September 30, 2003

Busy, getting ready to go away this weekend for the second day of BloggerCon and to take my grandson shopping for his first pair of shoes. Dean Landsman beat me to posting about going ape for BloggerCon. Coincidentally, as I was watching the news report about the ape that got loose from the Franklin Park Zoo -- to which my grandson just went for the first time a week ago --I was working on this "monkey-hood bath towel" to bring to him.

Busy finally finishing ironing the transfers onto the t-shirt that will announce who I am at BloggerCon. (Two small ones on the front and big one on the back.)

Busy contibuting to Howard Dean's fund-raising push. This is only the second time in my life I've ever contributed to a campaign. The only other was for a friend who's a civil rights lawyer and was running for Albany County D.A. He didn't win. I hope I haven't jinxed Dean.

Busy keeping up with all of the sordid news and trying to keep on keeping on despite my anger, frustration, and sadness.

Busy making Jeneane Sessume's Jenna something girly for her sixth birthday, even though it's going to get there after the fact. It's such fun stuff to make but not quite the thing for my grandson. (It's a bead-trimmed floppy hat and shawl/poncho, in case you're wondering.)

Busy making signs for my craft fair booth.

Busy cooking up some meals to leave for my mother to nuke while I'm away in Boston.

And, finally, busy starting to read The Secret Life of Bees, which I love already. Thanks, myrln, for the recommendation.

Bzzzzzzzzzz.

September 27, 2003

A new comment on an old post prompts me to repeat posting the words of my therapist-shaman-spiritual seeker friend, who sent the following out in an email a year ago.

Dear Friends,

Thank you all for being my congregation of spiritual seekers,
soul-renders, and God-wrestlers on this anniversary of the day of
Creation. May you each and all have a year of blessings and meaning.

"...a year of blessings and meaning." Yes.

September 26, 2003

At this moment, the tally for the total comments left on this weblog is 1111. Last July, I posted about seeing the numbers 11:11. When I went back to look at that post just now, I noticed that the total comments on that post is 11.

Since I don't know who most of the commenters are, I'm assuming that they found that post through Google.

I sure am not alone.

September 25, 2003

This is the view across the top of my roll-top desk, past my room divider, into my kitchen. Like my life. Chaos.

-- Still getting over major tooth abcess and root canal work.
-- Now mother hearing voices singing Polish Christmas Caroles while the podiatrist (who she insists is Polish but he's not) is working on her hammer toe.
-- While making broccoli soup in my Vita Mix, didn't realize that the machine was set on high speed and the cover wasn't on tight enough and -- heh -- broccoli bits all over everything, including me.
-- Made batches of pesto with the harvested basil after I cleaned up the broccoli mess.
-- Still not ready for the craft fair that I do once a year; need to print up signs, finish a few more items, and price everything. New items this year, thanks to a brainstorm of my breast-feeding daughter: washable nursing necklaces and shawls.
-- Am almost done using putting transfers (that I printed up on my computer) on a special t-shirt to wear to BloggerCon.
-- Finished harvesting my tomatoes, basil, and parsley; now have to clean out my garden before frost hits.
-- Gotta get to the library to return Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, which was so enthralling to me that I read it in one day (instead of cleaning up some of the chaos). As an ex-Catholic who went to 13 years of Catholic school and is totally fascinated with the lore of Church and its roots in paganism, I just loved this symbol, taken from the book:

-- Gotta pick up The Secret Life of Bees, which is waiting for me at the library, as well as one of Judith Jance's' mysteries-on-tape that I can listen to on my way back and forth to Boston.
-- Next stop is at Hannaford to pick up my mother's prescription for Quinine for her leg cramps and then to Joanne's for fabric to cover seams that I let out from a jacket I love that I made smaller years ago when I WAS smaller.

When my friend P stopped by after the tap-dancing class that we're taking but I missed because of my root canal, we commiserated about how being retired isn't what we wanted it to be. (Her 87-year-old ex-mother-in-law, to whom she's close, has just been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.) She thought that she would be spending her time resting, traveling, reading, having fun.

