Almost Famous
Thanks to my blogfriend Anita Bora, who writes for rediff.com, Blog Sisters and Kalilily Time got some play in that online magazine this month. The article also links to Mike Golby, Gary Turner, Anita (of course), and b!X.
It always amazes and delights me how these loosely joined pieces keep constantly reconfiguring and reconnecting. The feature article, written by Nidhi Taparia Rathi, profiles the online experiences of three "older generation" netizens, including me. How cool is that!
Friday, May 03, 2002
Thursday, May 02, 2002
Inside Out and Upside Down
While Blogsisters readies its first ever monthly Burning Issues soapbox (Turn Beauty Inside Out), b!X finally gets around to finding something he thinks is worth posting, and it’s a glimpse into an alternate universe, where the assumptions of the corporation's mission are inverted. His post explains that the manner in which we have structured the entities known as "corporations" is not some sort of inherent natural law, but one we have deliberately created. And it is one that is in no sense the only way in which a free market "corporation" can be constructed.
The “inverted” version, as he quotes from The Divine Right of Capital , certainly gives one pause.
While Blogsisters readies its first ever monthly Burning Issues soapbox (Turn Beauty Inside Out), b!X finally gets around to finding something he thinks is worth posting, and it’s a glimpse into an alternate universe, where the assumptions of the corporation's mission are inverted. His post explains that the manner in which we have structured the entities known as "corporations" is not some sort of inherent natural law, but one we have deliberately created. And it is one that is in no sense the only way in which a free market "corporation" can be constructed.
The “inverted” version, as he quotes from The Divine Right of Capital , certainly gives one pause.
Tuesday, April 30, 2002
Brave Hearts
Shelley Powers, Tom Shurgart, and stavrosthewonderchicken all have beat me to making this post acknowledging the uncanny talent that both RageBoy and Mike Golby have for peeling back their skin and letting you not only see, but feel what they're made of.
Chris Locke/RageBoy is a pioneer in publicly and purposefully dissolving the boundaries between his passions and the hearts of his readers:
For better or worse, I said, I am trying to live my life in public. Online. We've never had any channel for this. No models. And the models we need are not "model" lives but real ones. Uncertain and afraid, crippled, broken. Trying to make sense of our minds and our hearts and the world we encounter out here. Telling each other what it's like to be human. Making what we can with all we've got. Not shitting ourselves and each other with facile platitudes, easy formulas, empty slogans. A human life for all to see, for what it's worth. It may not be worth much, but that's what I'm doing here. Not a model life, but writing that shakes and shivers and burns and speaks for whatever life we have.
I have just finished reading both the Cluetrain Manifesto and Bombast Transcripts , which I promised Chris I would. Soon I will post my reactions to those texts, as I promised Chris I would.
Shelley Powers, Tom Shurgart, and stavrosthewonderchicken all have beat me to making this post acknowledging the uncanny talent that both RageBoy and Mike Golby have for peeling back their skin and letting you not only see, but feel what they're made of.
Chris Locke/RageBoy is a pioneer in publicly and purposefully dissolving the boundaries between his passions and the hearts of his readers:
For better or worse, I said, I am trying to live my life in public. Online. We've never had any channel for this. No models. And the models we need are not "model" lives but real ones. Uncertain and afraid, crippled, broken. Trying to make sense of our minds and our hearts and the world we encounter out here. Telling each other what it's like to be human. Making what we can with all we've got. Not shitting ourselves and each other with facile platitudes, easy formulas, empty slogans. A human life for all to see, for what it's worth. It may not be worth much, but that's what I'm doing here. Not a model life, but writing that shakes and shivers and burns and speaks for whatever life we have.
I have just finished reading both the Cluetrain Manifesto and Bombast Transcripts , which I promised Chris I would. Soon I will post my reactions to those texts, as I promised Chris I would.
