Saturday, April 27, 2002
A Sense of Scent
This afternoon, I walked over to check on my grave-sized garden. The parsley patch I planted last year was already up and dancing in the wind. In the corner, small green sprouts of new lavender peered through layers of winter-grayed spikes. I held one of the new lavender leaves up to my nose. I love the smell of lavender, only in part because one of the great romantic adventurers of my life loved it too. The scent lingering in my memory prompted me to unearth this poem I wrote in the early 90s.
The Sense of Scent
She thought she was done with him,
but one night the moon rose
clear and full-faced,
and an early autumn wind
swept the scent of lavender
through her open window.
Some times are harder than others
to sit silent,
hands clenched against
the lure of the pen,
mouth set against
the call of the phone,
thinking to oneself
that some things are better
left to silence,
to the slow decay of time,
the turning of moons
and lavender seasons.
But even in the darkest of corners
some things refuse to die –
some small husk still
riddled with seeds,
some insistent root
defying the dust,
some dormant dream
of a riotous clash of hearts,
curious clutch of minds,
a dance of hands that
hope and hold and, too soon,
let go.
She thought she was done with him,
except his voice
still pulls at her belly
like the insistent tides of the moon.
So when he calls
from places lush
with a thousand thriving things,
she sends him dewy lavender
wrapped in familiar black lace,
because, they say,
the sense of smell
is the most visceral,
holding even the darkening
memory of the dying.
Sigh. Spring.
Comments
This afternoon, I walked over to check on my grave-sized garden. The parsley patch I planted last year was already up and dancing in the wind. In the corner, small green sprouts of new lavender peered through layers of winter-grayed spikes. I held one of the new lavender leaves up to my nose. I love the smell of lavender, only in part because one of the great romantic adventurers of my life loved it too. The scent lingering in my memory prompted me to unearth this poem I wrote in the early 90s.
The Sense of Scent
She thought she was done with him,
but one night the moon rose
clear and full-faced,
and an early autumn wind
swept the scent of lavender
through her open window.
Some times are harder than others
to sit silent,
hands clenched against
the lure of the pen,
mouth set against
the call of the phone,
thinking to oneself
that some things are better
left to silence,
to the slow decay of time,
the turning of moons
and lavender seasons.
But even in the darkest of corners
some things refuse to die –
some small husk still
riddled with seeds,
some insistent root
defying the dust,
some dormant dream
of a riotous clash of hearts,
curious clutch of minds,
a dance of hands that
hope and hold and, too soon,
let go.
She thought she was done with him,
except his voice
still pulls at her belly
like the insistent tides of the moon.
So when he calls
from places lush
with a thousand thriving things,
she sends him dewy lavender
wrapped in familiar black lace,
because, they say,
the sense of smell
is the most visceral,
holding even the darkening
memory of the dying.
Sigh. Spring.
Comments
What is happening to our children?
We give them birth, and most of us look forward to all that comes after. We do our best to teach their minds, touch their hearts, heal their bodies, guide their souls, keep their eyes clear and their butts clean. We frustrate them, we limit them, sometimes we embarrass them, but we always love them. Most of all, we love them. At least most of us most of all love them.
And yet we might never really know them -- especially the ones who one day walk out of a rest room dressed in black and coldly eliminate themselves as well as those who are not their enemies; the ones who one day walk into a crowded market and boldly explode themselves and those who are not their enemies; the ones who eliminate their bothersome sibling and bury him along with their dreams.
What happens to them between us and the rest of the world? What happens to how much we love them? What happens to how much they love? What is happening to our children? What is happening to us?
Comments
We give them birth, and most of us look forward to all that comes after. We do our best to teach their minds, touch their hearts, heal their bodies, guide their souls, keep their eyes clear and their butts clean. We frustrate them, we limit them, sometimes we embarrass them, but we always love them. Most of all, we love them. At least most of us most of all love them.
And yet we might never really know them -- especially the ones who one day walk out of a rest room dressed in black and coldly eliminate themselves as well as those who are not their enemies; the ones who one day walk into a crowded market and boldly explode themselves and those who are not their enemies; the ones who eliminate their bothersome sibling and bury him along with their dreams.
What happens to them between us and the rest of the world? What happens to how much we love them? What happens to how much they love? What is happening to our children? What is happening to us?
