had gone to law school and had friends, I felt I should give my child some kind of spiritual life.

When we first moved to Minnesota (first time for her, a return for me), we happened to live two blocks from a Catholic church with a spellbinding young Irish priest who gave great sermons. The church had great music. For the year or so we lived there, we went to mass every Sunday. After mass, we walked to a nearby café were Rosie always ordered a bottle of orangina, which she did not actually like to drink. She liked the round bulb of the bobble. It was expensive. Every Sunday I tried to cajole her out of that orangina, then cajole her into drinking it. She never budged.

One day in church, after the energetic young, visiting Irish priest had returned to Ireland, a priest said, in the middle of a hate-speech sermon, “If anyone in this church right now doesn’t believe that homosexuality is a sin, they should leave this church and never come back.”

Thank you, Father!

Rosie and I were seated in the third row, smack dab in the middle of that very long row.  We got up and crawled over a dozen or more right-thinking Catholics.

I relished the dramatic departure. Rosie was glad to get out of sitting still for mass.

That was when I gave up on Catholicism for good.

My baby brother and my best out of four brothers is gay.  I could not attend a church that considered my dollykins Dave a sinner.  Dave came into this world very effeminate. When he was five and I fifteen, I had a moment of awareness that Dave was one of those males I had heard whispers about. I didn’t have language for what I knew about my little brother but I knew:  he was ‘like that’, whatever that was.  After that, no one could tell me people choose to be queer. Dave was born gay.

Then my guiding star for finding a church, for I felt I had to give my child some kind of spiritual exposure apart from my own beliefs,  became finding a church that accepted homosexuals without judgment.  In the mid-eighties, this was not an easy quest.

For some time, Rosie and I went to a different church most Mondays, rejecting them.

I don’t want to write about my attempts to give my child some kind of spiritual foundation.  We ended up in Waldorf, which does not teach anthroposophy, of course, but which became our source for fellowship and community.  We did search for church for some years but left church behind as we grew in anthroposophy.

My point is that annulment petition, how I wrote a fake version of my life.

I veer away from my truths in not-quite-conscious ways. 

Maybe I am too intense. Or maybe I think about the truth of my life in a skewed way.

I don’t know if I will be able to write my real life story but I hope to try. Ever since it came to me that I live behind layer upon layer of white lies and hiding aspects of my being, I feel a tremble in my whole being.

Do I dare to write about aspects of my life I have never talked about with anyone, except for Jane, a psychotherapist I saw every Monday for ten years.  Jane might be the only person I have ever revealed myself honestly to. And that took years.

Jane once said, and she was the kind of therapist that almost never said anything, “I have a strong sense, Tree, that you are dancing on the table here, that you are not telling me about your real life, but the one you think is acceptable.”

Dancing on the table. She was right.

I have been dancing on the table all my life.  Can I stop now?  I trusted Jane as much as I have ever trusted anyone and I couldn’t stop dancing on the table for her. I wanted to but I couldn’t.

It hit me last night, powerfully, that I might be ready to stop dancing on the table.  And maybe, at age 61, it is too late to stop. Too late to be me.  I hope not.

I keep thinking of a quote from George Eliot:  “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”

I note that I did not write what the true story of our marriage was here. That might be a start.

Something within me seems to want to come out.

One benefit of being dumped by my daughter and even my five siblings, who all live far from me ,and my parents gone is I am free to write my story. Own my story. Write whatever I want in anyway I like. As Annie Lamott has been quoted saying "If people wanted you to write nicer stories about them, they should have been nicer to you."

I am free from the constraint of relatives who might object to me writing my life story

my daily pancake

I checked out Berkeley's new Whole Foods recently.  It's hella long walk from my place. The old Whole Foods is not only half as far but more like a grocery store. The new place has an odd layout and even odder food choices. In my opinion.

One interesting new thing:  the paleo hot food take-out bar.  I don't try to follow a paleo diet but paleo usually means lower carbs. My diabetes necessitates rigorous carb control. So I turned to the paleo food bar in curiosity.

I bought a bunch of spicy green beans.  And added some marinated crimini mushrooms in the same box. The marinade was tart and sour, burying any mushroom flavor and seeping into my deliciously spicy green beans. Yuck.

Right now, before I head to my writers group, I am enjoying my favorite daily breakfast. I think it counts as paleo but I am not sure.

Mash two bananas, add cinnamon, two eggs, beat with stick blender and cook like a pancake. It is as much egg dish as banana dish but it is as close to pancake as I get these days. I have added ginger to this recipe and it tasted fine. I have also tried a dash of vanilla; also fine. I love a cinnamon-y pancake like breakfast.  Sometimes I add chia seeds, which does not change the flavor or texture.  I quite like the way chia seeds metabolize slowly and leave me feeling full.