Whoever keeps trying to tell us that life can be just fun and games at any age is really selling us a bill of goods. I don't know anyone whose life is that way.

Meanwhile, I've got to go battle chaos. And entropy. Always entropy.

Yes. America as a whole seems to have succumbed to entropy. And apathy.

Battle on, Xena.

September 22, 2003

Thanks to Frank Paynter for clueing me in to a major Crone, Kathleen Jenks, whose scholarship and writing I find interesting but from whose approach to personal spirituality I diverge when it comes to believing in past lives and all of that kind of stuff.

Nevertheless, her Myth*ing Links web site is chock full of mythic stories that I hadn't read before, and her Crone Pages section of essays will having me linking back there for a while.

Right up front, I was most interested in her essay on "Artists and Muses: the Creative Impulse." After relating the new-to-me Navajo myth of Changing Woman (as she creates the first sand painting), Jenks offers a quote from Anthropologist and Buddhist teacher, Joan Halifax, who commented in a 1996 interview that:

Traditionally, there are three female archetypes: the maiden/virgin, the mother, and the crone. I think there is also a fourth, and that is the woman of craft. She is the woman who takes her creativity and turns it toward the healing of the world. She can be a weaver of textile or a weaver of text. I think that's where the women of the twenty-first century will find themselves. They will be virgins, mothers, crones and wise women, and many of them will be women of craft

I guess that has been my fundamental intent as a woman of the craft of blogging -- to "take my creativity and turn it toward the healing of the world." While that sounds arrogant, I don't mean it that way; I mean it as a statement of positive purpose. Of course, I recognize that sometimes my positive efforts require some sword-wielding, but that's the Kali way, you know.

Jenks' essay on "Prometheus and Me: The Mythic, Artistic Life in Which We All Share" offers a really good description of how we "live" archetypal myths in our own lives. As she considers the Prometheus myth, she realizes:

Those were the pieces I needed: night, art, rebellion, healing, fire.

It was a shock to recognize this, but also exhilarating, for it tells me that my nature really is to steal fire for others, but also for myself, for I too need that numinous magic, that gladness.

I know just what she means. And, as she continually points out, it's not just a Crone thing or a female thing.

Paynter ends his post about Jenks with some poems by Marian W. Love, whose work Jenks apparently recently published. I particularly liked this one because it's about the artist's hardest task:

Discarded Beauty

Poetry.

Down for the count this weekend with an abcsessed front tooth. Fat lip. Can't eat. Barely sleep. Waiting to hear from endodentist if he can squeeze me in before noon tomorrow. On penicillin since Friday. Major Motrin doses. Feel too crappy to blog.

But feel even crappier after hearing mental troglodyte Bill O'Reilly's interview on 60 Minutes last night about his 10 Rules for Effective Parenting. I echo what non-blogger myrln had to say. (The capitalization is his):

-- Discipline is essential, but no parent should inflict FREQUENT physical or mental pain on a child.
-- A good parent will ensure that home is a refuge -- a place where a child feels protected and loved. There will be no RANDOM violence, intoxication, sexual displays, UNCONTROLLED anger or vile language at home.

Does the first mean "occasional" pain is okay? And the second that "planned" violence, etc. and "controlled" etc. are okay?

It's bad enough to have a toothache. Listening to O'Reilly makes me really want to escape to Fantasy Island.

The pain! The pain!

September 19, 2003

So ye thought I were the only one, did ye? I comes from a long line o' women adventurers who dressed as men tae gain equal treatment. There be many more, but as they were ne'er unmasked, we'll ne'er know who they were. Below there be listed links tae some, an' names o' others, as sort o' a mini-tribute tae them that had the guts tae fight an' the blood-thirstiness tae kill for the right tae live as free as they wanted.

So begins a great website on Historical Female Pirates.

The most interesting story, as far as I'm concerned, is the tale of Alvilda, who ran away and became a cross-dressing pirate so that she wouldn't have to marry the prince of Denmark chosen for her by her parents. That's not the cool part. The cool part comes at the end when, after becoming the scourge of the Baltic and fiercely battling her former betrothed.....

