The Immutability of Impermanence.
It’s my 5-month old grandson’s first Christmas, and I go crazy taking digital photos. My brother shows up with the fading 16mm frames of my chubby childhood Christmases copied onto a computer disk. My daughter gets me to rummage through the now-lopsided boxes filled with what I managed to hang onto of my kids’ stuff. She’s looking for her own baby pictures, her baby book, her grade school folders, her high school yearbook, her modeling and acting head shots. My mother drags out my baby book, the poetry I wrote in high school, my senior prom photo. I find an envelope full of b!X’s memorabilia – copies of the underground newspaper he published in high school; a photo of his feet in the ratty, sole-flapping sneakers that he wore to his high school graduation; crumbling newspaper articles from when he and his cronies played music (literally) on the Henry Moore sculpture gracing the college campus that he deigned to attend for a couple of years; the ‘90s Rolling Stone article that interviewed him as one of a dozen twenty-somethings trying to change the world. The living room becomes surrounded by moldy mounds of memories -- Kodak and otherwise -- most of which are unyieldingly stuck, one to the other, having succumbed to the dampness of cellars, the frost of garages, the immutability of impermanence.
The baby is cutting his first tooth. My mother’s gums are receding. My daughter’s hair shows strands of silver. The old photos stick and fade and peel. There’s so much I don’t remember any more, so much faded and stuck and peeled.
I drive my grandson and his parents back to the Boston area (neither parent has yet to learn how to drive). We listen to Eva Cassidy’s CD “Imagine,” because her voice is the one thing that calms the baby in times of stress. Teething is a bummer. You can listen to some of her songs here.
With her bluesy soulful voice, Cassidy sings “Who knows where the time goes.” Time is gone for Eva Cassidy. Time is a bummer.
On my way back home I finish listening to Louise Erdrich’s novel, Antelope Wife. She tells her story in Native American time – non-linear, like the spinnings of Grandmother Spider. It is the story of Woman through the stories of women borne to ride the tides of time. Out of Erdrich’s lyrical prose flow great one-liners that I want to remember. But I don’t write them down, and time goes and takes the one-liners with it.
These are the mothers and the son who were snowbound together over this gone Christmas. Impermanent as time, we have already changed from what you see here.
On my way home from Boston, I stop and buy myself Eva Cassidy’s CD and ride the rest of the way outside of time.
Across the evening sky
All the birds are leaving
But how can they know
It's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire
I will still be dreaming
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Categories:
Getting It
He got it. He got it right, right there, in dead-on color. He probably doesn’t care that I think he got it right, didn’t have that in mind at all. But it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right….with me. Even the she-warriors – spiked and metal-breasted and demonized. That’s right on. Right on.
I spent the solstice driving out toward Boston to get my grandson and his folks. I listened to “The Antelope Wife,” a novel on tape by Louise Erdrich, a Native American novelist. I love the way she weaves together myth and language and dreams and reality – the natural, the unnatural, the supranatural. This from her book “Love Medicine.”
The earth was full of life and there were dandelions growing out the window, thick as thieves, already seeded, fat as big yellow plungers. She let my hand go. I got up. "I'll go out and dig a few dandelions," I told her. Outside, the sun was hot and heavy as a hand on my back. I felt it flow down my arms, out my fingers, arrowing through the ends of the fork into the earth. With every root I prized up there was a return, as if I was kin to its secret lesson. The touch got stronger as I worked through the grassy afternoon. Uncurling from me like a seed out of the blackness where I was lost, the touch spread. The spiked leaves full of bitter mother's milk. A buried root. A nuisance people dig up and throw in the sun to wither. A globe of frail seeds that’s indestructible.
I drove thinking of the solstice, the double dorje. I’ve had a single brass dorje for years, along with the bell that accompanies it . When I take a smooth stick and run it along the edge of the bell, it emits the purest, clearest tone that goes on, and on, and on, thrumming into my bones, vibrating my blood.
I had never heard of a double dorje before, so when I got to my daughter’s, I got on her computer and surfed around for some information on it. I’m a dilettante about spiritual paths just as I’m a dilettante about just about everything else. So, here’s what I found out about the singing bell and the double dorje:
The Singing Bell …symbolizes female energy in the form of Wisdom expressed as "going beyond wisdom." The …Dorje …symbolizes male energy in the form of Method expressed as "compassion." They are inseparable companion pieces, with the bell held in the left hand and the vajra [dorje] in the right. Used together, they can activate energy and clear a space of negative energies. The bell is used as a sonic focus for meditation, a cadence factor for mantra recitation....
The Double Dorje … represents the principle of absolute stability…. This emblem represents the indestructible reality of the Buddha's mind as the unshakable throne of enlightenment. Tibetans regard the double dorje as the symbol of that which is unimpenetrable.
My new year gift to myself is going to be a double dorje gau. I’ve been looking for a symbol to wear around my neck. I am enamored of symbols, metaphors – those short-hand reminders of much larger cosmic constructs. The double dorje will be my guiding symbol for this new year. Who would have ever thought I would have found it where I did. I just love the magical way the world works. Even the blog world.
This is how I like to make the trip – full circle but back to a different place. The smooth way a spiral slips along, like the Slinky I used to play with as a kid.
All my life’s a circle, sunrise and sun down…….. There’s no straight lines make up my life and all my roads have bends. There’s no clear cut beginning, and so far no dead ends.
