The Man in Black
Five years ago, when he flew in for his sister’s wedding, he was still a boy to all of us – backward baseball cap, hair waving below his ears, scraggly mustache and goatee, sunglasses (of course the sunglasses).
But this is a portrait of a man immersed in shades of gray. Off-center. Shadowed. Unsmiling. Uncompromising. An artist, maybe. Or an avenger.
If I saw him on the street, would I recognize him as the sweet little boy I sang to sleep? “Try to remember the kind of September when you were a tender and callow fellow…”
But this is a portrait of a man assailed by shades of gray, bleak black times, futures plagued by shadows.
This is a portrait of man I don’t know if I know. I try to remember that tender and callow fellow, that toddler, that boy, taken from me by time and space and a quest to wrestle shadows.
I wonder if I will ever come to know the man. That man in black.
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Vote YES and vote often
Enough with this god already. Vote YES.
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There's fun and then there's fun.
Anita Bora comments in one of my previous posts that it seems as though I'm having more fun that she is. Well, there’s fun, and then there’s fun.
Yesterday, I drove out to the new home that a long-time friend and her husband just finished building (in small town not too far from me) as their retirement dream home. And then she and I drove out to Rhode Island for an annual bead show (she makes jewelry) and to visit her daughter. Then we drove up to the Boston area to stop in and see my grandson etc.
Here’s the point: I would trade my fun Salsa dancing in a heartbeat for the kind of life she has. It’s not that her life is perfect; I’ve known both her and her husband since college, and I know for a fact that they have had their rough times. I remember a couple of nights in the mid-eighties when (married and upset with her husband) she slept on my couch. But they worked it out. Now they travel together, garden together, enjoy finishing and decorating their new home, and have a great time with their grandchildren.
At one point in our lives, when I was married as well, we lived in the same town. We would barter our craft creations; I passed my daughter’s clothes along to her younger daughters. She was the friend with whom I saw my first porn movie the weekend that we left our husbands with our kids and went up to Cape Ann for a “girls’ weekend away.” Now we do some craft fairs together, commiserate about our relationships with our mothers and our daughters, and have lunch every once in a while.
In most everyday ways, though, our lives have little in common. Living single is much different than living married.
The life I lead these days is not the life I would have preferred. But, given the choices I had, it’s the life I chose. And within this life I chose, I try to find ways to have fun, feel vital, have a social life, and feel good about myself. It takes a great deal of effort to counter frequent feelings of isolation with activities that give me some sense of connection, that give me reasons to reach out into the rest of the world. And so I go out and dance -- ballroom, swing, latin -- because I do it well and I enjoy it.
But I would rather be in a comfortable and comforting relationship with a man with whom I can make a home, garden, travel, cuddle, and laugh; I would rather live near my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson so that we could do things together. Doing a hot sexy Salsa that draws admiring looks is fun. There’s fun, and then there’s something more.
BTW, while in Providence RI, I called Blog Sister Sheila Lennon a couple of times, but I wasn’t able to get her on the phone. It would have been fun to meet in person. Maybe next year.
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Sultry Salsa
Say what you want about what’s sexy. Clubb Matrixx last night, dancing to hot Latin Salsa, bass booming, non-stop until I’m in my zone, sweaty and thought-less, the dance floor filled with people of all colors, sizes, shapes, and oh could they all move, smooth sultry, sexy.
It’s someone’s birthday, and she wants to dance with every guy in the place. So, they line up – doesn’t matter whether they know her or not – and she does. I think that’s what I want for my next birthday.
Big ego trip for me when one young attractive excellent dancer (female) asks me if I’m a dance teacher. And another, sitting at the table next to mine with her date, leans over and asks me where I learned to dance like that.
Now, that was fun!
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Long Time No Blog
I used to blog every day. Often, several times a day. I can't figure out if I've run out of steam or out of things to say or out of the need to say them OR if I've just gotten bored with the whole process.
For me, hell would be a place of ultimate boredom. I get bored easily. Maybe I have more of an attention deficit than I thought.
I did have lunch earlier this week with Gina Guiliano, and I could have sat there and talked with her for the rest of the lovely early fall afternoon, but she had to get back to the university for her office hours. I think we covered every possible subject that we blog about, think about, and care about.
