This poem is one of Jim Culleny’s daily poetry emails:
Killing the Plants
Jane Kenyon
That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they don’t
argue, they don’t ask for much,
they don’t stay out until 3:00 A.M., then
lie to you about where they’ve been….
I can’t summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, of this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of water – that’s all
they get. I wonder if they suspect
that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves….
The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.
After I read it, for a moment I thought: “I could have written that.”
Maybe. But I didn’t.
I could have written about how my plants have always been “survival of the fittest.” Anything that withstands my haphazard care has a home for life, even the phallic piece I saved from the dead 5 foot cactus that I threw in into the woods last fall. I stuck the piece in the corner of some other pot, and the damned thing took root. Lopsided and blighted, it’s still growing.
I could have written about the avocado pit I rooted last year and actually made an effort to nurture. It’s dying now, and sometimes I see it as a mirror of my own spirit these days. The leaves dry up, one by one. Fall lightly from the grace of the sun.
I could have written about the seeds I never planted, jambed, envelope by envelope, into an old shoe box, waiting for a better planting season.
I could have written about my shoes — not only the never ending quest for the most comfortable pair of black dressy shoes, but also the compulsive buying of shoes that I probably only will wear in my fantasies.
I could have…

As I stood in front of my full-length mirror after my shower, commending myself on losing almost 15 lbs over the past four months, I noticed them. I ran over to my computer and googled “tiny skin flaps cause.”
Skin tags.

It’s not bad enough that my gums are receding. It’s not bad enough that, despite losing some extra pounds, I can’t get rid of the (neck) waddle. And don’t get me going on the state of my upper arms. Now I have skin tags.
Yes, yes, I know. I’m not only getting older, I’m getting wiser. (At least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.)
But I’m GETTING OLD! I’m developing all of those obvious signs of old age. Why does that bother me — after all, I consider myself smart enough to keep it all in perspective and be proud to be an “elder.”
Actually, I think there are two reasons I am bothered by those obvious signs of aging (of course, I’m not bothered enough to have what body I have left carved up).
The first reason is my own sense of what I want to look like, my own personal sense of vanity and aesthetics.
The second reason is more valid. These physical signs are reminders of the time that is passing in my life, time I can never get back. What if my mother lives ten more years. I’m taking such good care of her that it just might happen.
In ten years, I will be 77. My dad died when he was 72.
What will I look like at 77? What personal joys will I have missed having during those 16 years that I will have been my mother’s primary caregiver? What will I still be able to do? Drive? Dance? Blog? Knit? Read?
Maybe. Maybe not.
And that made me think about how I would rewrite this poem of Jane Kenyon’s (another of Culleny’s daily poetry emails). I would have to turn it inside out and upside down.
Otherwise
by Jane Kenyon
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
It’s otherwise for me now. And then I’ve got skin tags on top of that.

A shower-clean sun-dappled morning in our small back yard. Goldfinches cover the feeders, haphazardly spilling seeds at the base of the post, around which squirrels, mourning doves, and one male cardinal share the wealth. Then two chipmunks literally gambol across the clover, and our resident woodchuck shuffles his weight from around the edge of the fence. The scene, enhanced with rain-cleared colors and the musical score of the flighty finches, is right out of a Disney movie. I expect to see Thumper and Flower arrive any minute.
It is my fifteen minutes of solitude while my mother naps. I indulge myself with the brightest-hued, ripest, juiciest mango that has ever dripped down my chin and onto my favorite hang-around-the-house t-shirt.
Now, if those moments had extended far into the day, if I had hours in which to daydream, ponder, imagine, I might have come up with something I’d feel passionate enough to write about. But that’s not how my days go.
When I check my email just before my mother wakens, I find this poem, sent as one of Jim Culleny’s daily offerings. and it strikes me as just right. For me. For today. For the todays still to come.
Trippers and Askers Surround Me
From: Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet….the effect upon me of my early
life….of the ward and city I live in….of the
nation,
The latest news….discoveries, inventions,
societies….authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business,
compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman
I love,
The sickness of one of my folks – or of myself….or
ill-doing….or loss or lack of money….or
depressions or exhaltations,
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle,
unitary,
Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable
certain rest,
Looks with it’s sidecurved head, curious what will
come next,
Both in and out of the game, and watching and
wondering at it.
Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through
fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments…I witness and wait.
5
I believe in you my soul….the other I am must not
abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass….loose the stop from your
throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want,….not custom or
lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

MYRLN is a non-blogger friend of mine who is the guest-poster here on Mondays. It’s another MYRLN Monday.

