Enlightenment Strikes!
After I dropped off the book I just finished reading, I stopped at the "New Books Just In" section of the library just to see if there might be something that looked interesting. Some new legal mystery with a kick-ass female protagonist maybe.
Hmm. A just-published novel by Ken Wilber. Ken Wilber. Wasn't he that transpersonal psychology guy? Back in the 70s? I always thought he spelled his name Wilbur. I look at the photo and blurb about Ken Wilber on the back cover. The photo is of a young man wearing a Smilie button. The blurb says:
Ken Wilber, who turned 23 when this book was published, received his degreee from MIT in computer science and artificial life. [emphasis mine, and that should have clued me in right there.] He lives in Denver Colorado with his finace, Chloe Walters, and their dog, Isaac......
I go back to novel's Table of Contents, which includes chapter headings such as:
Omega_Doom@FutureWorld.Org
And_It_Is_Us@FuckMe.com
Subvert_Transgress_Deconstruct@FuckYou.com
The_Conquest_of_Paradise@MythsAreUs.net
OK, so this must be a different Ken Wilbur...er...Wilber.... I go back and read the blurb on the inside of the front cover.
Ken Wilber's latest book is a daring departure from his previous wiritings...combines brilliant scholarship with tongue-incheek storytelling.... he expounded in more conventional terms in his recent "A Theory of Everything."
I scan through the first few chapters and see references to Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism" and Stern's "Me: the Naracissitic American." I also see references to big tits and memes, cognitive malfunction and postmodernism, to sexdrugsand....
Wait a minute! Wait a minute! That doesn't sound like the Ken Wilbur I used to know. That sounds like.....gulp.....
I take the book home so that I can figure out the Wilbur dilemma and further think about the connection between Wilbur/er and.....gulp....that other guy.
A Google search ultimately proves that Ken Wilbur is Ken Wilber. I can't find any indiction of why his name is spelled two different ways, but when I compared a current photo of him with the 23 year-old guy on the book's back flyleaf -- yup, it's the same guy. So, the old geezer is pretending to be a 23 year old geek writer. Uh oh.
That's when enlightenment stikes.
Rage Boy is Ken Wilbur/er's Evil Twin, his Dark Side. the other side of his coin. I mean just look them:
Rage Boy: long hair, down-turned eyes, bushy eyebrows, tight closed mouth, angular face, a look to intimidate if not scare you off completely.
Ken Wilbur/er: bald, turned-up eyes, normal eyebrows, open smiling mouth, softly curved face, an open and inviting expression.
And now the dark Rage Boy side has taken over the enlightened Ken Wilbur side and the result is "BOOMERITIS: A Novel That Will Set You Free."
Oh where will it all end!
Categories:
The Bridges of Baghdad Country.
Make this your daily read to get an honest and articulate perspective of a young woman's current life in Baghdad. This is just a taste of what's there today:
Buildings cannot just be made functionary. They have to have artistic touches- a carved pillar, an intricately designed dome, something unique… not necessarily classy or subtle, but different. You can see it all over Baghdad- fashionable homes with plate glass windows, next to classic old ‘Baghdadi’ buildings, gaudy restaurants standing next to classy little cafes… mosques with domes so colorful and detailed they look like glamorous Faberge eggs… all done by Iraqis.
My favorite reconstruction project was the Mu’alaq Bridge over the Tigris. It is a suspended bridge that was designed and built by a British company. In 1991 it was bombed and everyone just about gave up on ever being able to cross it again. By 1994, it was up again, exactly as it was- without British companies, with Iraqi expertise. One of the art schools decided that although it wasn’t the most sophisticated bridge in the world, it was going to be the most glamorous. On the day it was opened to the public, it was covered with hundreds of painted flowers in the most outrageous colors- all over the pillars, the bridge itself, the walkways along the sides of the bridge. People came from all over Baghdad just to stand upon it and look down into the Tigris.
So instead of bringing in thousands of foreign companies that are going to want billions of dollars, why aren’t the Iraqi engineers, electricians and laborers being taken advantage of? Thousands of people who have no work would love to be able to rebuild Iraq… no one is being given a chance.
The reconstruction of Iraq is held above our heads like a promise and a threat. People roll their eyes at reconstruction because they know (Iraqis are wily) that these dubious reconstruction projects are going to plunge the country into a national debt only comparable to that of America. A few already rich contractors are going to get richer, Iraqi workers are going to be given a pittance and the unemployed Iraqi public can stand on the sidelines and look at the glamorous buildings being built by foreign companies.
I always say this war is about oil. It is. But it is also about huge corporations that are going to make billions off of reconstructing what was damaged during this war. Can you say Haliburton? (Which, by the way, got the very first contracts to replace the damaged oil infrastructure and put out ‘oil fires’ way back in April).
Well, of course it’s going to take uncountable billions to rebuild Iraq, Mr. Bremer, if the contracts are all given to foreign companies! Or perhaps the numbers are this frightening because Ahmad Al-Chalabi is the one doing the books- he *is* the math expert, after all.
Her current post was triggered by the fact that "the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !! "
She reports that her cousin, an experienced and successful Iraqi engineer, estmated that Iraqis could rebuild the bridge for less than $500,000.
Why aren't all we Americans up in arms that it's our tax money that's going to go into the pockets of the greedy and unscrupulous American corporate monopolist friends of Dumbya on the pretext that they're rebuilding Iraq. I'd rather send my check directly to an Iraqi bridge construction company.
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PLEASE! Someone find a cure!
I sure hope someone finds a cure soon for that Geek Syndrome.
I went over to Comp USA with my friend P, who needed to get some guidance (and, she figured, some kind of software) to clean out the old computer that her old (as in "former") S.O. left with her when he moved out, since he didn't want it any more. Figures, right? She figures she can donate it somewhere after it's cleaned out.
Well, someone told her she needed to "ghost" the machine, and I, being technologically retarded, had no idea what that meant. What I would do is go in and delete all the files that I want to get rid of. But what do I know.? Maybe I think they're all deleted but they're all still in there somewhere for someone else to find and blackmail me with.
