Further observations on Reparations to the State of Slog

1. It's not just the making of the Bourbon Balls -- which is a hassle -- it's the licking of the bowl and spatula that makes the rest of the making of them a lot LESS hassle.

2. For some reason, Bourbon Ball creation numbs the ends of the fingers. Or, it could just be the vigorous bowl- and spatula-licking that does the numbing indirectly.

3. Great care must be taken to avoid the hangover from the application of the various nostrums in Slog-prevention. It is important to keep Bourbon Balls within reach at all times, particularly with morning coffee.

4. Bourbon works fast, even though it's hard on the gullet. Gin is a euphoric, and sometimes a hallucinogenic; further, gin can be mixed with all sorts of other things that make its ingestion a lot gentler on the system. Irish whisky is excellent for bedtime, has it all over Nyquil for soothing the psyche and inviting deep and dreamy sleep.

5. Christmas carols, even when sung along with (I do not know how to avoid the dangling participle there), are not necessarily cheering; viz: "In the bleak mid-winter", "Coventry Carol", "The infant King", etc. VERY cheery, on the other hand are: "The 23rd Psalm" by Bobby McFerrin, the otherwise loathesome "Donkey Carol", anything with a brass ensemble, "Adeste Fidelis" because it could also be "Semper Fidelis" which is always an upper.

6. Standing over to the right of a Slog, looking closely at it and writing about it, especially while a tiny bit tipsy, helps one HELL of a lot in rising above it.

7. So does a good hard snowfall.

Seven being a holy number, I'll stop there.

The Slogs

All fall I've been feeling around with the toes of one foot for the bar of cosmic soap I dropped a couple of months ago. I'd been standing in a metaphorical shower, in the dark, and I was doing okay until I dropped the soap. Well, yesterday I found it and in a nanosecond I slipped on it and landed on my can. Head over heels. Tin can over teakettle. And here I sit, somehow unable to get myself upright again. I'm unbelievably tired -- exhausted really; I'm if not depressed then I'm damned pessimistic about pretty much everything. I feel as if I'd mysteriously gained about 50 pounds, all in my feet and lower legs. I can't get my bearings, I can barely cross the room without bumping into furniture or scraping along the walls. (That last is pretty hazardous because the bozo that built this house surfaced all the interior walls with stucco; seems to me there was a really funny commercial not too long ago about a crazed housewife refinishing the walls with a stucco surface like unsheathed knives. It was funny at the time anyway; in this house it's a cruel joke.)

In desperation I looked up my biorhythms (remember that?) and found that sure enough, I'm below par emotionally, physically and intellectually. Hell I'm lucky to be able to type right now. Furthermore, I will just damned well be staying this way until December 22, another week, and (God is laughing here) the day of the Winter Solstice. Now, see, the Winter Solstice means a lot of things to a lot of people (they practically mount the Ringling Brothers Circus at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan in celebration of it), but what it means to me personally is the end of my inexorable slide into the miasma of depression. When the sun starts heading north again, and the days get incrementally longer, I am suddenly fine again. It doesn't seem to matter that I'm getting no more full-spectrum light on December 23 than I was on December 21, so it must be the PRINCIPLE of the thing.

So, while I wait for rescue, I contemplate the process. The autumn slide isn't so bad in itself, it's just that it is frightening, rather like catching the first aura of a migraine and knowing that it's just a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. You try not to look for the other signs, try not to surrender to it, try to stay in your body, try to relax (HA! -- that's the first thing they tell you to do in a migraine: relax, tensing your muscles only make it worse, as if you could, and as if it would matter), maybe even try to outrun the inevitable, try to rationalize the fear away. None of it makes a difference. This year I think I've reduced the crash-and-burn -- the place where I am today -- to the duration of about a week, which is progress; sometimes I've slogged through the darkest of swamps for months on end. I bet I'm fun at a party, if I went to any where there might be strangers while I'm in that condition. Imagine trying to have a diverting conversation with Eeyore.

So here I am -- trying some new tricks to dispell this not-quite-depression: I'm blogging, so I don't feel so isolated and can try to keep my thoughts and dreads going in the same direction; I have music going all the time while I'm awake, and singing along with it; and I'm going to try to get and sustain a little bit of a buzz on for the duration, with the practical aid of bourbon balls, Swedish glüg and my daddy's favorite egg nog recipe (the instructions are mostly to add more booze). The bourbon balls I can have one at a time (beginning with morning coffee), and the rest is easy after that. For instance, in making the glüg, I had two perfectly good oranges that I had zested, so I squoze them and added about a teaspoon of gin and drank it right down like a good girl. Gotta say I feel better already. Why didn't anybody tell me this before?

