Various Portents

By Alice Oswald

Various stars. Various kings.

Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,

Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.

Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.

Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.

Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North Star, more than one South Star.

Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems,

Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thicknesses of Dark,

Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,

All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:

Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,

Works of wonder and/or water, snowflakes, stars of frost . . .

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,

Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,

Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,

Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,

Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,

And all sorts of drystone stars put together without mortar.

Many Wisemen remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,

Watches of wisp of various glowing spindles,

Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,

Seafarers tossing, tied to a star . . .

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.

Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening

Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.

in winter's deepest night

Triumphant in man’s deepest soul
Lives the Spirit of the Sun;
Quickened forces, set astir,
Awake the feelings to His presence
In the inner winter life.
Hope, impulse of the heart,
Beholds the Spirit victory of the Sun
In the blessed Light of Christmas,
The sign of highest life
In the winter’s deepest night.

Rudolf Steiner.

The Golden Tunnel

I am in the Golden Tunnel today. Great to be back. Everything is holy in the Golden Tunnel. Everything is happy. Love is all around. So is Light.

Various Portents

By Alice Oswald

Various stars. Various kings.

Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.

Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,

Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.

Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.

Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.

Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North Star, more than one South Star.

Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems,

Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thicknesses of Dark,

Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens,

All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes:

Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk,

Works of wonder and/or water, snowflakes, stars of frost . . .

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes,

Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness,

Various 5,000-year-old moon maps,

Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze,

Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains,

And all sorts of drystone stars put together without mortar.

Many Wisemen remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers,

Watches of wisp of various glowing spindles,

Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac,

Seafarers tossing, tied to a star . . .

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.

Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.

Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening

Blowing the stars towards them, bringing snow.

remembering my childhood thrill over Xmas trees

the berlin wall

The Berlin Wall fell, I think, in 1989. Katie was seven. I don't remember paying much attention to the event but Katie must have heard about it at school. While Christmas shopping, for Xmas 89 or 90, we came upon a display in Dayton's Department Store: they were selling chunks of the Berlin Wall for $9.95. It was like a pet rock only with a putative historical significance. I don't remember how but the opportunity to own a piece of history captured Katie's fancy. She wanted to buy one for her dad for Christmas.

I tried to discourage her. I swear. I knew, instantly, that he-who-shall-not-be-named would think I was making a commentary, comparing our divorce to the falling of the Berlin Wall.

And he did. He was furious about that piece of the wall.

Katie was oblivious to any possible undertones in that hunk of the wall. She thought she was giving her dad a piece of history. She thought it was thrilling

The wisteria are in bloom again. . .

I lived in the Upper Midwest,  until I moved to the West Coast in 2002. I've been in CA since 2006.

I don't think wisteria thrives in the very hard frost of MN winters.

At my first CA swimming pool, one of my favorite parts of that pool experience was the walk home. I walked there on one route and walked home on another. My walk home took me through a private apartment complex, a very nice one, probably an expensive one. It has a long trellis that became completely drapped with luxuriously verdant wisteria.  I liked that walk all year round but when the wisteria were in bloom, I'd walk up and down under the archway from which hung dense wisteria.

Here in Berkeley, there is always a lot of wisteria. Wisteria must like cool, misty climates. Fog!

There is an Oakland public library on College Avenue that is fronted with many trellises. Right now, the wisteria is (are?) overflowing on those trellises.

When I lived in Seattle, I lived on the northernmost boundary of the city. I lived on 145th Street, which is where Seattle ended. Across the street from my building was a suburb. It was a poor, shabby part of Seattle, plus remote from everything anyone would want to do in Seattle. With just one bus line that snaked through north Seattle, then through the University of Washington campus and then snaked back up north on the other side of the city. It took forever to go anywhere on that bus.

I came up with self entertainment. I decided early on that all the front yards that I had many hours to view on the always slow bus were 'my garden'. I tried to memorize the gardens and then savor how they changed with the seasons.  It turned out to be a surprisingly satisfying expeirence. I came to quite love trees, shrubs, perennial gardens.  My point is that I paid a lot of attention to flowers in Seattle and I don't remember seeing huge plantings of hanging wisteria. Not anywhere there.

So I am wondering:  where else does wisteria thrive as it does here? I bet wisteria really likes the foggy, misty air of the bay.

ask: She gives

When I went to my weekly farmers market this Saturday, in my power wheelchair, I placed a bag on the back, one bag handle on each handle behind the chair.

I have been using this bag for the few weeks since I have this loaner wheelchair. When I have bought stuff, I stand up, step around, put stuff in the bag and get back in the chair. Standing up, moving around hurts. If I am moving for longer periods, all my stiff, kinked joints seem to loosen up but for the few moments of getting up to put my persimmons in the bag behind me is a lot more of a challenge than I think it should be. So I have been sending myself messages of self negation, grumbling to myself about growing more disabled.