A Merry Yule to you all, each and every one.
Categories:
Pin Ups
I found these as I was cleaning up my desk so that I could close the roll top. I picked them up years ago on one of those nasty marches re Roe vs Wade. Hee. Hee.
Categories:
Why I'm Still a Relentless Feminist
On Blog Sisters, Lisa English calls attention to a photo exhibition called "Family of Woman," which opened in New York and which will be traveling to Los Angeles and Minneapolis next year. The exhibit is presented by the U.S. Committee for the United Nation's Population Fund.
These are some thought-provoking quotes from that exhibit’s web site:
In a changing world, women are often the first to suffer and last to gain.
Women and children account for more than 75% of the refugees and displaced people in war, famine, persecution and natural disaster. Of the population at risk, 25% are women of reproductive age and one in five is likely to be pregnant.
Although they comprise half the world's population, women have never enjoyed their fair share of the world's resources or opportunities. Gender inequity takes many forms and crosses all cultural, religious and national boundaries. Even in industrialized countries, women earn less than men—or nothing—for the same work and more hours. Women's productivity is seldom counted in national output because much of it is unpaid or informal.
When women suffer, families and nations suffer. Discrepancies in pay favor men's salaries, although studies show that women typically keep little of their income for personal use while men keep up to 26% of their wages for personal use. Inequities in workload—with women's combined paid and unpaid work exceeding men's by as much as 30%—limit women's participation in a nation's social, cultural and political life.
Categories:
Memo to the Gonzo Guy
sent as an email to Chris:
Well, I guess I'm still on your email list, so I'll go ahead and thank you directly for the lovely broom. Of course I already have one, but one can always use a spare. In return I would be honored to mail you one of my copies of Erica Jong's "Witches," of which I have several copies, all but one received as gifts. But I won't unless you tell me to.
Meanwhile, congratulations on your new site. That's the kind of stuff that just might change the world (at least an important piece of the business world).
You are a worthy opponent, even though I think that, like some, you often play dirty. That's why there are witches -- or more accurately, women who cloak themselves in that kind of disturbing image.
as always
cybercrone
Categories:
The Blogroll Bother
Shelley Powers has a really interesting post (and links to the perspectives of others) about her plans to replace her blogroll with a system of archiving and organizing the specific posts of others that she really liked. I like the idea, although there are two major reasons why I can’t/won’t do it.
1. The technology to accomplish it is beyond my knowledge base right now, and I don’t have enough energy or interest to learn it all. It’s all to complicated for my aging brain. I need to keep things simple.
2. There are talented bloggers/writers like Jeneane Sessum who, at least once a week, posts a poem or a reflection that I’d want to save; I just couldn’t keep up.
Even more importantly, I use my blogroll as a quick link for myself so that I can check in with my personal favorites without having to remember their URLs. I suppose, for my visitors, my blogroll also gives an idea of what other blogs I value – and therefore what my values are. Interestingly enough, I think that many of the individuals on my blogroll don’t read my weblog very often. But that’s OK; that’s the way the way it goes.
There’s also some discussions going on about adding and deleting blogroll entries – which is also just another natural blogging process for me – a constant refinement of my preferences as I meet more and more bloggers. (I, for one, can’t keep up with them all. I have to make choices.) As I see it, problems arise when “delinking” is made into a big deal. That makes it seem as though a blogroll is some sort of coterie or special society.
Unfortunately, Jeneane says she’s stopping her weblog for a while. I’m sure holidays with an energetic young ‘un are exhausting. I’m thinking that my relentlessness also has contributed to her needing a break. My quarrel was with Chris Locke’s vitriol and not with her, and I never wanted to get into a pissing match with her. But I did. It was unavoidable (because I’m ferociously relentless when people/s – including myself – are wronged), and I’m sorry that it happened that way. I will tell her that in a direct email, but it seems appropriate to say it here as well. As I said, she is just about my favorite “personal” (as opposed to political or technical) blogger. She is also ferociously protective of those she loves. As am I.
Categories:
Taken by "Taken"
As I'm cleaning and cooking, I'm watching Steven Spielberg's "Taken," which I taped, since it runs for 20 hours. I was prepared not to like it, but as I get into the 4th segment, I find it fascinating the way he wove together the histories and myths of "the truth is out there." The "cigarette man" from the X-Files, in his younger days, might be one of the central figures. His duplicity, immorality, total lack of conscience, and even pure evil, develop as the story line develops. What I found interesting was something that the child-voiced narrator says in relation to him -- something about why people become that way -- likening it to what we see often happening on the playground. "If you're the one doing the pushing, you're not going to be the one being pushed."
(Addendum: Oops. He wasn't the "cigarette man" because he died. Oh well. That's what I get for jumping the gun.)
Categories:
Oh Babies!
Welcome brand new baby boy Ruairi Michael O’Connor Clarke. Dad reports:
There's a conscious link to Ruairi O’Connor (Ruadrí Ua Conchobair]) the last High King of Ireland, but that's not the main reason we chose it. Up to the last minute, we still couldn't quite choose between Ruairi and Alexander - but all our new found friends in the delivery room and everyone we spoke to yesterday evening really liked Ruairi - so we went with the flow. And if he lives up to the promise of his 9lb 9oz, he’ll be a king amongst men, for sure.
I love the name and the acknowledgment of heritage. I like "Alexander," too; that's my 5-month-old grandson's name.