Alvilda and her crew fought back to the best of their abilities, but in the gulf of Finland they were bested at last. Prince Alf and his men boarded the pirates' ship, where hand to hand fighting ensued. After sustaining heavy casualties, Alvilda's crew succumbed and she herself was taken captive. With her beauty concealed by a face covering helmet, she was taken prisoner, and it was only when this helmet was removed that Prince Alf realized who the scourge of the seas had been. For her part, Alvilda was so impressed by how Alf had fought in battle that she married him on the spot. She went on to share his wealth and throne as Queen of Denmark, and together they had a daughter, who they named Gurith. Whether little Gurith followed in her mother's ocean going ways is not known.

And then there was the fiery Jane de Belleville, a French noblewoman who turned against her country when her beloved husband was executed by the French as a spy. With vengeance in her heart, she sided with the English in the 1345 invasion of Brittany. Seeking to enter the fray herself, she purchased and prepared three ships with money from the sale of her worldly possessions. She was a ruthless mistress of revenge at sea and on land, and no ship nor town near the coast of Normandy was safe from her wrath. With a flaming torch in one hand and a sword in the other, she must have been a fearsome sight to behold, as she burned whole Norman villages to the ground.

Finally, I can't leave out Anne Bonny, "the most notorious female pirate that ever lived!" who supposedly gained her fame before she was twenty years old.

In general, it seems, gutsy women don't choose pirateering unless (1) it becomes their absoslutely only escape from lives of enforced quiet desperation or (2) they seek revenge for some ill-fate that overcame their mates.

Anger turned inward becomes depression. Anger turned outward makes for some feisty formidable ferocious willful wenchy women.

The following is a chant attributed to Anne Bonny:
Drain, drain the bowl,
each fearless soul.
Let the world wag as it will.
Let the heavens growl
and the devil howl.
Drain, drain the bowl
and fill.

ARRR!

Arr! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, and this bilge rat is joining a couple of my wenchiest Blog Sisters in celebrating the fact that we women can be as salty as any bung hole.

According to the Pirate Personality Profile Test that you can take on the Talk Like a Pirate web site, this is me:

You are The Cabin Boy

You, me lad, are an activist! You will not only change the world, you will make a dyed-in-the-wool Pirate dream of you in a sheep costume. You are the embodiment of the love that dare not hoist its sail! Ahoy thar! You could make a two-patch Pirate turn his head - but then he would lose sleep over it and what good would that do anyone? An innovator, you are WAY ahead of your time - and everyone else's. You are sensitive and artsy-fartsy. You say things like, "artsy-fartsy" but there is always a slight giggle in your voice when you say it - like Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares delivering a staggering punch line. Speaking of "punching" the only "punching" you would do is punching up that outfit with some accessories - say, a little bandana and some glass beads. You're not the Pirate we want in a fight, but we want you there for the crying game that follows! You go,

Well, don’t underestimate Cabin Boys and Crones. Remember Pirate Jenny:

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town
In this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.

And the ship
The Black Freighter
disappears out to sea
And
on
it
is
me

September 17, 2003

The BloggerCon 2003 at Harvard is scheduled to have "Art Interludes," but I sure hope they come up with something more creative than what's been suggested so far. Except for my suggestion, of course, which was:

Rather than display works already created, since bloggers tend to improvise on the spot, why not have those brave enough improvise/create their own art. For example, (and you would need people to have access to the net and printers, you also would need magic markers, paper, fabric, sticky tape etc.), have Chris Locke begin affixing to a blank wall some improvisational creation as soon as he arrives -- words, drawings, images from blogs. And then others add to this in some associative way, playing off each others' themes (just as many of us verbally do in our weblogs already). In a way, it becomes a group "wall-log." If you can come up with a way to cover the wall with large pieces of paper so that the resulting mural can be saved, at the end, everyone can take a piece of it home, digitize it, and use it as a jump-off point for blogging about the Blogger Con. Use your imaginations, guys!!

Art is as much process as product. Wouldn't it be cool to see what kind of "art" bloggers might produce if they approach that creative act as they do the process of blogging?