Last Saturday, I tried something new. When I bought something, I paid for it and then I asked someone, chosen for their proximity to me, if they would please put my bolani in the bag behind me. Or whatever. I am way into the spinach bolani these days. And now I am way into the very nice young men who sell it. They are a free sample operation, almost aggressively offering potential customers all kinds of bolani and all kinds of toppings. They sell the toppings too. I buy some bolani every Saturday so they now see me as a regular. It is always nice to be a regular, in with some humans.

I never asked the bolani guys to put something in my back bag before. The guy had already given me two or three samples of different breads and spreads. He made, he said, a special sample for me, then came over to hand it to me and then to put my purchased items in the bag on the back of my wheelchair.  I thanked him, telling him the samples were delicious and he and his partner were such nice vendors.

As he walked behind my chair with my stuff, just two or three steps, him almost looming over me because I was seated and he was standing, he emanated kindness. So I said so, I said "You are so kind." And he said, and I did not make this up, "I am not kind. I am love."

That statement is still buoying me days later. I see his smile, see his being's light radiating as he came over to help me.

People mostly seem to light up when I ask them, strangers to me, to put something in my bag. People sometimes ask detailed questions to be sure they put it in right. These are flashing, fleeting moments of human connection. I quite enjoy this. And the secret to accessing such light, love and kindness is to ask for help.

Asking the occasional stranger to help me, plus accepting the many offers of help I get through my days (on UC campus, the students fall all over themselves to open doors and ask me if they can do anything else for me. . . such a lovely energy flowing through our exchanges) is allowing me to see something I have known all along but which I can lose sight of:  people not only want to be kind, they need to be kind. That old saw about giving is receiving is true. I am giving people something when I ask them to put my spinach in the bag on the back of my wheelchair. I am giving, and receiving, a moment of kindness, love, connection.

Thank you Goddess.

the love sound of puffing cranberries

Every Thanksgiving season I think about my holiday pie. I am not supposed to eat cranberries anymore because of a medication I take. I eat them when I make this pie.  I have been thinking about making my cranberry pear pie. I like the way memories can float about, like the smells coming from a kitchen readying a holiday feast.

It is a simple recipe. A bag of fresh cranberries (used to be a pound, these days these bags hold 12 ounces) and less than one cup of real maple syrup and a bunch of beautiful pears. Prebake the pie crust slightly. Peel and slice the pears. If you are baking this pie with a child, let the child eat all the pear slices s/he wishes to eat. Layer the fruit artistically. And use a lattice top. It is a very beautiful pie. The red cranberries shine like rubies nestled in the pears. The red peeks through the lattice crust nicely. Serve with unsweetened whipped cream. Let the child taste a fresh cranberry too, if they wish. Explain the word pucker afterwards.

The recipe is not really what I was thinking about. I was thinking about the real reason I love to make this pie.

You put the maple syrup in a saucepan with the cranberries. The actual recipe calls for two cups of maple syrup but one of the reasons I like this pie is that it is not too sweet. Cut way down on the maple syrup and you really taste fruit. Cranberries are tart so they need the syrup but use as little as possible.

Heat the syrup and cranberries gently, slowly. Here is the  reason I used to make this pie: as the cranberries warm up and start to both cook and absorb the maple syrup, they make a very soft puffing sound.

Oh my gosh, I love the sound of the cranberries puffing. I love to do this with a child. I love to enjoy the hushed anticipation as we listen for the first puff. While waiting, this is a good time to kiss the child on top of the head a few times. Quietly so you both hear the puffs.  Nowadays, when I think of this pie, I am mostly ruminating on making the pie so I can revisit the pleasure of kissing my Katie Joy atop her head as she helps.

As soon as the cranberries start puffing, you have to quickly pull the saucepan from the heat. The thrill does not last long, the puffing is only a few seconds and the sounds very soft. Yet it is a very fine experience. There is a temptation to keep the cranberries on too long in the hope that you will get to hear another mild puffing sound but you must resist. Resolve to make this pie again soon.

Then you layer the cooked berries, the pears and bake, not too long, just long enough to meld the flavors, to lightly bake the pears.

in out

I am not in the Golden Tunnel now. I wish I were.

genius is a male trait

Genius is, by its original definition, a male trait. For realsies.

Megan Garber published an article, about David Foster Wallace, but also about the male hijacking of human genius (some of that is my words!), published in May 2018 in The Atlantic. Here's link to the article:  men own genius? no fucking way  Again, I add my own flava to Ms. Garber's excellent piece.

