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In times of old, The Furies protected Mother Right. If a mother (or any woman) was harmed, The Furies swooped down and took their vengeance. They were one of the last vestiges of a world that existed before the patriarchy. When we feel righteous anger, it is The Furies who are calling out to us to make what is wrong right again.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
The Morning After
Yesterday storm clouds bloomed over the valley like bouquets of black and white roses, so gigantic, gorgeous, and intense that they had no place left to go but down, their petals disintegrating into huge raindrops that soon became streams, creeks, and rivers. And the desert, so long in drought—like someone who has been without love, without embrace—could not take in this relief, at first, and the streets and sidewalks flooded. Now, morning, most of it has sunk in. The moon hangs above it all, and birds chortle in the trees.
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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Moon Giggles
Scottsdale, Arizona
On Sunday, we had dinner again with my sister, Michelle; her sweetie, Guy; and his mother, Hazel. We made quinoa, peas, veggies (yes, just like at home). As Mario and I cooked in my parents’ tiny kitchen, Mario remarked (with good humor) on how small everything is. Everyone in my family is small, so my parents home is filled, quite naturally, with things comfortable for small people. Mario has already had the misfortune of sitting on a chair and falling through. When he got into my parents’ bed, he said he felt a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput.
I like being in my parents’ home. (They have stayed in Michigan this year because of my mother’s illness.) I feel quite tender about them as I move amongst the things they live with. My father has made most of the furniture. He built the wooden night stands, then painted them with bright colors, adding zig-zag lines with an artistic flourish.
I think of the wooden box he made me some years ago to house my collection of tarot cards. He went to the Scottsdale library and asked the librarian for books on the tarot and the goddess. Then he painted a goddess on the front of the box and put symbols from various tarot decks all around the beautiful box. He told me later, “I didn’t know if I was concocting something good or bad with those symbols.” And I laughed, because of course he knew. In this case, it was all good.
Hanging on the walls in the living room are reproductions of a Renoir (I think), and a painting of a woman with her children. I wonder if my mother picked them out or if my father did, hoping to please her and lift her spirits. Over the light switch to the kitchen my father has put a colorful cover that depicts an outdoor scene of two pots of flowers on a bench outside a window with a branch from an unseen tree leaning toward it all. I gaze at this for a long while. In Michigan, my father has flower gardens he dedicatedly tends to when there. I think sometimes he misses his gardens when he is in Arizona. I wonder if he got this cover to remind him of home.
Quilts are all over the townhouse. My mother taught my father to quilt some time ago, and he took to it. I now own four quilts my father made, and I am always jealous for more. In Washington, I sleep under a quilt he made and here, too—although when I see one of the quilts, I don’t think only of my father. I think of them as creative gifts from both my parents, only my father has been gifted with more energy than my mother, so he does the actual physical work on the quilts.
In every room of the townhouse, including the hallways, are small clocks. They’re all alike, except for the colors. I’m sure my father must have bought them at the same time, for a bargain. On a shelf in the living room are three clocks in a row, each set to different time zones. My dad has them set at Michigan time, Arizona time, and Washington time. Yet whenever he phones, he wants to know what time it is where I am. (I get confused, too, actually, because Arizona doesn’t go on daylight savings time, so sometimes they are at the same time we are and sometimes they’re not.)
But, quilts aside, the five of us sat at the tiny table for dinner Sunday. My sister and Guy brought pork chops, tortelinis, salad, stewed tomatoes, and pumpkin pie. It all looked delicious, but I stuck to my quinoa and veggies since I was still wobbly from the vertigo.
We talked a long time, as we had the night before. I especially enjoyed Hazel’s stories. She’s in her eighties and sharp as a tack, as they say. We were asking her about the depression, and she told us they lived out in the country and had a garden, so they didn’t suffer too much. “And my mother canned everything,” she said. “Some people claimed my mother even canned the pig’s squeal.” Or later she was remarking on someone being annoyed about her spending money, and she said, “But it doesn’t matter. She’ll get over it in the same shoes she’s wearing.”
Mario and I took a walk after everyone left. It is remarkably quiet here, even though it’s a busy city. The streets are wide and the blocks are spread out. Most buildings are one story high. The street lights are low to the ground, too, so the night light isn’t harsh. We walked in shadows more than we walked in the subdued light. Hardly anyone else was out walking—probably branded us as touristas. Ah well.
I had vertigo all night, but I was still able to sleep.
We talked away half the morning with Hazel, which was nice. Then we drove out east of town to the Tonto National Forest. The city disappeared quickly as we followed the road out. We drove under several partially finished expressway overpasses—it was rather surreal, like some kind of art piece entitled: Going Nowhere.
Something about the desert is very compelling and repellent at the same time. You can’t hide much in the desert. If someone throws out their garbage, it’s there for all to see. Plastic bags get caught in the scrub, cans and cups roll around in the dirt. Yet if you can get away from that, the desert has a pristine, primordial feel like no other place.
Mario and I stopped at a trailhead near the Superstition Mountains and began to walk. I breathed deeply for the first time in days and felt my body quiver with anticipation of relaxation, bird exhales, and coyote tales (tails?). Later, when Mario and I sat in an Indian restaurant eating abu gobi and lentil soup, I wrote this about our walk:
Ahhhh
Took a deep breath
Finally, gazing out at the Superstitions
Tall redrock, snake curves created by age.
Kundalini expressed in rock?
A mother sits on the kitty litter dirt,
Pale pink, the earth; brown, the mother.
One of the children asks, “What’s the trail?”
“It’s where people walk,” the father says.
Buried treasure somewhere in this serpent
Mound. Of course, of course. Treasure
Everywhere, right beneath your feet.
Cholla, prickly pear, saguaro:
Not huggers, even the ones with arms.
A jumping cholla imitates a Kachina,
Covered in pale yellow burrs, frozen
In dance position. The trail tips,
Turns. Horse, coyote, and dog prints are
Cemented into the Earth, temporary
Petroglyphs. The hooves tell of metal.
Will that frighten away the desert
Fairies? Or just piss them off?
Swallows skim the air for food.
A Gila woodpecker walks along the ground,
Waddling as she searches for her own treasure.
Dead cactus bones are poised on the
Desert floor, like singed pieces of
Art work, or shed snake skins, only
More substantial: shed snake bones.
Ah wilderness, is all I can say.
Until a hawk—creamy with feathers
And flight—flies over us, becoming the
End of the exclamation.
After dark, we walked around the Scottsdale Mall, which is similar to the plazas in New Mexican towns. It was dark and cool. Tiny white lights hung in clumps on most of the trees so that they looked like fruits made of light. And more white lights were strung from one side of the street to the other. Everywhere we walked, it seemed, we encountered some kind of artwork: horses made from strips of metal, steel Kachinas, tin cactuses. On the way home again, the moon lit the clouds from behind, reminding me of someone trying not to laugh by putting her hand over her mouth, only the laugh spills out anyway, just as the moonlight did.
Ahhhh beauty!
May You Giggle in Beauty! 0 comments
On Sunday, we had dinner again with my sister, Michelle; her sweetie, Guy; and his mother, Hazel. We made quinoa, peas, veggies (yes, just like at home). As Mario and I cooked in my parents’ tiny kitchen, Mario remarked (with good humor) on how small everything is. Everyone in my family is small, so my parents home is filled, quite naturally, with things comfortable for small people. Mario has already had the misfortune of sitting on a chair and falling through. When he got into my parents’ bed, he said he felt a bit like Gulliver in Lilliput.
I like being in my parents’ home. (They have stayed in Michigan this year because of my mother’s illness.) I feel quite tender about them as I move amongst the things they live with. My father has made most of the furniture. He built the wooden night stands, then painted them with bright colors, adding zig-zag lines with an artistic flourish.
I think of the wooden box he made me some years ago to house my collection of tarot cards. He went to the Scottsdale library and asked the librarian for books on the tarot and the goddess. Then he painted a goddess on the front of the box and put symbols from various tarot decks all around the beautiful box. He told me later, “I didn’t know if I was concocting something good or bad with those symbols.” And I laughed, because of course he knew. In this case, it was all good.
Hanging on the walls in the living room are reproductions of a Renoir (I think), and a painting of a woman with her children. I wonder if my mother picked them out or if my father did, hoping to please her and lift her spirits. Over the light switch to the kitchen my father has put a colorful cover that depicts an outdoor scene of two pots of flowers on a bench outside a window with a branch from an unseen tree leaning toward it all. I gaze at this for a long while. In Michigan, my father has flower gardens he dedicatedly tends to when there. I think sometimes he misses his gardens when he is in Arizona. I wonder if he got this cover to remind him of home.
Quilts are all over the townhouse. My mother taught my father to quilt some time ago, and he took to it. I now own four quilts my father made, and I am always jealous for more. In Washington, I sleep under a quilt he made and here, too—although when I see one of the quilts, I don’t think only of my father. I think of them as creative gifts from both my parents, only my father has been gifted with more energy than my mother, so he does the actual physical work on the quilts.
In every room of the townhouse, including the hallways, are small clocks. They’re all alike, except for the colors. I’m sure my father must have bought them at the same time, for a bargain. On a shelf in the living room are three clocks in a row, each set to different time zones. My dad has them set at Michigan time, Arizona time, and Washington time. Yet whenever he phones, he wants to know what time it is where I am. (I get confused, too, actually, because Arizona doesn’t go on daylight savings time, so sometimes they are at the same time we are and sometimes they’re not.)
But, quilts aside, the five of us sat at the tiny table for dinner Sunday. My sister and Guy brought pork chops, tortelinis, salad, stewed tomatoes, and pumpkin pie. It all looked delicious, but I stuck to my quinoa and veggies since I was still wobbly from the vertigo.
We talked a long time, as we had the night before. I especially enjoyed Hazel’s stories. She’s in her eighties and sharp as a tack, as they say. We were asking her about the depression, and she told us they lived out in the country and had a garden, so they didn’t suffer too much. “And my mother canned everything,” she said. “Some people claimed my mother even canned the pig’s squeal.” Or later she was remarking on someone being annoyed about her spending money, and she said, “But it doesn’t matter. She’ll get over it in the same shoes she’s wearing.”
Mario and I took a walk after everyone left. It is remarkably quiet here, even though it’s a busy city. The streets are wide and the blocks are spread out. Most buildings are one story high. The street lights are low to the ground, too, so the night light isn’t harsh. We walked in shadows more than we walked in the subdued light. Hardly anyone else was out walking—probably branded us as touristas. Ah well.
I had vertigo all night, but I was still able to sleep.
We talked away half the morning with Hazel, which was nice. Then we drove out east of town to the Tonto National Forest. The city disappeared quickly as we followed the road out. We drove under several partially finished expressway overpasses—it was rather surreal, like some kind of art piece entitled: Going Nowhere.
Something about the desert is very compelling and repellent at the same time. You can’t hide much in the desert. If someone throws out their garbage, it’s there for all to see. Plastic bags get caught in the scrub, cans and cups roll around in the dirt. Yet if you can get away from that, the desert has a pristine, primordial feel like no other place.
Mario and I stopped at a trailhead near the Superstition Mountains and began to walk. I breathed deeply for the first time in days and felt my body quiver with anticipation of relaxation, bird exhales, and coyote tales (tails?). Later, when Mario and I sat in an Indian restaurant eating abu gobi and lentil soup, I wrote this about our walk:
Ahhhh
Took a deep breath
Finally, gazing out at the Superstitions
Tall redrock, snake curves created by age.
Kundalini expressed in rock?
A mother sits on the kitty litter dirt,
Pale pink, the earth; brown, the mother.
One of the children asks, “What’s the trail?”
“It’s where people walk,” the father says.
Buried treasure somewhere in this serpent
Mound. Of course, of course. Treasure
Everywhere, right beneath your feet.
Cholla, prickly pear, saguaro:
Not huggers, even the ones with arms.
A jumping cholla imitates a Kachina,
Covered in pale yellow burrs, frozen
In dance position. The trail tips,
Turns. Horse, coyote, and dog prints are
Cemented into the Earth, temporary
Petroglyphs. The hooves tell of metal.
Will that frighten away the desert
Fairies? Or just piss them off?
Swallows skim the air for food.
A Gila woodpecker walks along the ground,
Waddling as she searches for her own treasure.
Dead cactus bones are poised on the
Desert floor, like singed pieces of
Art work, or shed snake skins, only
More substantial: shed snake bones.
Ah wilderness, is all I can say.
Until a hawk—creamy with feathers
And flight—flies over us, becoming the
End of the exclamation.
After dark, we walked around the Scottsdale Mall, which is similar to the plazas in New Mexican towns. It was dark and cool. Tiny white lights hung in clumps on most of the trees so that they looked like fruits made of light. And more white lights were strung from one side of the street to the other. Everywhere we walked, it seemed, we encountered some kind of artwork: horses made from strips of metal, steel Kachinas, tin cactuses. On the way home again, the moon lit the clouds from behind, reminding me of someone trying not to laugh by putting her hand over her mouth, only the laugh spills out anyway, just as the moonlight did.
Ahhhh beauty!
May You Giggle in Beauty! 0 comments
Sunday, December 26, 2004
Terror at 30,000 Feet
Well, I got onto a plane for the first time in 17 years. These are my observations: they make the planes a lot smaller than when I used to fly, and they don't give you any food. Few observations, I'll admit. Not particularly cogent, I'll agree. I'm pretty sure now that all the planes I ever flew (besides a little two-seater) where 747s and jumbo jets--which could be the same thing.
I talked myself into doing it by reminding myself that I was a middle class white woman with so many advantages, and I should be counting my blessings that I have a choice whether I can get on a plane or not. That got me over the threshold and onto the plane. I thought it might quell my fears, or at least enable me to face them.
So you know that thing about facing your fears and getting over them and moving on, etc.: I faced my fears and she's a big bad bitch who ain't goin' away any time soon. I was absolutely mindlessly terrified for nearly the entire flight. Every time the plane bumped a little bit I was reminded of the bad flight I had in 1980 (or 1979) that started this whole thing. (Stewardesses even thought we were going down; ambulances awaited us at the airport to take care of injured.) And when it wasn't bouncing, I thought it wasn't moving. Here's the thing. I know that the odds of me dying in a plane crash are astronomical. It's not that. Before we were in our little jet mishap (they never told us what happened), I thought if you were in a jet crash you'd die and that was that. What I realized after our plane almost came apart (at least that's what it felt like) was that all those people who had ever been in a crash knew what was happening and they were terrified out of their minds--just as I was that day. I was absolutely certain I was going to die and it wasn't pleasant.
So I flew. Mario read to me from the 2005 We'Moon datebook to keep me occupied. (I would link it but I'm at the Scottsdale Public Library and I don't have much time.) I also had my mala and I recited the Tara chant (OM TARA) and the Yeshe Tsoygal chant (OM DAKINI). I felt as though I were going insane. But I didn't. We landed. I don't ever want to do it again.
We're at my parents' place in Scottsdale, although they aren't here. We're spending time with my sister and her family. I woke up first having a bit of trouble breathing, then with vertigo, and now my allergies are badly flared. If it doesn't settle down by tomorrow, we're going to have to leave. This has been the strangest vacation I've ever tried to have.
We're now in the Scottsdale library. It is an amazing library. All I can say is imagine the kind of library you would want and imagine your community had the money to do it and the Scottsdale library is what you would get. If you read my novel Coyote Cowgirl, which begins in Scottsdale, you already know the library has a gigantic quill out front.
Scottsdale is an odd little place. It's so close to Phoenix that it is dwarfed by it. And like so many desert cities, it just seems to go on and on, pavement and strip malls--only the malls are made of fake adobe. Palm trees grow everywhere, tall exotic symbols of the desert, only they aren't native to this area.
As we were walking here from my parents' townhouse, we went along on a quick tour of the sculptures in this park area around the library. In the middle of one of the ponds is a rusted abstract metal sculpture called Don Quixote. It's very expressive--bits of dried blood-colored pieces barely strung together to give a hint of the horse and man that may or may not be there. And the windmills? All around us, I suppose. The docent, a nice 81 year old woman with red hair, told us that the name "Quixote" means "conquering fears." I don't know if it's true or not, but it didn't matter. Just then Mario pointed out two swans floating near the sculpture. Earthbound. Waterbound? More my style these days.
May You Walk on the Earth in Beauty.
0 comments
I talked myself into doing it by reminding myself that I was a middle class white woman with so many advantages, and I should be counting my blessings that I have a choice whether I can get on a plane or not. That got me over the threshold and onto the plane. I thought it might quell my fears, or at least enable me to face them.
So you know that thing about facing your fears and getting over them and moving on, etc.: I faced my fears and she's a big bad bitch who ain't goin' away any time soon. I was absolutely mindlessly terrified for nearly the entire flight. Every time the plane bumped a little bit I was reminded of the bad flight I had in 1980 (or 1979) that started this whole thing. (Stewardesses even thought we were going down; ambulances awaited us at the airport to take care of injured.) And when it wasn't bouncing, I thought it wasn't moving. Here's the thing. I know that the odds of me dying in a plane crash are astronomical. It's not that. Before we were in our little jet mishap (they never told us what happened), I thought if you were in a jet crash you'd die and that was that. What I realized after our plane almost came apart (at least that's what it felt like) was that all those people who had ever been in a crash knew what was happening and they were terrified out of their minds--just as I was that day. I was absolutely certain I was going to die and it wasn't pleasant.
So I flew. Mario read to me from the 2005 We'Moon datebook to keep me occupied. (I would link it but I'm at the Scottsdale Public Library and I don't have much time.) I also had my mala and I recited the Tara chant (OM TARA) and the Yeshe Tsoygal chant (OM DAKINI). I felt as though I were going insane. But I didn't. We landed. I don't ever want to do it again.