And I am planning to be there for the second day, 'cause it's for free. And I'll be wearing my own personally-designed Kalilily Time t-shirt so that everyone will notice me. Or not.

Shuffle. Slap. Stomp. Scuffle. Stamp. Chug. Leap.

That's me, tap-dancing. I'm taking tap-dancing lessons, and I'm not doing badly at all. I'm in a class of five women and one guy, all over the age of 55, who are tying to keep their bodies moving and their blood pumping.

The last time I took tap I was five years old and my mom had to take me on a bus to the lessons. That all lasted about six months. My mom did her best to socialize me to her standards. Most of it didn't work. But she tried.

Now, of course, at the age of 87, what she is, is "trying." She says she's hearing voices singing Polish Christmas songs. And sometimes it's at odd hours -- like 4 a.m. Now, it's possible that, given the building full of octogenians in which we live (me excluded, of course), someone just might be up at 4 a.m. playing and singing Polish songs. It's possible.

And as for me at the age of 63, I'm trying to tap-dance. After all, there's more to life than blogging, right?

Shamanic. Imaginal. Numinal. All words having something to do with experiences of the mind and body, the understanding of which is more related to creative psychological analysis than logical, empirical examination. All experiences that have little to do with external sensory adventures and more to do with the capacity of the mind to create another reality.

Back in the 1940s, when I was a severely asthmatic only child confined to bed for long periods of time, the radio offered me escape through imagination. Let’s Pretend. Ellery Queen. Inner Sanctum. Lights Out. The Whistler. The Green Hornet. I would lie there with my eyes closed and let myself be transported into the other realities created by those radio voices.

Back somewhere in my old weblog, I posted an excerpt from an article I wrote that was published in Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 1990 of Voices: the Arts and Science of Psychotherapy. The theme for that issue was "Psychotherapy and the Mythic Journey."

I am used to the company of shadows. One I remember from earliest times, when as a child afflicted with serious bouts of asthma, I spend long lonely weeks with only my radio, my books, and my paper and pencils to distract me from the boredom and isolation of my sheltered life. Restricted from the physical play that would connect me to the outside world, I learn to reach into the dark places behind my eyes for the companions and the adventures that are denied me out in the streets. I use my imagination to give some satisfying form to the loneliness that accompanies me always, like some sad and shadowy muse. Over the several early school years during which my illness rules, that Shadow becomes my guide to colorful inner lives of my own choosing – worlds of willful princesses and warrior queens, of dark erotic forces and fierce exotic songs. Rather than fear the dark realms into which my shadow leads me, I learn to trust it magical power to help me build the paths I need to find my way out of my sterile room, from the careful and ordinary family with whom I still feel an outsider, a changeling. As I grow older and the asthma subsides, the Shadow that has become my knowing guide continues to assert its presence through my writing and through my interest in things magical and mythic.

Today’s kids are bombarded with visual images created by others that graphically illustrate the stories designed to lure them into other realities. Their eyes, wide open, are fed all the images they are able to devour. Their own private numinal imaginations (which need closed eyes to germinate) have almost no time or space to emerge.

Part of who I am today is because of radio – of those times when, eyes closed and mind open, I would spend hours creating other realities inside my own head, guided by distant voices and imaginal yearnings.

Combine that experience with a college education where I learned about the origins of the creative arts (theater, music, poetry, visual art) as ritualistic attempts to communicate with the “Unknown” (gods, forces of nature etc.), and a job in which I advocated for the practice of using the creative arts to reach kids not interested in learning in general, and you have someone who is convinced of the fundamental psychological magic inherent in the process of creating artifacts, poetry, and performances. Alchemy. Ritual. Shamanism. Guided Imagery. Active Imagination. Expressive Arts Therapy. In my life, it all began with the magic of radio.

And it continues with the magic of blogging.

September 14, 2003

So, on one hand, I’m addicted to the seamy steamy moral agonies of Nip Tuck’s hunks AND the gory adventures of Tempe Brennan, the forensic anthropologist heroine of Kathleen Reichs’ murder mystery novels. Maybe it’s because I grew up living above the funeral parlor operated by my Dad.