Here is the etymology the Oxford English Dictionary provides for the word genius, imported to English straight from the Latin: “male spirit of a family, existing in the head of the family and subsequently in the divine or spiritual part of each individual, personification of a person’s natural appetites, spirit or personality of an emperor regarded as an object of worship, spirit of a place, spirit of a corporation, (in literature) talent, inspiration, person endowed with talent, also demon or spiritual being in general.”

There’s more, but there’s already so much: genius, by definition a male condition. Genius, a male condition that inflects its maleness on the individual soul. Genius, an object of worship. Genius, perhaps slightly demonic. The derivation isn’t surprising on its own (no one would mistake a typical Roman for a feminist). What is striking, though, is that, millennia later, the biases of the language remain with us, tugging at the edges. Genius itself, the way we typically conceive of it, remains infused with the male gaze, or perhaps more aptly, the male haze: It is gendered by implication. It is a designation reserved, almost exclusively, for men. Guess who the first seasonof that new show Genius is about? I’ll give you a hint: The first name of the genius in question is Albert. The subject of the show’s second season? Pablo.


I am angry.

dear daughter: I love you around all impediments

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


Nothing can stop me from loving you unconditionally. I wish I were more skilled at loving myself. If I loved myself as I love you, well, I don't know.  I find myself imagining such self love but I am not there. XO

my next life

spring has now unwrapped her flowers

spring has now unwrapped her flowers SOMEONE WROTE THIS, I DON'T KNOW WHO, BUT NOT ME
day is fast reviving
life with all its growin powers
towards the light is striving
all the world with beauty fills
all the world with beauty fills
gold the green enhancing
flowers make glee among the hills
and set the meadows dancing AUTHOR UNKNOWN

I wrote the rest of this post. A dream:  I was at a conference that had no facilitation. Not open space, just poorly planned. All women. So everyone was hanging out,just roaming around, wondering what to do. Someone that did not know me had been asking around , or something (this was some dream confusion, the weird way dreams sometimes (always?) unfold, outside physical plane logic sometimes?..

someone women, two, came to me and asked if I could do something with music, saying tht some art would be good to coalesce the women's energy


at first I began to demur but something in me was dran to lead the group in singing. with no instruments what else could I offer but to sing, to sing in rounds. I agreed while still casting about in my mekories for something to sing. At first I thought of somewhat dull things to sing in rounds, like
frere jacque or you are my sunshine.  I cast off my dull song choices and decided to trust that a good song would come to me. And then it did.

I remember this song, typed at the top of this post. My daughter learned it in school and taught it to me as she and I worked in the garden of our house, new-to-use that spring. The song was perfect for working in our new garden. I had bought the house in winter and did not know what the landscaping was so spring days were unwrapping the shrubs, perennials, trees and weeds with each passing day.

Age ten, I think, Katie had learned the song and sung it many times and knew it well. She had the fast memory of a smart child and the embodied memory of having sung it over and jover. It took me several run throughs to memorize it but, as we see, I did memorize it. and memorized it for good because twenty five years later, I still know it.

Of course, when I remembered this song in my dreamscape, I decided to teach it to the women. When this plan emerged, I felt peaceful, confident and happy; In my dream, I kept going to a sloping hill with all the women assembled, imagined myself breaking them into three smaller groups, imagined myself teaching the group this song, imagined the group getting it well enough, with me reciting the lines one at a time as they sung the previous ones, guiding, conducting, leading.

I awoke before I lead the group in song but, in my dreamscape, I knew that the singing in rounds was wonderful, popular and energizing.

'art is like that.

to walk inside one's Self

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond
between two people:
that each should stand guard
over the solitude of the other.
What is necessary, after all, is only this:
solitude, vast inner solitude.
To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours -
that is what you must be able to attain. 
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Dad, this one is for you

Another day needing lemon cookie ice cream by Three Twins Organic Ice Cream. With an evil mad man in the White House and evil Republicans eager to keep corruption going, I need lemon cookie ice cream. With the world sliding into environmental, economic and dictatorship collapse, I'ma gonna eat what I want. My dad never tried to manage his diabetes, which is definitely why he has a massive, paralyzing stroke around age 56, then died at 62. His left side was paralyzed and he never regained the use of his left arm. He was able to limp, dragging his left leg a bit, but his left arm stayed dead. When I would see him eating sweets, which sometimes seemed like his only eating choice, he would say "Whadda I care? Life is short. Life is hard. And if eating cookies makes me feel better, whadda I care?" My dad would totally understand me eating lemon cookie ice cream two days in a row. I also did a TJ run this morning to stock up on their tasty chocoalte/coconut-covered almonds. This is what insulin is for! Dad, this pint of lemon cookie ice cream is for you. Cheers.

Icarus did not fail, his triumph came to an end

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

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.   Gilbert spent much of his life living abroad. From SF, he wrapped up his life in Berkeley.