RAMBLE TO UTTER CONFUSION

by MYRLN

Diminishing daylight hours recalls the ambivalence of the first day of summer. It’s that longest day of the year on which we celebrate reaching the peak of daylight’s supremacy. But at the same time, it’s also the day when we begin again the slide into winter’s cold, dark dreariness. Oh, some will say, what a pessimist. They will ask, is the glass half full or half empty?

Well, actually it’s both at the same time…from an holistic viewpoint. And from the same viewpoint, the first day of summer is both a beginning and an ending. No matter how much you might want to ignore the duality, it’s there: the summit of light and warmth but also the descent towards dark and cold, a pattern likely the basis for the myth of Sisyphus. Push the stone to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down and require another and endless repetition of the task, while knowing full well its eternal nature.

So the glass is always both half full and half empty. To insist on one or the other is to require factionalism, partisanship — those things that inevitably lead to disagreement and extremism (e.g. al Qaeda terrorism vs. U.S. terrorism) and often to war between the extremes. So how does the holistic viewpoint deal with such extremes? Not well, actually. Simplify the question: is murder good or bad? The holist must say it’s both. The opposite viewpoint insists it’s a moral matter; it must be one or the other. So is holism amoral? If it refuses to distinguish between good and bad, then yes, it is, the partisan would say…if not downright immoral. And if no distinction, then humanity’s response is paralyzed when it comes to extremes of behavior or event. So the glass must be either half full or half empty. No holism allowed. Partisanship required. Like the Pope recently declaring Roman Catholicism the only true path to salvation, all other aspects of Christianity and other religions, in fact, false and useless. Or like the good prez, George Dumbya’s, “I’m right and everyone else is wrong so follow me or die.”

It’s a tough world for holists. The first day of spring or fall are the best days of the year for them: days and nights are of the same length, the glass half full and half empty at the same time. The Pope and prez must hate days like those. Or maybe not so much the Pope since he recently took a nice holistic view in declaring Evolution and Creationism not to be exclusive of each other. It’s sort of like the holist pointing out the obvious truth that the human animal is and always has been good and bad in one and the same body/mind. Hasn’t it?

Although…well, remember the Garden of Eden? Remember the admonition its inhabitants were given? “…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it….” They were not to know of good and evil. See, even God didn’t want us to differentiate, wanted to keep that knowledge away from us. Or for us to know about it and not know about it at the same time? A holist? Hmmmm….

And poor Sisyphus, that first day of summer. All he can do as that damned rock begins to roll away from him, is watch, maybe cast a “Why me?” glance heavenward, and take a swig from his half-full/half-empty water bottle before starting after the rock…again. “At least it’s all downhill from there,” the eternal optimist would say, never realizing the irony of the remark.

Confusing, ain’t it? Or is it confusing and clear at the same time?

Facebook. That’s one of those “social networking” sites, this one founded by a 23 year old and populated, at least originally, by that younger set. Yes, that’s important.
I’m not a big joiner of those online social networks, but some of my “old time” blogger friends joined and invited me to join them. Why not, I figured. Maybe getting back in touch with the old crowd will jump start my own blogging.
Meanwhile, Ronni at Time Goes By takes notice of the anti-elder hate speech that is evident in a number of Facebook discussion groups occupied by those younger members. Ronni deactivated her Facebook account in protest.
My response was to join the “oldest people on Facebook” (70 so far is the oldest) and become one of those who are standing up to be counted.
I guess it’s the old in-your-face “warrior crone” in me.