And Gary Turner posts a lovely fatherly portrait with his sweet Cameron. Babies. Babies. It's what keeps the human race going. And with these two new ones, given their families, the race is bound to keep being a lively one.
We're still waiting for the third. Maybe that one is waiting to be a perfect Christmas present.
Categories:
Relentlessness
Being relentless is one of my best qualities and one of my worst. It's the one that allowed me whatever successes I had advocating for the arts and humanities in education -- which are always the first to be cut out of the school budget and which many classroom teachers don't understand how to integrate into what they already are teaching.
It's also a quality that makes people and bloggers tell me "enough already."
So my mantra for the coming year is going to be from my favorite translation of Lao Tsu's Tao Te Ching, #8.
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep into the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.
No fight. No blame.
Not relentless like crashing waves, or incessant hail stones. Rather, relentless like the steady, even flow of clear, cleansing water. Here's hoping.
Categories:
How Other See U.S.
Got this from Pearl Calico's Corner. Roddick, a successful British business entrepreneur, has solid human values. I'm sure that her view of America is shared by most people across the Atlantic. She's right, and it's so tragic!
Categories:
A virtual oplatek for Marek
Here you go, Marek J. I already broke off my piece. (I'd like it better if it did taste like Godiva chocolate! Hey, there's a commercial venture for you!)
Zycze zdrowia, szczescia i fortuny!
Niech sie spelnia wszystkie marzenia!
Wesolych Swiat!
Categories:
Attention Warbloggers!
Go here to read a wonderful sermon given at a Jewish temple last Friday by a Jewish man -- a therapist, a healer, a poet, a writer, a man of wisdom and compassion. The title of the sermon is "Biblical Wisdom and Modern War."
May we all find peace in the New Year.
For more information about Dr. Edward Tick, see www.mentorthesoul.com
Categories:
Can't let this one slide by
The following, thanks to Lisa English. Read her entire posts on her site and/or Blog Sisters.
THE HOMELAND SECURITY WHODUNIT:
TOM PAINE.COM OFFERS $10,000 REWARD TO FIND OUT
Back in November, the Senate and House passed a Homeland Security Bill replete with goodies for special interests, but none so troubling as that mysterious rider which appeared out of nowhere, seemingly in the middle of the night, just prior to the vote. The rider created a wall of protection around the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, a large Republican campaign contributor. For a company facing expensive lawsuits stemming from an association between the vaccines it produced, and the high rise in autism among American children who were administered that vaccine, this rider - having nothing to do with Homeland Security - may well have saved Eli Lilly's future in corporate America. Sadly, passage of Homeland Security put an end to those lawsuits, filed by parents who want to know the truth. Families must now file their claims through a special "vaccine court" where their cases will be heard. The quest for truth has been crushed.
Who was the person who slipped this rider into the bill at the last minute? Who out there is protecting the corporate backside of Eli Lilly? Politicians on the left and on the right claim they knew nothing about the addition. Many voted for the bill not realizing the rider had been included. Now, you and I both know that Washington DC is not exactly a haven for the modest. To the contrary, it's home to politicians and pundits whose every breath is cause for a two-column write-up, so when nobody stepped up to the plate and took credit for this mysterious corporate litigation condom, families of autism and people of good will began to ask, "whodunit?" We just might get an answer to that question.
TomPaine.com has issued a $10,000 reward leading to the identification of that individual responsible for this clandestine piece of lawmaking. Read it all on their site..
I wonder if the arts money that heiress Ruth Lilly is spreading around is tied to this at all. Blood money? Then why to the arts? Because arts people are so hungry for support that they won't criticize their benefactresses connections? Just wondering.
Categories:
One more thing...
I've been thinking a lot about the Blog arena as a place to exercise one's authentic voice. That's something that's discussed on and off all the time -- as is the idea of "writing oneself into existence."
Oddly enough (or maybe not), I've always looked at the real world as a place to exercise my authentic voice, to write/speak/act myself into existence -- so my blog voice is the same as my real voice, the one I use all of the time. And my blog behavior is the same as it is the the real world. I don't need to type myself into existence through my blog; but it is a way to share my real, authentic voice with a larger world.
Question: Why doesn't everyone use the same voice/behavior in the real world as they do in the blog world? Is it fear? Inhibition?
Just something I'm thinking about as I'm cleaning, cooking, and packing for the drive. I'm inviting you all to think about that too.
Categories:
My Last Christmas Tree
In the fall of 1984, I bought a real potted Norfolk pine in anticipation of beginning a tradition of decorating that real tree for each winter holiday. On December 22, 1984 I was ready to start that tradition -- when I got a phone call telling me to come "home" quick (to my parents'); my father was coming home from the hospital to die. (I told that story on this weblog a while ago.)
I left my high school-aged son with his father and the tree undecorated. My father died on December 26. The tree followed not long after. I haven't had a Christmas tree since. If I decorate, it's more in honor of the solstice -- the passing through the darkest of days and moving toward a new. more joyous, season.
This year I have a new grandson, who's coming with his mom and dad to spend his first Christmas with his grandmother and great-grandmother. There should be a tree, and lights, and stockings, and laughter. And this year there will be. It's not a real tree, but it has lights that twinkle, and I made a totally funky un-Christmasy-looking stocking (except for the bells around the edge) for my grandson and filled it with cool baby stuff.