Remember the movie My Girl? Even closer to the story of my actual childhood is a 1952 novel called My Daddy Was an Undertaker. I might have the only copy still in existence; I can’t seem to locate any others online. The first lines of the book could be my early autobiography:

There was always someone dead at our house….. Daddy was an undertaker. Occasionally he permitted himself the dignity of the "high flown" title of Funeral Director, but was never a mortician.

"Mortician!" he scoffed as the word gained popular usage. "Dietician, beautician, mortician! he minced. I’m an undertaker.

As a result of the oddities of my early years, I’ve always had a fascination with blood and gore, with death and all things that consider it. As a kid, I used to hang around Mr. Wellman’s candy store, where he let me sit and read comics all day for the price of a couple of penny candies. Tales from the Crypt. Ecchhh! Those are the two I devoured with great appetite, in addition of course, to Wonder Woman and Katy Keane – which also were seminal in the formation of my persona and associated fantasies. (My options for kick-ass female role models were severely limited by the times.)

Adults need inspiring fairy tales too. I certainly do. That’s why I was totally engaged by Kathleen Dexter’s novel Fifth Life of the Catwoman, which is a poetically written allegory about prejudice, intolerance, and second chances as lived by a woman who is the Everywoman who does not fit the mold imposed by her current culture.

My former spouse sent me the novel because he thought I would like it. He was right.

It's strange and wonderful how it's possible these days to remain part of a "family," even though you're not a family any more. I noticed that Halley's in the process of finding that out for herself. There are some good things about the times in which we live.

Nip, tuck, poetry, parenting, and promise – almost enough.

September 13, 2003

I picked her up because RageBoy, who often buries diamonds among his ubiquitous dreck, mentions her positively. I’m talking about bell hooks’ book All About Love: New Visions.

I’m thinking he must have noticed her statement about rage being “the failure of love’s promise” and assumed the rest of the book elaborated on that notion. In some ways it does – at least it does if you can eliminate all of her dozens and dozens of references to just about every pop psychologist’s tome published in the last twenty years.

Hooks does have (what I think are) a few semi-precious gems buried among her own dreck, however. And most of them stress the link between justice and love as these marry to forge stronger relationships in both the personal and global senses.

-- Justice between people is perhaps the most important connection people can have.

If the work they did was informed by a love ethic, they would consider it important to think critically about the images they create. And that would mean thinking about the impact of these images, the ways they shape culture and inform how we think and act in everyday life…..

Love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility.

While hooks doesn't have anything new to say, her writing is an honest reminder that, individually and collectively, we humans still have a lot to learn before we figure out how to stop crashing and burning ourselves and each other.

P.S. What's fascinates me about Nip Tuck is how it plays with the approach-avoidance struggles of various individuals to internalize that definition of love as a " combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility." It's as though, in their heart of hearts, they want to embrace that defnition; but the conflicting values imposed by competitive peers, individual personality, and cultural priorities keep getting in their ways.

And so it goes for all of us.

September 11, 2003

between lives
between lines
between minds
between times

That’s where I am.

1. Between getting a tooth pulled and being able to chew again.

2. Between being caught up with the blood, guts, turmoil, and torment of Nip Tuck and Deja Dead and attracted to the loving and lovely celebrations and tantalizations of Kathleen Dexter and bell hooks.

3. Between frantically getting ready for the one big craft fair that I sell my shawls at once a year and lamenting that a week has gone by without my doing any blogging.

4. Between wanting to drive out for the second (free) day of BloggerCon 2003 and trying to figure out how to do that and also make the same drive out the previous weekend to carry out plans with my daughter and her family.

So
1. I remind myself that cottage cheese and chocolate low-carb soy drinks will do wonders for my attempts to lose a few pounds.
2. I start taking notes for what I want to blog about the way the love theme plays out among those four very different perspectives.
3. I’m blogging right now.
4. I’ll get some books on tape for the drives and do both trips and not feel guilty about leaving my mother with meals in the freezer.

The way to get through the betwixt and betweens is to keep moving.