Monday, April 29, 2002
Lapham hits the mark, as usual
Jason of museunlimited pointed me to an article by Lewis Lapham in this month's Harper's which analyzes Ashcroft's and Bush's crusade mentality. There are two quotes from that article that particular grabbed me:
I happened to read "The Psychology of War," a study of the ways in which human beings adjust their interpretations of reality in order to recognize the mass murder of other human beings as glorious adventure and noble enterprise. First published in 1992 but fortunately brought back into print this year by the Helios Press, the book, written by Lawrence LeShan, draws a distinction between the sensory and the mythic perceptions of war. Let war become too much of a felt experience, as close at hand as the putrid smell of rotting flesh or the presence of a newly headless corpse seated in a nearby chair, and most people tend to forget to sing partiotic songs.
and
Because the civilian population finds itself drafted into service as the target of opportunity for terrorists armed with asymmetric waeapons, we're being asked to believe that we're opposed by Morgoth and the Corsairs of Umbar rather than by an incoherent diaspora of desperate human beings, most of them illiterate and many of them children, reduced to expressing their resentment in the impoverished vocabularies of violence. Best not to see our enemies as they are; better to go quietly into the caves of myth thoughtfully prepared by our news media and our schools, there to find, praise be to Allah, our comfort, our salvation, and our glory.
See also Jasons post on the Politics of Fear.
Jason of museunlimited pointed me to an article by Lewis Lapham in this month's Harper's which analyzes Ashcroft's and Bush's crusade mentality. There are two quotes from that article that particular grabbed me:
I happened to read "The Psychology of War," a study of the ways in which human beings adjust their interpretations of reality in order to recognize the mass murder of other human beings as glorious adventure and noble enterprise. First published in 1992 but fortunately brought back into print this year by the Helios Press, the book, written by Lawrence LeShan, draws a distinction between the sensory and the mythic perceptions of war. Let war become too much of a felt experience, as close at hand as the putrid smell of rotting flesh or the presence of a newly headless corpse seated in a nearby chair, and most people tend to forget to sing partiotic songs.
and
Because the civilian population finds itself drafted into service as the target of opportunity for terrorists armed with asymmetric waeapons, we're being asked to believe that we're opposed by Morgoth and the Corsairs of Umbar rather than by an incoherent diaspora of desperate human beings, most of them illiterate and many of them children, reduced to expressing their resentment in the impoverished vocabularies of violence. Best not to see our enemies as they are; better to go quietly into the caves of myth thoughtfully prepared by our news media and our schools, there to find, praise be to Allah, our comfort, our salvation, and our glory.
See also Jasons post on the Politics of Fear.
Sunday, April 28, 2002
There is a fraternity of us, the abyss walkers....
from Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons
There is a fraternity of us, the abyss walkers. In our eyes, the world is divided by it, made up of those who walk frail, careening rope bridges over the abysses and those who do not. We know each other. I do not think it is a concsious thing with us, this knowing, at least not most of the time, or we would flee from each other as from montsers. It is an animal thing. It is only on that wild old neck-prickling level that we meet. It is only in our eyes that we acknowledge that our twin exhalations have touched and mingled. Sometimes, though not often, one of the others, the non-abyss people, will know us too. You may even know the feeling yourself; you may have met someone about whom otherness clings like miasma; you can feel it on your skin though you can't name it. When that happens, you have me one of us. You may even be one of us, down deep and in secret. The other half of the world, the solid, golden half, the non-abyssers...they feel nothing under their feet but solidity. They inherit the earth. We inherit the wind.
