I have been writing all my life, and my writing is me - talking to you. If you were here, I'd probably talk you to death. I listen too. And I see. This writing, talking, listening and looking is my connection to the world, where I believe we are all connected, part of the evolving and everlasting system that is our planet's home.
I'm old ( though that is not how I see myself) but still always discovering. I believe that my task in life is to learn to balance, to accept the contradictions inherent in living and to be grateful
We are old women
the children of our mothers
We share our memories
Talk about them
Mothers and the fathers
How they were
how held us
how they couldn’t
how hurt or comforted
How we held or did not
hold the children of our own.
What particular scar each of us acquired,
How we wounded
what injuries were sustained
Who went wrong
Who is forgiven
My mother held me crying
In her lap without penalty
offered her thighs soft pillows
to cry into
vowed to walk to Jerusalem
on her knees
And I am whole and grateful
She is forgiven every other fault
though I carry them
The mothers and the fathers
and the children are fashioned
in an endless chain
Each loop arising from the last
carrying its beauty and
its imperfection.
We are old women
We have children
They are mothers
We are children
I had occasion to talk about this visit with my granddaughter and friends today.
I still remember the look in her eyes.
She's a big girl now.
The adults were talking about how good it would be to know about what kind of support particular corporations give to particular causes. That would let us decide whether to shop in Walmart or choose Target, Home Depot or Lowes. We don't want to support big box stores, but most of us guiltily do. Anyway, I do. I would like to live off the grid and not be tempted by klik bait and really strip down. At 80, I don't have the discipline. Who am I kidding. When did I?
Anyway let me be clear that I think we really need to address our real needs and think about and do something about moving toward sensible economics and real equality.
We need to look at money as a tool to allow everyone to have what they need to exist, not as something to count, hoard and acquire the very most and the very easiest life we can possibly have until there is no more. No wild places, no regular people, no planet. We need to learn to resist and address the forces that make us want it all.
A trip to the store2013
I went to Walmart with my granddaughter to buy underpants
She will be three next month
And needs underpants instead of pull ups instead of diapers
At Carters outlet they were 3 for 15 dollars
Too much to pay
At Walmart they were 6 for 5.84
This is probably the first poem
That quotes the price of underpants at Walmart
You should have seen her eyes
When she saw the multitude of shiny things
Barrettes with sparkles, plastic ribbons,
And a pink umbrella with a cat in a plastic heart as a handle
There were birthday cards that sang Walt Disney princess songs
With paper ballerinas literally twirling
What won’t they think of next
She chose some headbands with paste diamonds
As she touched the other thinks that sparkled
She repeated we don’t buy this, we don’t buy this.
A mantra to soothe the ache of desire
It’s magic isn’t it?
Who wouldn’t want it all?
Who of us is able to resist?
I worked yesterday, a little more than an hour away from home, and when I came back at dark, my coffee table was birthday arranged. I don't remember such wealth all at once. I am touched and grateful. This feels so cool! I have to point out especially, the flower arrangement of dandelions, white violets and crab apple branches, a design imagined by my granddaughter, I'm sure.
Yesterday morning, before I went to work - which I always anticipate with some anxiety (I'm not good at keeping track of time, so I really make an effort to set aside a necessary amount to get ready, set out, and arrive when I'm supposed to. Still, I'm always get a little side tracked and have to rush in the end.) ... I was deleting email when I noticed an announcement from my first kirtan teacher Dave Stringer about something online called Bless Fest.
That's what i'M GOING TO DO!. From now on, I will listen to kirtan every day and go blissfully off in the future. No more anxiety at all!!!
When my daughter and family gave me the Kirtan Flight School at Kripalu for an earlier major birthday, I knew it would change my life. I love to sing and to sing with others is a particular gift. It was a little more daunting than I expected because it's actually geared to people who want to lead kirtan and I hadn't even sung kirtan, let alone thought about playing an instrument and being at the front of the room. No matter.
"kirtan is a call-and-response style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite or describe a legend, or express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas.[3] It may include dancing or direct expression of bhavas (emotive states) by the singer.[3] Many kirtan performances are structured to engage the audience where they either repeat the chant,[4] or reply to the call of the singer.[5][6][7]" Thank you wikipedia.
We started a call and response chant that continued for maybe a half an hour, changing rhythms, drum beats, cadences and harmonies, repeating the verses as he sang them. When the chant was done, there was absolute silence - as if there were no more breath - or as if we were all in one breath. We were still. I realized I had no memory of the melody of the chant.
This continued over the course of 3 days. Dave is magnetic: Here he is talking about his flight school https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWH4nNk66NA
Though I respect and appreciate faith and belief in its various forms I have a problem with the god I have been schooled in. I probably am less critical of the concept of multiple gods because it is easier to interpret them as not gods, but ideas. I belong to a lovely synagogue and I am really uncomfortable with the prayers. I think I go because I want community and am attached to childhood memory and connect to my history and culture. Saying prayers in Hebrew in the synagogue is not too bad. I am attached to the language and can understand it but not well enough to have each work reverberate with meaning. God is such an egotist! A pretty violent one at that. So telling him that he is my father, king and on and on is not my thing. When I was a child, seeing god as a grandfather, and a Jewish one at that was ok. I asked him for things when I really wanted them, thanked him when they came, and figured that when they didn't there was a good reason. But as an adult, visualizing a god isn't something I agree to. The world, the universe, Gaia, Ubunto, we are all together and are not the higher power. Maybe the togetherness is the Higher Power. Maybe Physics and chemistry, magnetism, electricity. There is enough mysterious, miraculous higher power to go around and astound me. And I'm good with that even though I am unable to get my head around the The Big Bang.