Comments
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." --Carl Sagan
This was a quote nestled among the blog posts of a lively and creative student, whose site is worth checking out.
I got fixated on the quote because of a link that b!X emailed me that offers a theory, based on information that the genome project has shared, about human ancestry.
The site begins with the following statement:
In whose image was The Adam – the prototype of modern humans, Homo sapiens – created? The Bible asserts that the Elohim said: “Let us fashion the Adam in our image and after our likeness.” But if one is to accept a tentative explanation for enigmatic genes that humans possess, offered when the deciphering of the human genome was announced in mid-February, the feat was decided upon by a group of bacteria!
The site goes on to explain, in somewhat scientific detail, the composition of human DNA, beginning with this statement:
Moreover, there was hardly any uniqueness to the human genes. They are comparative to not the presumed 95 percent but to almost 99 percent of the chimpanzees, and 70 percent of the mouse. Human genes, with the same functions, were found to be identical to genes of other vertebrates, as well as invertebrates, plants, fungi, even yeast. The findings not only confirmed that there was one source of DNA for all life on Earth, but also enabled the scientists to trace the evolutionary process – how more complex organisms evolved, genetically, from simpler ones, adopting at each stage the genes of a lower life form to create a more complex higher life form – culminating with Homo sapiens.
It was here, in tracing the vertical evolutionary record contained in the human and the other analyzed genomes, that the scientists ran into an enigma. The “head-scratching discovery by the public consortium,” as Science termed it, was that the human genome contains 223 genes that do not have the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree.
How did Man acquire such a bunch of enigmatic genes?
The site offers the same answer that many others have regarding "ancient astronauts." I find it as believable an explanation as any put forth by more traditional spiritualities.
Comments
This was a quote nestled among the blog posts of a lively and creative student, whose site is worth checking out.
I got fixated on the quote because of a link that b!X emailed me that offers a theory, based on information that the genome project has shared, about human ancestry.
The site begins with the following statement:
In whose image was The Adam – the prototype of modern humans, Homo sapiens – created? The Bible asserts that the Elohim said: “Let us fashion the Adam in our image and after our likeness.” But if one is to accept a tentative explanation for enigmatic genes that humans possess, offered when the deciphering of the human genome was announced in mid-February, the feat was decided upon by a group of bacteria!
The site goes on to explain, in somewhat scientific detail, the composition of human DNA, beginning with this statement:
Moreover, there was hardly any uniqueness to the human genes. They are comparative to not the presumed 95 percent but to almost 99 percent of the chimpanzees, and 70 percent of the mouse. Human genes, with the same functions, were found to be identical to genes of other vertebrates, as well as invertebrates, plants, fungi, even yeast. The findings not only confirmed that there was one source of DNA for all life on Earth, but also enabled the scientists to trace the evolutionary process – how more complex organisms evolved, genetically, from simpler ones, adopting at each stage the genes of a lower life form to create a more complex higher life form – culminating with Homo sapiens.
It was here, in tracing the vertical evolutionary record contained in the human and the other analyzed genomes, that the scientists ran into an enigma. The “head-scratching discovery by the public consortium,” as Science termed it, was that the human genome contains 223 genes that do not have the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree.
How did Man acquire such a bunch of enigmatic genes?
The site offers the same answer that many others have regarding "ancient astronauts." I find it as believable an explanation as any put forth by more traditional spiritualities.
Comments
Can we move from "feminism" to "humanism?"
Halley Suitt has several blog posts that cite various books and other blog posts about the struggle women still have achieving careers success on an equal basis with men -- a definition of "equal basis" that includes the sharing of family responsibilities. She hopes we are moving into a new era of "humanism" in contrast to "feminism."
I hope that she's right, although it was the feminst movement that gave women like me the personal confidence to go out and make our way in the "man's" world of work. Oddly enough, however, both the best boss and the worst boss I have ever had were both women. And, while "feminism" had nothing to do with their management styles, I must say that "humanism" did.
However, mine is a feminist success story. I was a teenager in the 50s, rebelled against those values in college, and married someone who seemed to accept me as an equal. That is, until I got pregnant immediately; then I was expected to become the wife/mother/homemaker. He made it impossible for me to pursue a career, but after we divorced, I had no problem doing that successfully and raising my kids myself as well. I have found that, in my generation, husbands often made it very difficult for their wives to have a careers while raising children. The husband expected that he would work outside the home; but if the woman did so, she was also expected to do the work inside the home as well. No wonder we succumbed to either anger or depression, and no wonder so many of us embraced the feminist movement.