Anne Siddons is someone I read during those lazy summer days when I don't want to think too hard; I just want to be entertained. But the above quote is something that must have caught in my thoughts one summer because I found it typed up and lost among my many drafts of many poems. I like the notion of "abyss-walkers." It kind of goes along with my view of myself as a "rim-walker" -- definitely NOT one of the "solid golden half."
from Outer Banks by Anne Rivers Siddons
There is a fraternity of us, the abyss walkers. In our eyes, the world is divided by it, made up of those who walk frail, careening rope bridges over the abysses and those who do not. We know each other. I do not think it is a concsious thing with us, this knowing, at least not most of the time, or we would flee from each other as from montsers. It is an animal thing. It is only on that wild old neck-prickling level that we meet. It is only in our eyes that we acknowledge that our twin exhalations have touched and mingled. Sometimes, though not often, one of the others, the non-abyss people, will know us too. You may even know the feeling yourself; you may have met someone about whom otherness clings like miasma; you can feel it on your skin though you can't name it. When that happens, you have me one of us. You may even be one of us, down deep and in secret. The other half of the world, the solid, golden half, the non-abyssers...they feel nothing under their feet but solidity. They inherit the earth. We inherit the wind.
Anne Siddons is someone I read during those lazy summer days when I don't want to think too hard; I just want to be entertained. But the above quote is something that must have caught in my thoughts one summer because I found it typed up and lost among my many drafts of many poems. I like the notion of "abyss-walkers." It kind of goes along with my view of myself as a "rim-walker" -- definitely NOT one of the "solid golden half."
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, April 20, 2002
The Earth Quakes on Earth Day
Somewhere around 7 a.m. this morning, my cat began meowing inconsolably. And then my dresser mirror began rattling for no apparent reason. No, not ghosts, but rather an earthquake at more than 5 on the Richter Scale, centered way upstate but felt here in Albany, all of these hundreds of miles away. I heard from my daughter outside of Boston that they could feel it there as well. An earthquake on Earth Day, and I have 111 unread messages in my main in-box and 1 unread in a sub-mail box. That's 1111. Yesterday, as I walked into my bedroom the digital clock read 11:11. (Here we go again.) What next?
Somewhere around 7 a.m. this morning, my cat began meowing inconsolably. And then my dresser mirror began rattling for no apparent reason. No, not ghosts, but rather an earthquake at more than 5 on the Richter Scale, centered way upstate but felt here in Albany, all of these hundreds of miles away. I heard from my daughter outside of Boston that they could feel it there as well. An earthquake on Earth Day, and I have 111 unread messages in my main in-box and 1 unread in a sub-mail box. That's 1111. Yesterday, as I walked into my bedroom the digital clock read 11:11. (Here we go again.) What next?
Nithia
Nithia is a relatively new blogger from South Africa. Nithia writes with savvy voice, graceful style, and strong soul. Nithia 's piece on growing up as a victim of Apartheid is worth leaving my blog and linking here right now. And after you read that, read a little more of Nithia's posts and then be sure to link to The Onion piece about a new Microsoft patent.
Nithia is a relatively new blogger from South Africa. Nithia writes with savvy voice, graceful style, and strong soul. Nithia 's piece on growing up as a victim of Apartheid is worth leaving my blog and linking here right now. And after you read that, read a little more of Nithia's posts and then be sure to link to The Onion piece about a new Microsoft patent.
Friday, April 19, 2002
The Chthonic Challenge
While I was quoting to death Camille’s obsession with the chthonic, Tom Shugart was considering Jeneane’s challenge to blog “Not the outside stuff. The *inside* stuff” -- to write from the depths of the heart, from the chthonian netherworld of our deepest fears, angers, hurts -- and not just from the heights of the head.
I couldn’t help notice that when Tom mentions some of the bloggers who, he thinks, do write from that messy and fertile place, the names he offers are all female. Which brings me back to Camille Paglia’s assertion that it is the “female” that embodies the chthonian in our human natures. That disturbing, emotional, chaotic stuff makes many men uncomfortable (RageBoy notwithstanding.) So most men continue to blog from an emotionally protected distance.
So, Tom takes a step closer to accepting Jeneane’s challenge and looks at an emptiness he feels, despite a full and loving life. He admits: And yet….. there's a big hole somewhere in the middle of me.