On paleo, can you eat bananas?

I used to avoid most fruits, because of the carbs. I have learned fruits have healthier carbs than processed foods like most flours and all sugar and sugar substitutes.

a bit of butter on toast: yum

The host of our writing group always puts out bread and butter for toast. Sometimes muffins. She also presents nuts and, sometimes, blends of trail mix with a few bits of chocolate.

I always bring my own snacks, everywhere I go. If I feel suddenly ravenous, I have learned, I need to eat. A one ounce bag of cashews, sold conveniently by the dozen at Trader Joe's, does the trick.

I have resisted buying glucose tablets for low blood sugar challenges.  I have not had many low blood sugar moments. I bring a piece of fruit to eat when I feel low blood sugar. I also test when I feel my glucose is dropping. I need data, urgently. A 70 reading is very different than a 30. A 30 is close to coma time.

Low blood sugar can happen overnight while sleeping and this is often when the type one diabetic slips into a coma.  My former endocrinologist wanted me to awaken at 2 a.m. each night to test for lows but that would keep me awake for hours. Plus I never tested low.

Diabetes changes all the time. Doctors don't tell you this. Doctors, in my experience, don't tell diabetics very much. And endocrinologists are weirdly, tightly focussed on certain lab tests and don't actually pay attention to the patient as a person.

Two weeks ago at my writers' group, an hour after Eric had offered to make toast for everyone. He made custom orders for each person but me because I don't do gluten, dairy (butter) or sugar (jam).

An hour or so into the writing, I suddenly felt my sugar plummet. Like a large stone dropped in a river.  I tested and there it was, the dread 32.

I got up and made myself toast. And, since I was eating wheat, reasoned I might as well butter that toast.   I miss hot buttered toast. I really miss it. Such a simple pleasure.

Eric, restless and hungry, I guess, came in and added a piece of toast for himself, expressing surprise that I was making some for myself. When I told him about my low blood sugar, he reminded me there was jam in the fridge.  I probably should have used some jam. Sugar will boost my glucose fast but probably not much faster than the highly processed white flour toast I was going to have. I was already looking forward to the hot buttery toast and already planning on a second slice. If I added jam, I would only have had one slice.

A purist? 

Two pieces of not-very-nutritious white bread toast with butter and my glucose was back up.

A persimmon would have done the job but I had slipped out without my fruit.  I always carry an apple and some cashews, depending on which way the sugar is moving. In persimmon season, I carry persimmons.

Those two pieces of hot buttered toast were so good.  They reminded me, however, that it is optimal to avoid highly processed carbohydrates. The more processed the carbs, the more I crave carbs. After such an indulgence, I crave junky carbs like more toast, donuts, even candy.

I have learned, to my happiness, that I can eat more fruit than I allowed myself for the ten years I was misdiagnosed. Fruit has healthy carbs. Fruit doesn't spark my glucose to dangerous levels the way highly processed carbs do.

But in a dangerously low blood sugar situation, processed carbs get the job done.

Gosh that buttered toast was tasty. And my blood sugar level snapped back into healthy range.

That buttered toast was so much more pleasurable than the most delicious fruit, probably because it was my first buttered toast in many years.

Not enough to condemn riots: Rev MLK.

"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard." Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968

the greatest gift

chia seeds

I've been using chia seeds for about two years.  Now and then, I have a day without eating chia seeds and I really notice the difference.

Chia seeds are high in omega 3, providing enough Omega 3 in one ounce for a week. They are high in fiber and protein, too.

My favorite thing about chia seeds is how slowly the body metabolizes them, leaving me feeling sated for a couple more hours than a meal without them.

I put them in my grain-free breakfast muffins. I put them in my heavenly banana-egg-cinnamon-chia seed pancakes (almost no carbs! good for my glucose).

Eating chia seeds helps me need less insulin. Insulin is a tricky medicine. I need it to live, since as a Type I Diabetic, my pancreas is shutting down its ability to make insulin. Yet taking insulin tends to make it very hard to lose weight, a major goal of mine. I continue to steadily lose but it is a lot harder with all the insulin. Chia seeds help me eat less, eat less carbs and, happily, need less insulin.

My chia seed supply is low. I have to reorder but have to wait until the first. I am completely out of money until December first. No turkey dinner buffet from Whole Foods for me this year.  For years, I have gone to WF the day before Thanksgiving to buy a plate of traditional Thanksgiving, and also for Christmas, meal. Not this week! Perhaps it is just as well for I would surely have taken a scoop of stuffing -- carbs, carbs, carbs.

My organic baker pal said to me, yesterday (she lives in Santa Cruz), "Even if you don't have a family, you should be able to find a family of friends to have holiday meals with."

"I know, you'd think so. But I have spent all holidays alone since my daughter left me. I used to ask friends to invite me. People who do family things don't seem very comfortable including an Elisiah or two in their family meals."