It's much different for my pregnant 30-something daughter, whose husband has shared homemaking with her from the very beginning of their relationship.. He also intends to share the child care. While they haven't yet worked out how they will share the bread-winning, he is open to doing whatever will work best for the family -- from one of them staying home with the child, to their each working part-time, to one of them working full time and the other part time. That kind of equality of responsibility was rare in my generation. Perhaps many of us "feminist" women who struggled so hard have it all and realized that we couldn't, have raised sons who are aware that having it all means sharing it all.
Creating workplaces that are flexible enough to accommodate this more humanistic family unit, however, is another story. My last job (with the best boss) allowed for a great deal of flexibility for both men and women who had childen, including telecommuting, bringing kids into the office, taking emergency time off etc. etc. And she wound up with an incredibly loyal and productive staff as a result. So it can be done. But I wonder how likely it is to be done by many male managers/bosses.
Comments
Halley Suitt has several blog posts that cite various books and other blog posts about the struggle women still have achieving careers success on an equal basis with men -- a definition of "equal basis" that includes the sharing of family responsibilities. She hopes we are moving into a new era of "humanism" in contrast to "feminism."
I hope that she's right, although it was the feminst movement that gave women like me the personal confidence to go out and make our way in the "man's" world of work. Oddly enough, however, both the best boss and the worst boss I have ever had were both women. And, while "feminism" had nothing to do with their management styles, I must say that "humanism" did.
However, mine is a feminist success story. I was a teenager in the 50s, rebelled against those values in college, and married someone who seemed to accept me as an equal. That is, until I got pregnant immediately; then I was expected to become the wife/mother/homemaker. He made it impossible for me to pursue a career, but after we divorced, I had no problem doing that successfully and raising my kids myself as well. I have found that, in my generation, husbands often made it very difficult for their wives to have a careers while raising children. The husband expected that he would work outside the home; but if the woman did so, she was also expected to do the work inside the home as well. No wonder we succumbed to either anger or depression, and no wonder so many of us embraced the feminist movement.
It's much different for my pregnant 30-something daughter, whose husband has shared homemaking with her from the very beginning of their relationship.. He also intends to share the child care. While they haven't yet worked out how they will share the bread-winning, he is open to doing whatever will work best for the family -- from one of them staying home with the child, to their each working part-time, to one of them working full time and the other part time. That kind of equality of responsibility was rare in my generation. Perhaps many of us "feminist" women who struggled so hard have it all and realized that we couldn't, have raised sons who are aware that having it all means sharing it all.
Creating workplaces that are flexible enough to accommodate this more humanistic family unit, however, is another story. My last job (with the best boss) allowed for a great deal of flexibility for both men and women who had childen, including telecommuting, bringing kids into the office, taking emergency time off etc. etc. And she wound up with an incredibly loyal and productive staff as a result. So it can be done. But I wonder how likely it is to be done by many male managers/bosses.
Comments
Linda Lovelace died yesterday.
She died in a car accident. But that's not my point. Linda Lovelace's most famous and most degrading movie, Deep Throatwas the first porno movie I ever saw. It was on a double bill with The Devil in Miss Jones in the only movie theater in Gloucester, Maine.
One summer weekend in the mid-seventies, a female elementary school teacher friend of mine and I left our husbands with our kids and took off for a weekend on our own. We wound up in Cape Anne, Massachusetts, where we did some sightseeing, including discovering that Harry Chapin's song about "Dogtown" was based on real and really weird stuff. On our first night there we were so tired that we crashed after dinner (and wine, of course) and then set out the next day for Gloucester. Well, what can two married women do in the evening after dinner in a town where they don't know anyone? Heh. Go to the movies, of course. We had a choice of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or a double porno bill. Neither one of us had ever seen a porno movie, and no one in town knew who we were. It was a chance we couldn't pass up.
Years after, Linda Lovelace revealed the horrors that she endured as her (then) husband proceeded to get her hooked on drugs and caught in a spiral of prostitution and personal brutality. That was the reality. But for two young naive married women off on a weekend away from their every day real worlds, the fantasy was too intriguing to pass up.