We're at my parents' place in Scottsdale, although they aren't here. We're spending time with my sister and her family. I woke up first having a bit of trouble breathing, then with vertigo, and now my allergies are badly flared. If it doesn't settle down by tomorrow, we're going to have to leave. This has been the strangest vacation I've ever tried to have.
We're now in the Scottsdale library. It is an amazing library. All I can say is imagine the kind of library you would want and imagine your community had the money to do it and the Scottsdale library is what you would get. If you read my novel Coyote Cowgirl, which begins in Scottsdale, you already know the library has a gigantic quill out front.
Scottsdale is an odd little place. It's so close to Phoenix that it is dwarfed by it. And like so many desert cities, it just seems to go on and on, pavement and strip malls--only the malls are made of fake adobe. Palm trees grow everywhere, tall exotic symbols of the desert, only they aren't native to this area.
As we were walking here from my parents' townhouse, we went along on a quick tour of the sculptures in this park area around the library. In the middle of one of the ponds is a rusted abstract metal sculpture called Don Quixote. It's very expressive--bits of dried blood-colored pieces barely strung together to give a hint of the horse and man that may or may not be there. And the windmills? All around us, I suppose. The docent, a nice 81 year old woman with red hair, told us that the name "Quixote" means "conquering fears." I don't know if it's true or not, but it didn't matter. Just then Mario pointed out two swans floating near the sculpture. Earthbound. Waterbound? More my style these days.
May You Walk on the Earth in Beauty.
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Thursday, December 23, 2004
Found Constellations
First, Mario had his MRI, and he is fine. Knock wood.
Second, I wish people would stop saying how lucky we are. I don't think having a car crash is lucky. Unless it's bad lucky. Being horribly hurt or killed would have been very unlucky, indeed. I'm not complaining about the outcome. I am sincerely grateful and glad and hopeful and kissing the Earth with gratitude. I am grateful to all the stars. Grateful to the grassy median that grabbed hold of our wheels and kept us from flipping over. I am highly grateful no other car was involved. I am very very very tremendously grateful we are presently OK. I don't think it has much to do with luck, however. Shit happens. Shit happened to us. But it wasn't major shit. It was an inconvenience, as Mario keeps telling people.
I've stopped shaking. I think. We'll see tonight. My bones ache from shaking with fear. I'd wake up trembling and move closer to Mario, and he would wrap his arms around me, still asleep, and say, "Are you cold or scared?" And I'd whisper, "Shhhh, sleep, sweetheart, sleep." Eventually I would stop shaking and move inches away from Mario to fall into another dream. Eagles and helicopters. My car filling up with water and snow. Someone outside the window wanting to get in; me running around to make certain I had locked everything up, knowing that I must have missed something, somewhere, and it was going to get inside one way or t'other...
On Solstice, I took Mario to the Columbia Gorge Hotel. We drove there in the dark to walk amongst the trees dressed in white lights. The hotel sits on the edge of the gorge, overlooking the Columbia River, with a waterfall just on the other side of a stone wall that keeps the hotel's guests from plunging hundreds of feet down to the river. Mario and I walked up slippery rocks to look at the waterfall. We could hear it before we could see it, and then it was there, strangely luminescent white in places where it hit the rocks down below.
Then, amongst the mostly smaller deciduous trees, we walked. We talked about how we would describe this scene to someone else.
"How would you do it?" I asked. "I bet you would look at this all and see it as it is now. I look at it and I'm remembering the trees without the lights and how they normally have leaves. That’s just my memory of what it was."
"The lines of the lights are like the skeletons of trees and bushes," Mario said. "A boneyard."
I nodded. "It's as though stars have fallen from the sky and they've gotten caught on these bare branches," I said. "Look!"
We leaned over the walled creek that runs through the property. In the nearly still water were reflections from the lights. We couldn't see the trees or bushes, only the lights strung together.
"They look like constellations," I whispered.
"Yes, exactly," he said. "That one looks like a butterfly."
"Or an angel with a trumpet. These are lost constellations, fallen to Earth!" They're only found if we stand still long enough to think of looking into the water. They're only found if we stop long enough to wonder what has happened to all the stars.
We moved slowly along the path and the water. Who knew the vastness of the universe could be reflected in such a small body of water? We only had to move this way and that—like holding a mirror up to the Milky Way—to see more of the lost constellations. Infinite.
When we got home, we put up our Solstice tree, our two foot tall 20-year old artificial tree. Our tiny lights were colored and draped the tree like a star-studded boa.
Before we had to go back to the hospital on Wednesday, we walked Panther Creek. Up and up the Pacific Crest Trail we climbed. Mist rose from the river, and we breathed in her exhales while looking for bear marks. We could see to the end of the old growth, where they had clearcut a hillside, but we did not walk that far. We had our own wounds to lick. I hadn't the appetite for any other grief this day.
Not sure how I got through this morning before we saw the doctor. Mario wasn't afraid. My oldest sister doesn't like to fly, but she does. I don't like to fly, and I don't. I've asked her how she is able to do it.
"You're not supposed to distract yourself from the fear," she said, "or drink or do anything like that."
"What then?"
"You just feel the fear."
"And then what?"
"And then you get to the other side of it," she said. "You walk through it. I still don't like flying, but I can do it."
For these past six days, I have tried to walk through my fear. I've also tried to ignore it, shed it, dissect it, shred it, feed it, get rid of it. I have tried to walk through my fear to the other side of it. My fear must go a long way, because I haven't found the other side yet. If I could give a gold star to myself for something I do really well, I would have to say I do fear really well.
Today after the doc said the results of the MRI looked good, I hugged the doctor. He said, “Yep, I had a lot to do with it.” Then I embraced Mario. He smiled and put his hand under my chin and looked into my eyes to see if I was OK.
Later Mario and I drove out to Trapper Creek and walked in the woods. It was dark and cold and getting darker and colder as we walked deeper into the woods.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep," Mario said as we walked back toward the car.
"What's that from? It sounds familiar."
"That's Frost's poem," Mario said, "’and I have miles to go before I sleep.’"
"Isn't that poem about death?"
"That's what some say," Mario said, "and he repeats the line 'I have miles to go before I sleep.' So they're always discussing that, too. I thought he was just going home, seeing his family."
“Plus he said he had miles to go,” I said. “So that sleeping wasn’t happening any time soon.”
“That’s right,” Mario said.
The path we walked was cinnamon-colored from composting leaves. The dark and deep woods were black with green. On the way home in the car, moonlight pooled at my feet. I laughed and pointed.
“What is it?” Mario asked.
“Moonlight,” I answered. “It’s lighting up the Kleenex box.”
What could that possibly mean?
We looked up the poem once we were home, and discovered we had forgotten a line: "...and I have promises to keep."
My promise is to try to live in joy. With joy.
Now, the nearly full moon lights up the darkness, accompanied by the street light outside my window. Music plays on the stereo. I can't remember which CD it is. Mario sits on the couch reading. He is part of my constellation, and I am a part of his. Technically a constellation is a group of stars. Can two be a group? I say yes.
As I sit here listening to the sounds of this house, my husband, and my life, while the adrenalin levels in my body slowly go back to normal, I think there is more to each of us than what is first seen. Like looking in a mirror, if we move this way and that, we eventually find an entire world. We are all more than our failings, more than our fears and failures.
Even stars fall...If they didn't, who would light our way in the lovely woods, dark and deep, when we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep?
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Second, I wish people would stop saying how lucky we are. I don't think having a car crash is lucky. Unless it's bad lucky. Being horribly hurt or killed would have been very unlucky, indeed. I'm not complaining about the outcome. I am sincerely grateful and glad and hopeful and kissing the Earth with gratitude. I am grateful to all the stars. Grateful to the grassy median that grabbed hold of our wheels and kept us from flipping over. I am highly grateful no other car was involved. I am very very very tremendously grateful we are presently OK. I don't think it has much to do with luck, however. Shit happens. Shit happened to us. But it wasn't major shit. It was an inconvenience, as Mario keeps telling people.
I've stopped shaking. I think. We'll see tonight. My bones ache from shaking with fear. I'd wake up trembling and move closer to Mario, and he would wrap his arms around me, still asleep, and say, "Are you cold or scared?" And I'd whisper, "Shhhh, sleep, sweetheart, sleep." Eventually I would stop shaking and move inches away from Mario to fall into another dream. Eagles and helicopters. My car filling up with water and snow. Someone outside the window wanting to get in; me running around to make certain I had locked everything up, knowing that I must have missed something, somewhere, and it was going to get inside one way or t'other...
On Solstice, I took Mario to the Columbia Gorge Hotel. We drove there in the dark to walk amongst the trees dressed in white lights. The hotel sits on the edge of the gorge, overlooking the Columbia River, with a waterfall just on the other side of a stone wall that keeps the hotel's guests from plunging hundreds of feet down to the river. Mario and I walked up slippery rocks to look at the waterfall. We could hear it before we could see it, and then it was there, strangely luminescent white in places where it hit the rocks down below.
Then, amongst the mostly smaller deciduous trees, we walked. We talked about how we would describe this scene to someone else.
"How would you do it?" I asked. "I bet you would look at this all and see it as it is now. I look at it and I'm remembering the trees without the lights and how they normally have leaves. That’s just my memory of what it was."
"The lines of the lights are like the skeletons of trees and bushes," Mario said. "A boneyard."
I nodded. "It's as though stars have fallen from the sky and they've gotten caught on these bare branches," I said. "Look!"
We leaned over the walled creek that runs through the property. In the nearly still water were reflections from the lights. We couldn't see the trees or bushes, only the lights strung together.
"They look like constellations," I whispered.
"Yes, exactly," he said. "That one looks like a butterfly."
"Or an angel with a trumpet. These are lost constellations, fallen to Earth!" They're only found if we stand still long enough to think of looking into the water. They're only found if we stop long enough to wonder what has happened to all the stars.
We moved slowly along the path and the water. Who knew the vastness of the universe could be reflected in such a small body of water? We only had to move this way and that—like holding a mirror up to the Milky Way—to see more of the lost constellations. Infinite.
When we got home, we put up our Solstice tree, our two foot tall 20-year old artificial tree. Our tiny lights were colored and draped the tree like a star-studded boa.
Before we had to go back to the hospital on Wednesday, we walked Panther Creek. Up and up the Pacific Crest Trail we climbed. Mist rose from the river, and we breathed in her exhales while looking for bear marks. We could see to the end of the old growth, where they had clearcut a hillside, but we did not walk that far. We had our own wounds to lick. I hadn't the appetite for any other grief this day.
Not sure how I got through this morning before we saw the doctor. Mario wasn't afraid. My oldest sister doesn't like to fly, but she does. I don't like to fly, and I don't. I've asked her how she is able to do it.
"You're not supposed to distract yourself from the fear," she said, "or drink or do anything like that."
"What then?"
"You just feel the fear."
"And then what?"
"And then you get to the other side of it," she said. "You walk through it. I still don't like flying, but I can do it."
For these past six days, I have tried to walk through my fear. I've also tried to ignore it, shed it, dissect it, shred it, feed it, get rid of it. I have tried to walk through my fear to the other side of it. My fear must go a long way, because I haven't found the other side yet. If I could give a gold star to myself for something I do really well, I would have to say I do fear really well.
Today after the doc said the results of the MRI looked good, I hugged the doctor. He said, “Yep, I had a lot to do with it.” Then I embraced Mario. He smiled and put his hand under my chin and looked into my eyes to see if I was OK.
Later Mario and I drove out to Trapper Creek and walked in the woods. It was dark and cold and getting darker and colder as we walked deeper into the woods.
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep," Mario said as we walked back toward the car.
"What's that from? It sounds familiar."
"That's Frost's poem," Mario said, "’and I have miles to go before I sleep.’"
"Isn't that poem about death?"
"That's what some say," Mario said, "and he repeats the line 'I have miles to go before I sleep.' So they're always discussing that, too. I thought he was just going home, seeing his family."
“Plus he said he had miles to go,” I said. “So that sleeping wasn’t happening any time soon.”
“That’s right,” Mario said.
The path we walked was cinnamon-colored from composting leaves. The dark and deep woods were black with green. On the way home in the car, moonlight pooled at my feet. I laughed and pointed.
“What is it?” Mario asked.
“Moonlight,” I answered. “It’s lighting up the Kleenex box.”
What could that possibly mean?
We looked up the poem once we were home, and discovered we had forgotten a line: "...and I have promises to keep."
My promise is to try to live in joy. With joy.
Now, the nearly full moon lights up the darkness, accompanied by the street light outside my window. Music plays on the stereo. I can't remember which CD it is. Mario sits on the couch reading. He is part of my constellation, and I am a part of his. Technically a constellation is a group of stars. Can two be a group? I say yes.
As I sit here listening to the sounds of this house, my husband, and my life, while the adrenalin levels in my body slowly go back to normal, I think there is more to each of us than what is first seen. Like looking in a mirror, if we move this way and that, we eventually find an entire world. We are all more than our failings, more than our fears and failures.
Even stars fall...If they didn't, who would light our way in the lovely woods, dark and deep, when we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep?
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Seeing the Elephant
The day is grey and rainy, perfect for the shortest day of the year, I suppose. After a morning spent at the doctor's, we came home and lay on the couch together, watching a movie and napping. Anything else feels too exhausting.
Yesterday, after many hours in the clinic, we knew nothing more than we had the day before, or the day before that. We ate lunch at Thai Noon. On the way home we stopped at the grotto. It's a Catholic church and shrine in the city but surrounded by woods and built next to this huge stone cliff. (Don't worry; I'm not going religious. We often go to the grotto at this time of year.) First we sat in the car and I cried and cried and cried. Mario does not get stressed when I cry, unlike most other people. He knows it is a stress releaser. Then we walked toward the church. This is their busy time of year, although it was practically deserted this afternoon. We passed by a corral with goats, llamas, and a burro inside. Sponsored by a bank or hardware store or something like that. Everywhere we looked, it seemed, was an advertisement. Commerce and religion. They go hand and hand in this country. I remembered the story of Jesus going into the temple and turning over the tables and telling them all to get out of his house. (Like the bumper sticker says, Jesus was a revolutionary!)
We went inside the small Catholic church. It's called the Chapel of Mary. Although inside are the crucifixes and bible quotes and statues of saints, the focal point of it all is Mary, not God or Jesus. I'm certain the people who run this place would be absolutely appalled by this observation. On the arch in the middle of the church, above the altar, are the words, "Behold thy mother." On the wall behind and above the altar is a mural with Jesus and God (I guess) putting something on Mary's head. (I didn't pay much attention to what the guys were doing, frankly.) Sometimes this chapel feels like a sanctuary where I can come and see the goddess, especially on days like today when the weather is too miserable to spend time in my true church: Nature.
Mario looked around at all the statues and said, "So this is why other Christians called Catholics pagans?"
"Yep."
I went up to the statue of Mary. She was all white, her hands open. I stared at her and was certain she smiled. Although it could have been a trick of light—or the adrenalin that had been coursing through my body for days now.
It was dark when we got home. We checked our messages. No one had even come to look at our wrecked car, which was still parked hours away. We had several calls from friends who had heard about the accident. Our friend Kevin in Hawaii mentioned "microsleep" in an email, and I looked it up and showed it to Mario. It sounded exactly like what happened to him. People can fall to sleep, or have a kind of loss of consciousness, even with their eyes open. Microsleep happened to people driving all the time. We both thought this might be what happened. I started to feel better.
After a dinner of leftovers, we walked into a gorgeous cold night. The stars twinkled just like they always do on cold nights, reminding me of Christmas nights when I was a child. The sky was indigo, the clouds preternaturally lit—like clouds created by a storybook artist. The town was sparkly, white lights draped across the trees on the county courthouse lawn and the big old walnut next to the Big River Grill. Joe was standing outside the BRG and he called us over. "Come on in," he said. "It's our yearly party." "But it says closed," I said. "Isn't it for your staff?" "It's for everyone," he said. "You'll know most everyone in there."
So we went into the restaurant. It's long and narrow and tonight it was packed with people—all of them taller than I am. As we walked the gauntlet, we spoke to a few people. "Hey, you're not supposed to be here." Accident. Oh, but you're all right? We waved, nodded. Noisy, dark, crowded, cramped. I wanted to stop and talk. To embrace and be embraced. This was my home. These were my neighbors and friends. It felt nice to be invited inside.
George, the bagpiper and artist, stopped Mario, "Heard you saw the elephant, man."
"Yeah," Mario said, "and the elephant was spinning."
We stepped out into the cool fresh air and walked away from the restaurant.
"Have you ever heard that expression before?" Mario asked.
"I'm sure it's a George-ism," I said.
Later Mario looked up elephant in the slang dictionary and it said to "see the elephant" meant "to see or experience a great deal, as much as one can manage; an extraordinary sight or remarkable situation and the experience of such that leads to gaining knowledge or the loss of innocence."
We watched movies. I made blueberry muffins without the muffin cups. Blueberry cake. While I was stirring the egg, oil, maple syrup, and vanilla into the barley flour and baking soda, a conversation popped into my head from characters from a book I had often thought of writing but never had. I have talked with other people who are chronically ill or who have to spend a great deal of their time with doctors or in hospitals. I said it's like being a citizen of another country, one no one wants to immigrate to.
In the imaginary conversation that came into my head, a group of these citizens sit around a table in a hospital or some huge medical complex, like homeless around a fire. They're even dressed a bit like the homeless, disheveled and tired. Clearly not the ones who are benefiting from a massive health industrial complex.
"Don't you think it's like we come here once a month or once a week to be entertained and cured by magicians," one says. "They give us their potions and enchantments and voila! we're healed."
"But we're not. Healed. Cured."