Anyway, she goes up to the young man behind the desk and says that she wants to "ghost" her computer. What does she need to do, she asks. Can she buy software that will do this for her.
So, this tall, lanky low-browed geeky kid looks at her, his eyes glaze a little, and eventually he starts to tell her that she needs to make a boot disk. "How do I do that," P asks, further explaining that she knows nothing about computers and she has an old one that someone might be able to use but she needs to get all the stuff that's on it, off it.
Another five minutes of this kid spewing gibberish to two totally uncomprehending middle-aged females, and he finally suggests that we go over to the repair guy and ask him.
Heh. Right. He wasn't much better, as he repeated some of the stuff about making a boot disk and and re-booting and didn't she get a boot disk with the computer and something about going into Control Panel........ But somewhere in all of that guy's incomprehensive monologue, I did manage to figure out that if one "ghosts" a machine, the whole hard drive gets wiped out, including the operating system -- a virtual lobotomy resulting in a very real tabula rosa and a pile of bolts that are not of much use as a gift to some poor kid who can't afford to buy a new computer.
Someone needs to teach these tech service guys to ask the right questions and respond with understandable answers.
Questions like: Why do you think you need to ghost the machine? Is it that you want to remove all of the files and folders that have information in them that you don't want anyone else to get hold of? Do you want someone else to be able to use the programs that are in the machine, like word processing and maybe graphics?
Possible answers like: You don't want to wipe out the hard drive, and you don't want to delete programs. But you do want to get rid of all the files with information in them. We can do that all for you here and it will cost you XXXX. Or if you want to do it yourself, here's what you need to do: (and then give her the step by step instructions, which she can write down).
But it's hopeless. "Listen," I say to P, who I can see is all at sea. "I'll come over and show you how to delete files and we'll look in the Control Panel's Add-Delete Programs to see if there are any programs you want to delete as well." I figure I can delete all the temp files and cookies and anything else that doesn't look like a program and that ought to do it for her. And, if there are some little bytes still stuck in that back of that fake brain somewhere, who cares right?
And it's time for lunch, anyway. Someplace where there are no inarticulate, borderline autistic geeks, for sure.
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Stumbling on the old love vs. fear thing.
Reading Dave Rogers post about evil, love, and fear prompted me to unearth the following poem, based on a true happening. Unearthing the poem has prompted me to plan to do an Open Mike poetry reading this Monday night. It's something I've been thinking about doing. This time I'm letting the fear go.
Hunting
On the rise beyond the stream
on Trout Mountain,
they say, he shot himself—
a still-young man
despaired of a world
too full of fear.
On the west wall of his cabin,
hang the antlers he tore
from some fair game,
banging the nails bent
through the thick bone
of clumsily shattered skull.
In the shifting summer light,
their shadows writhe
in fearsome memory.
(They say he loved the land,
the hunt, the kill.)
Some think the land is haunted, now.
They say they can feel the fear
in the heavy mountain mist,
hear it in the hollow scrape
of bone on stone.
(They say what he feared
he loved too much.)
When the land was finally sold
(to someone starkly purged
of love and fear),
the new owner found a photo
face-down on a dusty shelf –
a stiff-faced young man
in an unforgiving setting,
sternly victorious over
some finally fearless prey.
And so I ask for the antlers,
chipped and weathered, now --
artifacts made unworthy
of either fear or love.
Is the answer hidden somewhere
in the pits of those old bones?
If I scrub them clean, soften the scars,
set them like icons on an altar
ringed with strings of stones,
will I dream one night
of some daring beast
who lifts me gently
on his gleaming horns
and shows me
the unspeakable secret?
(copyright Elaine Frankonis)
Categories:
A Far Cry From Free or Footloose.
My previous post seems awfully frivolous after reading this piece posted by a female blogger in Iraq.
Her Baghdad Burning post begins with this:
Females can no longer leave their homes alone. Each time I go out, E. and either a father, uncle or cousin has to accompany me. It feels like we’ve gone back 50 years ever since the beginning of the occupation. A woman, or girl, out alone, risks anything from insults to abduction. An outing has to be arranged at least an hour beforehand. I state that I need to buy something or have to visit someone. Two males have to be procured (preferably large) and 'safety arrangements' must be made in this total state of lawlessness. And always the question: "But do you have to go out and buy it? Can't I get it for you?" No you can't, because the kilo of eggplant I absolutely have to select with my own hands is just an excuse to see the light of day and walk down a street. The situation is incredibly frustrating to females who work or go to college.
Before the war, around 50% of the college students were females, and over 50% of the working force was composed of women. Not so anymore. We are seeing an increase of fundamentalism in Iraq which is terrifying.
For example, before the war, I would estimate (roughly) that about 55% of females in Baghdad wore a hijab- or headscarf. Hijabs do not signify fundamentalism. That is far from the case- although I, myself, don’t wear one, I have family and friends who do. The point is that, before, it didn’t really matter. It was *my* business whether I wore one or not- not the business of some fundamentalist on the street.
For those who don’t know (and I have discovered they are many more than I thought), a hijab only covers the hair and neck. The whole face shows and some women even wear it Grace Kelley style with a few locks of hair coming out of the front. A ‘burqa’ on the other hand, like the ones worn in Afghanistan, covers the whole head- hair, face and all.
I am female and Muslim. Before the occupation, I more or less dressed the way I wanted to. I lived in jeans and cotton pants and comfortable shirts. Now, I don’t dare leave the house in pants. A long skirt and loose shirt (preferably with long sleeves) has become necessary. A girl wearing jeans risks being attacked, abducted or insulted by fundamentalists who have been… liberated!
Fathers and mothers are keeping their daughters stashed safe at home. That’s why you see so few females in the streets (especially after 4 pm). Others are making their daughters, wives and sisters wear a hijab. Not to oppress them, but to protect them.
I lost my job for a similar reason. I'll explain the whole depressing affair in another post. Girls are being made to quit college and school. My 14-year-old cousin (a straight-A student) is going to have to repeat the year because her parents decided to keep her home ever since the occupation. Why? Because the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq overtook an office next to her school and opened up a special 'bureau'.