I believe that that’s the “hole” into which the Shaman willingly strides, the rabbit hole into which Alice falls; that is the messy chthonian chaos of our unconscious that, if we traverse and survive, we come out much wiser for the journey.
I found this poem on an aptly entitled site:
Chthonic Rising
Many things rise from the earth --
the steam of ancient whispers,
seeds that fall like a vast blanket.
howls too playful to be lonely.
But these days ground yields only ash
and yellowed grass must
blink away the smell of blood.
Those that are wise
will walk with toes bared
to feel the rocks loosen
before they take to the air
proclaiming the return
of a red-eyed mother.
Tom’s blog quotes Jean Shinoda Bolen's directive: "Show up, and pay attention." I believe she means that we should show up at the empty entrance to our own chthonian netherworld and pay close attention to all of those rocks that we loosen on the way down.
Have I made the journey? Yes, when I needed to confront my shadow self in relation to my failed marriage. It was a lengthy and eventful journey, and eventually I was able to “take to the air, proclaiming the return of a red-eyed mother.” And then this is what I wrote, based on the synchronistic discovery and purchase of a disturbing art work depicting Eve wrenching herself from Adam’s side as he lay, spectral and spread-eagled, upside down, with red raining down on both of them:
The Real Birth of Eve
Don’t fail me now, Adam.
I did not choose this path,
this pain.
He woke you slowly.
With care he molded your form,
stroked your face to smile,
sang your ears to sound,
shaded your new wide eyes
from all but his vision of paradise.
He gave you a place, a name,
a chance to lie
with the fullness of earth
before his restless breath
stirred the question on your tongue.
But I --
I had no time,
no sure sense of shape,
no songs of promised lands
to free the reach of eager arms.
I have only had the quest,
the question
that has grown into this pain
--your pain—
and the pain of my knowing
that my only way out
is through you,
through the final rending
of heart and mind and will,
of the fabric of our common sky
that rains fire and blood
upon this sacred and willfull act.
Forgive me, Adam.
I can no longer be both self and other.
I need my own breath, my own blood.
He left me no choice
but to tear from you what belongs to me –
my sex, my soul, my song.
Forgive me, Adam,
for making my Word
from your flesh and bone,
for forcing you to share this eternal exile,
for taking it anyway –
my only way out.
So, yes, Tom. I agree that the emptiness is a gift, an invitation to take a journey where no one has ever gone before. As Jeneane said, “Not the outside stuff. The *inside* stuff.” Deep. Messy. Chthonic. True. And there are those who believe that not only daemons [not “demons”] live in that place, but also god.
While I was quoting to death Camille’s obsession with the chthonic, Tom Shugart was considering Jeneane’s challenge to blog “Not the outside stuff. The *inside* stuff” -- to write from the depths of the heart, from the chthonian netherworld of our deepest fears, angers, hurts -- and not just from the heights of the head.
I couldn’t help notice that when Tom mentions some of the bloggers who, he thinks, do write from that messy and fertile place, the names he offers are all female. Which brings me back to Camille Paglia’s assertion that it is the “female” that embodies the chthonian in our human natures. That disturbing, emotional, chaotic stuff makes many men uncomfortable (RageBoy notwithstanding.) So most men continue to blog from an emotionally protected distance.
So, Tom takes a step closer to accepting Jeneane’s challenge and looks at an emptiness he feels, despite a full and loving life. He admits: And yet….. there's a big hole somewhere in the middle of me.
I believe that that’s the “hole” into which the Shaman willingly strides, the rabbit hole into which Alice falls; that is the messy chthonian chaos of our unconscious that, if we traverse and survive, we come out much wiser for the journey.
I found this poem on an aptly entitled site:
Chthonic Rising
Many things rise from the earth --
the steam of ancient whispers,
seeds that fall like a vast blanket.
howls too playful to be lonely.