"They're not magicians," one of them says, almost spitting, as though this is a ridiculous suggestion. "They’re just people who know some things about some things and not a lot about a lot of things."
"And we're cogs on their assembly line," another person says.
"So there's no such thing as magic?" one of them asks the spitting man. She is young, still believes in possibility.
"Sure there's magic," he said. "And we still all die any way."
When the blueberry muffins were ready I took them into the living room and told Mario the conversation I overheard from a group of immigrants in that other country.
“That reminds me of the screen saver at the doctor’s exam room,” Mario said. “It said ‘We are guests in our patients’ lives.’” (Donald M. Berwick, MD)
Every time I woke up in the night, I was shaking so hard I could hardly walk. Fear and adrenalin. I'm good in emergencies; later the shit hits the fan.
In the morning it was off to another doctor. On the way there, I asked Mario what he thought happened when you die.
"Nothing. It's just over. What do you think?"
"Yeah, probably."
"I read somewhere someone saying that we all know we're going to die but we have this kind of social agreement to ignore that fact so that we don't all go crazy."
“I apparently don’t have that.”
“Well, you’ve never been one for social niceties,” Mario said.
I tried to imagine being in the world without Mario. I started to cry. I was crying so hard I could hardly see the road, so I knew I had to stop the car or the crying. But when I tried to stop crying my throat hurt and I could hardly breathe. Mario held my hand. (It's not as selfish at it sounds. Mario was not worried, and my crying did not alarm or worry him.)
We went to the doctor. He was reassuring, but idle reassurance does nothing if it ain't backed with truth or knowledge. Tomorrow Mario would get an MRI. Thursday he would see the doctor again.
Mario suggested I try to meditate so that I could relax. I looked at him and said, "The last time I meditated I was in a car accident. I don't think that's gonna be happening again soon."
Today was Solstice. The days would soon be getting longer. New light was born. I spent most of it in the arms of my sweetheart. Ain't a bad day after all. Extraordinary, actually. Like seeing an elephant. Only this one wasn’t spinning. 0 comments
Yesterday, after many hours in the clinic, we knew nothing more than we had the day before, or the day before that. We ate lunch at Thai Noon. On the way home we stopped at the grotto. It's a Catholic church and shrine in the city but surrounded by woods and built next to this huge stone cliff. (Don't worry; I'm not going religious. We often go to the grotto at this time of year.) First we sat in the car and I cried and cried and cried. Mario does not get stressed when I cry, unlike most other people. He knows it is a stress releaser. Then we walked toward the church. This is their busy time of year, although it was practically deserted this afternoon. We passed by a corral with goats, llamas, and a burro inside. Sponsored by a bank or hardware store or something like that. Everywhere we looked, it seemed, was an advertisement. Commerce and religion. They go hand and hand in this country. I remembered the story of Jesus going into the temple and turning over the tables and telling them all to get out of his house. (Like the bumper sticker says, Jesus was a revolutionary!)
We went inside the small Catholic church. It's called the Chapel of Mary. Although inside are the crucifixes and bible quotes and statues of saints, the focal point of it all is Mary, not God or Jesus. I'm certain the people who run this place would be absolutely appalled by this observation. On the arch in the middle of the church, above the altar, are the words, "Behold thy mother." On the wall behind and above the altar is a mural with Jesus and God (I guess) putting something on Mary's head. (I didn't pay much attention to what the guys were doing, frankly.) Sometimes this chapel feels like a sanctuary where I can come and see the goddess, especially on days like today when the weather is too miserable to spend time in my true church: Nature.
Mario looked around at all the statues and said, "So this is why other Christians called Catholics pagans?"
"Yep."
I went up to the statue of Mary. She was all white, her hands open. I stared at her and was certain she smiled. Although it could have been a trick of light—or the adrenalin that had been coursing through my body for days now.
It was dark when we got home. We checked our messages. No one had even come to look at our wrecked car, which was still parked hours away. We had several calls from friends who had heard about the accident. Our friend Kevin in Hawaii mentioned "microsleep" in an email, and I looked it up and showed it to Mario. It sounded exactly like what happened to him. People can fall to sleep, or have a kind of loss of consciousness, even with their eyes open. Microsleep happened to people driving all the time. We both thought this might be what happened. I started to feel better.
After a dinner of leftovers, we walked into a gorgeous cold night. The stars twinkled just like they always do on cold nights, reminding me of Christmas nights when I was a child. The sky was indigo, the clouds preternaturally lit—like clouds created by a storybook artist. The town was sparkly, white lights draped across the trees on the county courthouse lawn and the big old walnut next to the Big River Grill. Joe was standing outside the BRG and he called us over. "Come on in," he said. "It's our yearly party." "But it says closed," I said. "Isn't it for your staff?" "It's for everyone," he said. "You'll know most everyone in there."
So we went into the restaurant. It's long and narrow and tonight it was packed with people—all of them taller than I am. As we walked the gauntlet, we spoke to a few people. "Hey, you're not supposed to be here." Accident. Oh, but you're all right? We waved, nodded. Noisy, dark, crowded, cramped. I wanted to stop and talk. To embrace and be embraced. This was my home. These were my neighbors and friends. It felt nice to be invited inside.
George, the bagpiper and artist, stopped Mario, "Heard you saw the elephant, man."
"Yeah," Mario said, "and the elephant was spinning."
We stepped out into the cool fresh air and walked away from the restaurant.
"Have you ever heard that expression before?" Mario asked.
"I'm sure it's a George-ism," I said.
Later Mario looked up elephant in the slang dictionary and it said to "see the elephant" meant "to see or experience a great deal, as much as one can manage; an extraordinary sight or remarkable situation and the experience of such that leads to gaining knowledge or the loss of innocence."
We watched movies. I made blueberry muffins without the muffin cups. Blueberry cake. While I was stirring the egg, oil, maple syrup, and vanilla into the barley flour and baking soda, a conversation popped into my head from characters from a book I had often thought of writing but never had. I have talked with other people who are chronically ill or who have to spend a great deal of their time with doctors or in hospitals. I said it's like being a citizen of another country, one no one wants to immigrate to.
In the imaginary conversation that came into my head, a group of these citizens sit around a table in a hospital or some huge medical complex, like homeless around a fire. They're even dressed a bit like the homeless, disheveled and tired. Clearly not the ones who are benefiting from a massive health industrial complex.
"Don't you think it's like we come here once a month or once a week to be entertained and cured by magicians," one says. "They give us their potions and enchantments and voila! we're healed."
"But we're not. Healed. Cured."
"They're not magicians," one of them says, almost spitting, as though this is a ridiculous suggestion. "They’re just people who know some things about some things and not a lot about a lot of things."
"And we're cogs on their assembly line," another person says.
"So there's no such thing as magic?" one of them asks the spitting man. She is young, still believes in possibility.
"Sure there's magic," he said. "And we still all die any way."
When the blueberry muffins were ready I took them into the living room and told Mario the conversation I overheard from a group of immigrants in that other country.
“That reminds me of the screen saver at the doctor’s exam room,” Mario said. “It said ‘We are guests in our patients’ lives.’” (Donald M. Berwick, MD)
Every time I woke up in the night, I was shaking so hard I could hardly walk. Fear and adrenalin. I'm good in emergencies; later the shit hits the fan.
In the morning it was off to another doctor. On the way there, I asked Mario what he thought happened when you die.
"Nothing. It's just over. What do you think?"
"Yeah, probably."
"I read somewhere someone saying that we all know we're going to die but we have this kind of social agreement to ignore that fact so that we don't all go crazy."
“I apparently don’t have that.”
“Well, you’ve never been one for social niceties,” Mario said.
I tried to imagine being in the world without Mario. I started to cry. I was crying so hard I could hardly see the road, so I knew I had to stop the car or the crying. But when I tried to stop crying my throat hurt and I could hardly breathe. Mario held my hand. (It's not as selfish at it sounds. Mario was not worried, and my crying did not alarm or worry him.)
We went to the doctor. He was reassuring, but idle reassurance does nothing if it ain't backed with truth or knowledge. Tomorrow Mario would get an MRI. Thursday he would see the doctor again.
Mario suggested I try to meditate so that I could relax. I looked at him and said, "The last time I meditated I was in a car accident. I don't think that's gonna be happening again soon."
Today was Solstice. The days would soon be getting longer. New light was born. I spent most of it in the arms of my sweetheart. Ain't a bad day after all. Extraordinary, actually. Like seeing an elephant. Only this one wasn’t spinning. 0 comments
Monday, December 20, 2004
Waiting, waiting....
Hello Furious Spinner readers. This is Mario blogging. I am at the Kaiser Permanente facility in Portland, Oregon, waiting for the doctor to come tell me what's up with my lee-tul brain. Fortunately, Kaiser is a wired facility, so there is internet access in this teeny little room. Amazing, yes. (I don't think it's actually for patient use.) So far the doc has shined a light in my eyes, looked in my ears, made me do odd things with my hands and touch his finger, then my nose. We had a ball. He says he doesn't know what caused my loss of consciousness, so he has invoked that dreaded phrase: "Let's do some tests." Groan. That means coming back here tomorrow or the next day or whenever and having them pock and prod at me and such. Not that I'm complaining. Still. We would like to get going on this trip. Soon.
Kim has been in the room with me most of the time. The doc said my lapse of consciousness could have been due to many many things, so they are going to do a detection job on me to find out what it might be. I said, tell me something benign that it MIGHT be so we can convince ourselves that's all it is. He laughed. Sure, big joke. Although he did finally say that after they do the tests they might just find out that it's nothing and it will never happen again. Halleluja.
We've been here about 2 and a half hours. Doc's coming back.
Later.
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Kim has been in the room with me most of the time. The doc said my lapse of consciousness could have been due to many many things, so they are going to do a detection job on me to find out what it might be. I said, tell me something benign that it MIGHT be so we can convince ourselves that's all it is. He laughed. Sure, big joke. Although he did finally say that after they do the tests they might just find out that it's nothing and it will never happen again. Halleluja.
We've been here about 2 and a half hours. Doc's coming back.
Later.
0 comments
Sunday, December 19, 2004
A Perfect Day
We didn't sleep well. I woke up at 4:00, then tried to sleep some more, until about 5:00 a.m. Mario and I stayed curled up under the covers together for a while. I said, "This is all I need in the world." But we had a five week trip to take. So we got up, cooked breakfast, packed our stuff in the car and were off. The day was cold, but it looked like it might get sunny.
After about an hour of driving, we saw a silver car off the side of the road in flames. Black smoke poured out of the vehicle. We were all stopped now, all four lanes of both sides of the highway. The passenger door was open and the fire had consumed nearly all it could, leaving behind a skeleton of a door, reminding me of those movie shots of people turning to bones from fire. I wanted to look away but was mesmerized. Soon the fire truck came. Whatever they put on the car turned the smoke to white. Then gradually the smoke disappeared and we were all on our way.
"If I believed in portents," I said, "I'd think this was a bad sign."
I was determined on this trip to be relaxed, not to worry, to meditate and have a healing attitude. When I wasn't driving, I meditated. I felt peaceful. I felt as though a new world was opening up to us, finally. Things were turning around. Fog curled up from the fields we passed, looking like fat white fingers reaching for the toy cars going by. Then the fog came in all around us. Moving more like clouds, than fog. Making it all seem beautiful. Magical.
We stopped in Eugene and had lunch at the Morning Glory Cafe. We always stop here when we're in Eugene. They have a peace sign next to the name of the cafe on the building. We know we are dining with like-minded people. Inside was the great vegetarian and organic food we love, served to us by an eclectic group of people. On a light switch was a sticker that read: Mean people are in the White House. Today I ordered sesame noodle stir-fry and Mario had vegetarian quesadilla. Delicious.
On the road again. Highway 5.. Red-tailed hawks watched the road from perches on fences along the way.
I got twitches—something I ate, I guessed. So I tried to meditate. I closed my eyes. Then I heard the wheels running over that rough pavement—whatever that is that's supposed to wake you up if you fall asleep. I started to open my eyes and say, "I think you're drifting," but we were already in a spin. I started screaming. I had no idea what was happening. Things were hitting the car. I put my hand up against the window. All I could hear were my screams. In my head, I was thinking what's happening, what's happening. And the car seemed to be knocking against so many things and it would have to flip over soon and we would be dead.
Then the car stopped. I looked over. Mario was fine. We weren't turned over. We were in the grassy median, closer to the traffic going in the other direction.
Mario said, "I don't know what happened."
"Didn't you fall asleep?"
"I wasn't sleepy. I don't know what happened."
Then, nothing else mattered. Once Mario said he didn't think he'd fallen asleep, I feared the worst. We both got out of the car. The passenger side was badly damaged; my door would barely open. Two men ran down the embankment.
"You are a lucky guy!" one of them said.
Wouldn't it have been luckier if we hadn't gotten in an accident?
Hands shaking I looked for the cell phone we had just gotten yesterday. I called 911. She kept me on the phone asking all these stupid questions. "Where do you live?" Who cares where I live can't you send someone out here!
The men left. Mario and I got back into the car, shaking. We held hands and cried.
"All I care about is that you're all right," I said.
"All I kept thinking is Kim all right."
The wind shook the car, and we sat shivering, wondering where the sheriff was. Mario called the insurance agent. There wasn't anything they could do on a weekend, but we got a claim number. The sheriff finally pulled up. He got out of the car with some effort and walked toward us, his pot-belly pushing on a button near his navel so hard we could see his undershirt. Mario told him what happened.
"Yep, we see it here all the time. This stretch of road just hypnotizes people."
"But I wasn't sleepy."
"People say that all the time. It's this stretch of road."
He didn't take a report—said they didn't have the budget to do that kind of thing any more. But he did call a tow truck. The sheriff left. I called the place we were going to be staying at tonight and told her we couldn't make it. She was nice enough not to charge us.
We got back into our wrecked car and waited. About 10 minutes later a big old flatbed tow truck pulled up. A teenager and a man got out. I stared at the truck as they figured out how to get the car up onto it and realized I was going to have to ride in this thing for forty miles.
While they were trying to figure out what to do with the car, I got into the car and drove it around so they could access it easier. Soon the boy got into the space behind the front seats in the truck, and I got in the seat next to the driver. Mario sat next to me. The truck was, of course, filthy. (Lucky I can't smell.) The driver was just helping out for the weekend while the boy's parents moved his grandmother. The boy was the boss. The man talked animatedly with his hands while driving and often looked over at Mario. I kept thinking, I don't want to be in a second accident. I also kept watching Mario to see if he was OK.
The drive was interesting. I wish I could remember more and be witty and entertaining. But it's hard. The teenager said he had been in this area only two months.
"Are the kids in school nice to you?" I asked.
"Oh, someone said I was talking trash about someone else," he said. "But it wasn't true and I convinced everyone it wasn't. I'm friends with about half the class."
The driver asked us what we did for fun. I told him we were writers. I was completely unanimated. A little zombie hoping the driver didn't crash us and Mario didn't pass out.
"When I was in college, I really admired writers," he said, using his right hand to air-scribble, as if he had pen in hand. "Because you can tell a story, give information, show people how to do stuff. So many things."
"I hated to read," the boy said, "so they put me in a communications class where we don't read. When I was younger I really liked Gary Paulsen."
"Yes, Gary Paulsen is great," I said. "My sister didn't like reading when she was younger until she was about eighteen and she read Jane Eyre and then everything changed. After she read that book, she said she understood what people liked, and she read a lot. That's what a story can do for you. It lets you see worlds you might never see. It gives you a perspective beyond where you live."
"Your imagination can take you away from reality," the driver said.
We stopped at their towing place to call the Honda dealer in Eugene. The towing place looked like you would expect. Sad, junky, tired. Rusty metal and old gasoline pumps. A tiny trailer in the back.
The teenager took me in his truck down to the park to use the restroom.
"Do you have to drive down here every time you have to pee?"
"No," he said, "but I take showers over there. They're really nice showers."
It was foggy and dark by the time we reached Eugene. The tow truck driver drove us around looking for Sacred Heart hospital, which took forever. They were very kind to us, though. Finally we had them drop us at a convenience store, and we walked into emergency. The waiting room was filled with people. One of them kept throwing up; another one screamed off and on. Eventually they took Mario inside.
I held his hand while he was on the gurney and got down close to his face. We looked into each other's eyes and whispered those things that lovers say. While the doctor was giving him tests to find out if he had fallen to sleep or passed out, I tried to get a rental car. I finally found one at the airport. I called a taxi, and a young man in a van took me. He had several tats. One of them was of a spider. We talked about literature as he drove. He loved Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky. I said that I liked Hemingway's simple use of the language. I had always admired that. Although I liked some of Faulkner, I also thought he needed to spend some time with women—some of his stories were a bit odd when it concerned women. The taxi driver talked about Hemingway's life more than his work. Yet it was clear he had read his work and admired it.
"Crime and Punishment is my favorite book," he said.
"Russian literature is not very upbeat," I said, "but then you look at their history. One despot after another. I've read books by Russians who were imprisoned or sent to the Gulag, and all of them could recite long poems or passages from books. Literature is very important to them. Not many of us could do that. I couldn't do that. Of course, maybe under those kinds of circumstances you remember those kinds of things, to keep you sane."
"Yeah, I think so," he said.
I hadn't taken a cab in a long time, so I asked him how much to tip.
"It's like when you go to a restaurant," he said.
Good answer. I paid him, said good-bye, and went on my way. It was as if I were on another planet—or in another world. Hardly anything was visible. Street lights dimmed by fog hung here and there, their poles invisible, circles of semi-brightness, like brand new imported moons. Red lights glowed here and there when an unseen car put on its brakes. The whole world had become a ghost.