Men in black turbans (M.I.B.T.s as opposed to M.I.B.s) and dubious, shady figures dressed in black, head to foot, stand around the gates of the bureau in clusters, scanning the girls and teachers entering the secondary school. The dark, frowning figures stand ogling, leering and sometimes jeering at the ones not wearing a hijab or whose skirts aren’t long enough. In some areas, girls risk being attacked with acid if their clothes aren't 'proper'..............
And I was complaining about not being able to share a Florida time-share!
Time to get my priorities straight. First, get that evildoer out of the White House and get someone in there who understands the complexities of human nature.
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Footloose in the Last Resort
Almost exactly a decade ago, I was footloose and free to take off for points unkonwn on a whim. A female colleague, whose sister opted out at the last minute from a trip to Key West that they had planned together, asked if I wanted to go in her sister's place. I checked with my boss about taking vacation time; she said no problem and neither did my charge card balances; so I went.
I figured that Key West, which markets itself as the most southern point of the United States, must therefore also be the "last resort" in the U.S. So, there I was, footloose in the last resort, and I decided to take my tourist photos based on that theme. Lying down in the middle of various streets so that I could get my feet included in the photos caused a few odd looks from passersby -- but wotthell, it was KEY WEST, after all.
Neither footloose nor free enough these days to physically take off on a whim for two weeks, blogging has become my "last resort" for easy fun and frolicking. I wonder how many other bloggers, feeling constrained by life's circumstances, use this as their final frontier as well.
So, as my friend P goes about seeking out some other friend to share her time-share in West Palm Beach during the third week in November, I'm still here, footloose in my very last resort.
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Compatible Neuroses
On the spur of the moment, I rented two movies to watch last night, Solaris, which I mentioned in my previous post, and The Secretary. Each was recommended to me by a different friend. I saw both available at my local Hannaford, where I can rent movies for a buck each, so I got both of them, not realizing how relevant each was to current weblog conversations about relationships and compatible neuroses.
There was a secondary character in each movie who, coincidentally, was played by the same actor, Jeremy Davies. And the two characters he played were practically interchangeable. It was kind of spooky to have, at the same time, rented two supposedly totally unrelated movies about which I knew practically nothing and see the same actor in both looking and acting exactly the same.
Synchronicities like that make me pay close attention, and, darn it, if both movies didn't serve as echo chambers for the conversations that prompted my last post.
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion" is the Dylan Thomas poem that reverberates through the love/attachment theme of Solaris. Love conquers all, even death. It's fantasy, of course, on all kinds of levels, including the kind of romantic fantasy that keeps us dreaming of a Prince Charming with George Clooney's butt.
Naked butts, the love/attachment theme, fantasy, and of course Jeremy Davies and his nervous hands, are all fundamental to The Secretary as well. Now how coincidental is that? Now I'm really paying attention.
The leitmotif for The Secretary is by Leonard Cohen, not Dylan Thomas, but, I'll be damned, the message is the same.
Dylan Thomas:
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
Leonary Cohen:
If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I'm your man
If you want a boxer
I will step into the ring for you
And if you want a doctor
I'll examine every inch of you
If you want a driver
Climb inside
Or if you want to take me for a ride
You know you can
I'm your man
Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
Ah but a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please
I'm your man
And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road
I will steer for you
And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you
If you want a father for your child
Or only want to walk with me a while
Across the sand
I'm your man
If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you.
James Spader is no George Clooney, but he does have that screwed-up bad boy dark-erotic (in contrast to light-romantic) magnetism.
Romantic fantasy is compelling, but so can be its neurotic-erotic shadow.
Psychosis, pathology -- attachment, obsession -- dominion, domination. It's all about love.
Everything is always all about love.
And pain.
Categories:
Reflections in a Crone's Eye.
NOTE: I wrote this a couple of weeks ago on my new laptop before I had an external floppy drive that would enable me to transfer the document to my regular computer so that I could post it on my blog. Of course I’m still wireless-less -- haven’t figured out the PCI software download or the router etc. I’ll get there when I’m ready. Even though the following is a couple of weeks old, I’m posting it now because it all connects both to stuff I’ve been reading on other weblogs, especially Indigo Ocean’s and Chris Locke’s. I will try to tie it all together at the end.
Reflections in a Crone’s eye.
Saturday August 9
I am sitting on the deck at my daughter’s, writing on my new little laptop.
My son in law went fishing early this morning and caught some nice perch, which we will have for supper. "Great hunter goes out into the wild and brings back food for family," I tease him. He looks at me and smiles. "Yes, as a matter of fact. That’s exactly the point," he says.
My daughter and grandson are taking a nap. My son-in-law has gone to spend the rest of the day with some buddies, including a high school friend who is visiting from Ireland. He's going to stay overnight with his folks, since the reunion is taking place back in his hometown. This is the first time they have spent a night away from each other since even before they were married.
This is on my list of things to do when my mother is gone -- sit on a deck among the treetops and think. And write. And dive deep. Except now the baby is up, and I don’t want to miss a minute of time with him during my short visit here. Embracing the love and comfort of others. Such is a Crone’s life.
…………………….
Sunday, August 10
The air is like soup here just outside of Boston. Yesterday, my daughter and I took the baby and went to the Arboretum, where we sat on a bench under a tree while the baby watched the natural and unnatural world roll by and my daughter and I chatted. I so treasure the time I can spend with her like this, like friends, equals. I can see how tired she is, and I wish I lived closer so that I could help her out more. I wasn't always the best mother to her early on in her life. How can you be a good mother when you still need one of those yourself. Too soon old; too late smart. Such is one Crone’s life.
My daughter is definitely a good mother. Patient. Infinitely patient. In the moment with the baby's moments. And so he's amazingly thoughtful and curious, engagingly communicative even though he speaks in his own language -- babbles and gestures that are as eloquent as any official verbiage. I love that he knows me well enough now to crawl over to me and ask to be picked up, to be read to, ask me "ahda?" which we all know means "What’s that?" Apple, I tell him. Box. The letter X. Gammy's nose. Hippopotamus. I nuzzle his cheek and he opens his mouth to give me his toothy version of a sloppy kiss. I don't want to let go. Did I do this with my own kids when they were little? I don’t remember. Such is this Crone's life.