But these days ground yields only ash
and yellowed grass must
blink away the smell of blood.
Those that are wise
will walk with toes bared
to feel the rocks loosen
before they take to the air
proclaiming the return
of a red-eyed mother.
Tom’s blog quotes Jean Shinoda Bolen's directive: "Show up, and pay attention." I believe she means that we should show up at the empty entrance to our own chthonian netherworld and pay close attention to all of those rocks that we loosen on the way down.
Have I made the journey? Yes, when I needed to confront my shadow self in relation to my failed marriage. It was a lengthy and eventful journey, and eventually I was able to “take to the air, proclaiming the return of a red-eyed mother.” And then this is what I wrote, based on the synchronistic discovery and purchase of a disturbing art work depicting Eve wrenching herself from Adam’s side as he lay, spectral and spread-eagled, upside down, with red raining down on both of them:
The Real Birth of Eve
Don’t fail me now, Adam.
I did not choose this path,
this pain.
He woke you slowly.
With care he molded your form,
stroked your face to smile,
sang your ears to sound,
shaded your new wide eyes
from all but his vision of paradise.
He gave you a place, a name,
a chance to lie
with the fullness of earth
before his restless breath
stirred the question on your tongue.
But I --
I had no time,
no sure sense of shape,
no songs of promised lands
to free the reach of eager arms.
I have only had the quest,
the question
that has grown into this pain
--your pain—
and the pain of my knowing
that my only way out
is through you,
through the final rending
of heart and mind and will,
of the fabric of our common sky
that rains fire and blood
upon this sacred and willfull act.
Forgive me, Adam.
I can no longer be both self and other.
I need my own breath, my own blood.
He left me no choice
but to tear from you what belongs to me –
my sex, my soul, my song.
Forgive me, Adam,
for making my Word
from your flesh and bone,
for forcing you to share this eternal exile,
for taking it anyway –
my only way out.
So, yes, Tom. I agree that the emptiness is a gift, an invitation to take a journey where no one has ever gone before. As Jeneane said, “Not the outside stuff. The *inside* stuff.” Deep. Messy. Chthonic. True. And there are those who believe that not only daemons [not “demons”] live in that place, but also god.
Thursday, April 18, 2002
For my mom; for moms everywhere.
Today, my mother was talking about how Poland was betrayed by the West as they struggled to refuse Hitler's tyranny.
Today, Marek blogs:
There are still people in Poland who lived during the War who are bitter and angry that Western Coalition, mainly France and Great Britain didn't do anything when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Polish people said NO to Hitler. Great Britain and France promised to attack Nazis, they didn't. They didn't stand up for freedom. They didn't stand up for us. And now in Warsaw there are thousands of places marked by plaques where people were killed because somebody didn't stand up for them.
What about the Palestinians? Is somebody standing up for them? I know some of them blow themselves up and murder people but what about Palestinians who love their children? What about Israelis? Is somebody standing up for them? I know some of them just want to kill all Palestinians but what about Israelis who love their children?
Maybe, instead of talking cease-fire, Palestinians and Israelis could start talking about how much they love their children.
Today, my mother was talking about how Poland was betrayed by the West as they struggled to refuse Hitler's tyranny.
Today, Marek blogs:
There are still people in Poland who lived during the War who are bitter and angry that Western Coalition, mainly France and Great Britain didn't do anything when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. Polish people said NO to Hitler. Great Britain and France promised to attack Nazis, they didn't. They didn't stand up for freedom. They didn't stand up for us. And now in Warsaw there are thousands of places marked by plaques where people were killed because somebody didn't stand up for them.
What about the Palestinians? Is somebody standing up for them? I know some of them blow themselves up and murder people but what about Palestinians who love their children? What about Israelis? Is somebody standing up for them? I know some of them just want to kill all Palestinians but what about Israelis who love their children?