They didn't have my car at the Hertz desk at the airport, but she quickly found me another one. Soon I was driving a silver car through the fog in a strange city, not sure how to get back to town or the hospital. I thought, this is what my life would be like without Mario: gray and foggy. And the world without Mario would be lessened, without color. He is such a unique person. No one looks at the world the way he does.
I found my way back to the hospital. Mario was just coming back from the CAT scan.
His nurse, a thin 30-something man in green scrubs, said, "He's going to come stick you and take some blood."
"I'm just having a great Saturday night in Eugene," Mario said. They all laughed.
A man in glasses came to take his blood.
Mario said, "I better not look."
"He passes out at the sight of blood," I said.
The Phlebotomist said, "I won't look either."
The doctor came and said they didn't find anything on the CAT scan.
"Not even that marble I lost when I was five?" Mario said.
"Nope, keep looking," the doctor said.
They didn't find anything. They checked his heart, blood, brain, reflexes, etc., but the doctor still thought it was odd that he wasn't sleepy before he "checked out." He wanted him to have an MRI to make certain he doesn't have a brain tumor. He also said Mario couldn't drive until he went to a doctor on Monday.
We somehow found our way back to where the tow truck had taken the car. We took all our stuff out of the wrecked car and put it into the rented car. I liked being next to Mario, seeing him in his jeans, green dragonfly t-shirt, black jacket, moving things in and out of the car. Moving like an ordinary person. Stopping once in a while, he'd open his jacket and smile, and I'd go to him, into that space between his jacket and the t-shirt, and we'd hold each other, like we always do.
I got back onto the expressway. After several hits and misses, we were going in the right direction. It was 9:00 p.m. The fog was thicker than I had ever seen it. I wondered if we should be on the road. At the first rest stop, we pulled off. In the car, we made a picnic. We had cold wild Alaska salmon, quinoa with peas, cabbage, carrots, celery, and a boiled egg. (Mario said it was our dinner at Chez Rest Stop.) It was the first time we’d eaten anything since lunch. Sitting in this car with Mario, surrounded by cold, darkness, and fog, eating and breathing, I thought that I wanted to be like this forever: safe, alive, with my beloved.
It was the finest dinner I had ever had.
Mario stayed awake the entire trip back home as the fog got thicker, then cleared, then enveloped us again. Each car was its own little world. We talked about our lives.
“You know, they say when something like this happens you learn what is really important to you. But we already knew.”
“We were just saying that this morning.”
Then we spoke of things lovers speak of.
When we reached our town, the fog had lifted.
“What a perfect day,” Mario said. “I started it with you, and I ended it with you.” 0 comments
After about an hour of driving, we saw a silver car off the side of the road in flames. Black smoke poured out of the vehicle. We were all stopped now, all four lanes of both sides of the highway. The passenger door was open and the fire had consumed nearly all it could, leaving behind a skeleton of a door, reminding me of those movie shots of people turning to bones from fire. I wanted to look away but was mesmerized. Soon the fire truck came. Whatever they put on the car turned the smoke to white. Then gradually the smoke disappeared and we were all on our way.
"If I believed in portents," I said, "I'd think this was a bad sign."
I was determined on this trip to be relaxed, not to worry, to meditate and have a healing attitude. When I wasn't driving, I meditated. I felt peaceful. I felt as though a new world was opening up to us, finally. Things were turning around. Fog curled up from the fields we passed, looking like fat white fingers reaching for the toy cars going by. Then the fog came in all around us. Moving more like clouds, than fog. Making it all seem beautiful. Magical.
We stopped in Eugene and had lunch at the Morning Glory Cafe. We always stop here when we're in Eugene. They have a peace sign next to the name of the cafe on the building. We know we are dining with like-minded people. Inside was the great vegetarian and organic food we love, served to us by an eclectic group of people. On a light switch was a sticker that read: Mean people are in the White House. Today I ordered sesame noodle stir-fry and Mario had vegetarian quesadilla. Delicious.
On the road again. Highway 5.. Red-tailed hawks watched the road from perches on fences along the way.
I got twitches—something I ate, I guessed. So I tried to meditate. I closed my eyes. Then I heard the wheels running over that rough pavement—whatever that is that's supposed to wake you up if you fall asleep. I started to open my eyes and say, "I think you're drifting," but we were already in a spin. I started screaming. I had no idea what was happening. Things were hitting the car. I put my hand up against the window. All I could hear were my screams. In my head, I was thinking what's happening, what's happening. And the car seemed to be knocking against so many things and it would have to flip over soon and we would be dead.
Then the car stopped. I looked over. Mario was fine. We weren't turned over. We were in the grassy median, closer to the traffic going in the other direction.
Mario said, "I don't know what happened."
"Didn't you fall asleep?"
"I wasn't sleepy. I don't know what happened."
Then, nothing else mattered. Once Mario said he didn't think he'd fallen asleep, I feared the worst. We both got out of the car. The passenger side was badly damaged; my door would barely open. Two men ran down the embankment.
"You are a lucky guy!" one of them said.
Wouldn't it have been luckier if we hadn't gotten in an accident?
Hands shaking I looked for the cell phone we had just gotten yesterday. I called 911. She kept me on the phone asking all these stupid questions. "Where do you live?" Who cares where I live can't you send someone out here!
The men left. Mario and I got back into the car, shaking. We held hands and cried.
"All I care about is that you're all right," I said.
"All I kept thinking is Kim all right."
The wind shook the car, and we sat shivering, wondering where the sheriff was. Mario called the insurance agent. There wasn't anything they could do on a weekend, but we got a claim number. The sheriff finally pulled up. He got out of the car with some effort and walked toward us, his pot-belly pushing on a button near his navel so hard we could see his undershirt. Mario told him what happened.
"Yep, we see it here all the time. This stretch of road just hypnotizes people."
"But I wasn't sleepy."
"People say that all the time. It's this stretch of road."
He didn't take a report—said they didn't have the budget to do that kind of thing any more. But he did call a tow truck. The sheriff left. I called the place we were going to be staying at tonight and told her we couldn't make it. She was nice enough not to charge us.
We got back into our wrecked car and waited. About 10 minutes later a big old flatbed tow truck pulled up. A teenager and a man got out. I stared at the truck as they figured out how to get the car up onto it and realized I was going to have to ride in this thing for forty miles.
While they were trying to figure out what to do with the car, I got into the car and drove it around so they could access it easier. Soon the boy got into the space behind the front seats in the truck, and I got in the seat next to the driver. Mario sat next to me. The truck was, of course, filthy. (Lucky I can't smell.) The driver was just helping out for the weekend while the boy's parents moved his grandmother. The boy was the boss. The man talked animatedly with his hands while driving and often looked over at Mario. I kept thinking, I don't want to be in a second accident. I also kept watching Mario to see if he was OK.
The drive was interesting. I wish I could remember more and be witty and entertaining. But it's hard. The teenager said he had been in this area only two months.
"Are the kids in school nice to you?" I asked.
"Oh, someone said I was talking trash about someone else," he said. "But it wasn't true and I convinced everyone it wasn't. I'm friends with about half the class."
The driver asked us what we did for fun. I told him we were writers. I was completely unanimated. A little zombie hoping the driver didn't crash us and Mario didn't pass out.
"When I was in college, I really admired writers," he said, using his right hand to air-scribble, as if he had pen in hand. "Because you can tell a story, give information, show people how to do stuff. So many things."
"I hated to read," the boy said, "so they put me in a communications class where we don't read. When I was younger I really liked Gary Paulsen."
"Yes, Gary Paulsen is great," I said. "My sister didn't like reading when she was younger until she was about eighteen and she read Jane Eyre and then everything changed. After she read that book, she said she understood what people liked, and she read a lot. That's what a story can do for you. It lets you see worlds you might never see. It gives you a perspective beyond where you live."
"Your imagination can take you away from reality," the driver said.
We stopped at their towing place to call the Honda dealer in Eugene. The towing place looked like you would expect. Sad, junky, tired. Rusty metal and old gasoline pumps. A tiny trailer in the back.
The teenager took me in his truck down to the park to use the restroom.
"Do you have to drive down here every time you have to pee?"
"No," he said, "but I take showers over there. They're really nice showers."
It was foggy and dark by the time we reached Eugene. The tow truck driver drove us around looking for Sacred Heart hospital, which took forever. They were very kind to us, though. Finally we had them drop us at a convenience store, and we walked into emergency. The waiting room was filled with people. One of them kept throwing up; another one screamed off and on. Eventually they took Mario inside.
I held his hand while he was on the gurney and got down close to his face. We looked into each other's eyes and whispered those things that lovers say. While the doctor was giving him tests to find out if he had fallen to sleep or passed out, I tried to get a rental car. I finally found one at the airport. I called a taxi, and a young man in a van took me. He had several tats. One of them was of a spider. We talked about literature as he drove. He loved Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky. I said that I liked Hemingway's simple use of the language. I had always admired that. Although I liked some of Faulkner, I also thought he needed to spend some time with women—some of his stories were a bit odd when it concerned women. The taxi driver talked about Hemingway's life more than his work. Yet it was clear he had read his work and admired it.
"Crime and Punishment is my favorite book," he said.
"Russian literature is not very upbeat," I said, "but then you look at their history. One despot after another. I've read books by Russians who were imprisoned or sent to the Gulag, and all of them could recite long poems or passages from books. Literature is very important to them. Not many of us could do that. I couldn't do that. Of course, maybe under those kinds of circumstances you remember those kinds of things, to keep you sane."
"Yeah, I think so," he said.
I hadn't taken a cab in a long time, so I asked him how much to tip.
"It's like when you go to a restaurant," he said.
Good answer. I paid him, said good-bye, and went on my way. It was as if I were on another planet—or in another world. Hardly anything was visible. Street lights dimmed by fog hung here and there, their poles invisible, circles of semi-brightness, like brand new imported moons. Red lights glowed here and there when an unseen car put on its brakes. The whole world had become a ghost.
They didn't have my car at the Hertz desk at the airport, but she quickly found me another one. Soon I was driving a silver car through the fog in a strange city, not sure how to get back to town or the hospital. I thought, this is what my life would be like without Mario: gray and foggy. And the world without Mario would be lessened, without color. He is such a unique person. No one looks at the world the way he does.
I found my way back to the hospital. Mario was just coming back from the CAT scan.
His nurse, a thin 30-something man in green scrubs, said, "He's going to come stick you and take some blood."
"I'm just having a great Saturday night in Eugene," Mario said. They all laughed.
A man in glasses came to take his blood.
Mario said, "I better not look."
"He passes out at the sight of blood," I said.
The Phlebotomist said, "I won't look either."
The doctor came and said they didn't find anything on the CAT scan.
"Not even that marble I lost when I was five?" Mario said.
"Nope, keep looking," the doctor said.
They didn't find anything. They checked his heart, blood, brain, reflexes, etc., but the doctor still thought it was odd that he wasn't sleepy before he "checked out." He wanted him to have an MRI to make certain he doesn't have a brain tumor. He also said Mario couldn't drive until he went to a doctor on Monday.
We somehow found our way back to where the tow truck had taken the car. We took all our stuff out of the wrecked car and put it into the rented car. I liked being next to Mario, seeing him in his jeans, green dragonfly t-shirt, black jacket, moving things in and out of the car. Moving like an ordinary person. Stopping once in a while, he'd open his jacket and smile, and I'd go to him, into that space between his jacket and the t-shirt, and we'd hold each other, like we always do.
I got back onto the expressway. After several hits and misses, we were going in the right direction. It was 9:00 p.m. The fog was thicker than I had ever seen it. I wondered if we should be on the road. At the first rest stop, we pulled off. In the car, we made a picnic. We had cold wild Alaska salmon, quinoa with peas, cabbage, carrots, celery, and a boiled egg. (Mario said it was our dinner at Chez Rest Stop.) It was the first time we’d eaten anything since lunch. Sitting in this car with Mario, surrounded by cold, darkness, and fog, eating and breathing, I thought that I wanted to be like this forever: safe, alive, with my beloved.
It was the finest dinner I had ever had.
Mario stayed awake the entire trip back home as the fog got thicker, then cleared, then enveloped us again. Each car was its own little world. We talked about our lives.
“You know, they say when something like this happens you learn what is really important to you. But we already knew.”
“We were just saying that this morning.”
Then we spoke of things lovers speak of.
When we reached our town, the fog had lifted.
“What a perfect day,” Mario said. “I started it with you, and I ended it with you.” 0 comments
Friday, December 17, 2004
Preparing
Preparing for the journey is half the journey. I think I've heard that somewhere. I'm weepy tonight as I pack. We've only spent one winter away from the Pacific Northwest in 22 years. We are both nesters, so going away for this long is a strain on our natures, initially. And my body is rebelling in all kinds of ways, and I'm just crossing everything I have and trying to have faith that it'll all work out. Outside it is cold and windy and a half moon hangs above it all, waiting for night to put a real shine on her.
This morning, as a wonderful beginning to our trip (and a nice Solstice gift), I received an offer from a publisher to buy my novel, Mercy, Unbound. I'm very pleased, to say the least. It'll come out as a young adult book in 2006. I've now sold two books in less than two months! Didn't it all happen after I said I was considering giving up writing? Trickster energy, I would say.
We're off to California tomorrow, stopping for the night near Arcata.
Enjoy! 0 comments
This morning, as a wonderful beginning to our trip (and a nice Solstice gift), I received an offer from a publisher to buy my novel, Mercy, Unbound. I'm very pleased, to say the least. It'll come out as a young adult book in 2006. I've now sold two books in less than two months! Didn't it all happen after I said I was considering giving up writing? Trickster energy, I would say.
We're off to California tomorrow, stopping for the night near Arcata.
Enjoy! 0 comments
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Whitewashing Earthsea
The SciFi channel is airing a miniseries based on Ursula LeGuin's Wizard of Earthsea. I read the series when I was an adult. I greatly admire LeGuin's writing, especially her essays, but I remember I was annoyed with the books because a woman was not the main character. I thought, she's a woman; why isn't Ged a girl! I had read three billion books where boys or men were the main characters and I wanted to read about a girl or a woman. In later years, LeGuin talked about some of those things, acknowledging, for instance, that she should have come up with a different pronoun than "he" when talking about the sex-shifting people in The Left Hand of Darkness. She is not happy with the film version of her series. They have taken her multicolored cast of characters and whitewashed them. I can imagine the frustration. My novels are filled with multicolored people of various ethnicities, spiritualities, sexualities. I've read about other writers and their frustration with Hollywood. Most say, "Take the money and run."
I have absolutely no experience with Hollywood or the movies; I'm sure I would make many mistakes if I were approached. What I've learned from publishing is that you can't believe it unless it is in writing. No matter how much someone reassures you that this or that will happen: it won't happen unless it is in writing and you've both signed on the dotted line. Thems just the facts.
I have no problem asking for changes in a contract, and I don't think any writer should. (All they can do is say "yes" or "no.") My very first contract was for a short story I sold to Asimov's. They wanted the rights to all the characters in my story forever. I had been to Clarion the year before, and the instructors (who were all writers) had drilled it into our heads that we needed to be business people, too. I called Damon Knight and talked to him about it; plus I sent him the contract. I called the contracts person at Asimov's and told her I couldn't give her rights to my characters. She said, "OK," and suggested a couple other changes (to my benefit), and we crossed out all those sections I didn't like.
I think the publishers try to get as many rights as they can because that's what they need to do, and it's the responsibility of the writer to keep as many rights as she can. Damon got the publisher to change the contract somehow for other writers, but I can't remember exactly how. I have asked for changes on nearly every contract I've signed since then, and I've almost always gotten the changes I wanted. If the editor is a writer, the contract is usually much better.
Just some thoughts on this cold and sunny almost-winter day.
0 comments
I have absolutely no experience with Hollywood or the movies; I'm sure I would make many mistakes if I were approached. What I've learned from publishing is that you can't believe it unless it is in writing. No matter how much someone reassures you that this or that will happen: it won't happen unless it is in writing and you've both signed on the dotted line. Thems just the facts.
I have no problem asking for changes in a contract, and I don't think any writer should. (All they can do is say "yes" or "no.") My very first contract was for a short story I sold to Asimov's. They wanted the rights to all the characters in my story forever. I had been to Clarion the year before, and the instructors (who were all writers) had drilled it into our heads that we needed to be business people, too. I called Damon Knight and talked to him about it; plus I sent him the contract. I called the contracts person at Asimov's and told her I couldn't give her rights to my characters. She said, "OK," and suggested a couple other changes (to my benefit), and we crossed out all those sections I didn't like.
I think the publishers try to get as many rights as they can because that's what they need to do, and it's the responsibility of the writer to keep as many rights as she can. Damon got the publisher to change the contract somehow for other writers, but I can't remember exactly how. I have asked for changes on nearly every contract I've signed since then, and I've almost always gotten the changes I wanted. If the editor is a writer, the contract is usually much better.
Just some thoughts on this cold and sunny almost-winter day.
0 comments
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
What's the Buzz?
Responding to a suit by the ACLU, the government has released further details of the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. This information should be spread across the front pages of every major newspaper in the United States—along with photos of what is really happening in Iraq right this moment. The mistreatment and torture of the prisoners in Iraq are war crimes. U.S. citizens should not tolerate this, to say the very least. The story says thirty-six prisoners may have died in U.S. custody: thirty-six human beings who probably didn't do anything except happen to live in Iraq when the United States invaded.
All this uproar over Kerik (and how they didn't vet him enough and geez, he hired an undocumented alien) is ridiculous. I don't think the guy should have been nominated in the first place, and yes, the White House should do a better job of looking into the lives of the people they nominate; however, that ain't the story. What are these news agencies doing? Where are the investigative reporters? Why wasn't there this kind of uproar over the fact that the U.S. invaded a country who was not a threat to us! Why isn't there this kind of uproar over Rumsfeld and the lack of armor and medical benefits for National Guard soldiers? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over what Bush is doing to our environment? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over U.S. soldiers torturing people? It is absolutely absurd.