--------------------------
I always bring lots of food and lots of things for me to keep busy with when I come to visit. I bring the kind of food that I know that my daughter likes but doesn't have time to make -- kielbasa and kapusta, home made potato salad and chicken soup -- food to remind her of the better days of her childhood.
In the afternoon, while my daughter and grandson nap, and when the little family goes to bed early (dad leaves for work shortly after 7 a.m.), I work on my crochet projects – mostly the shawls I still make (I just got another request for one from someone who did an Internet search for “spiral shawl”and came up with my old blog post. I just love how that works!) I bring books on tape to listen to during the more than 3-hour car ride each way and late at night as well if I have trouble falling asleep. I also usually bring a book to read, but this time I didn’t. So, I go over to their overflowing books shelves and look for some short stories to read while I have my bedtime tea, along with the best diet aid I’ve found yet for those like me addicted to chocolate mint anything. Yumm!
Both my son-in-law and daughter share my affection for science fiction, so I know I can find some short story books to keep me occupied. I pick up an old one, the cover tattered at the edges, the pages yellowed -- published in 1963.
(Of course, the first thing I do is peruse the Table of Contents for stories by women writers. A bias of mine, yes. Not surprisingly, I only see three female names out of the 50 authors listed. Back then, many women sci fi writers used male pseudonyms, since it was a field dominated by men, so there really might be more than those three.)
1963. My daughter was the age then that my grandson is today. But I was little more than half her age. A kid myself. Tired, overwhelmed. Trying desperately to hold onto whomever I had been while responsibly and responsively also trying to become what others needed me to be. I wasn’t a bad mother, but I could have been a lot better. My daughter was smart enough to become who she wanted to be before joining her life with another’s, before embracing the responsibilities that loving brings with it.
63. That’s how old I am now. Unlike my daughter, I wound up spending my thirties and forties becoming who I wanted to be, while at the same time struggling to take care of my kids as a single mom. That was the hard way to do it, but what did I know, a confused child of the 40s and 50s transformed into a strident feminist of the 70s? But, I’m a better mother now. A better daughter, too. And a fantastic grandmother. Too soon old, too late smart. (Or maybe not too late.) Such is my Crone’s life.
Today, August 21:
I’m sitting in the doctor’s waiting room writing on my new laptop waiting for my mother’s 3-hour Aredia infusion to be over. This is one of the reasons I bought this cool little machine -- so that I can write while I wait. (Although the compact keyhboard makes for lots of typos, which I will fix when I transfer this document to my wired machine for posting.)
NOTE: the following is the personal opinion of the Crone, without footnotes or research or acknowledgments. Sometimes being older and having lots of experiences screwing up one’s own relationships does give one a little more of a right to be opinionated. Well, I think so anyway.
From where I sit on my Cronethrone, I see enough failed marriages (including my one and only) that have proven over and over again that, unless you married early as best friends and managed to grow together in the same direction, you sure better get your own self walking tall before you try to walk holding anyone else’s hand.
It’s not that symbiotic or parasitic relationships can’t work. If the partners have compatible neuroses it can all work out just fine. But for most of us, we need a lot more give and take, a lot more effort to strike a balance between two different sets of needs and values.
Back in the 80s (too late for my purposes) I read Hugh and Gail Prather's A Book for Couples. I think I gave my copy away, but my daughter has one that I’ve asked her to unearth so that I can look at it again and see if it still makes a bottom-line sense to me.
The Prathers are much too deistic for an irreverent non-believer like me to be totally comfortable with their writing. I remember having to ignore their references to god and keep my focus on the means they're suggesting to get to the end (or rather to ensure the success of that long-term middle) of a mutually satisfying relationship between two in-love adults. I also remember reading what they had to say with an old annoyance and a new understanding.
Personally, I think whether a relationship lasts depends a great deal on how closely your values match up to begin with. For example, if one person is a smart-ass and the other is sensitive to off-hand disturbing remarks supposedly meant in jest, it's going to take more than a little work. (Yes, I'm thinking of RageBoy here because he seems to be obsessed these days with figuring out why love keeps either eluding or escaping him.)
Tonight, August 21, 2003
I just watched Solaris. Fantasy can be so very compelling.
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Keep it up, Bubala.
When Locke lets go of his flaming rages, he's not just good, he's superb. Maybe he gets inspired by challenges too. Whatever the case, this is worth the struggle.
And in the spirit of archetypes, his allusion to the old Howdy Doody show got me thinking about Mr. Bluster -- sort of an archetype for RB, no? I wonder if he made that conscious connection or is it just my ever connecting brain.
Meanwhile, after a day of manic blogging, I've got to spend the rest of the week taking care of the rest of what passes for my life these days: my chiropractor appointment; my mother's Aredia infusion (which takes half a day); a visit with my former colleague from Arizona (the free-lance job from whom enabled me to buy a laptop, which I still haven't connected) who's in the area; and getting ready for a visit from my cousins who are coming up this weekend. And my greying roots are way overdue for a touch-up. Such is life in the slow lane.
So, if I'm dark here for a few days, don't panic. The most I hope to get done on this blog is update my blogroll, which hasn't been touched much since I moved to this site from my old one.
Keep it up, Bubala.
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Fantasy Life
I live a very small life these days. It wasn’t always so. Once I was sought after by art teachers and teaching artists all over the state to help them figure out how to work the educational system. After all, I was working alongside some of the highest officers of that system, and I learned how it works so that it could be worked. And I loved to tell its secrets.
When I was in my 40s and 50s, I loved a good challenge, figuring out how to get around that male-dominated hierarchy. I often won – not because of any great brains or brawn on my part, but because I was patient and persistent, and the guys usually underestimated my creativity in finding ways to get things done around the roadblocks they set up to keep the power in their own laps, so to speak.
Before I retired to take care of my mom, I had a lot in input coming into my life – people, ideas, challenges, adventures. Now, it’s pretty much all output. Not much coming in. Except for blogging. (Oh, I have close women friends with whom I go to the movies, talk, hang out, vent, commiserate, and all that. They offer wonderful support, but not much challenge. And that’s fine with me.)