This weekend I'm going to a bead show in Providence RI with my friend who makes jewelry. I've been in touch with another Blog Sister, and will call her when I get in town to see if we can meet somewhere.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out where this ennui is coming from. The kinds of things that used to energize me don't seem to be doing it. Even dancing is a bore (but I'm going out tonight anyway to do some West Coast Swing and Salsa and take some photos for the magazine.) Of course, I'm making sure that I'm taping Friends and Will and Grace and ER and CSI (I have two vcrs.) I'm a series season premiere junkie. Buffy, as is to be expected, was awesome, but b!X already posted on that, so I'll pass.
I guess, at my age, I should consider that my feeling of floting in limbo might be something physical. I'm sure my chocaholism doesn't help my blood sugar levels. Ah, for the days of yesteryear when I never worried about any of those kinds of things!!
Over on Blog Sisters Drucilla Blood brings up what is sexy [note: permalink is not working]. We're such a diverse group (physically, spiritually, maternally, materially....), we Blog Sisters. I have a feeling that if someone took a photo of us all in the same place at the same time, a stranger might well wonder what in hell we all have in common. What I think is that, for certain females, just being female is enough of a common ground from which to build conversations that are relevant to all of us. Such are the Blog Sisters.
Now, off to dance, snap photos, and try to have some fun. That's what I'm missing. FUN!
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Dethrone the Pretender-Defenders
In CNN.com/entertainment – I emphasize ENTERTAINMENT – an article on “To Blog or Not to Blog” states “Several sources put the total number of blogs in the range of 200,000 to 500,000. Google returns 2 million hits on the word "blog."
Entertainment. That’s not serious stuff. That’s fluff writing. Right? Right?
Serious stuff is what Lewis Lapham writes about in the current issue of Harper’s and that b!X posts about. Lapham’s essay seriously attacks the report issued last November by the American Council of Trustess and Alumni, the organization that, he says, takes its cues from such conservatives as “Lynne V. Cheney, the vice president's wife and a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute; Martin Peretz, chairman of The New Republic; Irving Kristol, co-editor of The Public Interest; and William Bennett, editor of The Book of Virtues.”
Lapham describes the Council’s report, "Defending Civilization," as “a guide to the preferred forms of free speech….. that brought to mind the rule books discovered in the wreckage of the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice." Read Lapham’s essay for some scary stuff.
I’m sure that many bloggers would take issue with the American Council’s dictates of what it says should be the “preferred form of free speech” for Americans. I’ll bet an awful lot of the half-million bloggers that “several sources” say are out there would have some serious stuff to say in opposition to the Council’s approach to “Defending Civilization.”
So, why don’t we? Why aren’t all of us who truly believe in free speech doing some serious, continuous, and eloquent blogging in defense of the civilization that the pretender-defenders are becoming so successful in demolishing. If we all spent the next two weeks only blogging about that issue, do you think CNN might move us out of the entertainment category? Do you think that, together, our voices would be loud enough to be heard?
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And the beat goes on
A while ago, I mentioned reading two books by an author whom Jeneane Sessum had cited in her blog: psychotherapist Dr. Terrence Real.
Here’s another quote that struck a meaningful chord for me (from I Don’t Want to Talk About It – Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression) because it also seems to be true of some females.
Boys learn that the game [of success] requires fierce loyalty to those on the inside of the circle. But the outsiders, those judged weak or lacking, one must be willing to betray. Most boys learn the precise nature and extent of the cruelty leveled against deviants, because they themselves experience both sides. They learn to betray the humanity in others – the fat boys, the effeminate boys… as a way of protecting themselves, and I so doing, they also learn to disconnect from their own humanity, their own compassionate hearts. This is the most fundamental damage of false empowerment.
Real’s other book, How Can I Get Through to You – Reconnecting Men and Women is chock full of stuff I’d like to quote – not because he puts the onus to change on men (which he does) but because his analyses and case studies almost exactly reflect what I have experienced in my personal relationships with men, including sons and lovers. And he also makes it clear that his motivation to write the book has everything to do with his own experiences that Our cultural upbringing has not left us so ill equipped that we are prevented from falling in love. But a great many of us emerge as adults unprepared for the task of staying in love.
Real makes it clear that The first thing to notice about the current crisis is that it is not triggered because of changes in the man, nor even changes in both of them. It is women…..
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"I hope I'm changing my country"
My newspaper today features the arrest and imprisonment of Rich Ring, a local guy who was one of 43 protesters arrested for trespassing at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga., last November. They and 10,000 others demonstrated against the school's links to civilian massacres in Latin America.