Gary Webb was a real investigative journalist. He broke the story about the "Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s." Do you remember that? It sounded like something out of a movie. Essentially the government was responsible for the escalation of drug use in South Central. Soon after the story broke, the government and everyone else denied there was any truth to it. Webb and the story were discredited. He ended up without a job and in debt. As time went on, of course, it was discovered that his reporting had been accurate. Last Friday, Gary Webb apparently killed himself.
Michael Moore has an interesting take on what's happening with the Democrats via Mel Giles, who works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. She says the responses from the Democrats are very similar to responses by abuse victims. The Democrats keep trying to figure out what they did wrong; how can they fix themselves so it doesn't happen again? She writes, "They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence. As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating." Her analogy is fascinating.
Here's another good piece. about Wangari Muta Maathai's Nobel Peace Prize, "Environmentalism as Peaceful Endeavor."
0 comments
All this uproar over Kerik (and how they didn't vet him enough and geez, he hired an undocumented alien) is ridiculous. I don't think the guy should have been nominated in the first place, and yes, the White House should do a better job of looking into the lives of the people they nominate; however, that ain't the story. What are these news agencies doing? Where are the investigative reporters? Why wasn't there this kind of uproar over the fact that the U.S. invaded a country who was not a threat to us! Why isn't there this kind of uproar over Rumsfeld and the lack of armor and medical benefits for National Guard soldiers? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over what Bush is doing to our environment? Why isn't there this kind of uproar over U.S. soldiers torturing people? It is absolutely absurd.
Gary Webb was a real investigative journalist. He broke the story about the "Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s." Do you remember that? It sounded like something out of a movie. Essentially the government was responsible for the escalation of drug use in South Central. Soon after the story broke, the government and everyone else denied there was any truth to it. Webb and the story were discredited. He ended up without a job and in debt. As time went on, of course, it was discovered that his reporting had been accurate. Last Friday, Gary Webb apparently killed himself.
Michael Moore has an interesting take on what's happening with the Democrats via Mel Giles, who works as an advocate for victims of domestic violence. She says the responses from the Democrats are very similar to responses by abuse victims. The Democrats keep trying to figure out what they did wrong; how can they fix themselves so it doesn't happen again? She writes, "They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence. As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating." Her analogy is fascinating.
Here's another good piece. about Wangari Muta Maathai's Nobel Peace Prize, "Environmentalism as Peaceful Endeavor."
0 comments
It's a Wonderful Bunny!
Mario found this little gem somewhere. It's a 30 second version of "It's a Wonderful Life." Make sure you look at the extras, too. Here is the site where you can see more 30 second movies—with bunnies.
0 comments
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
It
I’ve written about depression here many times. I’ve described it as being like a genetic rabid dog, chasing my family from generation to generation. I most recently wrote about it in my essay “Home Body.” I spoke to one of my younger sisters, Michelle, a few days after I’d written that (although she hadn’t read it yet). She encouraged me to write more about the family. I told her I didn’t want any of them to feel like I was violating their privacy, so I tried not to name names, yet I wanted to write about my life and they were a part of my life. She surprised me by saying she thought it was fascinating to read someone else’s view of the family. Everyone sees history differently, from their own perspective. She gave me permission to write about her in the context of my life. I said, “Well, then, you might be interested in this post.” And I told her about “Home Body.”
She read it, then wrote an email to me. With her permission, I am publishing part of it here. I’m doing this for two reasons. One, it’s beautiful. I told her she should be the writer. Two, regular readers know that I’ve argued it’s better to talk about things than to keep them secret. In “Home Body” I spoke about my grandfather’s suicide and my mother’s depression. Depression is a disease, not a secret. I think this letter is a testimony to the value of telling our stories. My sister is able to describe, in just a few sentences, what it is like to live with someone who is depressed. She calls it “it.” Precisely. Exactly. “It” was a thing that invaded our home and never left.
Here’s an excerpt of what Michelle said, “...It is interesting how different some of our memories are...the context in which we lived our lives and interpret our surroundings....I think its neat though that we both had an incredible love for the land and realized its value...that it lives with us, that we saw the land as much more than property, but more like a friend with its own rights and value.
“Although many of our memories are different...many are the same or similar....like the marsh flooding & having our own world for skating...(even with all of its marsh grass). Mom painting the wall...I know I had mixed feelings at the time but I often tell people about mom doing that—they look at me like what, how odd!!! And I look at them like ‘too bad your mom wasn't like that as you don't know what you missed.' I remember Mom's short hair & her choice of clothes, that she'd spontaneously start projects like carpentry...building that doll house & other wood projects, the painting....drawing...more paintings on the walls in the house & the car...playing the tambourine when Johnny Cash came on TV...belly dancing for Dad...or how when she was feeling well how her spurts of energy could suddenly make eating watermelon on a hot summer day seem like the next best thing to whatever that ‘best’ thing is...
“....and then....I remember her incredible sadness...her futile attempts to be happy.....to find that fix...her desperation...you could feel it, like it had its own life. I hated ‘it’...
“I, too, have always found Mom to be incredibly supportive...wanting us to know we had/have value however we turned out...& knowing that she seemed a little worried that we would not find our places in the world...and how she wanted so much for us to not be afraid, to be happy...."
Thanks, Michelle. 0 comments
She read it, then wrote an email to me. With her permission, I am publishing part of it here. I’m doing this for two reasons. One, it’s beautiful. I told her she should be the writer. Two, regular readers know that I’ve argued it’s better to talk about things than to keep them secret. In “Home Body” I spoke about my grandfather’s suicide and my mother’s depression. Depression is a disease, not a secret. I think this letter is a testimony to the value of telling our stories. My sister is able to describe, in just a few sentences, what it is like to live with someone who is depressed. She calls it “it.” Precisely. Exactly. “It” was a thing that invaded our home and never left.
Here’s an excerpt of what Michelle said, “...It is interesting how different some of our memories are...the context in which we lived our lives and interpret our surroundings....I think its neat though that we both had an incredible love for the land and realized its value...that it lives with us, that we saw the land as much more than property, but more like a friend with its own rights and value.
“Although many of our memories are different...many are the same or similar....like the marsh flooding & having our own world for skating...(even with all of its marsh grass). Mom painting the wall...I know I had mixed feelings at the time but I often tell people about mom doing that—they look at me like what, how odd!!! And I look at them like ‘too bad your mom wasn't like that as you don't know what you missed.' I remember Mom's short hair & her choice of clothes, that she'd spontaneously start projects like carpentry...building that doll house & other wood projects, the painting....drawing...more paintings on the walls in the house & the car...playing the tambourine when Johnny Cash came on TV...belly dancing for Dad...or how when she was feeling well how her spurts of energy could suddenly make eating watermelon on a hot summer day seem like the next best thing to whatever that ‘best’ thing is...
“....and then....I remember her incredible sadness...her futile attempts to be happy.....to find that fix...her desperation...you could feel it, like it had its own life. I hated ‘it’...
“I, too, have always found Mom to be incredibly supportive...wanting us to know we had/have value however we turned out...& knowing that she seemed a little worried that we would not find our places in the world...and how she wanted so much for us to not be afraid, to be happy...."
Thanks, Michelle. 0 comments
Getting Ready
Mario and I are leaving Saturday for a month-long trip. We’re going to the Southwest via California. We want to go to the Pueblo winter dances in New Mexico, and then we’re going to a writer’s retreat for a few weeks. I plan to post while we're on the trip, although it's possible I'll change my mind. Last time we went to the Southwest, I did a kind of road trip journal that I emailed to people who wanted it, and that was fairly successful. I'll do a similar thing this time, only it'll be on my blog. This means I probably won't do any current events or much political stuff. So if that's your main interest in Furious Spinner, you might want to check back in a month. It also means what you’ll be reading will be first draft. What I usually post now is already pretty close to first draft, but at least I try to read it over once and have Mario read the longer pieces before I post. On the road, it'll just be what it is.
I hope you all have a great holiday season. For me, I'd like to get some healing, so that's what I'm hoping for. I believe Santa is actually a shaman. So Santa, baby, send some healin' my way. 0 comments
I hope you all have a great holiday season. For me, I'd like to get some healing, so that's what I'm hoping for. I believe Santa is actually a shaman. So Santa, baby, send some healin' my way. 0 comments
Monday, December 13, 2004
What's All the Fuss?
We went to a party this weekend. I promised myself I would not bring up current events or anything anyone might find annoying or disturbing—I mean, I'm invited to very few parties any more. But someone brought up Bush so I felt as though I'd been given permission to go to town. It was an interesting discussion. Everyone agreed something is rotten in Denmark. When we left, Mario said, "How come we know so much more about current events than so many other people?" Now, you have to know Mario to know that this was not said with any feelings of superiority or judgment about the other people. He really wanted to know because we know that we're not really that informed ourselves. I shrugged. I had no answer. I could guess it was because we get our information from other sources besides the mass media. Except for people in our peace group, other bloggers, and readers of blogs, most of the people I know get their news from the TV—or else they don't get any news at all.
I saw this great program on Link TV about corporate farming called "The Global Banquet, By Invitation Only." This one woman who farms in the United States said some things that crystallized my thinking on the topic of corporations and their harm to this planet. She talked about how harmful monoculture is for plant species, as we all know. But corporate farming is also cultivating (as it were) monoculture in human beings. It's the McDonaldization of the planet.
Corporations go to these poor villages around the world and say, "Stop planting food crops. You need to plant cash crops." So they stop planting crops and start planting cash. This happens again and again. They stop planting food. They spend money on pesticides and fertilizers which poison them and the environment. In the end, they live in worse poverty, only this time they haven't any food because they don't have the land to plant the food any longer. The poverty rate in India has climbed in the last decade in areas where they plant cash crops. Globalization leaves poverty in its tracks all across the planet. As the connection with the environment is broken (and as McDonald's and Targets pop up on every other corner) the rituals, languages, ceremonies, and entire cultures are disappearing. We are all becoming alike. A monoculture of human beings. And these same human beings are slaves to the corporations that are taking away our cultures; they are encouraging us to consume now and ask questions...never. George Orwell was wrong. It isn't governments we need to fear. It is the corporations.
Canada may become the third country in the world to legalize gay marriages. Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin has announced he will go ahead with the legislation "after the Supreme Court of Canada said that parliament had the constitutional right to broaden the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples." You know my views on this. What is all the fuss? If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't marry someone who is gay. If various religious establishments don't want to perform gay marriages, they don't have to. If various religious establishments don't want to perform hetero marriages, they don't have to either. OK? Problem solved.
And what's the fuss about the reporter "planting" the question for Rumsfeld with the soldier. For one thing, Rumsfeld won't answer questions like that from reporters, so they've got to get their questions in somehow. For another thing, I saw most of that event, whatever it was called. Other soldiers asked questions. Rumsfeld was a doddering fool. "Settle down. I'm an old man. It's early in the morning." "I didn't hear the first part of the question." "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and a tank can be blown up." You've heard me rant about this already. But let me just say this: the story is not the reporter getting a soldier to ask his question. The story is that soldiers are not being protected. The story is that soldiers are digging around in refuse piles to find things to put on their trucks as armor. The story is that if we didn't have the army we needed to go to war, we shouldn't have gone to war! 0 comments
I saw this great program on Link TV about corporate farming called "The Global Banquet, By Invitation Only." This one woman who farms in the United States said some things that crystallized my thinking on the topic of corporations and their harm to this planet. She talked about how harmful monoculture is for plant species, as we all know. But corporate farming is also cultivating (as it were) monoculture in human beings. It's the McDonaldization of the planet.
Corporations go to these poor villages around the world and say, "Stop planting food crops. You need to plant cash crops." So they stop planting crops and start planting cash. This happens again and again. They stop planting food. They spend money on pesticides and fertilizers which poison them and the environment. In the end, they live in worse poverty, only this time they haven't any food because they don't have the land to plant the food any longer. The poverty rate in India has climbed in the last decade in areas where they plant cash crops. Globalization leaves poverty in its tracks all across the planet. As the connection with the environment is broken (and as McDonald's and Targets pop up on every other corner) the rituals, languages, ceremonies, and entire cultures are disappearing. We are all becoming alike. A monoculture of human beings. And these same human beings are slaves to the corporations that are taking away our cultures; they are encouraging us to consume now and ask questions...never. George Orwell was wrong. It isn't governments we need to fear. It is the corporations.
Canada may become the third country in the world to legalize gay marriages. Canada's Prime Minister Paul Martin has announced he will go ahead with the legislation "after the Supreme Court of Canada said that parliament had the constitutional right to broaden the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples." You know my views on this. What is all the fuss? If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't marry someone who is gay. If various religious establishments don't want to perform gay marriages, they don't have to. If various religious establishments don't want to perform hetero marriages, they don't have to either. OK? Problem solved.
And what's the fuss about the reporter "planting" the question for Rumsfeld with the soldier. For one thing, Rumsfeld won't answer questions like that from reporters, so they've got to get their questions in somehow. For another thing, I saw most of that event, whatever it was called. Other soldiers asked questions. Rumsfeld was a doddering fool. "Settle down. I'm an old man. It's early in the morning." "I didn't hear the first part of the question." "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank, and a tank can be blown up." You've heard me rant about this already. But let me just say this: the story is not the reporter getting a soldier to ask his question. The story is that soldiers are not being protected. The story is that soldiers are digging around in refuse piles to find things to put on their trucks as armor. The story is that if we didn't have the army we needed to go to war, we shouldn't have gone to war! 0 comments
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Power of the People
Wangari Maathai accepted her Nobel Peace Prize yesterday. If you get a chance to see her give the speech, take it. (If you don't have Real Player, you can click on the transcript of the speech and read it instead, but listening to her and seeing her is good medicine.) She is gorgeous, dressed in orange, a goddess supreme. She gives the speech in English. For 30 years she has been planting trees in Africa. Never doubt the ability of one person to make a difference. There can be no peace, she says, without a sustainable environment. She warns that current global consumption is not sustainable.
Speaking of something you should see, try to watch Rumsfeld being questioned by the soldiers in Kuwait—the whole thing. It is something to behold. Again, never estimate the power of one person to create change. Since this episode between Rumsfeld and the soldiers the Pentagon has asked for more armored vehicles (POPUP). The soldiers said they had to dig around in refuse piles to outfit their vehicles. Rumsfeld's response was that you could have all the armor you wanted and your vehicle could still get blown up. Can you imagine? He also said you go to war with the army you got. Well, I guess we kind of went to war with the Secretary of Defense we got. Geez Louise. 0 comments
Speaking of something you should see, try to watch Rumsfeld being questioned by the soldiers in Kuwait—the whole thing. It is something to behold. Again, never estimate the power of one person to create change. Since this episode between Rumsfeld and the soldiers the Pentagon has asked for more armored vehicles (POPUP). The soldiers said they had to dig around in refuse piles to outfit their vehicles. Rumsfeld's response was that you could have all the armor you wanted and your vehicle could still get blown up. Can you imagine? He also said you go to war with the army you got. Well, I guess we kind of went to war with the Secretary of Defense we got. Geez Louise. 0 comments
Thursday, December 09, 2004
It All Counts
This Wednesday, the recount for the governor’s race in Washington state began. Republican candidate Dino Rossi had a lead of 42 votes after the last count, so Christine Gregoire asked for a statewide recount. I volunteered to help. A few minutes before 9:00 a.m. I went to the basement of the county annex where last February I had participated in my first Democratic caucus. The room was once again crowded with about 40 people from our rural county.
The elections officer quickly got things going. At ten tables around the room, one Democratic counter and one Republican counter sat across from a county-hired tabulator. I was paired with a woman I had first met 15 years ago when I read stories to her daughter Friday mornings during storytime at the library. Across from us was an older woman who appeared a bit nervous about the whole process.
Behind us were the observers from the Democratic and Republican parties. The election officer told them they had to stay on the linoleum squares along the wall and they couldn’t come any closer or talk to us. I sensed some awkwardness at the tables as people settled into position, getting accustomed to Democrats and Republicans sitting together again after a long and sometimes ugly election season.
The first thing we would do was sort the ballots by precinct. The election people brought one pile to each table. Then we put them in order by precinct.
Next we needed to count the ballots in each precinct to make certain the total number of ballots matched with the numbers the auditor had. The election worker brought our table the pile of ballots for precinct 103. We divided this pile into three stacks, then each of us counted a pile. When we had a total, the election officer or auditor came by and checked our numbers. If this total matched their total, they took the pile away and got another pile for the table. If it didn’t, the table had to count all over. At the end of this process, one ballot was missing from the whole county.
During a break, I went outside and talked with a group of Democratic observers.
“Man, I wouldn’t want to be in King county today,” one of them said.
We all nodded, imagining the mess that would be.
“They’d have to be really organized,” someone else said.
“I heard the observers have to stand behind plexiglass and use binoculars,” another man said, holding up his hands to his eyes, his fingers curled into circles.
“Rossi’s people keep saying they wouldn’t have asked for a recount,” someone said.
“Right,” I said. “I don’t think I’d want a governor who didn’t ask for a recount if the difference was only 42 votes.”
I ran over to the library, which is next door. The new superintendent happened to be there. Mario introduced us, and we spoke for a few minutes. He seemed like a good man. Yes, I know you can’t really tell that in a few seconds—well, actually, sometimes you can. He looked me in the eyes and held my hand for a moment as we shook hands, but not in a sleazy way. I liked him instantly. We found out from him that the sister of one of my friends had killed herself two days earlier. I was stunned. I called my friend and left a message. Then I had to go back to the counting.