Each day I watch the local and world news from 6 to 7 p.m. I watch Countdown at 8. I know that every day someone gets shot in a drive-by. I know that every day some child dies at the hands of a violent adult. I know how corrupt too many of our government officials are. I know that the military tells lies to cover up the crimes committed by the soldiers it has brainwashed. I know that Rupert Murdoch wants to own the media of the world. I know. I know.
But what’s the point writing about it. Others are doing it far better than I ever could. Although Molly Ivins did it the best.
The Big Picture is out of my control. It often seems that it’s out of anyone’s control but the few who already control it.
Even some of the Little Picture is out of my control. It’s at the mercy of my mother’s health.
That’s why I blog about hair cuts and newly purchased cars. Those are among the very few things over which I have any control at all.
I know that my life isn’t nearly as tough as it is for millions of other people. And it’s even tougher if they’re stupid. (The following from an email I got from a relative.)
— Recently, when I went to McDonald’s I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets. “We don’t have half dozen nuggets,” said the teenager at the counter. “You don’t?” I replied. “We only have six, nine, or twelve,” was the reply. “So I can’t order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?” “That’s right.” So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets
— I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those “dividers” that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn’t get mixed. After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the “divider”, looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it. Not finding the bar code she said to me, “Do you know how much this is?” I said to her “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I’ll buy that today.” She said “OK,” and I paid her for the things and left. She had no clue to what had just happened.
— A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM “thingy.”
— I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. “Do you need some help?” I asked. She replied, “I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can’t get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?” “Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?” I asked. “No, just this remote thingy,” she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, “Why don’t you drive over there and check about the batteries. It’s a long walk.”
— Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, “I’m almost out of typing paper. What do I do?” “Just use copier machine paper,” the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five “blank” copies.
— I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in “Twister.” I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the “cruise control” and then went in the back to make a sandwich.
— My neighbor works in the operations department in the central office of a large bank. Employees in the field call him when they have problems with their computers. One night he got a call from a woman in one of the branch banks who had this question: “I’ve got smoke coming from the back of my terminal. Do you guys have a fire downtown?”
— Police in Radnor, Pa., interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message “He’s lying” was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn’t telling the truth. Believing the “lie detector” was working, the suspect confessed.
— A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid was eating ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and should be fine, the mother says, I just gave him some ant killer….. Dispatcher: Rush him in to emergency.

It’s hard not to slip into a funk these days. Mom doesn’t seem to be able to make any decisions for herself anymore. There’s no point in asking her what she wants to eat or where she wants to sit or what she wants to do. Her answer to all of those questions is always “I don’t know.”
And I’ve lost some teeth and the dental lab is having a hard time making a partial that fits. I’ve been back and forth to the dentist for more than two months. And it will be another two weeks until the next iteration comes back from the lab.
So, I went and bought a new car. A Ford Escape. A 2008 demo that I got a good deal on. It’s been a long time since I owned an American car. I’m feeling a little schizo, since, while I bought “American,” which is a good thing, I think, I also bought a small SUV, which is not as fuel efficient as, say, a Subaru Impreza, which is smaller. A lot smaller. The truth is I LIKE sitting up high in the driver’s seat. (Now, there’s a metaphor that has real meaning for me.)
Actually, the Escape is the same length as my old Subaru and only a couple of inches wider. I bought it in Albany so that getting it serviced will mean that I’ll have to spend a day in Albany and that will mean that I can have lunch with my women friends, whom I hardly ever get to see anymore.
I also have a new hair cut. A funky hair cut to help lessen the other kind of funk.

Not as expensive a funk neutralizer as a Ford Escape, but at this point, every little bit helps.

MYRLN is a non-blogger friend of mine who is the guest-poster here on Mondays. It’s another MYRLN Monday.

WHOSE COUNTRY?

by MYRLN

It’s maddening and often infuriating, and it should lead, every day, to a fierce question: Whose country is this?

It’s a question that should be put to every elected individual and bureaucratic appointee every day by citizens through snail-mail, e-mail, and phone calls…or any other means of communication. And for its transparency impact, every arm of mass media — print, radio, t.v. — should shove the question into the face of every political and corporate talking head in daily and weekend-circuit shows and interviews and at every press briefing or conference. Shove it at every current and future presidential candidate at every turn. Whose country is this?

But neither citizens nor media do it much — almost never, in fact. And that’s our real problem today. Nobody asks the pertinent question: whose country is this?

Why should we ask? Because without it, these elected worms and their political appointees and their corporate masters have come to believe — and seek to make us believe — that the country belongs to them. That they can do what they want with it with impunity. And when anyone might venture to say, “Wait a sec…what’re you doing? Why’d you do that?”, the worms reply, “It’s a secret, a matter of national security, and it’s unpatriotic of you to question it. It’s our business, so you butt out.”

Don’t ask. National security. Classified. Executive privilege. Homeland (that Nazi-esque term) security. They all mean the same thing: the worms claiming it’s their country. How imperial. How dictatorial. How Cheneyesque.