Thanks to all of you for reading this far -- you're true friends, and I imagine that most of you have walked at least one of these seasons with me, so this is not news. That makes your loyalty and patience all the more valuable to me.

Don't pull that plug!

Our growth, our happiness, our peace of mind, our comfort in times of trial, all depend on connection, and most of us only understand the concept and the nature of connection by going through life's rough patches, the periods of dis-connection.

We know what it feels like to be disconnected, and it ain't good. Disconnection feels lonely and a little paranoid; it takes just about all our strength to keep going, and in that condition, if we don't keep moving we can get severely depressed. (As a matter of fact, depression is extended disconnection, when we've lost touch with the comfort and life-sustaining energy sources in our own hearts and in those of other people.)

In disconnection we take everything personally because we have no sense of who, or where, we are in relation to the rest of the world; defensive posture is all we have in the face of constant, if ill-defined, threat. It's all about ME when I disconnect, and there's no comfort to be had; my demons have taken over, the noise from their accusations and taunts drowns out everything else. There's no such thing as love, only fear, only sorrow, only rage. Or nothing at all -- depression. When disconnection grabs hold, the only defense against immobilizing depression seems to be distraction, using addictions -- to substances, or to sex, or to sustaining a state of busy-busy-busy -- as a "safe" source of energy and motivation, rather than that of connection and intimacy. Addictions and distractions don't help the situation; in the end they exacerbate it. Sooner or later there's a lull in the action, and after such noise, such frantic activity, the silence and the loneliness is terrifying.

There are plenty of people who live in dehumanizing disconnection for years; they've no mechanism for receiving love or comfort, nor for giving it out. When they look out at the world, they find only reflections of their own frightened, sorrowful, angry psyches; either the world is out to get them, or, worst case, the world doesn't know they exist, and they live entirely alone. In Hell.

Well, ick.

If this is the case, then we'd best all find a way (and the courage) to connect; it isn't hard, really. Connection is what you get when you love, and vice versa. That's all there is to it; if that sounds a little too pat, then insert the word "acceptance" for "love", and that will do the trick, because they really amount to the same thing. As soon as we say something or someone is unacceptable, we pull our own plug and we're off again, vox clamatis in deserto.

All the answers to life's (persistent!) questions are the same: Yes.

Good Question

So, this 11 year old girl says to her Sunday school teacher, “If heaven is so great, why don’t we all just commit suicide?”

The Sunday school teacher (who is either some poor schlub who didn’t think fast enough to decline this thankless job, or someone trying to impress the church pillars, or -- worst case -- someone bent on bending the minds of the little tabulae rasae, and who in any case certainly lacks the training, the rationality, or the imagination to give the kid a useful answer) is stumped.

If he had studied church history (unlikely), he could have explained that suicide was a real problem for the early Christian church. Having made such a fuss about the heavenly reward, and having made life so tough for believers (at least in no way improving their lot), the church found itself losing membership at a rapid rate. The faithful, seeking a way out of their misery through redemptive martyrdom, were gruesomely bumping themselves off right and left, and the congregation was dwindling fast. Something had to be done, so Holy Mother Church declared suicide a mortal sin (some oxymoronic thinking there), thereby denying heaven to the martyrs unless they could find somebody else to do them in. So, fear of damnation keeps us from suicide. Right.

If the teacher were a rational and thoughtful guy, and wanted to explain and maybe reassure, he might have told the kid that while suicide is certainly an option, it’s hard to pull off successfully -- a failed suicide is a sad, pathetic creature -- and that survival is the most basic and powerful drive of the instinctual being. One would have to be very determined, or inexorably driven by madness, actually to commit suicide. Furthermore, heaven waits for us all, for even the worst of us. So, thinks the kid, I’m not that determined, and I have this party next weekend, and I’m not crazy, so that keeps me from suicide. A little more right.

If he had had the imagination, the teacher could have said that, again, suicide is always an option, but whatever the life lessons one might be thinking of abandoning in suicide, one was just going to have to work at them again the next time.

What? WHAT next time?