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.

Hope, a dimension of the soul

"Either we have hope in us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the Spirit, an orientation of the heart.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it's good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. . . It is also hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless. . ."

- Vaclav Havel (1986)

today is her birthday

I started the day, of June 26, 1982, already in the hospital. I had sprung a small leak the evening before while waddling back to our table. We had gone out to dinner and a movie, with a plan to go out every day until our due date of July 11th.  I felt a very sharp pain as I walked back to the table from the restroom. Later, health care folks opined that I had had a contraction. Or else the baby had kicked.

We had planned to see "E.T." which opened in our city that day but, as usual, her dad came home late and ET was sold out. So we went to see 'Poltergeist', the only Friday evening movie at our cineplex that sitll had tickets.  When hospital staff speculated that I had a contraction or a baby kick when my water leaked, I silently wondered if it was the movie and its loud noise that had unsettled my baby.

While I had gone to the restroom, my husband had paid our check. So we went to our car and drove home. It was only when I started to get out of the car that I realized I had sprung a leak.

Pregnant women sometimes have a gusher when their water breaks. My water didn't quite 'break'. I really did simply spring a small leak. I knew, however, from reading and from the one lamaze class we had attended (and I had paid attention) that once that water seal was broken, the risk of infection was present. I knew the baby had to come.

My ex, however, did not trust my judgment. He insisted on going into our house, with me in the car sure I needed to go to a hospital for the baby's wellbeing, to call our labor and delivery nurse friend Denise. Denise was the instructor of our one delivery class but she was also the wife of one of my ex's childhood friends.

Denise agreed with me, telling my husband that I had to go to the hospital.

I did not go into labor that Friday night. The L&D staff decided we'd wait for me to go into labor. And my husband went home. The next morning, he went to his office. All the top staff worked on Saturdays and he was more worried about his appearances to his employers than his wife and baby over at the hospital. When he walked into work, he announced his wife was at the hospital and might have the baby that day. All the men he worked with dropped their jaws. They were all husbands and fathers and they couldn't believe he had gone to work instead of staying with me.

He had asked my labor and delivery nurse to give him a call when it looked like the baby was coming soon. Really he did. The men he worked with were so appalled that he had gone to his office that he came to the hospital. He showed up at the hospital with his wife in labor with his child because the guys at work were appalled that he was not with me. He did not show up because of me. Or his baby.

Sometime that day, my L&D nurse actually said to me, in a hush, that I seemed better off without him. She took to sending him on errands all that day to keep him away from me as much as she could. He was upset that I did not go into labor on my own. Huh? Why was he blaming me for nature? He was upset that I had been given a drug to get me into labor.  He was upset that I called for pain relief, as if my doing so was an embarassment to him. This is not a moron. He has an MBA and a JD but he didn't seem to grasp basic things, such as I did not control when I went into labor, when I delivered.

A substitute ob-gyn, for my doc was out of town for his daughter's wedding, came around at 9 a.m. the morning of June 26 and gave me the 'pits', the pitocin to prod my body into labor. 

I spent much of June 26, 1982 waiting to feel labor pains. Once I felt some, I called for drugs. Even my L&D nurse saw that my husband was not a real support so she did not press us to try natural delivery. Induced labor with pitocin generally has more intense labor pains.

Blah blah blah. I got drugs. I got wheeled into delivery. My baby was born.

Later, Mr. Charm told me what he had seen watching our daughter be born, watching all the blood, tissue, etc., that had to be expelled from my body, had been really disgusting. He said "Your body is really disgusting". He was referring to my placenta, her placenta, life process.  A screen was placed so I could not see what my ex referred to as the grossly disgusting bits.  For one moment, I was propped up and given a mirror so I could see beyond the screen to see my body half out of my body. I wanted to watch the whole thing.  I was not put off by the messy stuff. I think that propping me up for a seconds-long glimpse of my baby half in and half out, before we saw her gender, was an odd touch. Was that supposed to help baby and I feel bonded?  It didn't.  I had been as bonded to her as any mother ever has been from the first instants I felt the new being in my body. I felt the presence of another being in my body in the first week or two that she landed in there.

He never patted my hand throughout my labor. He never paid any attention to me at all.  He was such an odd duck.

She was wonderful.  They took her away briefly to clean her up and then brought her back to me. He followed her. In the recovery room, they also took the baby away for a short while. The idea seemed to be that new parents would want to talk to one another alone for a bit. Not my guy. He left me alone in my recovery room and stayed with her.

He loved her. I am sure he still does. So do I.

Say, I am writing this story very differently than past tellings. And I am not keening in grief over losing her as I have. Progress? Or the end of caring?

This is how the day she was born unfolded for me.