Maybe, instead of talking cease-fire, Palestinians and Israelis could start talking about how much they love their children.
It’s time for some Camille.
I don’t remember where I first heard Camille Paglia speak. I think it was on the old Phil Donahue show. What I do remember is being totally enthralled by her perspectives on just about everything. Hated by both radical feminists as well as right-wing “fascinating womanhood” females, dismissed by most men because of her intense, confrontational, opinionated style, and shunned by many of her peers because of her controversial convictions about sexuality and morality, Camille is just the kind of woman that gets my attention.
As a bi-sexual, a serious scholar of contemporary culture, and a pretty much humorless conversationalist, Paglia is my opposite. Where my mind crosses hers, however, is in the belief that it is our chthonian natures that truly rule our actions, however much we have consciously or unconsciously tried to deny them. That is the “darkness” that we must acknowledge and learn to both embrace and “enlighten” if we, as a species, are to move beyond the periodic inclination toward mutual murder – both physical and psychological.
Here, for example, are some random quotes from her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. I have never been able to finish reading the whole book: it’s just too dense and too scholarly. However, I periodically go back and re-read her first chapter, which is where she articulates her larger perspective. She pushes the envelope in how we view ourselves in relation to the world we live in. Some quotes:
We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.
Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature’s power.
Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from the ritual of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements.
Civilized life requires a state of illusion. The idea of the ultimate benevolence of nature and God is the most potent of man’s survival mechanisms. Without it, culture would revert to fear and despair.
Aggression comes from nature; it is what Nietzsche is to call the will-to-power….society is not the criminal but the force which keeps crime in check.
Sex is power. Identity is power. In western culture, there are no nonexploitative relationships…. Each generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead.
Sex is a far darker power than the feminist has admitted. Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible. But sex had always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted.
Sex is daemonic. This term....derives from the Greek "daimon"..... meaning a spirit of lower divinity than the Olympian gods.... The word came to mean a man's guardian shadow. Christianity turned the daemonic into the demonic. The Greek daemons were not evil – or rather they were both good and evil, like nature itself, in which they dwelled. Freud’s unconscious is a daemonic realm.
The daemonism of chthonian nature is the west’s dirty secret.
The identification of woman with nature was universal in prehistory. In hunting or agrarian societies dependent upon nature, femaleness was honored as an immanent principle of fertility.
Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.
In every premenstrual woman struggling to govern her temper, sky-cult wars again with earth-cult.
Daemonic archtypes of woman, filling world mythology, represent the uncontrollable nearness of nature.
Evenutally Paglia posits that if women ruled the world, we'd still be living in grass huts. That's where my mind takes a left turn as hers takes a right. I don't think we would disregard the accomplishments of men (to Camille, those sky-cult skyscrapers, power grids, space shuttles, fast cars, are both the actual results as well as the metaphorical symbols of the accomplishments of the male gender). Rather, I think we would so a better job of integrating the sky-cult mentality with the earth-cult heart, soul, and shadow. But that's just my un-scholarly, heterosexual, female chauvinist opinion.
I don’t remember where I first heard Camille Paglia speak. I think it was on the old Phil Donahue show. What I do remember is being totally enthralled by her perspectives on just about everything. Hated by both radical feminists as well as right-wing “fascinating womanhood” females, dismissed by most men because of her intense, confrontational, opinionated style, and shunned by many of her peers because of her controversial convictions about sexuality and morality, Camille is just the kind of woman that gets my attention.
As a bi-sexual, a serious scholar of contemporary culture, and a pretty much humorless conversationalist, Paglia is my opposite. Where my mind crosses hers, however, is in the belief that it is our chthonian natures that truly rule our actions, however much we have consciously or unconsciously tried to deny them. That is the “darkness” that we must acknowledge and learn to both embrace and “enlighten” if we, as a species, are to move beyond the periodic inclination toward mutual murder – both physical and psychological.