Now it’s time for the teacher to be fired from his Sunday school job, because (a) no imagination allowed, only dogma-parroting and staying within the lines of the Christian coloring book (do Judaism and Islam have the same kind of idiotic teaching aids?); and (b) this guy’s about to give these kids a brief lesson in reincarnation. Can’t have that, certainly.

If we crack THAT window, then out of it flies the power of the church to control and manipulate: reincarnation neutralizes religion’s ace in the hole, which is the capacity to damn the wayward to the eternal flames of hell. If the soul is eternal and eternally learning and growing, if everybody gets another shot, over and over again until they get it right, plus, if they get a break in between classes, no matter how they might have screwed up in a particular life, a breather (which could very well be heaven, compared to how life can be here) before they have to come back for repair and reconciliation, then exactly where in this equation do we place the religious institutions?

Well, nowhere really, unless they’re willing to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be instruments of comfort, havens of peace and guardians of the souls of their flock, solely in the name of love, without any thought of material or political gain, period. Exactly how probable is that? The track record isn’t great, so far anyway. It may have been the original intention, or at least the intention of those avatars in whose name religious institutions were established, but less than one generation removed from the physical death of the avatar -- of any of them -- it all went to hell. So to speak.

Okay, so let’s take a look at a rational and imaginative God, the Great Sunday School Teacher in the Sky. Surely, in the process of designing and executing an expanding universe, God would probably go the micro-route and design and execute an expanding soul, yes? And, in order to give it substance -- particulate form rather than the wave form of the spirit -- he’d give it a nice fruitful planet on which to explore the experience of consciousness. Unfortunately, given the dangers and hardships of being housed in dense, solid matter, not to mention the alarming fragility of such a complex mechanical system as the human body (all those delicate moving parts), the soul would have to keep replacing the vehicle as it wore out, and as the soul simply outgrew it.

Each person’s soul, let us say, is a micro unit of the ever-expanding Great Soul, and grows itself by learning and bonding, getting bigger and bigger, greater and greater, seeking always the reconciliation of karma and the reconnection with The Great Soul.

(Uh oh -- she said the word “karma.” But that’s another show, as Oprah says.)

Anyway, in order to keep growing, all of us need try out various life scenarios, to experience all of everything: How would it be to work a life as a Hitler, and then how would one make peace with that? How can one endure a life as a modern Sudanese farmer? How would one learn to control the temptations of ease and comfort in the experience of a Mother Teresa? How would it feel to break under the strain of living as a single mother of several children and thus do them great harm? How could one transcend fear and go into the darkness of the mind of a Van Gogh, solely to produce great beauty? The possibilities are infinite, obviously; we are all killers and victims, saints, demons, madmen, artists, priests, warriors, scholars, kings, teachers, slaves.

That’s how we grow. We have to have different environments in order to study different experiences, and so, with each new entrance into solid matter, we try on a new body in new circumstances. Nothing scary about it, really; it sounds like something God might dream up. It also sounds like a framework that runs counter to normal politics; the truth of there being no soul death, that we have unlimited "do-overs", releases us from the thrall of our institutions, enables us to take more risks, be more creative in all our activities, and to see the elegant and stunning logic of our lives.

As soon as we accept that we are the sum and substance of unlimited possibility, we are set free.

An Impossible Task

A friend assigned me a blog subject of World Religions, in 1000 words or less. I replied that 1000 words is either too few or way too many; glib, that, and I hoped it would suffice. It didn't, and he waits patiently.

Well, since this is my blog, here are my own conclusions on the subject: formal religion, of any stripe, that has a set of canons/rules/strictures, etc., that lays out acceptable modes of behavior, dress, diet, thought, ethics and so forth, is no more nor less than a deliberate means of social control and manipulation. This control is enforced by instilling fear (e.g., of a Jealous God, the Eternal Flames of Hell, Shunning, Karmic Payback) in the hearts of believers. The designers and the enforcers (who are the same people) are the elite, the priesthood, those who saw and seized the opportunity afforded by the impact of the arrival and teachings of an Avatar -- The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, for example -- to create a social order with political ends, such as overthrowing Imperial Rome and setting up a second empire, the Holy Roman Church. It is cynical, it is a perversion of true spiritual nourishment, it interjects its own agenda between God and each human being, and thus religion itself is The Great Sin.

Yes, I do feel better now.