Last week I bought a small balsam in a pot. It's too small to decorate, and that's OK for this year. I'm planning for next. My mother is 86. It hope it's not deja-vue all over again.
But even if it is, there are many more Christmases with my grandson to look forward to. And, if necessary, next time, maybe I'll try something in fir.
In a few days I will be driving out to the Boston area to pick up and bring back the little family. (Would you believe that neither my daughter nor son-in-law ever learned how to drive!) And then I'll drive them back after Christmas. So this might be my last post for a while. Lots to do!!
Happy Holidays, everyone. And b!X, I put your Christmas package in the mail today. Keep an eye out for it.
Categories:
I miss the movies.
When I lived alone, I used to go to the movies all the time. I got into the habit early during my times of single bliss. It was the one thing I felt really comfortable doing by myself. I’d go every weekend; sometimes twice, if there was something I really wanted to see.
But now, as a caregiver, my weekend days are as tiring as my weekday days, and somehow it seems harder to get myself out. And my mom doesn’t like the movies; she can’t sit that along and can’t follow the story lines.
Sometimes my friend Joan calls and we take off on a Tuesday evening (when the non-mainstream movie theater has cheaper rates) to see movies, like Frida, that her male companion doesn’t want to see. Of course, I get senior citizen rates all the time, but, like all of my friends, she’s younger than I am – so I let her make the call.
But I also want to see the Star Trek movie (having seen all of them; having been a Star Trek junkie since the first episode – in the early 70s, wasn’t it?) I want to see the new Harry Potter movie, since I did read all of those books and I love how they play with mythologies. I become a kid again. The latest Lord of the Rings is right up there, too.
I need to laugh out loud more, and I remember doing that that when I saw Analyze This. Maybe I ought to see Analyze That. I never did get to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and my friends who saw it highly recommend it. I still haven’t seen 8 Mile or Bowling for Columbine, either. And then there’s Real Women Have Curves. Standing in the Shadows of Motown, which Tom Shugart highly recommends, isn’t even playing here yet.
I’m so far behind I’m never going to catch up. I’d better make sure my vcr is in good working order.
Categories:
The Name Game
Don't you just love the creative names that bloggers come up with for their weblogs? I'm not even going to try to list them. You surf through them all of the time. I wish I had thought of something more catchy for the name of my weblog. Kalilily was the name I started using when I began sending emails. Back then everyone seemed to be concerned about preserving one's anonymity, and I bought into that. I chose Kalilily because
1. I'm an enthusiastic student of feminine mythology because of the advantages of using female mythic figures in working toward self-empowerment. In other words, I dig mythic figures like Kali and Lilith. So, there you go. Kalilily.
2. I love Georgia O'Keefe's calla lilies. Perfect.
So, when it came time to pick a blog name, I thought, this is a time and place for Kalilily. Kalilily Time. Not as catchy as 99% of the blognames out there, but it's what I wound up with.
Now, back to #1, above. Kali and Lilith are not considered by traditional cultures to present pretty female pictures. They symbolize the dark sides of the femine (not evil; dark.) But their identities are powerful, and they set the stage for the emergence of the crone in all of us women -- the older, strong, individualistic, solitary, compassionate, female -- the one who has been there, done that, and keeps moving on to new experiences, new learning -- who keeps reinventing herself so that, each time, she becomes more authentic. Now, that is something to which I aspire.
And so emerged the sub-title: Elaine of Kalilily, Resident Crone of Blogdom.
Sort of a symbol, a leitmotif, a gimmick, an identifying image. Aspiring to the "crone" thing has been part of my spiritual development for decades, and my non-blog friends know all about my journeys toward that goal. But to bloggers, the sub-title might sound a little arrogant. I guess I should have kept the words "Self-Proclaimed" where I originally had it -- before the word "Resident." I think I'll put it back there, just so there's no mistake.
I aspire to Cronedom. I figure that that's not such a bad thing. And I do believe that we become what we intend.
Categories:
No Cookies in My Oven
I love to cook but I hate to bake. If I remember correctly, when my kids were little I used to make Pillsbury Slice 'n Bake cookies for Christmas. For the last few Christmases, my daughter baked and brought cookies, but this year, with little Lex pretty much monopolizing her time and energy, that's not going to happen. So, am I going to bake? Heh.
Of course not. I went out and bought a big plastic cannister of Christmas-shaped pretzels, got some candy-making chocolate from the craft store, and am making chocolate-covered pretzels, which I like a lot more than cookies anyway.
I sure hope everyone else does!
Categories:
Circles of Women
Some of the women in my (non-blog) life to whom I feel closest are women I've met through the men I've known. One of them dated a guy after he and I decided to end our three-year relationship. He introduced us at a dance, believing that we had a lot in common. Since then (more than a decade ago), he has gone on to other things and other women, but Joan and I have remained the best of friends.
And (thanks to him-whose-name-is-unmentionable-in-this-blog) now I come upon Laurie Doctor, who seems like someone I'd like to know better. Of course, she lives half-way across the country, so chances are we'll never meet in person. But her work speaks to me. She creates from a place that I used to know well but have wandered too far from.
While I had been to her website before, I'd never gotten in touch with her. But this time I did, perhaps because the spirit that her work captures has been tapping on the back of my brain for several weeks now. It's just wonderfully synchronistic that, again, I meet a kindred female spirit through the energies of a decidedly unkindred male.