It is important to know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Comments
She died in a car accident. But that's not my point. Linda Lovelace's most famous and most degrading movie, Deep Throatwas the first porno movie I ever saw. It was on a double bill with The Devil in Miss Jones in the only movie theater in Gloucester, Maine.
One summer weekend in the mid-seventies, a female elementary school teacher friend of mine and I left our husbands with our kids and took off for a weekend on our own. We wound up in Cape Anne, Massachusetts, where we did some sightseeing, including discovering that Harry Chapin's song about "Dogtown" was based on real and really weird stuff. On our first night there we were so tired that we crashed after dinner (and wine, of course) and then set out the next day for Gloucester. Well, what can two married women do in the evening after dinner in a town where they don't know anyone? Heh. Go to the movies, of course. We had a choice of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or a double porno bill. Neither one of us had ever seen a porno movie, and no one in town knew who we were. It was a chance we couldn't pass up.
Years after, Linda Lovelace revealed the horrors that she endured as her (then) husband proceeded to get her hooked on drugs and caught in a spiral of prostitution and personal brutality. That was the reality. But for two young naive married women off on a weekend away from their every day real worlds, the fantasy was too intriguing to pass up.
It is important to know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Comments
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
Today
Today, I sat in my dentist’s chair for a couple of hours while he “fit me in” to make an adjustment on a bridge. But that’s not my point. My point is that all of the chairs in his rooms face a perennial garden that includes a birdbath and eight bird feeders. The large trees behind the garden are hosts to various birdhouses. So, while you sit there waiting and waiting, you can watch a colorful wildlife pageant, and you can even do so through a pair of binoculars that you find on the windowsill, along with a bird watching book.
Having grown up in a large city, I have always thought that all pigeons are gray and dirty. Today, I discovered that some have the most stunning iridescent green and purple markings, and their pewter hued feathers actually shine in sunlight. As the pigeons came and went on some sort of agreed-upon schedule, blue jays darted among the branches, and an elegant male cardinal shared the platform of a feeder with a insatiable squirrel, while a lone chipmunk and another squirrel danced around each other and the birdseed falling below. I identified a nuthatch and a downy woodpecker, and just as I was sure that the chubby robin -- who seemed to be watching me watching him -- was going to hop up and tap on the glass, I had to turn my attention to the reason why I was sitting in that chair in the first place. The bridge still isn’t right, and it’s going to take several visits, I’m sure, to fix it to my satisfaction. In the meanwhile, the garden will grow lush, and I will learn more about birds and the peaceful coexistence of the various species that mingle and mix in my thoughtful dentist’s perennial garden.
Today, the news on my local TV station reported on a local twenty-something father who shook his 2 month old daughter to death; a local thirty-something mother who purposely drowned her 4-year-old son and wanted to drown her 5-year old but he got away; and a track coach at a local high school accused of having sex with a 16 year old male student (who might not be the only kid he sodomized). And that’s just within a 30 mile radius of where I live.
We humans are supposed to be the most intelligent species on this planet. I guess intelligence has nothing to do with compassion, empathy, consideration, or love. And, looking at what’s going on in the Middle East, it certainly doesn’t seem to have much to do with respect, tolerance, cooperation, and patience either. We could learn a lot from observing life in my dentist’s perennial garden.
Comments
Today, I sat in my dentist’s chair for a couple of hours while he “fit me in” to make an adjustment on a bridge. But that’s not my point. My point is that all of the chairs in his rooms face a perennial garden that includes a birdbath and eight bird feeders. The large trees behind the garden are hosts to various birdhouses. So, while you sit there waiting and waiting, you can watch a colorful wildlife pageant, and you can even do so through a pair of binoculars that you find on the windowsill, along with a bird watching book.
Having grown up in a large city, I have always thought that all pigeons are gray and dirty. Today, I discovered that some have the most stunning iridescent green and purple markings, and their pewter hued feathers actually shine in sunlight. As the pigeons came and went on some sort of agreed-upon schedule, blue jays darted among the branches, and an elegant male cardinal shared the platform of a feeder with a insatiable squirrel, while a lone chipmunk and another squirrel danced around each other and the birdseed falling below. I identified a nuthatch and a downy woodpecker, and just as I was sure that the chubby robin -- who seemed to be watching me watching him -- was going to hop up and tap on the glass, I had to turn my attention to the reason why I was sitting in that chair in the first place. The bridge still isn’t right, and it’s going to take several visits, I’m sure, to fix it to my satisfaction. In the meanwhile, the garden will grow lush, and I will learn more about birds and the peaceful coexistence of the various species that mingle and mix in my thoughtful dentist’s perennial garden.
