Myrln
Another myrln Missive.
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Monthly Archives: May 2003
A look into my eyes.
That Web Eyes Project has gotten me thinking.
I look into the mirror every day as I put on makeup and do my hair, but I never really look right into my eyes. That
The Web Eyes Project
The brains and balls behind Blog Sisters, Jeneane Sessum, has again come up with an eye-opening idea, The Web Eyes Project.
So, here’s mine, Jeneane. Can I play?
A Homonyminal Prayer to Pan
The sun! The sun! And all we can become!
Theodore Roethke, “What Can I Tell My Bones”
A Homonyminal Prayer to Pan
Let the sun find its home in this world today.
These days of rain wear at the heart.
I leave with you a mother
Join the ‘Stop George!’ Viral Campaign.
A new website, stopgeorge.com has launched a viral marketing campaign to defeat George Bush in the next election, with free posters, bumper stickers, and other stuff to download and print out and wear, display, and distribute. The mission statement of this effort is chock full of excellent rationale for why such a campaign is crucial to bringing the truths of Bush’s reign of terror to the forefront of the American consciousness (as well as the American conscience). For example:
WHAT’S THE POINT OF ATTACKING GEORGE? SHOULDN’T WE PUT ALL OF OUR ENERGY INTO SUPPORTING ONE OF HIS OPPONENTS?
The public image of George has been carefully created and maintained by some of the most successful and talented people in the business. Any candidate, no matter how qualified, will have a difficult time countering that well-constructed image. And if they do attack George, they may be condemned as a dirty politician, a dangerous position to be in for an opposition candidate. In addition, any viable opponent (or opponents) to George will not come to the forefront until the summer of 2004. That gives George over a year to promote his campaign without challenge while potential opponents fight among themselves. It is important to start poking holes in George’s well-constructed image as soon as possible.
and
We need to show Americans who are afraid to speak out against George that there are others like them and it’s OK to speak out. We need to show Americans who don’t even know that they have a reason to disagree with George that they do have a reason. And we need to encourage those who have not voted in the past that in 2004, their vote will make a difference. Remember, the last George was considered unbeatable less than a year before his defeat.
We make no difference.
Let
The Crone Evolution.
These are my two grandmothers in the mid-1940s, when they were a few years younger than I am now.
That’s my mother’s mother on the left — the small, straight-backed, serious woman — the one who saved my life with her Old World medicine magic (see poem below).
My father’s mother is bigger, softer-looking, but was no less strong. She remembered growing up in Sklody, Poland, admiring her third cousin, who became the famous Madame Marie Curie. Strong women, all.
But how old they look to me now, even though, today, I am older than they are in that photo. Life was hard for them — very serious business, with five kids each and hard-working blue-collared husbands. They cooked well, cleaned well, and passed along to me their matriarchal genes — the blessings and curse of my crone heritage.
On this day of memory, I remember my grandmothers.
HEART OF ROM
Cyganka! My grandmother shouted
as I bounded off the front stoop
onto the wet city street,
propelled by the promise of stolen kisses
and the musky taste of Tangee
still slick on my lips.
Gypsy! Even the word
brought blood rushing
to the pit of my stomach.
How I wished for the wild hair,
dark eyes, skin like old copper,
for the freedom to gleam
like crystal when I walk,
for a wisdom ancient as the land,
as the sweep of continents,
the shriek of willful wind
through openings in stones.
Cyganka! She hurled it
like an epithet,
but I role it like a broom
over landscapes grown deaf to her fears.
She named me true, my Polish grandmother
— a small strong-handed woman
with gypsy fire in her voice
and a back turned straight
against truths too bold to hold.
Yet, they tell me once,
as I lay young and dying
lungs rattling with rifts of air,
fever lighting my face to flame,
(the doctor came and went,
scowling at the earth) —
in the draped and stifling room,
she unfolded her family secrets:
holy candles, crystal cups,
vials of spirits, leeches, as
my mother watched from shadow,
willing demons away with her eyes.