Here, for example, are some random quotes from her book Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. I have never been able to finish reading the whole book: it’s just too dense and too scholarly. However, I periodically go back and re-read her first chapter, which is where she articulates her larger perspective. She pushes the envelope in how we view ourselves in relation to the world we live in. Some quotes:
We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is a subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.
Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature’s power.
Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from the ritual of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements.
Civilized life requires a state of illusion. The idea of the ultimate benevolence of nature and God is the most potent of man’s survival mechanisms. Without it, culture would revert to fear and despair.
Aggression comes from nature; it is what Nietzsche is to call the will-to-power….society is not the criminal but the force which keeps crime in check.
Sex is power. Identity is power. In western culture, there are no nonexploitative relationships…. Each generation drives its plow over the bones of the dead.
Sex is a far darker power than the feminist has admitted. Behaviorist sex therapies believe guiltless, no-fault sex is possible. But sex had always been girt round with taboo, irrespective of culture. Sex is the point of contact between man and nature, where morality and good intentions fall to primitive urges. I called it an intersection. This intersection is the uncanny crossroads of Hecate, where all things return in the night. Eroticism is a realm stalked by ghosts. It is the place beyond the pale, both cursed and enchanted.
Sex is daemonic. This term....derives from the Greek "daimon"..... meaning a spirit of lower divinity than the Olympian gods.... The word came to mean a man's guardian shadow. Christianity turned the daemonic into the demonic. The Greek daemons were not evil – or rather they were both good and evil, like nature itself, in which they dwelled. Freud’s unconscious is a daemonic realm.
The daemonism of chthonian nature is the west’s dirty secret.
The identification of woman with nature was universal in prehistory. In hunting or agrarian societies dependent upon nature, femaleness was honored as an immanent principle of fertility.
Judeo-Christianity, like Greek worship of the Olympian gods, is a sky-cult. It is an advanced stage in the history of religion, which everywhere began as earth-cult, veneration of fruitful nature.
In every premenstrual woman struggling to govern her temper, sky-cult wars again with earth-cult.
Daemonic archtypes of woman, filling world mythology, represent the uncontrollable nearness of nature.
Evenutally Paglia posits that if women ruled the world, we'd still be living in grass huts. That's where my mind takes a left turn as hers takes a right. I don't think we would disregard the accomplishments of men (to Camille, those sky-cult skyscrapers, power grids, space shuttles, fast cars, are both the actual results as well as the metaphorical symbols of the accomplishments of the male gender). Rather, I think we would so a better job of integrating the sky-cult mentality with the earth-cult heart, soul, and shadow. But that's just my un-scholarly, heterosexual, female chauvinist opinion.
Or maybe I'll just keep linking to Rushkoff
Thanks to AKMA, I've discovered the newly minted blog of David Rushkoff, who according to his bio, analyzes the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.
From I've been able to read so far, he articulates what I perceive and believe in the way that I wish I could.
So, please link here for the best I've read so far on the Middle East situation, where he concludes with a paragraph that I wish with all my heart I had written:
In my reality tunnel, the Palestinians and Israelis are basically looking in the mirror. The religions are quite quite similar, and the false notions of state-hood imported from Europe have the people acting out insanely unfounded mythologies of national identity. These people don't have national identities, because nations aren't real. And God certainly has no idea what they are.
Thanks to AKMA, I've discovered the newly minted blog of David Rushkoff, who according to his bio, analyzes the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.
From I've been able to read so far, he articulates what I perceive and believe in the way that I wish I could.
So, please link here for the best I've read so far on the Middle East situation, where he concludes with a paragraph that I wish with all my heart I had written:
In my reality tunnel, the Palestinians and Israelis are basically looking in the mirror. The religions are quite quite similar, and the false notions of state-hood imported from Europe have the people acting out insanely unfounded mythologies of national identity. These people don't have national identities, because nations aren't real. And God certainly has no idea what they are.
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