I had lunch last week with a female friend who is an expressive arts therapist. She and I used to give workshops together (she has the credentials; I just have the chutzpah and a sense of the theatrical). She's invited me to pick up this spring where we left off a couple of years ago and join her and her new business partner in presenting a series of workshops on "conscious aging." I would like to do that, although a lot depends on how my mother is doing.
One door closes (dancing) and another door opens.
Meanwhile, I just joined the local Kripalu center and enrolled in a Caregivers workshop as well as a meditation session and an expressive arts day that my friend is facilitating. I noticed that they offer a Yoga for Seniors at an time late enough in the morning for me to actually be able to make. I'm thinking about it.
The solstice is on December 22. Laurie Doctor says that she'll be getting together with some of her female friends to celebrate. I used to do that, and I'd create a ritual that would honor the power of our circle of women. These days, my circle of women has lost its shape, and we won't be getting together until after the New Year. So, I hope that Laurie doesn't mind if I send my spirit out into the Rockies to join her and her circle. Women. Circles. Cycles. Celebrations. As much as I love men (with the exception of one or two), they're just not women. Heh.
Categories:
The Legacies of Lineage
Yesterday, Jeneane remembered her amazing great-grandmother, and today I add my own remembrance in a comment to her post on Blog Sisters. I guess it's the holidays.
I took my mother to a Polish church yesterday afternoon to sing "koledy," Polish Christmas caroles. I avoid going to church every chance I get, but I have a feeling that this could just be my mother's last Christmas, so I did the right thing.
I remember as a child I used to love to go to our big cathedral-like Polish church in Yonkers at Christmas time -- the lights, the candles, the music, the incense, the crowds packed into the pews, everyone regaled in Christmas finery. I still love the smell of that incense, and years ago I bought some frankincense to see if I could duplicate it. Nope. (Maybe my sense memory has something to do with the scent of human sweat combined with that unique incense. Could be.)
My childhood church had a great choir, and they indeed sounded like a choir of angels when they sang the koledy. The church we went to yesterday was sparsely filled, the choir meager. There was no incense. I tried to let my awareness drift back in time, but my brain was too wired from dealing with my altercation with the previously-posted-about cult personality. But my mother sang right along, happy to be connected to something very important to her. And that's why I was there, anyway.
On our way out, we picked up some "oplatek," some of which I'm sending to b!X to keep him connected to his family roots.
I'll miss my son deeply this Christmas, but we'll talk on the phone, and I'll probably cry. And then I'll hug my grandson and cry some more. And my mother will play some koledy on her Lowry organ and, this time, I might even sing.
Categories:
Welcome to the world, Cameron Turner
Beloved Blogger Gary Turner and his exhausted wife Fiona have brought into the world a lovely baby girl. Welcome, Cameron, to this crazy mixed up world. Blessings on you, little one.
Categories:
My Finger to the Figure
I’ve never been one to follow a leader, and I’ve never understood the human attraction to cult personalities. But there certainly is something in some human natures that needs to feel blessed by someone that they have vested with only vaguely deserved wisdom.
I am thinking about this because of my current altercation with a current cult figure who, in emails to me, has called me a “passive-aggressive bitch” and “doctrinaire moralist” and has accused me of “disgruntled high-horse pretense of moral superiority” and “binary black and white filters.” (Out of sheer perversity, I refuse to link to him. But he did start all of this by indicating on his weblog that he thinks I am a half-wit and an anal retentive.)
Now, in all fairness, in response to his blogassault on me, I commented somewhere that
I do have something against schmucks who publicly harass former "beloveds" and who can dish out invectives out but can't take them. And, I have only pity and sympathy for narcissistic might have beens who seem to make a great effort to make sure the world at large sees them as emotionally stunted and psychologically deformed (by choice or circumstance -- it really doesn't matter) and then complain that people see them as emotionally stunted and psychologically deformed. In other words, as nasty schmucks.
OK. If you know about whom I’m blogging, I invite you to keep reading. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Move on. I have much more interesting posts to take up your time.
My retaliation to his assault was harsh and nasty. I tend to shoot back first, re-load, re-armor, and then look around to see what’s happening. I don’t like what’s happening. But, before you get to be a Crone, you learn to be a warrior. I’ve never run from a fight, especially one that pits me against a cult figure who has pitted himself against me.
He is credited by some bloggers as their teacher – someone who has given them permission to speak their hearts, their guts. In the words of Happy Harry Hardon, to “talk hard.” That’s wonderful. Everyone should know that they have permission to do that. Everyone should do that. I started when I was 17 and haven’t stopped yet. To some, that makes me an aggressive bitch. (I absolutely don’t agree with the “passive” tag!)
He has told me several times to “fuck off.” And I replied that I don’t “fuck off” (in the sense that he means it) that easily. I say that the time has come to diffuse cults of personality. We don’t need self-perpetuating personalities to follow and defer to and seek blessings and approval from. People are people, even in Blogaria. Sometimes they behave like nasty schmucks, and when they do, they should be called on it. Sometimes they write like angels, and they should be applauded for that.
I say that it’s time to invite all bare-assed emperors to climb off their self-constructed pedestals. The view from down here is kind of nasty.
And what's great about Blog Sisters is that it's not a cult of one personality. Founding mother Jeneane knows how to give birth and back off so that bloggers like her and her and her and her and her can "talk hard," tell the truth, and not be demeaned for doing so.
