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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have faith in nights

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

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

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

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

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

Icarus was not failing as he fell

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

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

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

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

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

we must risk delight in these dark times

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

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



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

Yes it is. It must be.

I intend to end up there

let's surface our country's abiding bigotry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

someone explain this one, please

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a mighty will paralyzed

"The Panther" by Rainer Maria Rilke

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

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

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

- English translation by Stanley Appelbaum

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

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

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

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

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

who speaks for human species?

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

catalpa flashbacks

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

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

There were no catalpa trees on our land.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hated catalpa leaves.

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

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

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

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

interspecies communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

food expiration dates and easy peasey

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

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

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

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

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

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

karma … misfortune

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

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

first job after college

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't do coffee."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My lucky day when the jerk fired me.

use the love window

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

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

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

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

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

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

--Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century

denial

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

just one flesh we can wound

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

how to untighten karmic knots

Forgiveness untightens the karmic knots and opens up new opportunities.

get yer hot peanuts at Sears!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Sears has always meant hot salted peanuts for me.

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

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

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

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

Joe was okay.

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

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

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

I dreamt of swimming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a message came to me:  keep going.

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

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

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

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