And maybe I’ll see some of you at Day 2 of BloggerCon. I’ll be the Crone in blonde hair and tight jeans hanging around with Besty Devine.

September 04, 2003

At one point I owned a chain-sawed sculpture of a small bear (made out of a tree stump) that I bought on my way back from a women's empowerment retreat held at a lodge in the Adironacks. The bear was standing upright, and one of his craggy paws had a notch in it that was supposed to hold a beer can. I think I ultimately put a a big crystal in it. Or maybe a bunch of flowers. It was a long time ago.

I bought it because I thought it was cool, and at the time I was into Mother Bear as one of my Totem Animals. I didn't think the piece was really "art," but I liked looking at it -- it looked powerful and playful at the same time. And it looked great standing outside my apartment door for all of my passing neighbors to look at and wonder about. It had meaning for me on many, many levels.

I've admitted before that I'm pretty much an elitist about "art." I believe that there has to be inspired craft imposed upon an artifact of creative expression before I can think of it as "art." That's why writing poetry, for me, takes a great deal of time and revisions. I'm not just trying to express myself creatively; I'm really trying to create a work of art.

Long before I owned the tree-stumped bear, I remember staying up half the night with a bunch of friends arguing whether the most important thing about art is the process or the product. If it's the process, the actual act of creation, then we might as well destroy all of the old art that's hanging around in museums. Of course, I argued the other side: great art should be shared with those who also find inspiration and delight in the product. That doesn't diminish the value of any kind of creative act, but we can all engage in creative acts and we can enjoy the creative acts of others. But that it doesn't mean that what has been created is necessarily good "art."

On the other hand:
Don’t hoard the past…. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.
“White Oleander" by Janet Fitch

So, I'm intrigued by this kind of creative product as a possible new art form. It's an amalgam of the visual, the verbal, and the multi-technical. I don't know yet if I think it's an art form, but it's certainly evident that there's a great deal of inspiration and creativity AND craftsmanship that need to go into its production.

Is it art or is does it just look great standing outside a blogger's door for all passersby to look at and wonder about?

Party politics puts me to sleep. I've been trying to keep up with what the Democrats are up to, since the upcoming election is such an important one, and I'm really yawning. An op-ed piece in today's NY Times by Matthew Miller shed some light on the inability of the Democratic effort to hold my attention:

[snip]

What American politics urgently needs, in other words, is not a new left, but a new center. Democrats need to refocus domestic debate around a handful of fundamental goals on which all Americans can agree — goals that in turn become the new basis for setting fiscal priorities and tradeoffs.

As Democrats start sprinting toward their primaries, the candidate who can take what the Republican Party denigrates as "wild-eyed liberal dreams" and reframe them properly as simple common sense will have the best chance to beat President Bush — and of deserving to.

Wake up, my fellow Americans!

September 02, 2003

From Baghdad Burning:

...type "Weapons of mass destruction" in the google.com search and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" bar. Read the standard-looking error page CAREFULLY!

Doncha just love the Net!

Snipped from NY Times "Home Alone" op ed by Bob Herbert:

Imagine if we had done some things differently. If, for example, instead of squandering such staggering amounts of federal money on tax cuts and an ill-advised war, we had invested wisely in some of the nation's pressing needs. What if we had begun to refurbish our antiquated electrical grid, or developed creative new ways to replenish the stock of affordable housing, or really tackled the job of rebuilding and rejuvenating the public schools?

All of these issues, if approached properly, are job creators, including the effort to reduce our energy dependence....

You knew, John Lennon, you knew.

And so does Indigo Ocean.

The following is a direct steal from Indigo Ocean's post yesterday on Blog Sisters.

I had something of an epiphany today when following a link from sysrick.com that led me to a post on Italian living.

Oh, gee. Please people, let's not. Let's figure out a new way to combine the tribal wisdom of community and present-centerdness with an expanded modern appreciation for planning ahead. Let's wed peace of mind with running water. Let's balance individual freedom with collective responsibility and its cousin self-restraint. Having done this, let's create a revolution without guilliotines in which the regal sovreigns of the invisible global wealth "nation" are finally removed from power and the will of we common people guides our destiny.