They tell me when the priest arrived,
surprised to find the child alive,
he never commended on the faint red circles
following the tender length of spine,
or the sprinkling of blood marks
along the back, like the bites
of mythic bats or the denounced
touches of wizened old wives.
And so I keep signs
of these grandmothers, still
–in fragrant herbs sprinkled in tea,
in shells and stones arranged on shelves,
in faint red circles, drawn in firelight.
Cyganka! I call to my daughter,
offering gifts of crystals
that fire the sky
where she walks.
(copyright EF 1980)
Whose Truth?
The other evening I went to an event held to give some visibility to the Glass Lake Studio (Expressive Arts Therapy Program) and to bid farewell to its founder and his wife, who are moving to Canada to join a community led by “guru” John de Ruiter.
According to de Ruiter’s site,
Canadian born John de Ruiter responds to invitations World-wide, addressing audiences from “core splitting honesty” and his unconditional way of absolute surrender and servitude to Truth.
Because I steer clear of anyone who spells Truth with a capital “T” (and run fast in the other direction from concepts like “surrender” and “servitude”), I am always a little taken aback when people who have been among my circle of friends go off to embrace such Truth so blissfully and assuredly. With the de Ruiter Truth, it’s not just the couple to whom I recently wished “safe journey.” Another couple I know — both well-trained psychologists with successful practices — have already moved, at least temporarily, north to de Ruiter’s Canadian enclave.
Without a doubt, truth is very important. Look at the mess the world is in because so many of our leaders have forgotten how to tell it. It’s interesting that de Ruiter’s wife recently left him because he is sleeping with two of his lovely blonde followers. I think that he has some sort of rationalization of the difference between his own “personal truth” (small “t”) and Ultimate Truth (capital “T”).
Heh.
It all makes me stop to think about how many ways of defining “truth” there are out there. There’s scientific truth, historical truth, personal truth, mythic truth. And then there’s the capital “T” Truth, the idea of which always seems so compelling. It also tends to be the idea behind many of the most gruesome murdering sprees of mankind, from the Crusades to the war on terrorism.
Scientific truths change and evolve as new information is added to the mix. Historical truths often are a combination of actual facts colored by personal truths. It’s all so messy, so chaotic, so lacking in surety — kind of like life. To believe or not to believe. We make our choices and we take our chances.
Personally, my choice for truth usually is to try to match up my personal truths with the kinds of mythic ones that Joseph Campbell so eloquently and artfully described and analyzed in his too-soon-forgotten series of PBS programs and books. I guess it’s my way of integrating the big picture with the little picture, the personal with the planetary. Because, for me, it’s the only way for me to arrive at truths that I can count on, that provides the loom on which I can weave that chaos of science and history and personalities into the fabric of a life that I can wrap around myself for safety and sustenance.
All the rest is someone else’s truth. Someone else’s Truth.
That’s why the current American intrusion into the Middle East is so confusing to most people. (Makes you want to run way and hide in the bosom of de Ruiter Truth, doesn’t it?)
To help you get at some of the truths about Middle East Truths, you might want to link over to Bob Harris’ post on here , which begins:
It may be anything from a play for leverage in Iraq to the opening drumbeat for another war, but the White House, Rumsfeld, and Blair have all gotten on Iran’s case for allegedly harboring Al-Qaeda suspects, which supposedly even led to this week’s increased terror warning.
Iran denies the charge.
Who’s telling the truth? I don’t know. But keep reading.
It’s well-worth reading.
And to get a better fix on the continuing un-truths being thrown at us by the Bushies, check out Peter Beinart’s article in The New Republic Online that spells out “the record over the last eight months.”
Whose truth. Yes, indeed.
The Propaganda Dilemma
Watching CBS
never enough Elmo
Since the terry-cloth “Elmo-head” pillow (with detachable arms) — pictured above — that I created was such a hit with my 9-month old grandson, I decided to design and crochet a Baby-Elmo hand puppet.
It came out so good that I’m attempting a Winnie-the-Pooh one.
Retirement, combined with caregiving, leaves lots of time for extreme dillitantism and a need to do something to keep my hands out of the potato chip bag.