So, after dinner today, after I parked my mom on the bench outside our building and set out for a long walk in the adjacent park, I began to have this fantasy about a mock battle: Rage Boy vs The Crone. (I would even give him top billing because I’m the contender.)
We could stage a public bout on that free Sunday of BloggerCon. Have a bake-off or a poetry slam. Mud wrestling is an option, I suppose.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect to win. It’s the same old brains and brawn thing that I would have to contend with. But I can be creatively cunning. And I am persistent.
Nah. He would probably only get nasty and mean, as is his preference it seems, and I’d probably cry. But not until after I emasculated him, of course.
I think that I prefer to keep this challenge virtually painless. And btw, Bubala, it takes more than a paintball to destroy a “familiar.”
Categories:
A Maybe-Meme on Empathy
I finally looked up what "meme" – a word often used by bloggers – means. According to Meme Central, Memes are contagious ideas, all competing for a share of our mind in a kind of Darwinian selection. A survival of the fittest of ideas. I certainly have seen how that applies to posts on weblogs.
Something that Gerry said in a Comment to my post about that blogger bad boy got me thinking about empathy. The Comment alludes to badly socialized geek boys on the Net and shallow "Flame Warriors" personas, and it occurred to me that these kinds of individuals don’t seem to have much capacity for empathy. So I went and looked up just what empathy means. A link from the Dictionary.com defnition brought me to this medical definition: An individual's objective and insightful awareness of the feelings and behaviour of another person. It should be distinguished from sympathy, which is usually nonobjective and noncritical. It includes caring, which is the demonstration of an awareness of and a concern for the good of others. [hold that thought]
………………………
As I sit to write this and think through where I want to go with all of this, my 87 year old mother walks into the room to complain about food getting stuck between her teeth (her gums are receding, but she insists that the dentist did something to make that happen), to try to get me to give her a pair of knit capris that I bought to exercise in, and to obsess about her toes hurting, even though she insists on wearing shoes that look good but don’t feel so.
I want to tell her to leave me alone. I’m trying to think. I’m trying to write. But I know that she’s been alone all day while I did some cleaning around my really cluttered apartment and periodically checked to see how the current conversation is going over at Burningbird's. I know that my mother is lonely and just needs someone to talk at. Talking WITH her is out of the question. She either can’t hear well or else her brain processes what others say so slowly that it’s impossible to hold an intelligent conversation with her. I take a deep breath, roll away from the keyboard. I listen. I empathize. It’s all I can do for her. But it’s often not very easy to do. I want to grumble-- or even shout: "Leave me alone. I’m trying to think. I'm trying to write. Go take a nap or watch CNN!" But I don’t.
I think it was a lot easier giving care to my kids than it is my mom.
……………………
Empathy. Caring. Yes. To continue.
It’s interesting that, earlier, I stumbled upon a psychological definition of autism on some medical site: an abnormal absorption with the self; marked by communication disorders and short attention span and inability to treat others as people.
Now, Googling for some information on badly socialized Geek boys, I find this in an article on wired.com:
The Geek Syndrome -- Autism - and its milder cousin Asperger's syndrome - is surging among the children of Silicon Valley. Are math-and-tech genes to blame. The article suggests that those who suffer from this syndrome include the most able, highly intelligent person with social impairment in its subtlest form as his only disability.
So, it’s possible, even likely, that Flame Warriors are afflicted with that Geek Syndrome – which might be actual autism, might be Asperger’s Syndrome, or might be an even milder form that manifests itself as total lack of empathy. In any case, it’s an identifiable disorder.
I can have sympathy for people with disorders that control their behaviors. I can even have some empathy for them. Having either changes the way I deal with them. I don’t want to deal with them the way I deal with regular assholes.
I don’t have much personal experience with the Geek Syndrome, being a generation or so removed from finding myself caught up in the phenomenon. My two Gen-X kids, while certainly counter-cultural, weren’t and aren’t technological Geeks. To them technology is a means for social and cultural change; codes drive them crazy and they only learn what they have to do in order to get their messages out. And their messages tend to be about empathy, peace, civil communication, and democratic activism. Well, what do you expect, given the role models they have in their parents?
So, where does this leave me?
It leaves me reminding myself to spend my time reading great posts and comments like this at the Happy Tutor’s instead of fanning flames. Unless, of course, I see an innocent getting burned. But from now on I’ll try to respond with more empathy for those with obvious disorders. And at the first chance I get, I’ll have to amend my blogroll to reflect those sites that I really do read these days.
But for now, it’s time to cook a well-balanced meal for my mom – and me, of course. (She refuses to eat out at restaurants -- all those people in the kitchens blowing their noses and not washing their hands, you know.)
Yes, I understand that sometimes, empathy is awfully hard to maintain.
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One reason why I love Trackbacks.
When I tracked down a trackback to one of my posts, I found this great CounterSpam Project that I want to promote. I'm a big believer that one person can make a difference, and this is a person doing something really worth trying to do.
Exerpted from the explanation of the Project:
......We know the spammers cull email addresses from any source they can. The real prize for them is a live email address. Scripting can automate the sending process, and a text generator can easily spit our address after address, but to get an email address that's live is the real goal. And one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to "crawl" a website for any email addresses listed. Sadly, even blogs are being crawled in this way now, with email addresses culled from the comments fields.
I'm undertaking a study...an experiment...a year long project. First, I've added an email address to the domain that will never be used. CounterSPAM@ipadventures.com is pretty clearly not an address that a human would knowingly send spam to, particularly since I'm publicly describing the project. It will appear in this entry, and in an occasional conversation on the subject. There will also be a single page describing my CounterSPAM project on my primary IP Adventures domain site. It will never be used to send an email. In short, the only way to find the address will be to crawl this modest web site or proliferation from there. It's a receive only address that will be scrutinized closely........
......I'm going to document a year of spam. Every message will be researched and responded to. Prosecuted where possible. Persecuted where legal and appropriate. Publicly derided frequently. Depending on how flagrant the offenders are, there may be a web of shame online identifying them with name, address and telephone number (it is after all, often public information)......