Categories:
The New Mr. Magoo
An article in today's newspaper by Newsday's James Pinkerton likens Mr. Bush to Mr. Magoo. "Quincy Magoo, the cartoon character debuting in 1949, was so myopic that he couldn't see anything that wasn't right in front of his face -- and even then he would always misinterpret that near object. But once he drew his bead, however wrongly, he wouldn't let up. ....There's something Mister Magoo-like about President Bush's preoccupation with Iraq."
We have a cartoon for a president. Only no one's laughing.
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Older is not better
I set all of my holiday chores up so that I wouldn't have to go out to any more crowded shopping malls. Every time during the last two weeks when I took my mom out to get things she wanted, I asked her if she wanted any Christmas cards. She looked at the prices and didn't want to pay them. She's getting totally obsessive about not spending any money lately. (At 86 she should just go and get whatever she can afford; she's not a pauper.)
So, today, she decided that she just had to have a box of Chrismas cards. When I hedged and reminded her that she had insisted on all those other shopping excursions that she didn't, she got the saddest and most defeated look on her face. All I could think of was how powerless one becomes when one gets that old, doesn't drive, has trouble walking, is getting cataracts etc. etc. If there's one thing that I can't abide it's feeling powerless. And that's one thing with which I empathize.
So, off we went to the mall, maneuvering through the steady stream of traffic that would stall for blocks at the traffice lights. But I did it and she got her cards. And I picked up something for b!X and some earrings for myself.
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Birthing a New Breed
Where else but in Blogaria could three men from different parts of the world band together to share the experiences of waiting for their new babies to be born? And make us all a part of it. Beats me.
But here it is! "Blogsprogs." They are blogging their babies into existence, and Jeneane eloquently captures the excitement of it all.
Michael O'Connor Clarke, Gary Turner, and Tom Matrullo, you guys give me hope for the future of humankind.
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Head in the Clouds; Feet on the Ground
Years ago, someone did my astrological chart. I'm a Pisces. I knew that. The chart also told me that I'm a Capricorn Rising. So, while my head is in the Pisces clouds, my feet know how to plant themselves pretty firmly on the earth. And, boy, am I glad, because otherwise I'd really be a fish up a creek.
I don't know how Jeneane manages to hang in there. I envy so much of her inner life, but these days, I'm glad I'm me and not her. I put in my time (as a single mother, even) for almost 30 years doing full-time work I mostly liked but sometimes hated, so now I can pay my bills as long as I'm not extravagant. I have a filing cabinet full of poetry -- much of it written from some dark scary place -- and don't feel compelled to exorcise any more. So can blog when I feel like it and not when I don't. And, while I still like to be liked, I really don't care much if or what the Cluetrain guys think about me.
Most of my demons, having aged along with me, are too tired to plague me any more. So, I can deal with a mother -- with whom I never got along that well -- who needs me to help her through the rest of her days even though she's never happy with what I do for her or how I do it. Except maybe my cooking, which I'm much better at than she ever was.
I wish I could share some of my stability with Jeneane. But I have a mother who needs some of it, and an offspring who still needs some of it, and I need to keep the rest for myself. It's a wonder my feet aren't bigger than they are! And I DO wish I could still get a glimpse of those clouds every once in a while.
I've concluded that everything in life is a trade-off. You can have everything, but not all at the same time. We all make our choices.
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Remembering Berrigan
Most of the warbloggers out there (or peacebloggers, as I prefer to call some of them) no doubt have no idea who Philip Berrigan was. He was one of my heroes, and he just died from kidney cancer at the age of 79. According to this:
Anti-war activist Philip Berrigan dies at 79
BALTIMORE -- The Rev. Philip Berrigan, patriarch of the Roman Catholic antiwar movement, died Friday night of liver and kidney cancer, his family said. He was 79.
He led a group that staged one of the most dramatic protests of the 1960s. They doused homemade napalm on a small bonfire of draft records in a Catonsville, Md., parking lot and ignited a generation of antiwar dissent.
More recently Berrigan helped establish the Plowshares movement, whose members have attacked federal military property in antiwar and antinuclear demonstrations.
By his own account, he spent more than nine years behind bars for committing acts of civil disobedience.
Berrigan's family said he was diagnosed with cancer two months ago and decided to stop chemotherapy one month ago. His brother, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, officiated over last rites ceremonies Nov. 30, which was attended by friends and peace activists, family members said.
His brother, Daniel Berrigan, also a priest, was often at Philip's side leading the opposition to war.
Where are all of today's Berrigans? I guess they're too busy molesting young boys.
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U.S. Congressman Supports Establishing U.S. Department of Peace
Excerpt from speech by U.S. Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich at the Praxis Peace Institute Conference held in Dubrovnik, Croatia on Sunday, June 9, 2002.
Citizens across the United States are now uniting in a great cause to establish a Department of Peace, seeking nothing less than the transformation of our society, to make non-violence an organizing principle, to make war archaic through creating a paradigm shift in our culture for human development, for economic and political justice and for violence control. Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament, treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values.
Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police-community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views, such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable'. Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.
The Department of Peace will also address human development and the unique concerns of women and children. It will envision and seek to implement plans for peace education, not simply as a course of study, but as a template for all pursuits of knowledge within formal educational settings. Violence is not inevitable. War is not inevitable. Nonviolence and peace are inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of peace which will confirm the presence of universal spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction. Carved inside the pediment which sits atop the marble columns is a sentinel at the entrance to the United States House of Representatives. Standing resolutely inside this "Apotheosis of Democracy" is a woman, a shield by her left side, with her outstretched right arm protecting a child happily sitting at her feet. The child holds the lamp of knowledge under the protection of this patroness.