What's good about religion is that it can afford a place and time and ritual for private reflection; it offers the companionship of people of similar social leanings; it has sponsored and supported great art and music, keeping the creative class alive (albeit in the kitchen with the rest of the help), and healthy enough for long enough to produce truly transcendent works; and it can do Good Works for the poor and the unenfranchised (those often called The Unchurched). Some religions do better than others in each of these endeavors, and thereby attract similarly interested people.

What is unfortunate is that the great majority of believers (as opposed to the faithful, which I'll elaborate on in a minute) are those whose lives are predicated on fear itself (viz. Doonesbury October 2006); they find a safe haven in religion, and the more fearful they are, the more they can be directed to do unspeakable acts in the name of that religion, and if life is hell, then at least they can look forward to heaven (as rapsodically defined by the priests) once they've finished their obedience here on earth. If they vote as instructed, if they leave enough yak butter and flowers on the prescribed altar, if they bomb the designated marketplace, then they'll get their just rewards. Whew, what a relief. (And lately it seems that religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, but their crack cocaine.)

I think belief and faith are two different things. Belief is an intellectual construct; it depends on empirical data and conclusions, with supporting canon, and exhaustive parsing by theologians over centuries: Jesuits and Talmudists and scholars of the Koran spend most of their time defining and refining ever more miniscule points of reason, and when they get stuck, they cop out with the cheap "the rest must be taken on faith". Ordinary people, those living their lives, doing the best they can, and trying to fill the spiritual voids left by overweening, ubiquitous and haunting fear, just don't have the time, the strength or the curiosity to check up on the theologians' work, to challenge any of their personal motives. Usually they're just not courageous enough to take on the arrogant assertions of the priesthood.

Faith IS cheap, and it is beyond price at the same time. Faith flies in the face of reason, even denies much of what is offered as truth by established religion. Faith circumvents consensus: someone who has experienced a spiritual event -- an unexplained recovery from terminal illness, a time out-of-body, a "visit" from a loved one at the point of his death, or his own near-death experience -- knows on a cellular level the truth and value of real faith. He knows that faith is irrelevant to most of the bromides recited in a house of "worship"; while he may still attend the services, might still recite the credos (albeit with private additions and omissions), enjoy the society of those attending with him, find some peace and momentary transcendence from the music, the surrounding art and the occasional homily by an extraordinary priest, our man of faith knows exactly where truth lives, and, with some practice, knows how to get at it for comfort in times of trouble.

It is almost coincidence when a Mother Teresa, a Mahatma Gandhi, a Rabi'a al-'Adawiyya, a Dalai Lama, a Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges from within the strictures of established religion, but emerge they do, and the majesty of their lives and teachings are a reproach to the institutions of their infancy.

Personally, I cherry-pick my religion, feeling most comfortable and least judged in the Episcopal Church, and so far I have found no defensible reason to do otherwise. I admire and appreciate the teachings of the Dalai Lama (compassion as well as detachment), I strive for the wholeness of Christ, I am transported by the music composed for the Roman and Anglican institutions, I am grateful for and I revel in the love of my dear ones whether they agree with me or not. The day this established church tells me how to vote, and who is and is not worthy of love and redemption will be the day I leave for good.

Push has come to Shove

Okay, it's time to deliver the coup de grace to the Great River Journal; the only question is how to do it. I could just send all my faithful subscribers a post card saying it's over, maybe returning their subscription money if it's come in since the summer issue. That would pretty much strip the bank account, and I'd have to scramble to pay the rest of Adam's fee for doing such a good job on the web page. (Quite rightly, he hasn't mounted it, and won't until he's paid in full. Once it's up, however, it will be there for a while -- the legacy of the hard work and occasional flashes of genius generated during the GRJ's brief span.) Or, I could keep the subscription money, since I deposited it in good faith. I've been told that $10.00 or even $17.50 isn't much to a subscriber, they wouldn't care and the loss wouldn't harm them as much as returning several times that sum would do to the GRJ bank account.

I could turn out one more issue, announcing the demise in the editorial, and filling the present glaring deficiency in submitted material with some old, previously published stuff that I really like. I did promise one person that I would publish her article this time; she made a huge scene when for time constraints it was not published last winter; she called me up late at night (after fortifying herself with a certain amount of liquor) and shrieked at me for 10 minutes. In the half year since then I have stayed angry, not speaking to her unless cornered; in truth that phone call was one solid reason I want out of this -- I do not enjoy, nor even do I wish to tolerate, being blasted for editorial decisions. Customer service is not where my vocation lies, and to have to be nice in the midst one of those contretemps is inimical to my nature. ANYWAY, if I don't publish and include that damned article, I'll have to reopen the whole subject with the crank and I am loathe to do it.