Well said!

I did it. I read my poetry at an Open Mic night yesterday. While (a decade ago) I used to do readings where I was one of the featured readers and the listeners knew who I was, this was the first time I did an Open Mic (where I was pretty much a total stranger). Immediate stage fright when I found myself in the spotlight with an amplified voice! Thirty endless seconds of stage fright. And then the Crone rose to the occasion.

Whether I want to do it again is still in question. I'm not sure I have the energy, and maybe blogging fills a need in me for that kind of "performance." And I'm sure that I'd rather find the time/space/solitude to write more poetry than make the time to go out and read what I've already written. When I lived alone, I embraced activities that brought me out into the world of people (dancing, poetry readings, workshops). Now that I have so little time alone, my preference has become to seek solitude. It's so hard to find the right balance.

Meanwhile, I flipped to the last chapter of Boomeritis, read it carefully, and will be taking the book, mostly unread, back to the library. It's a lengthy lecture on Wilber's philosophy disguised as a novel and interspersed with drug-enhanced sensualities, included, I imagine, in hopes that it would grab those who are used to more Hunter S. Thompsonesque reads. It's not that the message doesn't have some merit. It certainly is helpful to remember that each moment is all that we have of our lives and that, hopefully, we will live each with caring, compassion, a sense of justice, and enough fun and pleasure to balance out the pain. And if not, well, someday we will, or someday we won't.

So I'm going back to reading mystery novels with kick-ass female protagonists.

Rock on.

September 01, 2003

What I’m reading on and offline coalesces around the concept of caring.

Blogger Jeneane Sessum’s daughter, Jenna, is rushed to the hospital with a life-threatening staff infection from a cat bite. As she blogs about her fear, her love, her frustrations, Jeneane writes:

Our children are, as parents, all that matters. Really all. Nothing else. No. Not even yourself.

Blogger Debbie Gleason leaves the following as part of her comment to me on this post:

My mom and I have commiserated about being caregivers. During the first four years of my older daughter's life, she was taking care of my dad who died in December 2000. My older daughter has severe cerebral palsy. No health problems with that, thankfully, but a challenge all the same. My mom and I were each other's lifelines, especially in the first two years of my daughter's life when no one had any answers for me. My mom's "busman's holiday" was when she'd leave my dad with hired help for a few hours and meet my daughter and I before one of her therapies. We'd have lunch and then go to my daughter's Feldenkrais lesson.

She blogs more about her compassionate struggles on her own blog.

Throughout human history, it is mainly women who are the caregivers, who love unconditionally, who put their own needs aside for the sake of those they love and/or those they feel responsibility toward. Why are there not more men who make that choice? Maybe something in that roller-coaster of a ride novel Boomeritis offers an honest answer:

On page 46 of the novel, the persona of transformational guru Ken Wilber writes:

Carole Gilligan found, for example, that female moral development tends to go through three general stages, which she calls selfish, care, and universal care. In each of these stages, the circle of care and compassion expands while egocentrism declines…

[snip]

Incidentally males go through the same three general stages, although according to Gilligan, they usually emphasize rights and justice while female emphasize care and relationship. Gilligan believes that after the third stage, in both sexes, there can be an integration of both attitudes, so that at the universal-integral stage, both men and women integrate the male and female voices in themselves, thus uniting justice and compassion.

And then on the next page in his novel, the 23-year old egocentric arrested-development persona of Ken Wilber writes:

I am the detached monological eyeball my feminist professors hate. Detached and disembodied, I gaze on all- objectifying, reducing, humiliating all. I am the Cartesian God, come to annoy the world. What good is being a male if you can’t sexually objectify? I see all, I want all, I want to take it all for my explosive release, whereupon the depression temporarily forgets its name and my Siamese twin dislocates, only to regain strength and plot its quick return.

...after the third stage, in both sexes, there can be an integration of both attitudes, so that at the universal-integral stage, both men and women integrate the male and female voices in themselves, thus uniting justice and compassion.

Yes, indeed, Carol Gilligan, yes indeed. And I wonder if I will live to see it happen on any kind of meaningful scale??