When Rich entered the U.S. prison in Lewisburg, Pa., on Sept. 10 to serve three months, he was joined, nationwide, by 27 others, from a doctoral student in aviation conservation and two Colorado college kids to a pair of Franciscan friars, some teachers and a laborer from New Jersey. All told, protesters have served 40-plus prison years over the past decade seeking to close the school, which is now called The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
"I don't see this as a liberal issue by a long shot," Rich said. "If the average American on the street knew what this school was doing, it would be shut down in an instant. It's completely against American values."
In the same newspaper today, a column by a guy with whom I went to college who echoes what I've said before here. In the middle of his column about Bush and Iraq, Fred LeBrun says:
Where are the marchers, bug-eyed and shouting slogans, getting us all worked up on one side or the other?
Say what you want about the debacle of Vietnam and the sad era named for it, but public opinion was active in every shade, from beginning to end. Americans were dragged through that conflict screaming at each other, pulling hair in every direction, like one big, barroom brawl that just went on and on.
That was a painful process, but still time has shown an essential purpose was served. In the beginning, public policy was shaped by the same paranoid right-wing thinking that seems to be inspiring our current President, but by the end, it was the views of those reviled protesters in the streets beaten silly early on by the cops and construction workers that took hold and prevailed with the American people, and we got the hell out.
There's not enough of us risking our comforts to try to change our country. And that includes me.
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Ditto to the Left Everywhere
The rhetoric and bad politicking is revving up for the November elections. Too often, liberals (of which I am one) make the same mistake that b!X criticizes in this post.
The same level of idealism with which he drives me crazy sometimes is what also motivates him to verbalize such an important concept with such clarity. We should all ditto to the larger world what he wrote to some of the liberals of Portland.
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Cycles of Connection
We all know about the information explosion. I find that there's also a connection explosion. The longer we live, the more people we meet, the more individuals we add to our list of friends, the harder it is to find the time to keep the connections going. Anita Bora is a blogger I encountered early on in my blogging career, and one whose weblob always seems to be chock full of interesting snippets, the links from whicn I'm inclined to follow, comment on, etc. etc. Suddenly, it's two hours later.
Over the months since I discovered Anita, I accumulated an extensive list of blogs I like to follow, and I lost track of her.
And then she telephoned me today. From India. Just to chat. And the connection is vital again. So, thanks, Anita. I'll be showing up in your Comments again, so watch out.
And tonight I'm having dinner with one of my best friends (and roommate) from college. It has to be more than a decade since we've seen each other, since she lives on Long Island now and doesn't come up this way too often. She'll be in Albany for the weekend at a statewide conference of School Board members. I think she stood up for me when I eloped to get married (isn't it awful that I can't even remember for sure!!??). We keep in touch -- sporadically -- via email. I can't wait to see her and catch up on all the gossip from the contigent of my old sorority sisters who live near her!!
Next week I'm going to have lunch with a local Blog Sister whom I've never met in person. Circles. Cycles. Spirals. Life.
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Reality Check
In reality, bloggers have real bodies. From what I can tell, many of them are pretty young. And healthy, too, it seems to me. And, when you’re young, you don’t usually worry much about your health. You smoke, you drink, you drive fast; you indulge in various excesses; you don’t worry about the dangers of blood pressure, cholesterol, sugar, and abhorrent cells on the rampage. You don’t think about your vulnerability, and it’s easy to extend that thoughtlessness to others. (And I include my younger self in all of those charges.)
Last June, Dave Winer, who’s older than many and younger that some (of us bloggers) was stopped short by worries about his health. His recent post about where he is now and how he feels about being vulnerable is a meaningful reminder that, behind the protective façades of our weblogs, we are people who can be injured, hurt, worn down in both body and spirit.
I would like to think that, for all the bait and barbs and banter that we hurl at each other across the reaches of blogdom, we care when one of us hurts. I would like to think that we allow ourselves to desist and defer to the fact that our lives are too short not to fill as much as we can of them with healthy respect, kindness, and caring.
It’s so easy to bait and banter shielded behind our faceless screens. How much harder, and how much more healthy and heartening it is to step outside those barriers and admit that we are vulnerable, that we need hope, that we need each other’s human support.
That's why I have so much respect for Jeneane Sessum's and Mike Golby's style of journaling in their weblogs. That's why I send Dave Winer my very best Crone wishes for health and hope and many more years of beneficial blogging.
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Bless me, Bloggerhead....
Now, this is a "religion" that makes sense to me these days. I especially like the Ten Computer Commandments -- although the other directives are right on as well. Oh Yeah!
Thanks to bIX for pointing to it.