Hell, I am so cross with the whole subject that I am loathe even to address it; I don't WANT to do ANYTHING more with it. But I am honor-bound to take it on one more time and not be half-assed about it, or else notify subscribers of the truth of it and let it go. I'm trying to think how relieved I'll be having put down the burden, and how proud I'll be that I didn't just abandon it. So far it's not helping me get going.

Plus, Mary is busy beyond belief, and doesn't have much time to help. I groan audibly when I think of doing it alone. Like this: GGGGHHHHHAAHHH.

What about men? Dear Jon [no, it's not what you think]:

Well, Jon, I don’t know what’s so yesterday about leaving the toilet seat up -- I had a house guest last year who repeatedly committed that faux pas, and in the guest bathroom, no less. Civilization comes late to some, to others not at all.

I know well that you listen to many males in your occupation -- I think of it as your well-founded vocation, actually. I remember your relating to me how tough it can be to explain and demonstrate to some men the existence, characteristics, and usefulness of Feelings, Emotions and the like. I thought at the time that it was like training someone in the use of a very well-engineered prosthetic device. I have since first posting the above (below? previous, anyway) blog learned that men might very well be hard-wired NOT to be able to express themselves relative to women. In a New York Times review of the book “The Female Brain”, it’s noted that as soon as the communication system within the brain of the male fetus begins to develop, it is immersed -- “marinated” is the word the reviewer used, for God’s sake -- in testosterone, which effectively "prunes away" great numbers of its working connections. I could only think, “Ick.” Then I thought, “Oh, well no wonder.” Then I thought, “My God, men really ARE handicapped.”

After this acid bath, the birthed and maturing male brain is further discouraged from the practice of self-expression by those factors you mention: lack of male models, psychological and modeled patterning by the father of isolation from other and then from self, and then the shaming by women of men’s stunted growth in that area.

It must be extraordinarily difficult for men to learn the skill of communication, to quell their fear of it long enough and consistently enough to get good at it. (Must be like sending a woman through Marine boot camp -- it can be done, but it’s not easy on either the teachers or the students.) The logical teachers of the art of communication are women -- they’re born to talking and listening, using their intuition and emotions as source material, and they become skilled at it very quickly in their lives. Compassion from the teacher is required, and a lot of it; many women are so bruised by life at the hands of silent and judgmental men that there’s not much inclination toward compassion, and that’s a real problem, MOSTLY FOR THE WOMEN. If we don’t exercise our built-in empathy, practice forgiveness, love ourselves enough to stop being so damned defensive, this unhappy chain will continue for yet more millennia.

I did watch Andre Agassi’s exit from the game, and cried right along with everybody else (even Que es mas macho John McEnroe seemed a little leaky). Andre’s trainer and philosophy guru Gil Reyes had a lot (everything?) to do with Agassi’s arrival at the Zen of tennis, and of life. I think that the manner in which Andre comported himself in the second chapter of his career has done a lot for encouraging men to be compassionate themselves, open with their feelings, gentle with children and women, and yet completely Manly Men.

And, yes, dear Jon, you did a great deal for 2 of my sons, at a time when it was sorely needed and deeply appreciated. By all of us. That they are indeed strong, capable, interesting AND sensitive men today is attributable in no small measure to your love and guidance during their adolescence.

What about men? The Sequel

On the other hand, there’s the thing about men that even Hemingway acknowledged -- the curse of loneliness. That’s the drawback to the splendid isolation men seem to prize; thus isolated, they are safe from vulnerability, and for vulnerability, read “intimacy”.

Hence, intimacy, with a woman, threatens the loss of independence, loss of opportunity to have sex with any OTHER woman [who will have him, but that’s another story], or freedom to do all those fun, faux-jousting things like play poker and smoke cigars and eat junk and pull ligaments shooting hoops with each other until dark or until somebody ELSE’S wife makes him come home (pussy!).

As for intimacy with another man -- YIKES! we won’t even discuss that here; way too scary. For this kind of intimacy, it’s much more comfy to substitute that ligament-pulling b’ball, or, for the less robust, chess or academic department politics; it’s still rivalry, competition, you know, MANLY stuff. It is said that all sorts of intimate conversations are held in these contests, that they say many, many things to each other without the use of mere words, but the topics seem to be truncated, limited to subjects such as, whose is bigger, who’s smarter, who’s tougher, etc. Short conversations indeed.