CounterSPAM@ipadventures.com. Proliferate it.
CounterSPAM@ipadventures.com
You go, Ken.
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Nip Tuck
The FX network has been coming up with some great shows lately. I managed to catch most of the episodes of The Shield when it went into reruns. Now I'm hooked on Nip Tuck.
Of course, I've had a crush on Julian McMahon ever since he played that devastatingly hunky demon on Charmed. (Yes, I watched that too. Love anything witchy and/or with females who can give as hard as they get. My fascination with such things actually goes back to the 1942 movie, "I Married a Witch" with Veronica Lake and then the 1951 "Half Angel" starring Loretta Young. So you see, the seeds of my feminism and cronehood go way, way back.)
Nip Tuck is far from charming. It's messy, unpredictable, unnerving, subtle, outrageous, disappointing, redeeming, revealing, and rewarding. Kinda like life. And blogging, sometimes.
I love the complexities of the show's characters, the infinite shades of their gray thinking. It's those moral and emotional struggles in all of us magnified a hundredfold -- not enough to turn us away, but enough to hit home hard enough to pop our eyes open.
Kinda like our personal blogs should be, doncha' think?
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bad boys, bad boy
In my younger years I just loved those bad boys. You know, the ones who are so screwed up that they make you think of bloody wounds when you look at the lush lines of Renoir’s Peonies. The ones whose head threads are wound up in some kind of Gordian Knot and you become mesmerized by the labyrinthian lure of their inner Minotaur. The sensualists. The spoilers. Those sad, bad, never-glad boys.
But then I grew up and found my inner Xena.
So when bad boy Rage Boy spoilingly shuts down a fellow female’s blog for fun and fame, I say shame, shame on you, you sad, bad, boy blogger. Is that what blogging is about? Slash and burn? If you don't like it kill it? (Sounds an awful lot like Dumbya, doesn't it?)
Right, right. It shouldn’t be about patting each other on the back all the time. It shouldn’t be about never being confrontational. It shouldn’t be about stifling free speech.
It should be, as Jeneane both says and does, "giving and receiving one another's voices."
Bad blogger boys don’t really know how to do that. Instead they slash and burn, wielding words like daggers and knifing any kind of safe giving and taking. Rage. Sad. Bad. Boys.
Grow up. (And I'm sure they've heard that one before.)
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blah blah blah blog
I find reading blogs about blogging particulaly uninteresting. But the comments on something Tom Shugart posted (and he doesn't often write about blogging anyway) gave me significant and thoughtful pause -- mostly Dave Rogers' comment that "What draws me to blogs is not the topic of the blog, but the revelation of the blogger."
And maybe having a conference of webloggers to talk about blogging might be as boring as blogging about blogging. I've registered for the BloggerCon at Harvard in October, but I'm having second thoughts -- for the afore mentioned reason as well as for the exorbitant registration cost. (They offer a student rate, but not a Senior Citizen rate.) I want to go so that I can come back and do a post entitled "The oldest living continuously posting female blogger tells all" and give an outsider's perspective on all of those "A" list bloggers who will probably be there. I think it would be a hoot. A very pricey hoot, however, and one I'm not sure I can afford.
I am sure that I don't want to blog so much about politics, although it's hard for me NOT to write about politics, since today's devious politics really irk me. But what I want to remember to do is write about me in relation to those politics rather than just recap something I read somewhere else.
Having said that, I'm now going to post something political -- although I didn't write it, myrln did. But they're my sentiments as well...
Okay, we will again survive. I am struck by the uncommon goodness evoked by the outage: technology goes out, humanity comes in. Sounds like a correlation to me. In NYC people sleep on the sidewalks because they can't stay in their hotels, and nobody bothers or assaults or robs them. Civilians stand in intersections and direct traffic to maintain a semblance of order and sanity. Subway-trapped riders evacuate the tunnels without panic, their way often lit by cigarette lighters held up as if at a rock concert (and despite Bloomberg's smoking ban). People help the elderly and kids. A liver transplant interrupted by the outage is finished in some dim light and weak power. Somebody gives free sneakers to people without good walking shoes having to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. Somebody else gives free ice cream (unlike the gouging vendors who took advantage).
Obviously, there is untapped, unasked-for, and unseen good in people. Our culture suppresses it in favor of greed and egocentrism. It does nothing to evoke that hidden wonder because if it did, here's what we would learn: we don't need overweening government or a political power structure, we don't need oppressive big business, we don't need mind-numbing consumerism. Why not? Because we would have community. People caring about each other for no other reason than we have our humanity in common. I wonder what it would be like to live in such a culture? What would a culture and government that encouraged and supported such humanity achieve? It would be a whole different world, to be sure, one we can't/don't imagine because there's no room in our 24/7 world to do so.
Instead, we are saddled with a power structure (non-electric) that urges people to conserve power in this crisis, to forego air-conditioning if not essential, to keep lights out -- while at the same time we see the t.v. pictures (from fully-lit, fully-monitored studios) of Times Square with all its neon ablaze, selling our souls while people's bodies swelter and struggle just to stay alive. Or to get home.
I love people as people. I despise power (non-electric) structures because to exist, they must strip people of their humanity. We need a new Revolution. And not one of Dumbya's kind. Reach Out is what I would call it. "Think of every day as a crisis for the guy next to you," is what it would espouse.
Yeah.
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Rock 'n Rollin' on the River.
If you’re used to seeing the Hudson River from the Tappan Zee Bridge, or even the George Washington Bridge, like my mother, you might have a hard time believing that this is the same river.
Past here, the Hudson isn’t navigable for anything too much bigger than the boat in the photo, which was anchored near the Albany NY shoreline while Sha Na Na and the Marvelettes performed on the stage at the Riverfront Park.
Of course, it’s not exactly the same Sha Na Na I danced to in my late teens, but when these guys did In the Still of the Night a cappella, it was even better than the recording of the Five Satins that played in the sock hop background while I did the "Fish" in the arms of my high school boyfriend. Usually nostalgia embellishes past realities, but not this time. (While the Arthur Murray site claims the Fish didn't become popular in 1961, we were doing it in the suburbs of NYC in the fifties.)