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Daydreaming
My grandson snoozes on his mother’s shoulder, nestled in the bunting I knitted for him before he was even born. For the first time in my life, I’m in awe of how a new human creature comes to be. I guess with my own kids, I was too busy feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility and the work of it all resting on my shoulders. I never planned to have children; I never planned for anything. It seemed that I was always in the middle of coping with the immediate. And, as a result, I can’t remember experiencing the pleasures of being “in the moment” with my children.
My daughter somehow found her way into a much better life (not much thanks to me.) She and her husband wanted and planned and saved for and both welcomed this baby with open hearts. They share his care, although she has chosen to be the one to stay home and be the primary caregiver. And she relishes each moment of the days that she spends introducing the world to this tiny stranger.
Taking care of my mom aside, there is a part of me that likes living the life of a free-spirited single woman. I still have time to indulge my two favorite passions – writing and dancing (not always in that order.) I meet new people all of time and have a certain notoriety because of my role as editor of the local dance magazine. I have both male and female friends with whom I hang out, although not as much as I would like to. I can sit here blogging all night and sleep late in the morning if I choose.
Yet, driving home from the couple of days spent with my daughter and her family, I daydreamed about the joys of a much different life – a time when I might be able to move closer to my daughter and her family – close enough so that my grandson can toddle over to my door at any time and come in to play. Maybe I’d finally plug in that food dehydrator I bought years ago and, together, we’d figure out how to do its magic on lots of fruit so that we both would have healthy snacks. And we’d gather stones to make a rock garden, plant giant sunflowers, and stake out birdfeeders. On rainy days, we’d invent new recipes for cookies and then lie down on big stretches of butcher paper and trace the outlines of our bodies that we would then cut out and decorate with scraps of fabric and buttons and feathers and magic markers. Maybe we’d make kazoos out of combs and waxed paper and we’d have a pots and pans percussion parade.
I guess I just want to do with him the things I didn’t seem to have the time or energy to do with my own kids. (Although I do remember one odd parade I led around the outside of my house when b!X and the neighbor kids were little. I think I unearthed the fife that I once played in a fife and drum corps. I remember that the only tune my fingers still knew how to play was the “Colonel Bogie March.” Heh. Odd how I remember that. I wonder if b!X does.)
I won’t see my grandson again until Christmas time. So I guess I’ll just keep daydreaming. And I’ll start working on the Winnie the Pooh that I want to crochet for him as a Solstice present. Or at least I’ll start on that after I glue the little rhinestones I bought onto the bottom of the new slinky black dance skirt I picked up on sale.
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Family Ties
I'm heading out toward Boston tomorrow to take my mom to see her great grandson for the first time. Even at 2 months, he's starting to look like a little boy instead of a generic baby. My mom and I are going to stay over one night at a motel, since there's really not enough room for both of us now that they baby's here. Of course, my mom's already complaining about having to stay in a motel, so I picked one near Bloomingdales, where I promised to take her shopping before we leave the area.
And also before we leave, we'll be picking up three pizzas to take home from this little place in Jamaica Plain that my mom insists is the best pizza she ever had. (And she lived most of her life just outside NYC. Go figure.)
No sooner did I finish editing last month's Dance Scene magazine, then I find myself in the middle of editing the next issue. We've come up with some innovations for the magazine, including running a condensed serialized version of an original mystery novel set at a ballroom dance weekend. The novel was written several years ago by one of my former Significant Others (with considerable editing help from me) whom I had taken to a ballroom dance weekend. Needless to say, the main characters are loosely based on us. Heh. I guess that's one way to get noteriety.
So, now I'm off to get stuff ready for the trip. Of course, we're loading ourselves up with food, stuff for the baby that I can't resist buying, and all of our "support systems" (hair curler, makeup, medications etc. etc.). It gets worse as one gets older.
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Best Memorial Idea
As far as I'm concerned, this is the best idea I've heard so far about what kind of 9/11 memorial it would be appropriate to establish in NYC.
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Rush Limbaugh gets me through a root canal
I had a root canal done today by an archconservative endodontist who is a great fan of Rush Limbaugh and listens to his talk radio show all day – which means that everyone in his office also gets to listen. Or, as I did, tune out – to both distasteful and unnerving experiences.