Today, the news on my local TV station reported on a local twenty-something father who shook his 2 month old daughter to death; a local thirty-something mother who purposely drowned her 4-year-old son and wanted to drown her 5-year old but he got away; and a track coach at a local high school accused of having sex with a 16 year old male student (who might not be the only kid he sodomized). And that’s just within a 30 mile radius of where I live.
We humans are supposed to be the most intelligent species on this planet. I guess intelligence has nothing to do with compassion, empathy, consideration, or love. And, looking at what’s going on in the Middle East, it certainly doesn’t seem to have much to do with respect, tolerance, cooperation, and patience either. We could learn a lot from observing life in my dentist’s perennial garden.
Comments
Sunday, April 21, 2002
How to learn from the past and then let it go.
I don't have the answer to that. If I did, maybe I could get my mother to stop dwelling on all the injustices that have been done to her, personally, and to her Polish ancestry, generally, so that she might find a way to make something more positive of her own present life. She is wasting what time she has left letting her past control the way she sees her present -- which she winds up often mis-perceiving as being full of continuing personal affronts as well. I see that same pattern in certain other peoples who use past injustices as an excuse to continue feeling victimized. Sometimes the past has to be let go, or else we just continue to set up self-fulfilling destructive situations.
Comments
I don't have the answer to that. If I did, maybe I could get my mother to stop dwelling on all the injustices that have been done to her, personally, and to her Polish ancestry, generally, so that she might find a way to make something more positive of her own present life. She is wasting what time she has left letting her past control the way she sees her present -- which she winds up often mis-perceiving as being full of continuing personal affronts as well. I see that same pattern in certain other peoples who use past injustices as an excuse to continue feeling victimized. Sometimes the past has to be let go, or else we just continue to set up self-fulfilling destructive situations.
Comments
Drawing Lines in the Sand
There's a lot of drawing lines in the sand these days. Lines between war and peace, between intellectual and emotional, between head and heart, between ally and enemy. Add "blogger" to the end of every one of those words and the lines are apt to get razor sharp. I ponder why we draw these lines. Why do we need to carve out the borders of our territories so clearly? Nations do it and it leads to war. Religions do it and it leads to intolerance. I do it, too. I draw a line around myself and say "I am a peaceblogger or I am a female chavinsit or I am a irreverent non-believer." But, in truth,I do not mean these lines to separate me completely from those on the other side of the line; rather they are meant to define the place/s in which I prefer to stand -- the places where I take a stand and affirm and aver and assert, sometimes pretty loudly.
I prefer reading weblogs that reflect how the personal relates to larger issues (or the other way around), that focus more on feelings than facts. But I also read the more intellectual, personally detached blogs because they often trigger feelings in me that I then take back to my own site to explore. While I am rooted in Self, I am still fascinated by all of the Others. That's the dilemma: there will always be Self and Others. How do you keep the line you draw strong without having to build a barricade between yourself and your neighbors so that they don't trample it. it's a dilemma.
Comments
There's a lot of drawing lines in the sand these days. Lines between war and peace, between intellectual and emotional, between head and heart, between ally and enemy. Add "blogger" to the end of every one of those words and the lines are apt to get razor sharp. I ponder why we draw these lines. Why do we need to carve out the borders of our territories so clearly? Nations do it and it leads to war. Religions do it and it leads to intolerance. I do it, too. I draw a line around myself and say "I am a peaceblogger or I am a female chavinsit or I am a irreverent non-believer." But, in truth,I do not mean these lines to separate me completely from those on the other side of the line; rather they are meant to define the place/s in which I prefer to stand -- the places where I take a stand and affirm and aver and assert, sometimes pretty loudly.
I prefer reading weblogs that reflect how the personal relates to larger issues (or the other way around), that focus more on feelings than facts. But I also read the more intellectual, personally detached blogs because they often trigger feelings in me that I then take back to my own site to explore. While I am rooted in Self, I am still fascinated by all of the Others. That's the dilemma: there will always be Self and Others. How do you keep the line you draw strong without having to build a barricade between yourself and your neighbors so that they don't trample it. it's a dilemma.
Comments