So they need to be bombarded, these worms, reminded that their secrecy, their power grabs, their declarations from on high are not tolerable. That their disregard of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is not acceptable. That the government is not theirs to do with as they will. They must be reminded, loud and clear and forcefully, that it is a government of the PEOPLE, by the PEOPLE, for the PEOPLE. And if they don’t like it, get the hell out — of office and even the country.

Whose country is it? It’s ours…we the PEOPLE.

And this P.S from me, Elaine of Kaliliy:
If you watched 60 Minutes last night, you saw and heard just evidence of whose country this has become, as Congressmen documented the fact that too many of them work hard to pass legislation for corporate backers and then leave Congress to become lobbyists for — or employees — of those corporate interests. (Case in point: the Medicare Prescription Bill) The country obviously belongs to those with great money, which in turn buys great power.
There are a lot more of us “people” than there are of the monied interests. It’s sort of what it was like just before the French Revolution.
Liberte. Egalite, Fraternite: that should be the rallying cry these days for “we the People.”

A hospice in Rhode Island keeps a pet cat named Oscar, who, like the doctors and nurses, makes daily rounds of the patients.

But that’s not all Oscar does.

Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

The article linked to, above, tells of his success as a harbinger of death.
Many cats seem to know when their owners are ailing or even out of sorts. The cat we had when my kinds were little, a male, was usually stand-offish — didn’t really like to cuddle or be petted. But whenever I wasn’t feeling well, he would curl up next to me and purr so strongly that I could feel his vibrations in my own body.
Calli, my cat now, a female, loves attention. But the only times I ever saw her try to comfort someone were the two times my mother was so out-of-it that we wound up taking her to the emergency room. Each time Calli kept trying to get into her bedroom (where she knows she’s not allowed) and jump onto my mother’s bed to lie next to her.
I wonder if she’ll be able to tell when my mother’s time comes.

It’s another MYRLN Monday.

A Noisy Democracy
by guest poster, MYRLN

The system’s pretty near broken altogether. We
have an i.q.-challenged president who believes god has his ear when actually it’s Dick Cheney whispering through the heating vent. Cheney, of course, is the vile, corrupt, dictatorial leader of the shadow government actually running the country from an undisclosed location. (George W. is only akin to the old Charlie McCarthy puppet enlivened by Edgar Bergen, no offense to them.) We have a Congress wholly incapable of doing anything but jumping as high as its various corporate masters tell it. And a mass media with attention deficit disorder, all striving to become another Fox News or New York Post. And controlling it all is a multi-faceted corporate empire whose motto is, “How many consumers have you screwed today?”

Anything of the people, by the people, for the people is not only forbidden territory, it’s under daily attack. (And we don’t have Molly Ivins any longer to put it all in its proper perspective.)

None of this bodes well for the democracy created 231 years ago. It is seriously endangered on all fronts, all under the guise of protecting us from terrorism. And Americans of all ilks have permitted the erosion of the democracy. A lazy, compliant, silent electorate actually bought into the crap this vile — no, let’s arrange the letters in their true order — this EVIL government has been spouting. Like the characterization of wanting to stop any more of our young men and women from being killed in Iraq as “unpatriotic.” And “supporting the troops” is letting more of them die — and that’s supposed to somehow be a good thing. What too many fail to grasp is that this alleged “war on terror” is little more than a callous excuse for seizing more power and violating our democracy. Think disregard for habeas corpus, think torture, think spying. No, terrorism is ultimately defeated by working with all parties to eliminate the social and economic conditions that foster it (thus minimizing, if not eliminating altogether, support for the crazies, including those in our government, who think violence is an answer). Alleged military “solutions” are useless, they can’t stop terrorism. Ask Israel.

Unfortunately, these are not the 1960s. We could use the energy and fury of those years today. If it were still the ’60s, there’d be none of this pukey, half-assed political and moral maundering going on. The streets would be filled with protesters at every turn, beating on tin pails outside the White House, making an unholy din that drives its inhabitants up a wall and reminds them in no uncertain terms that their chicanery is no longer tolerable, and that tells them loud and clear whose democracy this is. And candidates for the next presidency wouldn’t be whispering mealy-mouthed platitudes for nothing more than personal political gain. They’d be out in the streets, too, shouting in defense of democracy. In every city in the land, young and old alike would be in the streets making a huge and powerful noise, crying, “ENOUGH!” Demanding and ultimately getting change — a return to democracy. OUR democracy.

Loud and incessant noise can be very effective.

Democracy likes it..