At the Kirtan workshop, Dave suggested that we not describe Shiva as the many armed goddess (often painted blue) called among other things - The Destroyer. (It's not clear to me if she is she or he, and I find that engaging - Indian deities are so many and have so many aspects. You can find whatever quality you are looking for in one of them.) We were advised to think of Shiva as the deliverer of change, of destruction but also opportunity.
Thinking of 30,000 Indian gods, I translated this for myself to mean that praise to one is praise to an aspect of life, gratitude. And even if the idea arises from a religion that has horrendous aspects, as do all other organized religions, this aspect is extremely valuable to my soul. "Take what you need" (and leave the rest).
So On my long ride up north and back south yesterday I listened to kirtan and sang it in the loudest voice possible. Come to think of it, I always want to sing loudly in the car with the windows open so others can join in. And of course, I am grateful Gracias a la vida: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIrGQD84F1g
Keep singing
Dear Beth
Hi Beth. I am now - at this late age - 5/15/1940 on all medical records, getting it together. I have a website :
http://themermaidcrone.com on which I am putting my writing and artwork. It will serve as my archive and be available to anyone who is interested and wants to connect. So there you go.
I have been discussing advanced directives and final wishes with my very responsible children, and I am more and more intellectually accepting of the process and possibilities. The more rationally I address this, however, the more unacceptable (read real) it becomes. It looms larger. The bruised maple tree outside my bedroom window greets me every day. Last Tuesday a raccoon went to sleep in the crotch of one of its trunks and did not move until dusk. She woke, went about her daily hygiene, explored higher, went out on a limb and then took off. I know that it's all still here, but there's a nasty little anxiety pain in my belly that I can't make go away. It makes me nervous. Yesterday, my friend and neighbor walked with her dog all the way to Miccucci's and back - that's almost 6 miles. Besides the usual breathlessness going over the bridge and getting over the need for a public restroom (there aren't any), it was a great walk and not at all difficult. I've told her that walking with her is like being alone. It could be an insult, but it's a compliment - it's perfectly comfortable, and I am grateful. All and all, I am always grateful - like the Stafford poem. Thank you. I miss you.
"Yes" by William Stafford
It could happen any time, tornado
Earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could you know. That's why we wake
And look out - no guarantees
in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
Like right now, like noon,
Like evening.
ALeph’s Alphabet, the children’s book is on sale for $16.50 + postage If you are interested, contact/email me and I will let you know when they will be available. I’ve included currently available designs here if you desire any such things. I am open for requests to design for special occasions or events or…
I am really excited. I approved a proof of Aleph’s Alphabet, the alphabet book I made for my granddaughter, Aleph, about twenty years ago. It is an animal alphabet: armadillos, birds, cats, dogs, elephants, goats, hippos, iguanas…. and I am thrilled with the way the proof looks. I worked on the publication of the book so that…
Below are some examples of projects I have designed in the past: brochures, flyers, ad copy, logos. Many of these were designed to advertise the bed and breakfast I hosted for 10 years in beautiful, Down East Maine and for community events. Others were produced for organizations at which I worked. I’d be happy to…
The Albany Bulb is a landfill/ cum park on San Francisco Bay where people take their dogs walking and others set up places to sleep and express themselves with art they make out of refuse. It is stunning and confusing and random and beautiful
I need to be speaking to whomever out there/in here wants to listen.
My computer is so full of conflicting and connecting information that it opens up windows where stuff is written over other stuff. Since I live alone with my dog, and my dog is only tolerant of my connection to this medium of information or fantasy, and does not participate in it, the connection here is between my friend/enemy/obsession computer and me. I’m old and I’m confused. I think, like the web and its developers, that there is righteousness and responsibility in sharing my unique (That’s sarcastic) insight with others: that it will inform their lives and make things better – which is solipsistic- yes?
The boundaries (if they exist) blur. Nothing is true. That statement is true. (Then something is true, is it not? Beats me!) The problem of working in a nursing home when you are almost 74 is that I cannot separate oneself from the basic fact that old age leads to death, and the path is often neither easy nor pretty. As everything narrows, what are my expectations for achieving that which I have not achieved before, now that I have the last chance. And as my faculties fail – or widen – am I more open and wiser to the expansive possibilities of being or seeing, or am I just dementing.
Most of the resident/inmates of nursing facilities are demented to a degree, but it is in the education of those who care for them that the disconnect from reality, as we once knew it, is not necessarily demented. Just different. Resident’s lives are constrained and limited by their geography: a room. a hallway. a dining table, a wheelchair. They get to see only those who visit them. Otherwise, their lives are filled with dreams, memories and the misunderstandings of projected images on tv that are themselves, fictional, even when they purport to be the news of the world , i.e, true reality. Their contexts are distorted: do I see a parrot or a pair of sunglasses? and they don’t get the joke in the ubiquitous advertisements, which depend on being hip to the current trend.
For example: We watched 26 days of repeated reports, videos and speculations about the missing plane. Experts standing on maps of the Indian Ocean bringing to bear their expertise and academic credentials to explain why the new search area was 700 miles closer to Perth than it was yesterday, interspersed with images (perhaps acquired yesterday, perhaps from stock files acquired two years ago) illustrating the state of this particular ocean, so current viewers can picture the difficulty of seeing debris while being informed of the various possibilities that will explain (there is always an explanation) random accidents of life, nature, the planet and the solar system, the universe and the possible parallel universes. It’s a lot to take in without blinking.
So they, in their rooms and I, with my stuffed nose and cough acquired from them, am/are confused and past and future, dreams and things that actually seem to have happened when I was awake, and knowledge that I know and pieces of information (or data) that I think I may have known, and experiences and fragments of imagined experience mix in the soup. It’s delicious, but is it nourishing or is it contributing to the plaque accumulating in the vessels that provide the blood supply to my brain?
finding my voice 