Then she said "But many people have gatherings of friends, take in friends who would be alone. Seems to me Berkeley would be a great place for such hospitality."

"I think it is but something about me blocks me."  I didn't go into my sorrow. 

I deliberately kept my head down and did my best to ignore the holiday season, which I took to calling the holiday hellhole when 'Rosie left me. I haven't used the phrase holiday hellhole for a couple years. That's some improvement, altho in recent weeks, with holiday jingles feeling more assaultive than usual, I have heard myself thinking "Hunker down, babe, and keep to yourself, avoid the hell of the holiday hellhole."  The hole is no daughter.

One thing I really hate:  when a friend brings up the holidays, maybe just to say "Happy Thanksgiving" my heart uncontrollably leaps with hope, thinking  maybe they are going to ask me what I am doing and when they hear I will be alone, they'll invite me". I fell for that leap of hope for years. Now I hate it when friends mention 'the holidays'.

I don't celebrate 'the holidays'. I stay home alone, eating a raw green smoothie with chia seeds this year.

At least I have chia seeds. Actually I have plenty of food in the house. Wild salmon, squash. For some reason, I bought two butternut squashes yesterday. Visions of a curried swuash soup danced in my head. If I keep feeling better, I might actually make that soup. Otherwise, I'll just bake the squash.

rambling, eh?

peanut butter. v. Marmite

Marmite is a yeast paste commonly used on one's breakfast toast in the UK and, for all I know, on other things. I have eaten Marmite and its Austrailian equivalent, Vegemite, a few times. It is, as my mom often said to encourage her children to eat new foods, an acquired taste. It is a taste I never acquired.

One my daughter's Waldorf School has a prominent Anthroposophical teacher and speaker come to town. Several leaders of the school community, which included me as a board member, attended a dinner at one board member's home to honor him.

Over that dinner table, the topic of Marmite came up. The visitor was from UK. And he put us all in our place.

After several Americans had weighed in on the peculiarity of Marmite, he announced, in his stensorial, professorial tone, "For most Brits, peanut butter is intolerable. Peanut butter is disgusting. Can you explain to me why Americans love peanut butter?"

Touche.

We didn't get Marmite. He didn't get peanut butter.

Peanuts, by the way, are not a nut. They are a legume, wrongly considered a nut by most. Pinto beans, navy beans, black beans. These are legumes, not nuts.

Peanut butter is an odd food.

So is Marmite, eh?

Rapids by A. R. Ammons

Rapids

by A. R. Ammons


Original Language English

Fall's leaves are redder than
spring's flowers, have no pollen,
and also sometimes fly, as the wind
schools them out or down in shoals
or droves: though I
have not been here long, I can
look up at the sky at night and tell
how things are likely to go for
the next hundred million years:
the universe will probably not find
a way to vanish nor I
in all that time reappear.

Lucky: happiness feels like this

We don't even have to pretend
We know what it is
That we are looking for

Life is just a dream
Lucky you
Lucky me
Life is just a dream
Lucky you
Lucky lucky me

Listen to this song and feel happy, as I do when I listen to it.

More lyrics from this song:

There is a Place in Time and Space that WE can ALL BE FREE!  

paintings of women with holes in them

In the late eighties, I ran an intensive training business, training in inner capacity development. Very intense five day trainings.  We offered them one month in Minneapolis, then one month in Baltimore. My former biz partner lived in Baltimore when we joined forces. When I had built up the business in Minneapolis, she basically just took it from me. Old wound. Stop here.

Anyway, I occasionally helped run the intensives in Baltimore. I got to know the base of our Baltimore clientele. There was a woman named Gina who was an artist, a painter.  I went to her studio once. All her paintings were paintings of women and every woman she painted had a hole in her. Just a hole someone, mainly in the torso, that was nothing but air all the way through. When gazing upon her paintings, the holes seemed perfect.  I came away thinking "These paintings are perfect because every woman has holes in her."

And anthroposophists believe that when a woman has a child, the birth tears a hole in her etheric being. Imagine having eight full term pregnancies, as my mom did. Or fourteen, as my great grandmother did. Yikes.

I thought Gina's paintings made a profound statement about women. I don't think she was thinking about etheric holes. She was a artist. She likely worked from a vibration, an energy. If one asked, and people did, why all her women had holes in them, she would shrug and shake her head to indicate she didn't know. I felt like I 'knew', knew viscerally:  maybe all women don't have holes in them but I have a huge hole in me. I am terrified it will never be healed, or closed, or compensated for. Maybe I'm depressed, although I am taking an antidepressant but my hole, my wound, is wearing on me. Hopefully it's just because I am so sick and not healing quickly but I know myself. This is my hole, the kind of hole Gina painted in all her women.