Looking at the dentist, you’d never think he was such a right-winger. He’s youngish, small, good-looking, has gelled spikey hair, and is known in the region as both an excellent jazz saxophone player and an excellent root canal guy. Just proves the old axiom, doesn’t it. It also reminds me how complex individuals are and how careful we should be about judging the total worth of someone by one aspect of his/her personality. On the other hand, Hitler supposedly was a good artist. (There's a movie in the works about his early years.) So, sometimes one bad aspect of a personality is so bad that it neutralizes anything good that might nevertheless be there. Then, again, what’s really bad from one person’s perspective is not so bad from another’s. No wonder people and genders and nations and religions and philosophies etc. etc. have such a hard time finding common ground. No wonder so often I feel totally out of sync with just about everyone else.
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September 11, 2001
The following was reported in the Portland Tribune on that day and blogged by b!X:
But the last word belongs to 6-year-old Gabrielle Thornton, who awoke to find her parents glued to the television set. She watched for a while before they noticed her there. "Oh, hi honey," said her mother. Gabrielle didn't respond directly. She had something else on her mind. "Mommy," she said, "What planet is that?"
I defer to b!X's chronicling of the related events here.
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Enjoying an ego boost.
I just have to share the ego boost I got tonight. Someone who knew me in college -- which was almost 45 years ago -- and hasn't seen me since, recognized me. I was covering a Big Band cruise on the Hudson River for the dance magazine I edit, and he was there with his wife. He stopped and asked me if I had graduated from the State University and if I had been in Beta Zeta sorority. He didn't remember my name, but he remembered that I was a good swing dancer back then as well. I mean, I don't think I look anything like I did 45 years ago. Hell, I weighed about 100 pounds back then, and I've put on almost a pound year and my hair's a different color and different style. But he recognized me anyway. Makes me feel that there's still a lot of that vibrant teenager left in this ol' Crone, and it's still visible. My ego's feeling good tonight!
(The photo on the left is me in costume for a college musical.)
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Out of the Mouths of Babes
Well, she's not really a "babe" in any of that word's meanings. She's a 16 year old girl whose mother posted on Blog Sisters something the girl wrote after using the internet to inform herself about the Patriot Act. What she wrote is worth giving more visibility to. So, here it is:
"I am Amelia Margaret Mason and I am 16 years old. I wrote this because I am worried about what the government is doing. I am too young to change things myself, but I hope that you who are reading this can do something about it. I am greatly concerned because I feel that from now on there is the possibility that the world that I will soon be entering will cease to be a free one.
What are the first things that came to mind when you ask someone my age why someone from another country would come here. They would probably say freedom of speech and freedom of religion. There are also many other things that make America special and different from other countries. I think that the terrorists do not like the freedom we have in our country or are some how jealous that they can’t have the same freedom. I think they do things like the atrocity of 9/11 because they think it could take our freedom away by scaring us.
That didn’t work on the citizens of the United States. But they scared the government. Now the government is scared enough to try to pass a bill called The Patriot Act. This act gives the president a lot of power to decide things without a vote. This may help some time, but I think it could lead to some very bad problems. From what I have hear and read the president is not really competent enough to make these kind of decisions properly by himself. From what I can tell he is more concerned with politics than the welfare and rights of the majority of the citizens of America. Also, this act takes away some of the most basic rights that we have: the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly. Without these basic rights America would be like any other country that we fight against. In effect the government is carrying out the terrorists work for them.
I hope that the adults that read this can vote and try to stop this so that when my friends and I grow up we will have a country we can be proud of and happy in."
Amen to that.
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I Do Want to Talk About It
(This is a follow-up to my previous post. The books mentioned are linked from there.)
I went to the library yesterday and took out two books by Dr. Terrence Real, an author that Jeneane Sessum has be posting about: I Don’t Want to Talk About It – Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression and How Can I Get Through to You – Reconnecting Men and Women.
Real, a family therapist, includes all kinds of the requisite case studies in both books, and they’re good examples of the points he’s trying to make – points I’ve been seeing made lately in many personal stories on various blog posts struggling to understand the frequent disconnect between genders. Real’s books makes these points real, give them some objective validity.
Of course, I have a feeling that, as usual, it will be mostly women reading these books – women who are desperately trying to stay in relationships that – in their present form – are not in their best interest. So they’re trying to get a better understanding of the men with whom they live, the men who “don’t want to talk about it.” It is really the men who should be reading these books and then talking about them.
Real confirms general observations that I’ve been reading and hearing about in recent news stories. For example, we are born with genetic dispositions toward certain behaviors, but it is our early upbringing (and also our various interactions with chemical substances of all kinds) that either activates these dispositions or tempers them. Recent studies seem to indicate that some men are born with something in their DNA that predisposes them to violence. Certain kinds experiences, especially in childhood, can set them on a violent life paths. Real maintains that the same is true of depression, and the expectations placed on men by our society provide fertile ground for a genetic predisposition toward depression to flower.