When the break was over, we counted all the ballots again, looking for the missing ballot. We first made sure that in our particular precincts they were all the correct ballots. Only precinct 304 ballots should be in the precinct 304 pile, for instance. Slowly, each table finished without finding the missing ballot. Those who were done got up and left for lunch.
The table next to us counted and came up with two extra ballots. It happened to be the precinct where one ballot had been missing on the first count. The auditor asked our table to count this pile again. We did. Some of the ballots were double—I never understood why—and were clipped or stapled together. The counters had accidentally counted two of these doubles as two rather than one each. Now all the totals matched. The auditor cheered us and sent us off for a short lunch.
After lunch, the 30 of us at the tables raised our hands and took an oath promising to do the work honestly and faithfully. Then we each signed the precinct book the election officer handed out. This ledger book had the candidates names handwritten down one column: Gregoire (D), Rossi (R), Bennett (L), Over votes, Under votes, and Write ins. Then, across from each name were these tiny boxes in a row where the tally marks went. Four tally marks, then one across to equal five in each box.
The person doing our tally was uncomfortable with this process. It was difficult for her to write, and her handwriting was shaky. She was embarrassed and wanted one of us to do it instead, but we couldn’t. We were required to hold up the ballot, then one of us would say “Vote for (candidate’s name).” The vote tabulator was supposed to mark the vote and say, “Tally one for (candidate’s name).” Then we would put the ballots in the appropriate piles.
We decided my Republican partner would say the name outloud and I would put the ballots in the piles. We started as we were instructed. Soon the tabulator was coughing from repeating over and over, “Tally one for...” She took a lozenge, and we continued, not really noticing (or caring) that she no longer said, “Tally one for...” It didn’t matter; we watched her carefully. My partner said, “Vote for Gregoire,” and the tabulator made her mark.
When we finished tabulating, we counted the piles to make certain the piles matched the totals in the book. Then we raised our hands and the auditor came over. Our numbers were correct, so he gave us another book and another pile.
We took a quick break after we finished with one precinct, and I happened to notice Mario walking back to the library after his lunch with a friend. I ran out into the rain and gave him a quick kiss.
I also talked with one of the election observers, a young man I’ve known since he was a boy. He’s headed for law school, after working this last year for the Democratic party.
“I noticed a lot of people who voted primarily Democratic also voted for Rossi,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It means Gregoire ran a lousy campaign,” he said.
I knew little about Rossi, which shows my own prejudices, I suppose. I’m often hard-pressed to vote for a Democrat, let alone a Republican. Someone would have to be an extraordinary candidate for me to ever vote Republican for any federal or state position. Locally, where I might actually know the person, I would vote Republican if I thought that person was the best candidate. Our community is so close to Oregon and so far away from Olympia or Seattle that we actually get very little Washington news. All our TV stations are Portland stations, and our largest newspaper comes out of Portland. Very few people read the Seattle paper at the library. I don’t know if Rossi ever even came to Southwest Washington; Gregoire did, at least once.
The ballots were a treasure trove of information. I kept having to remind myself to pay attention to the tabulation instead of the ballots. Each one was a kind of history in itself. Some were very lightly filled in. Some had only one vote: for the president. When this happened—when there was no vote for the governor—it was called an under vote. Sometimes every category was filled out as a straight party ticket. Other times, a person voted Republican for the president, governor, and local county commissioners, but also voted for Brian Baird and Patty Murray, a liberal Representative and Senator respectfully. On one ballot, the person voted all Democrat. Then all the votes were Xed out and the person voted completely Republican. I was curious what that was all about.
On our second batch, our numbers differed from the auditor’s, although our total was the same. We had two ballots that had been filled out very lightly. One was for Rossi, the other was for Gregoire. The voter’s intent was clear on each, but the machine had not been able to read either one, most likely. This was why they did recounts. I wondered how many ballots like this there had been all around the country that had never gotten counted.
We started at 9:00 a.m. and were finished just before 3:00 p.m. The day had gone by quickly. Any early morning awkwardness about being together had disappeared. We were a community working together again.
At one point I said to my Republican partner, “This is the way it should be. I used to really admire that about our country, that we could disagree with one another and not shoot each other.”
My Republican partner nodded. “Yeah, now we disagree and shoot each other.”
“Not us,” I said. “Not today.”
In our county, Rossi gained and lost in some precincts, and Gregoire gained and lost in some precincts. When I left, I was told Gregoire had lost one vote overall. It didn’t matter. At least we knew each and every vote counted and was counted.
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The elections officer quickly got things going. At ten tables around the room, one Democratic counter and one Republican counter sat across from a county-hired tabulator. I was paired with a woman I had first met 15 years ago when I read stories to her daughter Friday mornings during storytime at the library. Across from us was an older woman who appeared a bit nervous about the whole process.
Behind us were the observers from the Democratic and Republican parties. The election officer told them they had to stay on the linoleum squares along the wall and they couldn’t come any closer or talk to us. I sensed some awkwardness at the tables as people settled into position, getting accustomed to Democrats and Republicans sitting together again after a long and sometimes ugly election season.
The first thing we would do was sort the ballots by precinct. The election people brought one pile to each table. Then we put them in order by precinct.
Next we needed to count the ballots in each precinct to make certain the total number of ballots matched with the numbers the auditor had. The election worker brought our table the pile of ballots for precinct 103. We divided this pile into three stacks, then each of us counted a pile. When we had a total, the election officer or auditor came by and checked our numbers. If this total matched their total, they took the pile away and got another pile for the table. If it didn’t, the table had to count all over. At the end of this process, one ballot was missing from the whole county.
During a break, I went outside and talked with a group of Democratic observers.
“Man, I wouldn’t want to be in King county today,” one of them said.
We all nodded, imagining the mess that would be.
“They’d have to be really organized,” someone else said.
“I heard the observers have to stand behind plexiglass and use binoculars,” another man said, holding up his hands to his eyes, his fingers curled into circles.
“Rossi’s people keep saying they wouldn’t have asked for a recount,” someone said.
“Right,” I said. “I don’t think I’d want a governor who didn’t ask for a recount if the difference was only 42 votes.”
I ran over to the library, which is next door. The new superintendent happened to be there. Mario introduced us, and we spoke for a few minutes. He seemed like a good man. Yes, I know you can’t really tell that in a few seconds—well, actually, sometimes you can. He looked me in the eyes and held my hand for a moment as we shook hands, but not in a sleazy way. I liked him instantly. We found out from him that the sister of one of my friends had killed herself two days earlier. I was stunned. I called my friend and left a message. Then I had to go back to the counting.
When the break was over, we counted all the ballots again, looking for the missing ballot. We first made sure that in our particular precincts they were all the correct ballots. Only precinct 304 ballots should be in the precinct 304 pile, for instance. Slowly, each table finished without finding the missing ballot. Those who were done got up and left for lunch.
The table next to us counted and came up with two extra ballots. It happened to be the precinct where one ballot had been missing on the first count. The auditor asked our table to count this pile again. We did. Some of the ballots were double—I never understood why—and were clipped or stapled together. The counters had accidentally counted two of these doubles as two rather than one each. Now all the totals matched. The auditor cheered us and sent us off for a short lunch.
After lunch, the 30 of us at the tables raised our hands and took an oath promising to do the work honestly and faithfully. Then we each signed the precinct book the election officer handed out. This ledger book had the candidates names handwritten down one column: Gregoire (D), Rossi (R), Bennett (L), Over votes, Under votes, and Write ins. Then, across from each name were these tiny boxes in a row where the tally marks went. Four tally marks, then one across to equal five in each box.
The person doing our tally was uncomfortable with this process. It was difficult for her to write, and her handwriting was shaky. She was embarrassed and wanted one of us to do it instead, but we couldn’t. We were required to hold up the ballot, then one of us would say “Vote for (candidate’s name).” The vote tabulator was supposed to mark the vote and say, “Tally one for (candidate’s name).” Then we would put the ballots in the appropriate piles.
We decided my Republican partner would say the name outloud and I would put the ballots in the piles. We started as we were instructed. Soon the tabulator was coughing from repeating over and over, “Tally one for...” She took a lozenge, and we continued, not really noticing (or caring) that she no longer said, “Tally one for...” It didn’t matter; we watched her carefully. My partner said, “Vote for Gregoire,” and the tabulator made her mark.
When we finished tabulating, we counted the piles to make certain the piles matched the totals in the book. Then we raised our hands and the auditor came over. Our numbers were correct, so he gave us another book and another pile.
We took a quick break after we finished with one precinct, and I happened to notice Mario walking back to the library after his lunch with a friend. I ran out into the rain and gave him a quick kiss.
I also talked with one of the election observers, a young man I’ve known since he was a boy. He’s headed for law school, after working this last year for the Democratic party.
“I noticed a lot of people who voted primarily Democratic also voted for Rossi,” he said.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It means Gregoire ran a lousy campaign,” he said.
I knew little about Rossi, which shows my own prejudices, I suppose. I’m often hard-pressed to vote for a Democrat, let alone a Republican. Someone would have to be an extraordinary candidate for me to ever vote Republican for any federal or state position. Locally, where I might actually know the person, I would vote Republican if I thought that person was the best candidate. Our community is so close to Oregon and so far away from Olympia or Seattle that we actually get very little Washington news. All our TV stations are Portland stations, and our largest newspaper comes out of Portland. Very few people read the Seattle paper at the library. I don’t know if Rossi ever even came to Southwest Washington; Gregoire did, at least once.
The ballots were a treasure trove of information. I kept having to remind myself to pay attention to the tabulation instead of the ballots. Each one was a kind of history in itself. Some were very lightly filled in. Some had only one vote: for the president. When this happened—when there was no vote for the governor—it was called an under vote. Sometimes every category was filled out as a straight party ticket. Other times, a person voted Republican for the president, governor, and local county commissioners, but also voted for Brian Baird and Patty Murray, a liberal Representative and Senator respectfully. On one ballot, the person voted all Democrat. Then all the votes were Xed out and the person voted completely Republican. I was curious what that was all about.
On our second batch, our numbers differed from the auditor’s, although our total was the same. We had two ballots that had been filled out very lightly. One was for Rossi, the other was for Gregoire. The voter’s intent was clear on each, but the machine had not been able to read either one, most likely. This was why they did recounts. I wondered how many ballots like this there had been all around the country that had never gotten counted.
We started at 9:00 a.m. and were finished just before 3:00 p.m. The day had gone by quickly. Any early morning awkwardness about being together had disappeared. We were a community working together again.
At one point I said to my Republican partner, “This is the way it should be. I used to really admire that about our country, that we could disagree with one another and not shoot each other.”
My Republican partner nodded. “Yeah, now we disagree and shoot each other.”
“Not us,” I said. “Not today.”
In our county, Rossi gained and lost in some precincts, and Gregoire gained and lost in some precincts. When I left, I was told Gregoire had lost one vote overall. It didn’t matter. At least we knew each and every vote counted and was counted.
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Pick a Lane
This is a great column by Arianna Huffington. I laughed outloud. She's talking about why we should care about who becomes the next head of the DNC. She says she doesn't want anyone who says the Dems need to go to the middle of the road. Right on, sister. Pick a lane! And stay there. I've been talking to people who didn't like Kerry and/or had relatives who voted for Bush. (I guess no one will admit to me they actually voted for Bush themselves.) What I keep hearing over and over is that people like someone who stands for something EVEN IF THEY DISAGREE WITH THEM. The Democrats don't seem to stand for anything. I can't really argue with that assessment. Huffington and others are saying what I've been saying: Be Liberal. Be Progressive. Take back the language. Take back the argument. Don't be afraid to be who you are. Some of the most liberal candidates won in red districts—because the voters knew what they stood for. The mantra should be, "Remember Russ Feingold!" He's probably the most liberal Senator in the United States. He voted against the war. And he handily won reelection.
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Heart Beats
So many of you have been asking about my mother, and I thank you. It has been a strange process, which I'm sure some of you have been through, given the state of medical care in this country. (Where is that state, anyway?) As I told you, they canceled the operation last Wednesday, just hours before it was scheduled because they didn't have an operating room. They rescheduled for five days later, and my mother had a medical problem, so they rescheduled again for tomorrow. Well, my mother canceled this time. I think they were all psyched for the operation last week and when the doctor canceled, my mother lost heart, as it were, and just couldn't get up the energy to do it. We'll see what happens next. I appreciate your good thoughts for her. I can only hope this is for the best. Blessed be.
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Splitting Hairs
Mario is still reading the Complete Far Side and giggling. I'm writing to you and listening to music—and to Mario flipping pages.
Mario says, "Two gorillas are sitting talking and eating bananas. 'You know, Sid, I really like bananas...I know that's not profound or nothing...heck! We all do. But for me, I think it goes far beyond that.'" He laughs. I do, too. Those damn gorillas sound like me.
Saturday when it was sunny out, I went to the Turtle Pond. I was tromping along, lost in my thoughts, and I didn't see three swans hidden in one of the fingers of the pond—until they flew away. I've got to pay better attention. One of them was gray, so I think they were probably the family that was there before. I also saw a merlin, harrier, or kestrel. I don't have the smaller birds of prey down in my brain yet. I need to go out with someone who really knows the difference. I did see three bald eagles, however. I think they were a family unit. Two were adults, one was an immature. An immature eagle looks like a teenaged eagle. They've got the body and almost the attitude of the adult, but they're kind of scraggly looking. Their feathers are mottled—like bird acne, of a sorts, or greasy hair. Still magnificent.
Today it was cold and rainy. Bone chilling. We had our first talk with the new superintendent. When I say we, I mean our group. I got all the materials together but didn't go because I didn't want to be a distraction—I didn't want it to be about all the nastiness and hard feelings that have transpired between us. The president of the school board said he wants an integrated pest management system in place before spring. If he's sincere, this is great news. This could mean our school district will actually stop exposing children and teachers to toxic substances. I am very pleased by this turn of events, but I'll feel better when they actually have a policy in place that the guys on the ground will actually implement. Working at a grassroots level (literally, this time) can work!
I spent the rest of the day rewriting Lady Liberty. My agent thinks it could work as a young adult book if I cut it by a third. It was easier than I thought, which makes me nervous. Of course, I haven't read the rewritten version yet. It could be awful.
I took a break to get my hair cut. My hair cutter comes here since I can't be in the salon with all the chemicals. I like her. We can talk about pretty much anything. We don't know the same people, so I can tell her about my frustrations or worries about friends (without naming names) and she can do the same with people she knows. Great therapy, I suppose. Today she cut my hair very short. I think I now have the same hair style I did as the very first time I got it cut short when I was in eighth grade.
Do you remember your first important haircut? When I was in eighth grade I decided if I cut my hair short, then I would be stylish and the boy I had a crush on would notice me. So my mother took me to the hairdresser. Afterward, I cried for hours. It was the last time I can remember doing anything quite so drastic to please a man. I think I got that same cut today, blunt, slanting down from the back to the front. Only when I was in the eighth grade my hair was chestnut colored (except for a few gray hairs underneath). Now my hair is gray (except for a few chestnut colored hairs underneath).
Inquisitors used to cut off the hair of the accused witches so that the witches could do no mischief with their locks. If a woman unbraided her hair and a storm struck, she could be accused of being a witch—especially if she lived in a coastal town where the men were away at sea and could be harmed by a storm. Witchy women were supposedly able to perform all kinds of magic with their hair, so they could and should be shorn at the earliest opportunity if they were suspected of being witches. However, women weren't supposed to cut their own hair. (Good lord; who could keep up with all this nonsense?) Remember Joan of Arc was condemned and sentenced to burn for two crimes: wearing men's clothes and cutting her own hair.
When I had to quit my job ten years ago (wow, that long ago) because I was sick, I decided I wouldn't cut my hair until I was well. I think that lasted about a year. It grew down to the middle of my back. It was not attractive and it was a pain to care for.
Friday when we went to the bird refuge, I went to the Great Oak and made a plea for my mother's good health—and my own. I left a gold turtle for my mother's health and a lock of hair for my own. I hope my gray locks will adorn a nest somewhere someday.
One of my sister's old boyfriends had asthma when he was a kid. His grandfather took him out to the forest, cut a lock of his hair, and stuffed it into a hole in a tree. He said as the tree grew so would the boy grow out of his asthma. And he did. His asthma disappeared soon after.
After she cut my hair today, I swept the cuttings off the floor and threw them out. I checked it first. No snakes. More's the pity. I've always admired Medusa. Now she's got a head of hair. 0 comments
Mario says, "Two gorillas are sitting talking and eating bananas. 'You know, Sid, I really like bananas...I know that's not profound or nothing...heck! We all do. But for me, I think it goes far beyond that.'" He laughs. I do, too. Those damn gorillas sound like me.
Saturday when it was sunny out, I went to the Turtle Pond. I was tromping along, lost in my thoughts, and I didn't see three swans hidden in one of the fingers of the pond—until they flew away. I've got to pay better attention. One of them was gray, so I think they were probably the family that was there before. I also saw a merlin, harrier, or kestrel. I don't have the smaller birds of prey down in my brain yet. I need to go out with someone who really knows the difference. I did see three bald eagles, however. I think they were a family unit. Two were adults, one was an immature. An immature eagle looks like a teenaged eagle. They've got the body and almost the attitude of the adult, but they're kind of scraggly looking. Their feathers are mottled—like bird acne, of a sorts, or greasy hair. Still magnificent.
Today it was cold and rainy. Bone chilling. We had our first talk with the new superintendent. When I say we, I mean our group. I got all the materials together but didn't go because I didn't want to be a distraction—I didn't want it to be about all the nastiness and hard feelings that have transpired between us. The president of the school board said he wants an integrated pest management system in place before spring. If he's sincere, this is great news. This could mean our school district will actually stop exposing children and teachers to toxic substances. I am very pleased by this turn of events, but I'll feel better when they actually have a policy in place that the guys on the ground will actually implement. Working at a grassroots level (literally, this time) can work!