I went to the Fabulous Fifties concert at Riverfront Park with my friend "P" and some of her friends, most of whom I didn’t know.
I used to love to do those kinds of things – meet new people, be a part of a big crowd. But my nostalgia for the old days ended with Sha Na Na. I did get up and boogie with everyone else, worked up a good sweat, did the Twist, the Hand Jive, and even led a few Lindys. I still like to dance, but something’s missing now. Or too much has changed. Life in the slow lane, perhaps. Or maybe this is part of my metamorphosis into Cronedom. Whatever.
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Surviving the blackout of 2003.
Woo hoo! Six floors of 250 apartments of senior citizens who are used to eating out!
As fate would have it, my mom and I were in the elevator with a wagon full of groceries including ice cream, heading to the 3rd floor when everything shut down. After an eternity of 10 seconds or so, the power began flickering, so I punched #2, the elevator stumbled to a stop on 2, and we charged out. It took me four trips up and down the flight of darkened stairs before I got the groceries, the cart, and my mom up to her apartment. Good think I'm not in bad shape.
I checked with my neighbors to see if anyone needed food, but everyone seemed to be OK. The hallways and stairs were totally dark; luckily our old batteries had enough umph left to power our flashlights and my walkman/radio. The power went back on just after it got dark, and in the meanwhile, there was a lot of grumbling going on behind all those closed doors.
We sure are a spoiled lot, we Americans, taking our reliance on electrical power as our god-given right. Of course, Dubya is mouthing a lot of talk about shoring up the power grid. I'm waiting to hear somesubstantive talk about moving away from fossil fuel toward more hydro-electric and solar sources of power. Yeah, right.
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Democratize the airwaves.
The Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Act:
Senators John McCain [R-Ariz.], Russell Feingold [D-Wisc.] and Richard Durbin [D-Ill.] will soon introduce a bill that would require television and radio stations to provide voters with more and better information about candidates and issues at election time.
The American people own the airwaves. But current law gives broadcasters free and exclusive rights to use our airwaves. In return they're supposed to serve the public interest. Instead, they’re profiteering on our democracy. This legislation will help to reduce the demand for money in politics and help voters get more and better information about candidates and issues.
The bill requires television and radio stations to air at least two hours per week of candidate issue discussion in the period before elections. It also enables qualifying candidates to air a limited number of free radio and television ads without having to raise huge amounts of money from wealthy contributors and special interests. And it close loopholes in a 30 year old law that is supposed to prevent stations from gouging candidates on advertising rates.
During the 2002 election campaign, local television stations took in more than $1 billion from advertisements placed by candidates, political parties and issue groups. These same stations provided minimal coverage of the campaign issues. Basically, current law allows the broadcast industry to auction off the right to "free speech" to the highest bidder before elections. As a result, only wealthy people or those with access to special interest money can afford to run for office.
What makes this problem even more disturbing is that the law allows broadcasters to auction off access to something they don't even own: the public airwaves! In return for a pledge to serve the "public interest," broadcasters are given free and exclusive use of the airwaves. But instead of serving the interests of the public, they are profiteering on the democratic process. The airwaves belong to the American people, not the broadcast industry. They should be used to invigorate and sustain our democracy.
In 2002, television stations took in more than $1 billion from the sale of political ads. They’re auctioning off the right to "free speech" before elections to the highest bidder! The result is that only wealthy people or those with access to special interest money can afford to run for office.
It's time Congress acted to strengthen our democracy by passing legislation that requires broadcasters to play a more constructive role in our elections. You can be sure that the broadcast industry will dispatch an army of high-priced Washington lobbyists to pressure Senators to preserve the windfall profits they make from democracy. The Our Democracy, Our Airwaves Coalition is mobilizing grassroots support for this bill now. Your Senators need to hear from you!
The above is a compilation of information from the voice4change legislative actions center. Go there to send an email to your legislator.
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Full Red Moon
This is the time of the August full moon – the Full Red Moon.
Moon Mother,
Wisdom’s Crone,
Heal ____'s heart.
Guide it home.
I can think of several names with which to fill in that blank. As a matter of fact, that’s just what I’ll do, tonight, in the full of the red moon.
I bought a small laptop before I went out to visit my daughter so I took it with me. I sat on her deck and wrote something I want to blog. But, of course, I haven't figured out yet how to transfer documents from the laptop to my regular computer. I've got a PCI card and a wireless router. I've also got a 1950s brain that's struggling to deal with a technology that I've barely kept up with enough to figure out how to blog, email, and surf. I'll get to figure it out eventually, one way or another.
Speaking of 1950s, I’m heading out this Friday with a buncha friends to a Fabulous '50s Dance Party. The Marvelettes ("Please Mr. Postman")are performing. I never owned a Poodle Skirt; I was more the Pink Ladies type. It's probably going to be too hot to dance, but it will get me out of this mausoleum for a few hours.
Pink Ladies Pledge: "The Pink Lady pledge is to act cool, to look cool and to be cool, till death do us part, Think Pink!"
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Tasting the Acquired
You hate what you fear, they say. What has that got to do "tasting the acquired?" Something. … Something like the relationship between love and boredom. Something like Chris Locke.
That's where I got the title of this post. From Halley's post about Locke’s post about… about…. about not being bouldered in Boulder.
I haven't posted in a few days. Nothing I wanted to say. No inspiration. Until now. Heh. My seeing Locke as inspiration. Ironic.
I often go to art museums, like the one in Williamstown, to get inspired – something about searching for the unexpected, opening up to that lightning bolt. Like when I saw Renoir's Peonies there for the first time. They say we see the world not as it is, but as we are. And then I wrote:
There are no blossoms real
as Renoir's peonies --
no rose as red
no red as real.
I would have them
for my lover's table,
to bloom red and real
as a heart open
to the palette knife.
So, I read Locke's Going Under post and am drawn down, down, into his world, down into mine.