In Real’s experience as a family therapist, he has come to learn that, while it usually is the female in the relationship who initiates the complaints that lead to therapy or separation, it is often the male in the relationship who is struggling internally (and not talking about it) with various kinds of depression. She is the one who becomes “symptomatic,” although the problems did not necessarily originate in her.
I think this statement of his, in the conclusion of the book, is important:
In family therapy, we are trained to consider a symptomatic person as a signal that old mores and beliefs in the family no longer serve the present context. A symptomatic family member is the bearer of news that a change must come, a messenger of transformation.
Near the end of his book, he provides a perspective that I haven’t seen voiced this way before:
The greatest cost of the less than/better than dynamic of traditional masculinity lies in its deprivation of the experience of communion. Those who fear subjugation have limited repertoires of service. But service is the appropriate central organizing force of mature manhood. When the critical questions concern what one is going to get, a man is living in a boy’s world. Beyond a certain point in a man’s life, if he is to remain truly vital, he needs to be actively engaged in devotion to something other than his own success and happiness….. A grown man with nothing to devote himself to is a man who is sick at heart. What a great many men in this culture choose to serve is their own reflected value, which they often believe serves the needs of their family, even while their families may be crying out for something different from them.
My next post will be about Dr. Real’s other book: How Can I Get Through to You – Reconnecting Men and Women, which I am finding even more helpful in understanding the struggles of men in our society.
Stay tuned.
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Ah, sweet mysteries of life.
Two of the biggest mysteries that still keep us humans scratching our skulls are how male-female relationships got so complicated and what both genders can do to uncomplicate their interactions. I am glad to see that the conversations among women are continuing on this subject. Each adds new layers of insights and perspectives – some scholarly, some intuitive. There are two worth checking out.
Among a series of strong posts about feminism by a young female Rhodes Scholar who calls herself “glovefox,” is a lengthy response to a series of questions posed by a man, which includes this statement:
By the same token, I might say that since femininity and masculinity are cultural constructions, who could say how they might have manifested and developed if women instead of men were in charge of culture and society and that it was a historical status quo. Femininity and masculinity would probably have evolved very differently and might even be labelled differently.
Founder of Blog Sisters, Jeneane Sessum, has this to say in a post that looks at the way in which weblogging has enabled men to start manifesting a “cultural construction” that has historically been associated with women:
Sessum suggests:
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Vote Or Die
The following is repeated from here, for those who don't follow bIX's blog. I couldn't have said it better and I believe that it can't be said often enough.
I'm not big on their rhetoric about using election Day to show that in the aftermath of 9/11 freedom is still alive and well, but I will nonetheless point you to Freedom's Answer, because their mission is to increase voter turnout.
For me, the only connection to 9/11 should be the following.
For all you superficial patriots who hung flags on your car antennae (which then, not incidentally, gradually tattered and fell off to litter our nation's roads) -- you know, those of you who think you own the idea of being an American because you could fly the colors and sing the songs: Now is your time to put up or shut up. If you aren't in the voting booth (real or merely metaphorical for those of us who, say, vote by mail) this November, then put away your flags and leave the room when the national anthem is played.
Now, you all know I'm no flag waver or anthem singer. But I'm also not fond of hypocrites. Patriotism by proxy -- meaning dressing one's life up in red, white, and blue in order to support other Americans, but all the while doing nothing yourself as an American -- is not patriotism at all. In the end, it's just consumerism. And status.
You want to be a patriot? Then get to work on it for real.
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Ancient Wells of Wisdom
My therapist-shaman-spiritual seeker friend sent the following out in an email today. His words deserve a larger audience than the small group of friends with whom he shares his voice.
Dear Friends,
Last night, on the evening of Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of the Jewish
New Year, I made a difficult decision. After attending Rosh Hashonah
evening services, I decided not to attend today's New Year's day service.
A strange decision. In the annual Jewish spiritual cycle, this holiday
time begins a ten day period of soul-searching and introspection,
purification and reconciliation. It is meant to prepare us for our next
year of life by beginning that year cleansed, uplifted, unburdened, and
wiser from reflection on our mistakes and the ways we have hurt each
other. What better place than a synagogue, temple or church to practice
such introspection and contemplation?