I spent the rest of the day rewriting Lady Liberty. My agent thinks it could work as a young adult book if I cut it by a third. It was easier than I thought, which makes me nervous. Of course, I haven't read the rewritten version yet. It could be awful.
I took a break to get my hair cut. My hair cutter comes here since I can't be in the salon with all the chemicals. I like her. We can talk about pretty much anything. We don't know the same people, so I can tell her about my frustrations or worries about friends (without naming names) and she can do the same with people she knows. Great therapy, I suppose. Today she cut my hair very short. I think I now have the same hair style I did as the very first time I got it cut short when I was in eighth grade.
Do you remember your first important haircut? When I was in eighth grade I decided if I cut my hair short, then I would be stylish and the boy I had a crush on would notice me. So my mother took me to the hairdresser. Afterward, I cried for hours. It was the last time I can remember doing anything quite so drastic to please a man. I think I got that same cut today, blunt, slanting down from the back to the front. Only when I was in the eighth grade my hair was chestnut colored (except for a few gray hairs underneath). Now my hair is gray (except for a few chestnut colored hairs underneath).
Inquisitors used to cut off the hair of the accused witches so that the witches could do no mischief with their locks. If a woman unbraided her hair and a storm struck, she could be accused of being a witch—especially if she lived in a coastal town where the men were away at sea and could be harmed by a storm. Witchy women were supposedly able to perform all kinds of magic with their hair, so they could and should be shorn at the earliest opportunity if they were suspected of being witches. However, women weren't supposed to cut their own hair. (Good lord; who could keep up with all this nonsense?) Remember Joan of Arc was condemned and sentenced to burn for two crimes: wearing men's clothes and cutting her own hair.
When I had to quit my job ten years ago (wow, that long ago) because I was sick, I decided I wouldn't cut my hair until I was well. I think that lasted about a year. It grew down to the middle of my back. It was not attractive and it was a pain to care for.
Friday when we went to the bird refuge, I went to the Great Oak and made a plea for my mother's good health—and my own. I left a gold turtle for my mother's health and a lock of hair for my own. I hope my gray locks will adorn a nest somewhere someday.
One of my sister's old boyfriends had asthma when he was a kid. His grandfather took him out to the forest, cut a lock of his hair, and stuffed it into a hole in a tree. He said as the tree grew so would the boy grow out of his asthma. And he did. His asthma disappeared soon after.
After she cut my hair today, I swept the cuttings off the floor and threw them out. I checked it first. No snakes. More's the pity. I've always admired Medusa. Now she's got a head of hair. 0 comments
Unembedded and Unlettuced
I've always been uncomfortable with embedded reporters. (Duh, eh?) As a journalist you are supposed to try and remain as neutral as possible. How can you be neutral when you're eating, sleeping, and getting shot at with the same group of people? Naturally you're going to want to report stories which make them feel good, which means you might not be reporting the truth. Plus, you're reporting on people who are protecting you from being killed. Come on. The job of a journalist is to get the truth of the story as best she can. We know we aren't getting the full story about what’s happening in Iraq.
A recent study found that 100,000 Iraqis have died because of this war. 100,000. Can you imagine how pissed off we would be if another country sent their troops in and they caused the deaths of 100,000 of our civilians? The United States is creating baby terrorists every single day we're over there fighting. I don't think reporters should be embedded—or at the very least, there should be as many NOT in bed with the military as there are in bed with them. This interview on Alternet with an unembedded reporter is very interesting. He ain't seeing the same things we're being told every day in our mainstream media, that's for sure. Quelle surprise.
And apropos of nothing except continuing the discussion of folly: you've probably heard that they've discovered rocket fuel in lettuce, organic milk, and bottled water. Yes, rocket fuel. The FDA says there is no cause for alarm because they're not sure it's bad for us to be consuming rocket fuel. OK, I'll say right here and now, ladies and gents, that I ain't no scientist or one of them smart fellers running the FDA, but I suspect what my grammy used to say would apply here: "Don't be an asshole, kid; don't drink that rocket fuel. It's fer punching holes in the ozone layer."
I'm just saying... 0 comments
A recent study found that 100,000 Iraqis have died because of this war. 100,000. Can you imagine how pissed off we would be if another country sent their troops in and they caused the deaths of 100,000 of our civilians? The United States is creating baby terrorists every single day we're over there fighting. I don't think reporters should be embedded—or at the very least, there should be as many NOT in bed with the military as there are in bed with them. This interview on Alternet with an unembedded reporter is very interesting. He ain't seeing the same things we're being told every day in our mainstream media, that's for sure. Quelle surprise.
And apropos of nothing except continuing the discussion of folly: you've probably heard that they've discovered rocket fuel in lettuce, organic milk, and bottled water. Yes, rocket fuel. The FDA says there is no cause for alarm because they're not sure it's bad for us to be consuming rocket fuel. OK, I'll say right here and now, ladies and gents, that I ain't no scientist or one of them smart fellers running the FDA, but I suspect what my grammy used to say would apply here: "Don't be an asshole, kid; don't drink that rocket fuel. It's fer punching holes in the ozone layer."
I'm just saying... 0 comments
Somebody to Love
Yes, you guessed it. I'm listening to Queen and their fellahs in great homoerotic rock 'n roll, Led Zeppelin. Good thing we don't have neighbors very close to us. "Whole Lotta Love" can't be played correctly unless it can be turned up all the way. Before the lovely boys, I played Annie Lennox's "I need a man." As I've mentioned here before, I appreciate the irony of that song. And before all that, trance dancing. I danced around the living room whilst my man read the Complete Far Side by Gary Larson. Could anything be better?
Freddie Mercury was a genius. Nobody like him. When Queen first came out, so to speak, no rock group was doing anything like what they did. The first time I heard "We will rock you," I just laughed. Why hadn't someone thought of that before? And "Someone to Love" is so poignant. I tear up every time I hear it.
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I`m alright, I`m alright
I ain`t gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
For me, it ranks right up there with "I'm so lonesome I could cry"(POPUPS) by Hank Williams.
When I first became aware of Queen, I was in college. I was a fairly naive about some things. I barely knew what the words gay and lesbian meant. I thought every boy was attracted to boys and girls and every girl was attracted to girls and boys—since I was. I'd always had crushes on boys and girls. So what? It wasn’t something we talked about. As time went on, of course, I figured out not everyone was attracted to the same sex. Anyway, like Freddie Mercury, I was looking for somebody to love. Boys or girls.
Can anybody find me someone to love?
It was the seventies. I either connected with girls who liked boys or boys who liked boys. My best friend in college was of the boy persuasion. After class I'd hurry to his studio apartment above a store on the main street running through campus. We'd listen to Heart while he cooked for me. Sometimes I curled up in his clawfoot bathtub while he told me stories. (It was easier; his bed was a hideaway.) We talked about me going out and getting a job while he stayed home, wrote, and took care of me. (This was a similar relationship to the one I had with my best friend in high school, only she was a girl.)
My college friend and I were platonic friends, or so I thought, since I knew he was gay. But one day when we were drinking at Hungry Charlie's, the hangout just down the street from his apartment, my friend told me he loved me. "I love you, too, honey," I said, grinning from too much beer. "No, I don't mean like that," he said. "I really love you." Now, remember I was very young. I had always thought it would be romantic to have a friend fall in love with me even if I wasn’t in love with him. Flattering somehow. I mean, come on, if a friend could love me that way even after knowing all my secrets and idiosyncrasies, I would have found my great love, and naturally, I would then love him right back. Well, it didn't work that way. He told me he loved me. I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, and nearly threw up. Although I didn’t have a brother, I felt like my brother had just told me he wanted to have sex with me.
It ruined a great relationship. We were never the same after his declaration of love.
I stopped looking for somebody to love. Instead, I decided I didn't want to have the power to hurt someone like that again. If I hooked up with a jerk, I wouldn't have to worry about his feelings. So that's what I did. For four long years.
Then I went to the Clarion Writing Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan where I lived with eighteen other writers for six weeks. (Many of you have heard this story before.) Surrounded by other creative people, I fell in love again, with myself and the world. I also found two new best friends, one was Bill Coleman, the other was Mario Milosevic. Bill was nineteen and had not come out yet. Mario was twenty-two, fresh from Canada. He was the most interesting and funniest person I had ever met. And he had gorgeous legs. The thighs of a man and the ankles of a woman. He had (and has) the most beautiful slender ankles I have ever seen. Sometimes I just sit and stare at his ankles. He was a complete innocent, perhaps because he was Canadian. (They are so different from Americans.) He had no bitterness, none of that "I'm twenty-something and I'm sick of the world already." He was fascinated by everything—especially me.
Can anybody find me someone to love?
Yep. A year later, I married Mario. Bill attended the wedding, along with several other Clarion friends. Bill stayed for the honeymoon, which we spent at our apartment in Ann Arbor—and wandering around Detroit and environs.
I married my best friend, and I've never been sorry. He loves me, cooks for me, and tells me stories. My friend Bill died last year, from complications from AIDS. (I've written about him previously.) I don't know if he ever listened to Queen. Although he probably appreciated Freddie Mercury's theatrical style, he was not a fan of rock 'n roll. He loved the opera. He never really found somebody to love. Not in the way that he deserved. The way we all deserve. When you know someone is finally on your side no matter what, you're able to relax a bit in the world. He never relaxed.
I hope he knew I loved him deeply, for exactly who he was.
Did Freddie Mercury ever find somebody, anybody, to love? His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar in 1946. His parents were Persian. His classmates called him Freddie, and he changed his name to Freddie Mercury when he became a rock 'n roller. What a fitting name for him: the hermaphrodite god of alchemy. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 of AIDS.
We miss you, Freddie.
It's dark out now and cold. The hills across the river are covered in snow. I stood out on our front lawn this morning shivering and staring at the snowy gorge. At my feet was a poppy. It was closed, as if the flower had pulled its orange wrap closer around itself. No other flower has an orange like California poppies. It’s different from any other orange anywhere, I'm certain of it. It's more vibrant, shinier—alive in a way that makes you want to touch it, eat it, and leave it alone all at once. California poppies are a song of orange.
Freddie Mercury's music is like a wrap against the wind and cold. A stylish wrap, of course, the color of California poppies. Nirvana, baby,.
May You Love and Be Loved in Beauty!
Bliss
You turn up
Annie Lennox
dance with air
pull me up
away from
my book
we twirl
jump
sweat
embrace
laugh
until Annie
falls silent
and the house
is just us
holding hands
and warming
the air
with our
breath.
—Mario Milosevic
Santa Fe, 1999
0 comments
Freddie Mercury was a genius. Nobody like him. When Queen first came out, so to speak, no rock group was doing anything like what they did. The first time I heard "We will rock you," I just laughed. Why hadn't someone thought of that before? And "Someone to Love" is so poignant. I tear up every time I hear it.
Got no feel, I got no rhythm
I just keep losing my beat
I`m alright, I`m alright
I ain`t gonna face no defeat
I just gotta get out of this prison cell
For me, it ranks right up there with "I'm so lonesome I could cry"(POPUPS) by Hank Williams.
When I first became aware of Queen, I was in college. I was a fairly naive about some things. I barely knew what the words gay and lesbian meant. I thought every boy was attracted to boys and girls and every girl was attracted to girls and boys—since I was. I'd always had crushes on boys and girls. So what? It wasn’t something we talked about. As time went on, of course, I figured out not everyone was attracted to the same sex. Anyway, like Freddie Mercury, I was looking for somebody to love. Boys or girls.
Can anybody find me someone to love?
It was the seventies. I either connected with girls who liked boys or boys who liked boys. My best friend in college was of the boy persuasion. After class I'd hurry to his studio apartment above a store on the main street running through campus. We'd listen to Heart while he cooked for me. Sometimes I curled up in his clawfoot bathtub while he told me stories. (It was easier; his bed was a hideaway.) We talked about me going out and getting a job while he stayed home, wrote, and took care of me. (This was a similar relationship to the one I had with my best friend in high school, only she was a girl.)
My college friend and I were platonic friends, or so I thought, since I knew he was gay. But one day when we were drinking at Hungry Charlie's, the hangout just down the street from his apartment, my friend told me he loved me. "I love you, too, honey," I said, grinning from too much beer. "No, I don't mean like that," he said. "I really love you." Now, remember I was very young. I had always thought it would be romantic to have a friend fall in love with me even if I wasn’t in love with him. Flattering somehow. I mean, come on, if a friend could love me that way even after knowing all my secrets and idiosyncrasies, I would have found my great love, and naturally, I would then love him right back. Well, it didn't work that way. He told me he loved me. I got up, stumbled to the bathroom, and nearly threw up. Although I didn’t have a brother, I felt like my brother had just told me he wanted to have sex with me.
It ruined a great relationship. We were never the same after his declaration of love.
I stopped looking for somebody to love. Instead, I decided I didn't want to have the power to hurt someone like that again. If I hooked up with a jerk, I wouldn't have to worry about his feelings. So that's what I did. For four long years.
Then I went to the Clarion Writing Workshop in East Lansing, Michigan where I lived with eighteen other writers for six weeks. (Many of you have heard this story before.) Surrounded by other creative people, I fell in love again, with myself and the world. I also found two new best friends, one was Bill Coleman, the other was Mario Milosevic. Bill was nineteen and had not come out yet. Mario was twenty-two, fresh from Canada. He was the most interesting and funniest person I had ever met. And he had gorgeous legs. The thighs of a man and the ankles of a woman. He had (and has) the most beautiful slender ankles I have ever seen. Sometimes I just sit and stare at his ankles. He was a complete innocent, perhaps because he was Canadian. (They are so different from Americans.) He had no bitterness, none of that "I'm twenty-something and I'm sick of the world already." He was fascinated by everything—especially me.
Can anybody find me someone to love?
Yep. A year later, I married Mario. Bill attended the wedding, along with several other Clarion friends. Bill stayed for the honeymoon, which we spent at our apartment in Ann Arbor—and wandering around Detroit and environs.
I married my best friend, and I've never been sorry. He loves me, cooks for me, and tells me stories. My friend Bill died last year, from complications from AIDS. (I've written about him previously.) I don't know if he ever listened to Queen. Although he probably appreciated Freddie Mercury's theatrical style, he was not a fan of rock 'n roll. He loved the opera. He never really found somebody to love. Not in the way that he deserved. The way we all deserve. When you know someone is finally on your side no matter what, you're able to relax a bit in the world. He never relaxed.
I hope he knew I loved him deeply, for exactly who he was.
Did Freddie Mercury ever find somebody, anybody, to love? His real name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he was born in Zanzibar in 1946. His parents were Persian. His classmates called him Freddie, and he changed his name to Freddie Mercury when he became a rock 'n roller. What a fitting name for him: the hermaphrodite god of alchemy. Freddie Mercury died in 1991 of AIDS.
We miss you, Freddie.
It's dark out now and cold. The hills across the river are covered in snow. I stood out on our front lawn this morning shivering and staring at the snowy gorge. At my feet was a poppy. It was closed, as if the flower had pulled its orange wrap closer around itself. No other flower has an orange like California poppies. It’s different from any other orange anywhere, I'm certain of it. It's more vibrant, shinier—alive in a way that makes you want to touch it, eat it, and leave it alone all at once. California poppies are a song of orange.
Freddie Mercury's music is like a wrap against the wind and cold. A stylish wrap, of course, the color of California poppies. Nirvana, baby,.
May You Love and Be Loved in Beauty!
Bliss
You turn up
Annie Lennox
dance with air
pull me up
away from
my book
we twirl
jump
sweat
embrace
laugh
until Annie
falls silent
and the house
is just us
holding hands
and warming
the air
with our
breath.
—Mario Milosevic
Santa Fe, 1999
0 comments
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Making a Difference
So I've been sitting back this last month, since the elections. It's quite Kafkaesque, isn't?
What's happening in Washington just makes me shake my head. The Republicans won't let a bill come to a vote if they believe more Dems will vote for it then Republicans. The Republicans are rewriting how this country is governed. Remember, they make the laws. The coup is complete, it seems.
As expected, the Emperor's administration is continuing to dismantle environmental rules and regulations. It's especially important now to stay abreast of what's happening with the environment. I believe the National Defense Council does a good job. I just heard about NET from the article I linked to above, but they look like they're doing good work, too.
Bill Moyers gave a good speech about the environment recently. He said, "Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’ Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country." They know what he's talking about now as millions of people around our country sit around waiting for the rapture.
It is imperative to protect this planet, our biosphere. Yet I still drive a car. However, people all over our beautiful Earth are doing what they can to protect the environment and us. When Charlotte Brody discovered medical incinerators were the number one "distributors" of dioxin, she got to work. Unfortunately, women are the test tubes for all the chemicals in our environment. It's so depressing that when I think about it, I get weak in the knees. Charlotte Brody didn't get weak. She helped to change the way hospitals incinerate waste. The world is a difference and better place because of her. Each of us can make a difference.
You’ve no doubt heard the Republican candidate for governor in Washington state won by 42 votes, so we’re having ourselves a recount. I volunteered to be one of the “checkers,” watching the counters count. I imagine it will be boring and fascinating. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
0 comments
What's happening in Washington just makes me shake my head. The Republicans won't let a bill come to a vote if they believe more Dems will vote for it then Republicans. The Republicans are rewriting how this country is governed. Remember, they make the laws. The coup is complete, it seems.
As expected, the Emperor's administration is continuing to dismantle environmental rules and regulations. It's especially important now to stay abreast of what's happening with the environment. I believe the National Defense Council does a good job. I just heard about NET from the article I linked to above, but they look like they're doing good work, too.
Bill Moyers gave a good speech about the environment recently. He said, "Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’ Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country." They know what he's talking about now as millions of people around our country sit around waiting for the rapture.