This wondrous sculpture by Paul Wayland Bartlett, is entitled "Peace Protecting Genius". Not with nuclear arms, but with a loving maternal arm is the knowing child Genius shielded from harm. This is the promise of hope over fear. This is the promise of love which overcomes all. This is the promise of faith which overcomes doubt. This is the promise of light which overcomes darkness. This is the promise of peace which overcomes war.
I couldn't have said it better. As a matter of fact, I haven't said it better.
It's interesting that the first I heard of this was today in an email asking me to sign a petition supporting the establishment of a Department of Peace. Anyone interesting in expressing an opinion about this effort can do so here.
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Essence vs Accidents
In college, as part of a course in comparative religion, I remember a discussion of the Catholic belief that during the Mass, the wafer is transformed into the body of Christ. The professor explained that the belief is really that the "accidents" of the wafer remained the same (the color, texture, taste etc. -- which always made me gag, btw) but its "essence," its essential nature, didn't.
As an aside, that's the difference between feminism and girlism. Feminism says focus on the essence (admirable human qualities) of a person rather than the accidents (looks, weight, religion, race etc.).
It's the essence, not the accidents, of all of us that should be why we are respected, admired, employed, served, loved. Maybe we need to start a new human movement called "essentialists."
This thinking was triggered by a post on Blog Sisters by Brooke Biggs, who works for Anita Roddick who founded The Body Shop and who recently went "undercover" as a "fat person." Her story and comments are revealing, both for her humanity and how she serves the needs of her customers.
(double posted on Humans First.)
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Courage Under Fiire
In this post of b!X’s Myrln Comments:
which takes more courage -- to express an unpopular viewpoint openly and risk the wrath of your countrymen or to make anonymous threatening phone calls? What say you, bubba.
The post is about a threatening phone call that b!X got because of a series of posts he had made about the immorality of soldiering. He's also been getting some nasty emails.
From my perspective, soldiering is an example of bad things having to be done by (some) good people. I think b!X agrees with me on that. Soldiering often requires killing, or at the least, some sort of violent activity. I don’t think that’s good. I don’t think that’s moral. Sometimes it might be necessary, but that doesn’t make it a good or moral thing. I think that was b!X’s point.
There are people who see things in black and white and people who see all the shades of gray. Black and white. Either/or. For or against. Simplistic, blindered thinking that refuses to acknowledge the complexities of life’s most important issues. Unfortunately, soldiering seems to attract the simplistic thinker, who then gets so programmed for violence that all he can do when he reads something he doesn't like is respond with a threatening phone call. Of course; it’s the violent thing to do. Right, bubba?
Archived on my old weblog (“A Little History,” Thursday, February 21, 2002) is a rather lengthy piece that includes the story of how a “peace” banner I made and hung on my property during the Viet Nam war was destroyed and how things escalated until we got threatening phone calls from some anonymous person saying that “they were coming to get us.”
War is not a good thing. My kids grew up believing that. Their father, who served in the Army, believes that. We all protest against using the violence of war as anything but a very very very absolutely last resort.
It might happen, as some of the nasty comments on b!X’s posts suggest, that it is the soldiers who will ultimately have to protect the freedom of speech we exercise when we protest against war, injustice, inequality, racism, sexism etc. etc. etc. But I would hope that, as they are killing and maiming and committing unspeakable violent acts that wind up extinguishing the lives of many innocent people along with the “bad guys,” that, in their hearts, those soldiers hate what they have to do -- that they recognize that they are doing bad, very bad, immoral things. That they cry at night and beg their god for forgiveness.
Yes, it takes courage to be a soldier, but not – I think – in the way that most career soldiers are taught to believe.
But that’s not the issue here. The issue here is which takes more courage -- to express an unpopular viewpoint openly and risk the wrath of your countrymen or to make anonymous threatening phone calls?
Now that’s a no-brainer!
(Side note from the Crone: There’s a Dark Moon tomorrow. The time for conjuring protection from those who wish to harm and to reflect those violent wishes back to their source. Hee hee. Cackle. Cackle.)
And, finally, a reprise of a poem I wrote that I had posted before:
Desert Storm: A Family Scapbook
Someone’s son huddles
gravely under desert rain.
restless as his heartbeat,
he waits for signs in the sky
to turn the taste of metal
in his mouth to blood.
Someone’s daughter,
leather jacketed, baseball capped,
takes her place in U.N. Square,
lights a candle against the wind, and
joins her voice to the hymn
that pulses like blood
through the streets, through the night,
through the weary dreams of men
reduced to war.
Someone’s daughter runs
from classroom through snow,
stuffs her duffle to bursting
with camouflage and conviction,
prays for the chance
to set the skies ablaze with truth.
At the table of her father’s house,
she waits for orders
and watches the colors of dawn
melt like blood into sand.
Someone’s son
boards a bus at midnight,
sheathed in a confusion of
army surplus and disbelief.
He joins the dawn in Lafayette Park,
seeking solace – if not answers –
in the steady drum,
the solid hands,
the strong songs
of sons and daughters
refusing to bleed
for the dreams of weary men
reduced to war.
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I love making stuff..