Indeed, many of the words repeated in the prayer service, in fact
repeated for centuries, are meant to bring us to such a place of deep
internal reflection. We declare that "we consecrate God by our acts of
righteousness." We declare the Divinity is the source or morality. We
affirm that "the illnesses of our world will be healed by those who drink
deep from ancient wells of wisdom."
I strive to drink from those wells not just today but every day. I
strive to consecrate God by living righteously. The entire meaning and
motivations of all my professional activities as - psychotherapist,
growth facilitator, journey guide writer - are found in these goals. The
beautiful words in our traditional prayers remind me of my own deepest
motivations, and that they are watered by ancient wellsprings living in
Jewish and other religious thought. Then why am I home writing this
instead of in synagogue repeating the words in person with a few hundred
others, and in concert with Jews everywhere?
The answer is alarmingly simple. My friend, a Jewish lawyer who has
dedicated his life of professional service to crusading for social
justice, told me earlier this week: "I go to synagogue. I assume that
Judaism means something to the people attending services. But I don't
see or feel what it means. I don't see my neighbors rending their souls,
struggling with the big questions, applying these difficult spiritual and
philosophical questions to our daily personal and collective lives."
Services too often substitute for rather than encourage the soul-rending
that needs to occur on these days. Religion, meant to be the soul's
guide through the difficulties of life and living, becomes a substitute
rather than aid and encouragement to spirituality. My friend asked how
he could make the holiday truly spiritually alive, what he could read to
guide his soul in the process.
I, too, want to rend my soul on this day. In this brave new world we
live in, where we are in a new form of war without end, where our
political leadership chomps at the bit to plunge us into another
destructive and morally questionable war, where ecological, economic and
social decay threaten all of us on the entire planet daily, there is no
better, no more apt time to rend our souls, to ask how to live
righteously, to ask how to honor God and celebrate the creation. For the
meaning of the Rosh Hashonah holiday is just this. The holiday is the
mythic anniversary of the day of Creation. We celebrate it by working to
make ourselves morally clean so that we can be good stewards of this most
awesome gift of the Creator to us all.
With so much suffering, with such a degree of modern illness afflicting
us all, we must experience soul-rending. So, sadly, I stay home to rend
my soul in private contemplation because I do not experience that rending
occurring in the shared public arena. We are at war but we barely touch
its pain. We are about to go to another war but are not sharing our
terror. Our planet is frying, our fresh waters disappearing, yet we are
not agonizing over it and asking what we each can do as individuals, and
what we must do collectively, to help our beloved Earth heal. So how do
we celebrate and behave righteously toward the Creation? There is just
too much pressing our us, disturbing and threatening us, for today to be
a day of nicities: "Have a good year;" "Be kind to each other." We must
ask much more difficult and terrifying and disturbing questions -- of
ourselves, each other, and all our leaders. And we must demand a much
more difficult and uncomfortable search for answers.
I wish to go on with this reflection. I wish to apply the spiritual
demands of this holiday to our difficult political, social, environmental
questions. And I will. I will spend this holy day, the ten days of
repentance that follow, and the holiest day of Yom Kippur, in such
contemplation. I will ask about the unthinking sacrifices we are making
of our children and our earth -- as indicated by the story of Abraham and
Isaac retold today. I will ask about how I individually and we
collectively must serve as good stewards of the Creation on this day we
celebrate its birthday and declare that spirituality and right moral
action are one and the same. I will personally apologize to those I have
wronged, and seek ways to stop further harm in my individual as well as
our collective lives. I will continue to dedicate myself, my work, my
life to ultimate concerns, remembering that power and money are just
tools to use for good or ill, and should never be pursuits in themselves.
I will tremble in righteous indignation at the daily abuse of our
freedom, and use of our power to abuse others and our planet. And I will
never agree to allow my children, yours, or distant strangers' children,
to be sacrificed on the altar of our vanity and greed.
I will go on with these reflections in every way I can, hourly, daily,
yearly, and not just pay my public dues to the holiday and tradition by
taking an easy path. I ask, I implore each of you to do the same.
Thank you all for being my congregation of spiritual seekers,
soul-renders, and God-wrestlers on this anniversary of the day of
Creation. May you each and all have a year of blessings and meaning.
Sounds right to me.