It is imperative to protect this planet, our biosphere. Yet I still drive a car. However, people all over our beautiful Earth are doing what they can to protect the environment and us. When Charlotte Brody discovered medical incinerators were the number one "distributors" of dioxin, she got to work. Unfortunately, women are the test tubes for all the chemicals in our environment. It's so depressing that when I think about it, I get weak in the knees. Charlotte Brody didn't get weak. She helped to change the way hospitals incinerate waste. The world is a difference and better place because of her. Each of us can make a difference.
You’ve no doubt heard the Republican candidate for governor in Washington state won by 42 votes, so we’re having ourselves a recount. I volunteered to be one of the “checkers,” watching the counters count. I imagine it will be boring and fascinating. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
0 comments
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Steamin'
OK. She can stop now. Mount St. Helens has been declared Washington state's number one polluter! Geez Louise. My friend Kevin in Hawaii told me about vog, the volcanic smog created by the volcano in Hawaii, but I figured our volcano had to be different. Duh. Let's hope she settles down soon. I heard they sent in DEQ to shut her down, and she said, "Just clearin' my throat, boys. Wait til I really get going." Alpha bitch all right. I can relate.
0 comments
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Notes of a Natural Woman: Eating Cake
Friday, November 26, 2005: Drove to the refuge again. It was sunny and beautiful at our house, cold and foggy at the refuge. More people this time. Several of them were watching a peacock wandering near the parking lot. It looked a bit lost and out of place.
A bald eagle flew languorously overhead, so Mario and I got out our binoculars and watched. Bald eagles seem to embody confidence, strength. It’s difficult to imagine a bald eagle afraid or incompetent. Is it something in their genes? The female bald eagles lays two or three eggs and they hatch in order. Most often the older chick will kill the younger eaglet, especially if the older one is female. The female is bigger than the male. The parental units do not try to stop these killings.
Near the lake were three eagles on the ground. At first I thought they were golden eagles, but as far as I know, I’ve never seen a golden eagle, so I probably wasn’t seeing one now. Golden eagles are not as fond as lake fronts as bald eagles are. Perhaps these were juvenile bald eagles. I wasn’t certain. We heard the kar-roo-o-o-o of the sandhill cranes. We looked up and saw a flock of about a hundred of these slender beautiful birds. This time we were able to see them clearly through our binoculars. I turned to Mario and said, “I’m in love.”
Not that I wasn’t still in love with the tundra swans. Fewer of them were on the lake today than had been when we came on Monday. Still, their ooo-ooo-o-o blended with the kar-roo-o-o-o of the flying cranes.
As we watched the shoreline with our binoculars, I spotted two slender gray birds. At first I thought they were blue herons, but they stood taller, looking like short slender people wrapped in gray cloaks with tight fitting red hats: sandhill cranes. Eventually a dozen or so joined their compadres on the slope above the water.
Sandhill cranes are between 4’ and 5’ tall. (I’m 5’ tall—perhaps I’m a crane person.) Sandhills are endangered in Washington State. In 2000, only 19 nesting pairs remained. They mate for life. They have a series of calls (or notes of songs) they give during courtship. The female says one thing; then the males says another. Like other cranes, they have intricate dances which are used during courtship and other times. Wouldn’t it be something to witness that?
We watched them for a long while, until a man drove up and got out of his car. “Oh, a peacock, eh? Nothing against peacocks, but I’d love to see a fox make a dinner out of that. Yep, he’s gonna make some creature a good meal.”
November 28, 2004: We drove all the way out to Falling Creek and discovered I had forgotten my hat and scarf. It was sunny, but too icy cold for me to be tromping around in the woods without protection. We went back, stopped at the house for lunch, then decided to go to the refuge. We only remembered it was the end of the Thanksgiving holiday about the time we got to Ridgefield. We drove to the north end of the refuge and decided to walk the trail away from the lake (where we saw only a few swans today), toward the sound of many swans. We thought we might be on another wild goose chase (sorry), but we stepped onto the Oak Meadow trail anyway.
This trail led into a forest of old oaks. They weren’t the shrub oaks we usually see around here. They weren’t exactly like the huge old oak trees from back East, but they were taller than the scrub oaks, their branches reaching out and up like the oak trees from back home. Next time I go I’ll have to find out what kind they are.
The trees were skeletal. Their cinnamon-colored leaves made the path we walked on. An occasional sign told us what we were looking at: snowberries, hawthorn, Oregon grape. Unfortunately, what we could primarily see were the Himalayan blackberries. The person who introduced those into the Pacific Northwest should be doing time in prison—or own property where they’ve taken over. Native blackberries are a non invasive part of the woods, and they grow harmlessly amongst the flora of a healthy forest. Himalayan blackberries, which are not native, are noisome beyond description. Anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest understands completely. You could swear they are constantly on the move, like stealthy triffids, only water ain’t gonna kill ‘em.
We walked for a few minutes when suddenly I saw a gigantic oak. Six or more branches, each the size of a regular oak trunk, snaked up and out from a main trunk that was about four times as wide as my body. As soon as I saw it I felt as though I had found the mother lode, the heart of the forest, the soul of the place. I stood in awe. I whispered sweet nothings to it, walked to it and touched the bark.
Then I bowed and walked away. The path went in and out of the blackberries and oak trees. Along the edges of the path, chickweed grew. In the dark forest, the chickweed plants were like thousands of tiny bright green footlights. We never found the swans and didn’t see any other wildlife.
On the way back, when we were in the darkest part of the forest, we heard the deep eerie call of an owl, whooowhooowhooo. Twice. We came to the Great Oak again and paid homage. As we walked out of the forest into the light near the end of the trail we heard the distant and unmistakable song of the sandhill cranes. We looked up. Three different flocks flew over, each with 100 cranes or more. We watched and listened, pointing and laughing and grinning and completely satisfied to be on this spot on this planet at this moment.
Monday, November 29, 2004: We drove to Falling Creek. This would probably be our last walk before the gate closed on Wednesday. I had on many layers of clothes, but it was cold. The ground was frozen in a strange way. I’ve noticed this phenomenon on the trail before. It freezes below the top layer of the path. This means it was not slippery in most places. The iciness was pitted, and it crunched as we walked over it—the sound was not like what you hear when walking over snow but more like what you’d hear walking over rice crispies. In some spots, lines of ice grew out of the sides of the slopes or tree trunks. These were not icicles. Some of these ice formations curled like thick clear wood shavings. Mario thought water leaking off the hillsides froze and then as more water came through, it froze, too. Like ice toothpaste being pushed out of the tube.
We walked in the cold toward the falls. Mario squeezed one of the mushrooms. It was frozen. All the color had leaked out of the fallen leaves on the trail so that most were a white beige, composting even as we walked. I wondered where the colors had gone. Did they stay stored at the roots of the trees until it was time to grow more leaves, then up the trunk the colors went?
We passed no one on the trail today. We had the woods all to ourselves. We hardly even heard a bird.
What a sigh the falls were. How to describe it. The sounds was different. Thicker, as though the water was heavier—more like milk flowing than water. Everywhere the mist and water had touched rock or moss or grass it was now white. The moss and grass on the stones around and behind the waterfall were snowy. Icicles grew outward from the rock. Outward—not down, not up, out, as though reaching for the water. We’re in the domain of the Ice Queen, the Ice Goddess, I thought. Mist rose from the falling water. The rocks where we stood were covered in clear ice, so we stayed very still. I crouched and watched the water fall, the mist rise, the icicles reach out...
I whispered a thank you, then poured a bit of water near the Oregon grape on our way out. I glanced back at the falls. It could be our last time here until spring.
We reached the parking lot without seeing another person. We looked at each other and grinned. The cold was separating the curious from the lovers.
The forest seemed to be snuggling down beneath the cold and mist, just like I would curl under a blanket for a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Nice and comfy.
Winter had come to the woods.
Wednesday, December 1, 2004: I drove to Falling Creek on the chance they had not closed the gate yet. Last year they hadn’t shut it right on December 1. About a mile before the turnoff, I saw snow along the side of the road. The dirt road leading to the trail was snow-covered. I drove up it to the gate. It was closed and locked. Maybe Mario and I would come back this weekend and walk the two miles to the trailhead from here. I wasn’t going to do it today, alone.
I drove home. My father had just called to say they had postponed my mother’s heart surgery from tomorrow to Monday. I called him and tried to reassure him. His voice was anxious. “I don’t want to talk about it any more,” he said. So I told him I had sold a book of essays. That seemed to cheer him. Afterward, I drove to the Turtle Pond.
The sun was going down. Its light turned the clouds pink and red. Golden rays streamed out from the clouds as I walked by the Turtle Pond. No swans. Mallard ducks squawked and flew away from me. Geese floated on the pond. Normally I don’t pay any attention to Canada geese. They seem nearly as ubiquitous as the blackberry bushes. I had nicknamed them goose-shit containers because wherever they go, they leave little green cylinders of...crap. The geese in our area don’t migrate, either, so they seem a bit less than wild. However, today I lifted my binoculars and really looked at them.
I had never noticed before how beautiful they are. Elegant, like the swans, only they are black, white, and a gray. How could I have never noticed how gorgeous they are?
They have been held sacred and worshipped by cultures all over the planet. The Mandan and Hidatsa tribes of the Plains had (maybe have) Goose Societies made up exclusively of women. It was said the goose brought the corn spirits, then took away the spirits for safekeeping until spring. The women who were part of the Goose Society were thought to have special abilities in the garden. And of course, there is Mother Goose, who was probably originally the Goddess Juno or Hathor, who laid the Golden Egg. She is a great storyteller. Perhaps I should stop and see if these geese have any stories to t
A bald eagle flew languorously overhead, so Mario and I got out our binoculars and watched. Bald eagles seem to embody confidence, strength. It’s difficult to imagine a bald eagle afraid or incompetent. Is it something in their genes? The female bald eagles lays two or three eggs and they hatch in order. Most often the older chick will kill the younger eaglet, especially if the older one is female. The female is bigger than the male. The parental units do not try to stop these killings.
Near the lake were three eagles on the ground. At first I thought they were golden eagles, but as far as I know, I’ve never seen a golden eagle, so I probably wasn’t seeing one now. Golden eagles are not as fond as lake fronts as bald eagles are. Perhaps these were juvenile bald eagles. I wasn’t certain. We heard the kar-roo-o-o-o of the sandhill cranes. We looked up and saw a flock of about a hundred of these slender beautiful birds. This time we were able to see them clearly through our binoculars. I turned to Mario and said, “I’m in love.”
Not that I wasn’t still in love with the tundra swans. Fewer of them were on the lake today than had been when we came on Monday. Still, their ooo-ooo-o-o blended with the kar-roo-o-o-o of the flying cranes.
As we watched the shoreline with our binoculars, I spotted two slender gray birds. At first I thought they were blue herons, but they stood taller, looking like short slender people wrapped in gray cloaks with tight fitting red hats: sandhill cranes. Eventually a dozen or so joined their compadres on the slope above the water.
Sandhill cranes are between 4’ and 5’ tall. (I’m 5’ tall—perhaps I’m a crane person.) Sandhills are endangered in Washington State. In 2000, only 19 nesting pairs remained. They mate for life. They have a series of calls (or notes of songs) they give during courtship. The female says one thing; then the males says another. Like other cranes, they have intricate dances which are used during courtship and other times. Wouldn’t it be something to witness that?
We watched them for a long while, until a man drove up and got out of his car. “Oh, a peacock, eh? Nothing against peacocks, but I’d love to see a fox make a dinner out of that. Yep, he’s gonna make some creature a good meal.”
November 28, 2004: We drove all the way out to Falling Creek and discovered I had forgotten my hat and scarf. It was sunny, but too icy cold for me to be tromping around in the woods without protection. We went back, stopped at the house for lunch, then decided to go to the refuge. We only remembered it was the end of the Thanksgiving holiday about the time we got to Ridgefield. We drove to the north end of the refuge and decided to walk the trail away from the lake (where we saw only a few swans today), toward the sound of many swans. We thought we might be on another wild goose chase (sorry), but we stepped onto the Oak Meadow trail anyway.
This trail led into a forest of old oaks. They weren’t the shrub oaks we usually see around here. They weren’t exactly like the huge old oak trees from back East, but they were taller than the scrub oaks, their branches reaching out and up like the oak trees from back home. Next time I go I’ll have to find out what kind they are.
The trees were skeletal. Their cinnamon-colored leaves made the path we walked on. An occasional sign told us what we were looking at: snowberries, hawthorn, Oregon grape. Unfortunately, what we could primarily see were the Himalayan blackberries. The person who introduced those into the Pacific Northwest should be doing time in prison—or own property where they’ve taken over. Native blackberries are a non invasive part of the woods, and they grow harmlessly amongst the flora of a healthy forest. Himalayan blackberries, which are not native, are noisome beyond description. Anyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest understands completely. You could swear they are constantly on the move, like stealthy triffids, only water ain’t gonna kill ‘em.
We walked for a few minutes when suddenly I saw a gigantic oak. Six or more branches, each the size of a regular oak trunk, snaked up and out from a main trunk that was about four times as wide as my body. As soon as I saw it I felt as though I had found the mother lode, the heart of the forest, the soul of the place. I stood in awe. I whispered sweet nothings to it, walked to it and touched the bark.
Then I bowed and walked away. The path went in and out of the blackberries and oak trees. Along the edges of the path, chickweed grew. In the dark forest, the chickweed plants were like thousands of tiny bright green footlights. We never found the swans and didn’t see any other wildlife.
On the way back, when we were in the darkest part of the forest, we heard the deep eerie call of an owl, whooowhooowhooo. Twice. We came to the Great Oak again and paid homage. As we walked out of the forest into the light near the end of the trail we heard the distant and unmistakable song of the sandhill cranes. We looked up. Three different flocks flew over, each with 100 cranes or more. We watched and listened, pointing and laughing and grinning and completely satisfied to be on this spot on this planet at this moment.
Monday, November 29, 2004: We drove to Falling Creek. This would probably be our last walk before the gate closed on Wednesday. I had on many layers of clothes, but it was cold. The ground was frozen in a strange way. I’ve noticed this phenomenon on the trail before. It freezes below the top layer of the path. This means it was not slippery in most places. The iciness was pitted, and it crunched as we walked over it—the sound was not like what you hear when walking over snow but more like what you’d hear walking over rice crispies. In some spots, lines of ice grew out of the sides of the slopes or tree trunks. These were not icicles. Some of these ice formations curled like thick clear wood shavings. Mario thought water leaking off the hillsides froze and then as more water came through, it froze, too. Like ice toothpaste being pushed out of the tube.
We walked in the cold toward the falls. Mario squeezed one of the mushrooms. It was frozen. All the color had leaked out of the fallen leaves on the trail so that most were a white beige, composting even as we walked. I wondered where the colors had gone. Did they stay stored at the roots of the trees until it was time to grow more leaves, then up the trunk the colors went?
We passed no one on the trail today. We had the woods all to ourselves. We hardly even heard a bird.
What a sigh the falls were. How to describe it. The sounds was different. Thicker, as though the water was heavier—more like milk flowing than water. Everywhere the mist and water had touched rock or moss or grass it was now white. The moss and grass on the stones around and behind the waterfall were snowy. Icicles grew outward from the rock. Outward—not down, not up, out, as though reaching for the water. We’re in the domain of the Ice Queen, the Ice Goddess, I thought. Mist rose from the falling water. The rocks where we stood were covered in clear ice, so we stayed very still. I crouched and watched the water fall, the mist rise, the icicles reach out...
I whispered a thank you, then poured a bit of water near the Oregon grape on our way out. I glanced back at the falls. It could be our last time here until spring.
We reached the parking lot without seeing another person. We looked at each other and grinned. The cold was separating the curious from the lovers.
The forest seemed to be snuggling down beneath the cold and mist, just like I would curl under a blanket for a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Nice and comfy.
Winter had come to the woods.
Wednesday, December 1, 2004: I drove to Falling Creek on the chance they had not closed the gate yet. Last year they hadn’t shut it right on December 1. About a mile before the turnoff, I saw snow along the side of the road. The dirt road leading to the trail was snow-covered. I drove up it to the gate. It was closed and locked. Maybe Mario and I would come back this weekend and walk the two miles to the trailhead from here. I wasn’t going to do it today, alone.
I drove home. My father had just called to say they had postponed my mother’s heart surgery from tomorrow to Monday. I called him and tried to reassure him. His voice was anxious. “I don’t want to talk about it any more,” he said. So I told him I had sold a book of essays. That seemed to cheer him. Afterward, I drove to the Turtle Pond.
The sun was going down. Its light turned the clouds pink and red. Golden rays streamed out from the clouds as I walked by the Turtle Pond. No swans. Mallard ducks squawked and flew away from me. Geese floated on the pond. Normally I don’t pay any attention to Canada geese. They seem nearly as ubiquitous as the blackberry bushes. I had nicknamed them goose-shit containers because wherever they go, they leave little green cylinders of...crap. The geese in our area don’t migrate, either, so they seem a bit less than wild. However, today I lifted my binoculars and really looked at them.
I had never noticed before how beautiful they are. Elegant, like the swans, only they are black, white, and a gray. How could I have never noticed how gorgeous they are?
They have been held sacred and worshipped by cultures all over the planet. The Mandan and Hidatsa tribes of the Plains had (maybe have) Goose Societies made up exclusively of women. It was said the goose brought the corn spirits, then took away the spirits for safekeeping until spring. The women who were part of the Goose Society were thought to have special abilities in the garden. And of course, there is Mother Goose, who was probably originally the Goddess Juno or Hathor, who laid the Golden Egg. She is a great storyteller. Perhaps I should stop and see if these geese have any stories to t