... especially trouble. But I also like making things like these booties that look like sneakers. I made up the pattern. Creating stuff to make for kids is a hoot. I remember when I made b!X a "Bionic Man" shirt by cutting pieces of iron-on fabric into the shapes of the bionic arm components and ironing them onto the sleeve of a sweatshirt. I'm going to have such fun with this grandson of mine!! That's in between still trying to change the world, of course.
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Some of my best posts on feminism vs girlism.......
...... are in the Comments on other weblogs. Here’s one from one of Shelley’s posts that I think is worth repeating here:
I just want to correct Mike's suggestion that he made somewhere in all of this that I lost track of. Feminism brewed into existence not really because of some vague discontent of some affluent women of post WWII. I'm probably a more accurate example of why feminism took hold, and it has only a little to do with my level of education, intelligence, and economic status. What it had/has to do with was/is my realization that men were making most of the decisions that affected me and how I was able to live in the world. From my father early on, to my husband; from the President, to the Pope. I realized that their values were not mine, and their view of me was not mine. That didn't seem fair. It wasn't fair. What's a girl to do? What's a woman to do? We rebel. Feminism was/is a rebellion against partriarchal values, against the attitude that I, as a woman, am somehow at the disposal of men, or A man. We wanted a revolution. What we got is an evolution, with all of its "two steps forward, one step back." I believe that if the men on this planet were forced to live and put up with the shit that women have had to put up with, their rebellion would have been much more bloody. Mad? Pissesd about all of that? Still am. You bet. And is my button pushed by all of this "girlism" crap. Damned straight.
And this from a Comment I left on Blog Sisters to a post made by Deb Gusmann:
Oh yes! Eros. Erotic. How absolutely erotic is a woman in control of her life and sexuality/sensuality on her own terms and not the ones defined by adolescent males. Oh yeah!
Just trying to keep the pot stirred and hoping for a critical mass of posts that will blow the lid off and let the light shine in.
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Doc Searls is lucky.
Over here, Doc Searls includes the following in response to all of the hullabaloo about girlism:
One of the things that attracted me to my wife was that feminism (and political correctness in general) bored her as much as it bored me. She once dismissed the whole topic by saying "I'm not interested in equality with men. Why deal down?"
Feminism (and now girlism too... or any ism, I suppose) still bores me. I think that's because it's still about power, and there are other subjects that interest me more.
Like how much I miss sweet and romantic kind of beauty that fell out of favor with feminism (and the Vietnam war, and the Sixties in general) and never came back. I listened to a lot of old music while I unpacked boxes over the weekend... Patti Page (Old Cape Cod), Dean Martin (That's Amore), Doris Day (Que Sera Sera), Bobby Darin (Dream Lover) and it blew my mind how completely gone that stuff is.
Doc, you and your wife are two of the lucky ones who somehow avoided being battered around by the gender politics stuff. We all wish we were in relationships that felt as good as yours seems to. While love doesn't solve all relationship problems, it can go a long way. I read once that, rather than total compatability, what makes a relationship work is "compatible neuroses." I would add to that a shared sense of humor and mutually genuine affection.
But, Doc, if you were able to walk a mile in some of our shoes, you would understand why we are so upset. Since you can't, however, check out this post by Pascale Soleil and see what happens when sexism runs rampant. You mentioned that you and your wife are not concerned with feminism and political correctness; let me remind you that the guys in India aren't either.
(And, Doc, the kind of romanticism you posted about never falls out of favor, as long as it's not triggered by that dumb girlism stuff.)
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NO! NO! NO! Halley.
NO! NO! Halley is SOOOooooo wrong about feminism being only about lesbian sexiness. Believe me, I was a feminist back in the 70s. I was also a "disco queen" of sorts -- high heels, short skirts, sexy and all. Feminism is about owning your power as a female human and all that that implies -- including owning one's own heterosexual sexuality. Girlism winds up undoing all the good that we feminists fought so hard for on the mistaken idea that feminism discounts being sexy. No way! I'm living proof!! Ditch the girlism, girls, and find some role models that show how it can be done without resorting to all that stupid girly stuff.
Not that I'm such a great role model (although at 62, I've certainly had some experiences that 40-something women haven't had), but if you take a look at Frank Paynter's interview with me, you'll get what I mean.
Take it from me, girlism is going to come back and bite you in in ass, ladies.
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The Roads Not Taken
Alice Fulton is a poet who recently won the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbit National Price for Poetry from the UlS Library of Congress.
Back in the '70s, when Alice was still a student. she and I were in the same poetry workshop led by Lyn Lifshin. We were still struggling to find our voices, our styles. Alice was young, gamin-like, talented even then. I was ....well, let's just say I was in a troubled marriage and had two young children.
I remember that Alice had a low, resonant speaking voice, and she DJed late at night at a local radio station. One night she read poetry that we had all written in Lyn's workshop. This is the one of mine she read:
I wake tight
wound in the sheet
(night winding sheet)
wounded
in the lined-yellow-sheet logic
of your woundmind
winding
sheet-tight
around my night.
So, now Alice teaches at Cornell and wins poetry prizes. I take care of my mom and weblog.
Before my daughter gave birth to her son, she had written several (as-yet unpublished) novels, and Alice Fulton wrote a "preview" of her best one. My daughter had a small press interested in publishing the novel, but they went under after 9/11. Now, she is totally into being a mother and has set her writing aside.
My daughter has no regrets. Neither do I. But I do have a little envy.
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