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The RBoy we hardly know but want to love anyway
Chris Locke is writing. Again. And ya’ gotta love him. At least I do, when he surfaces with the kind of slithering songs he’s finally singing to someone other them himself.*
He lives in his lines, slim threads that snake like silk through places too darkly narrow for most of us to find our way through. Buy he goes there, at home in the wet hollows. And we try to follow. Or at least I try. Only can try. Because it’s such a trip, like drifting in the little dinghy through Howe Caverns all those years ago. Long tunnels echoing on all sides, all shadows and surprising winds and watery mysteries they never gave me leave to explore. Locke shines his flashing light down those tunnels. Look. Look. All that magic. Go for it.
*O the songs we hide, singing only to ourselves.
Theordore Roethke, Meditations of an Old Woman, Fourth Meditation
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Revealing Females
It all started as a not-to-be-taken seriously post about a prominent piece of female anatomy, but it triggered very serious blog conversations all over the place about sexism, feminism, femininity etc. etc. I was glad to see those conversations happen and I personally hope the thread continues as a way of clarifying how various of us women feel about ourselves as biological women. This is something we ought to be examining and sharing, and this is something men should be interested in hearing and responding to. It helps the genders to understand each other better.
This post on the issue by Andrea James is not the first of hers that made me sit up and take notice of the fact that this young woman has wisdom way beyond her years. Months ago, Andrea and I did a little cooperative playful conjuring as a way of giving a fellow blogger some moral support. I named her my Apprentice Crone, recognizing a shared interest in perceiving the ordinary magic inherent in our creative lives.
So, when Dorothea Salo referred in-not-terribly-positive tones to my Cronedom in one of her recent and excellent posts about her own experiences as a female-as-perceived-by-others, I felt prompted to defend my self-proclaimed title.
Just as many younger women are struggling to be recognized and respected for all that they are as women and not for how closely their physical appearance adheres to the Victoria Secrets stereotype, I’m trying to dispel the stereotype of the older woman, the Crone, the woman who has worked to attract some wisdom into her soul (and who doesn’t cringe at the extra skin slowly emerging on her upper arms and lower jawline). We come in as many different physical forms as do women of any other age. Some of us like looking and living sexy; some of us go the Earth Mother route; some are gray-haired and solitary. What we have in common is a knack for making the most of who we are despite the constraints of aging; of continuing to assert our perceptions and our presence in a world obsessed by youth; of refusing to stop learning, creating, conjuring; of continuing to make our choices consciously. What we have in common is a respect for our individuality as women, as older women, as Crones. The Crone is not a box or a cage; it is a strong female archetype that should have found her way by now into the archetype-full gaming culture that Dorothea knows so well. What do you think, Dorothea?
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The Good Father
This was posted as a comment to my 9/3 post, but I think it deserves more visibility. It was posted by the author, who also is my kids' Dad.
FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Little girls are nice
but we do them wrong
fussing with their hair and dressing them up
like dolls --
teaching them from the start
they are playthings.
Better we should feed them
words and numbers and tools
to remind them
that before women, they are people.
Teach them love and caring and nurture, yes,
but not as the entirety of their being,
else those qualities become walls and prisons.
Give them, as well, wings
and teach them to fly --
in case later in life
someone builds walls around them.
Little girls are nice,
but daughters who are their soaring selves
are better.
Categories:
Mother Load
"I sent you to college. You're a teacher. You should be perfect."
That's what she said to me yesterday, my mother. I don't even remember what it was I did this time that didn't meet with her approval. Not that it matters. I've spent my entire life repelling her disapprovals. But it does burn my butt that she still doesn't get it.
Over on her weblog, Jeneane Sessum shares her current struggles to get beyond the load her mother laid on her. Mother-daughter stuff. Tough stuff.
I think I managed to do the mothering thing less destructively than my mother, although I certainly didn't do it perfectly. Of course not.
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I'm Baaaacckkk!
Now, how does anyone out there know this? Haven't a clue, but this issue of the dance magazine has been "put to bed" (that's publishing talk. heh), so now I can resume some of my other life pursuits, like blogging.
Actually, while I haven't been posting here, I've been commenting intently and intensely on various blog and email conversations about sexism. My ire is stirred by that issue because I belive that expressed sexist attitudes (whether voiced in jest, conscious intent or even unconscious intent) contribute to the tough row that women have to hoe in this world by adding to the impression that it's OK to demean women.) So, when I read Jennifer Balderama's posts on the subjects of feminism and strong women, I figured that giving those posts some additional visibility was a good way to relaunch myself into the blogmix of things.
And, while I'm on the subject of gender differences (yes, all of this sexism stuff is somehow based in the different ways each gender needs to perceive the other, I believe), I found this very relevant passage in a "trashy" novel I just finished reading
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