OK. I admit it. I never took myself off Locke's email list, even though I really don’t have much use for Rage Boy. But Chris Locke? Well, when he's bad, he's horrid, but when he's good, he goes way down under. So, I admit it. Every once in a while I sneak a peek at EGR, even though that ungrateful cur..…(no, I'm not going to let that go!). As hard as it is for me to admit, I have acquired a limited taste for Locke's scenic railway rides.
Going Under. Is it art? Halley thinks it is. It sure is creating order out of chaos, sense out of sensorama. Is it truth? It sure is, factual or not. Whether or not Locke really met Helen doesn’t matter; what matters is we get to see a little more of what's under Locke.
It's left brained! It's right-brained! Those parallel columns! Those color codes! Those linked images! Those dives under the murky surfaces! Locke's Brain.
His adventure at the concert with his daughter reminds me of one time that I took young-teen b!X and his buddies to the movies. (Of course, they did not allow me to sit with them either!)
b!X was always a Monty Python fan, and so we all went to see The Meaning Of Life, where they sing "every sperm is sacred" and all of those Catholic kids start coming out of every closet and cubby hole. And that was just the tame part. I asked the other kids later if their parents would mind them having seen that movie. "We told them we were going to see The Black Stallion," they grinned as they told me.
Oh dear! Am I comparing myself to Locke? Maybe in another life. And even then, a far cry from.
In another life, a decade ago, I might have shown up at Locke's doorstep, redhaired and ready.
I'm not saying he would have been, of course.
Meanwhile, he can pull all-nighters and come up with what I will go back and read and re-read. And I? I’m waiting for one of my friends to call so that we can go over to Sam’s Club and I can stock up on Kleenex for my mom and diapers for my grandson (whom I will be leaving to visit on Friday). Tomorrow I drive my mom to visit my brother for the day. He lives half-way between here and NYC.
I'm shopping and packing and cooking. I can't pull an all-nighter. I just about managed to pull this hourer.
I'm desperately wishing that I had the time to dive deep down under. A friend of mine suggested that I make a list of the things I plan to do when my mother dies. (Is that too morbid?) It's not written down, but, believe me, I have a list.
And even if she's still around, I'm hoping that Dave Winer really does go ahead and bring Locke into Harvard for an creative artists segment of BloggerCon in October. I think I can get out there for that – schmooze a little more with Besty Devine and maybe even Halley, even though she's a Girlie.
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Dancing On
from Salvaged Poems of Theodore Roethke as cited at woods lot.
And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.
And then there was Elvis Presley. How do I get from Roethke to Presley? Ah, such is the magic of the blog linking, which takes me from Tom Shugart to woods lot.
What came before Presley? Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, I guess.
For me, nothing comes before Roethke.
Shugart's older piece on tying in the rock and rollin' explosion of 1955 with the four Kent State shots heard round the world fifteen years later is worth re-reading.
I was there too (at the movies), 15 and frustrated with my family's small life and ready to Rock around the Clock. At the moment of Kent State, I was hanging around the edges of a conference in the Rockies on changing the face of higher education. Yes, both happenings were life-changing for me too, Tom.
And we dance on.
Or at least we try, despite what Betsy Devine reports: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 486,000 jobs have disappeared since January, 44,000 of those disappeared during July.
We've just got to give Dumbya that real and final "pink slip." (image from Code Pink)
Burningbird thinks we need to get angry:
If you've read Burningbird for any length of time, you'll remember that I've talked about learned helplessness before, but it wasn't until I read this at Maria's that I indentified what I've been seeing among the people of this country. With learned helplessness, even if truth marches up and spits in your face, you've lost the ability to 'see' it.
How do you fight learned helplessness? I've talked about this here also; you fight learned helplessness with anger. Not everyone will agree with me, but if you can anger the American voters enough, I have a feeling they'll start seeing the reality, the truth behind today's patriotism. I hope. I wish.
I agree. Anger is what has danced me out of every bad situation in which I ever found myself. You take the energy of anger and, instead of turning it in on yourself and feeling helpless and depressed, you propel it outward into constructive action. We need to get mad at the diseased MadCowboy.
Let's do the democracy dance.
Dance on.
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If he didn't, he should have.
Got the following in an email from a woman friend. I don't know if Andy Rooney really said it, since I couldn't find the citation thru a search, and it seems as though Andy Rooney is being miscredited with saying a lot of other stuff lately. But if he didn't say it, he should have:
Andy Rooney says.... "As I grow in age, I value women who are over 40 most of all. Here are just a few reasons why:
An over 40 woman will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, "What are you thinking?" She doesn't care what you think.
If an over 40 woman doesn't want to watch the game, she doesn't sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And it's usually something more interesting.
An over 40 woman knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants, and from whom. Few women past the age of 40 give a darn what you might think about her or what she's doing.
An over 40 woman usually has had her fill of "meaningful relationships" and commitment." The last thing she wants in her life is another dopey, clingy, whiny, dependent lover.
Over 40 women are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won't hesitate to shoot you if they think they can get away with it.
Over 40 women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it's like to be unappreciated.
An over 40 woman has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn't trust the guy with other women. A woman over
40 woman couldn't care less if you're attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won't betray her.
Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to an over 40 woman. They always know.
An over 40 woman looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women.
Over 40 women are forthright and honest. They'll tell you right off you are a jerk if you are acting like one. You don't ever have to wonder where you stand with her.
Yes, we praise over 40 women for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of 40+, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old waitress.
Ladies, I apologize. Andy Rooney
And when we get to be over 60, we're even smarter and sassier. Oh Yeah!
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another myrln meme
myrln's not a blogger. he emails, like this:
Given the Pope's stand re same sex unions, I have a few thoughts for pondering:
1. The Pope lives in the Vatican with a bunch of guys.
2. In monasteries, a bunch of guys live together.
3. In seminaries, a bunch of guys live together.
4. In nunneries, a bunch of women live together.
5. Since nuns are married to Christ, the junior godhead has about a zillion wives, which I guess makes polygamy okay. The Mormons will be glad to hear that.
6. Priests, we have learned, are often fond of children, which the Church (and Pope?) knew about but did nothing about.
7. Will Dumbya try to codify those "one way or the other?"
Heh.
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