When are the conversations about their common terrors? Do they admit their loneliness to each other, and seek comfort through this confession? Do they share their fears of impotence, of death, of irrelevance? Men can write about these things, and some beautifully -- McGuane in "Gallatin Canyon", his new book of short stories, Robert B. Parker, James Lee Burke, the aforementioned Hemingway; what happens to those men whose medium of expression isn’t words, or painting or music, or to those who have been successfully conditioned OUT of exercising self-expression except through violence, or its bedmate, depression?

I am not the first woman to be puzzled and sorrowed by the terrible, even if self-inflicted, wounds of men. I remember a Phoebe Snow song from the 70s, “Have mercy on those men with no feelings”, with the haunting line “10 stories up and out on the ledge”. Another one, sung by Margaret Whiting and then Rickie Lee Jones, “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men” I reprint in full here:

Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again so
Kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men
Sitting in the bars
Knowing neon nights
Missing all the stars

All the sad young men
Drifting through the town
Drinking up the night
Trying not to drown

All the sad young men
Singing in the cold
Trying to forget
That they're growing old

All the sad young men
Choking on their worth
Trying to be brave
Running from the truth

Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
That's the cruelest part

All the sad young men
Seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold for a little while
Tired little girl does the best she can
Trying to be gay for her sad young man

While the grimy moon
Watches from above
All the sad young men
Play at making love

Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home tonight
All the sad young men

[Lyrics by Kurt Elling, music by Tommy Wolf & Fran Landesman, from "Close Your Eyes"]

Where were these guys’ mothers when the little boys were learning about the world? I admit mixed success with my own sons: they are all sensitive, all thinkers, and while they’ve each had moments of stunningly poor judgment, not to mention visibly wrestling with the demands of overweening ego, on the whole they do okay. They married strong, capable, interesting women, and they love and value them. Since there are three male siblings, there have been some (to a woman, their mother, anyway) very scary competitions, and times when I truly thought somebody might die -- certainly some kind of urge had taken over through which the desire to kill was almost palpable.

Oh, hell -- I’ve felt that myself in RAISING those kids; so angry and frustrated, and, here’s the kicker, so damned LONELY in that endeavor, I could understand how someone could hurt a child very badly, or over an extended period of time do great psychological or social damage to them. I had not much help in the trenches of child-rearing, not from absent husband (5 days a week on the road, making as much money and gaining as much corporate power as possible, as fast as possible), not from extended family (scattered to the winds, as my mother often said), not from peers (all of whom were, like me, ashamed to admit they had trouble being housewives and mothers, to admit even to themselves that they might need help). Anyway, there we were, all of us mothers of sons, doing our damnedest, but against the heavy odds of isolation and loneliness, and shame. And without a guide book but with the best of intentions, trying mightily to teach our sons how to be human, sensate and sensitive, courageous, discerning, loving. And to sustain their sense of humor!

Anyway, I still don’t completely understand the human male. I’ve come to accept him as he is, learned to enjoy some of that machismo, while staying well clear of its baser consequences. And sometimes I just throw up my hands and retreat in bafflement.

Since my last blog which poked a little fun at them, a couple of men have asked me if women have any handicaps, and I respond that of course we do, but I just can’t see them as clearly, standing here and not over there looking at us and scratching my balding head.

I would love it if somebody out there would offer some of that clarity here, either way.

Help the Handicapped

A friend of mine has a plan for what to do about men. It’s just not good enough to roll one’s eyes and then, casting one’s glance toward the nearest woman, exclaim, “Men!” Nor is it humane to dismiss them out of hand as insensitive brutes and go on to live one’s life without them. There’s another way, says my friend -- a sensitive, kind way to embrace our benighted brothers, to accept and love them in spite of their frailty.

Men are handicapped, indeed they are cursed, by their own primary sexual characteristics; those pieces of lumpish skin that men are forced to drag around with them all day and all night, carry the seeds of their destruction, asitwere. Let us call those seeds testosterone poisoning or TP. (TP represents an equally appropriate French phrase “tant pis” meaning, when accompanied by a Gallic shrug, “Tough, dude.”) Thus poisoned, men are frequently, with no warning whatsoever, rendered blind, deaf, dumb and stupid to everything around them; they might as well have been cattle-prodded when their genitals stir, for all the good they are at that moment to themselves or to the rest of the human race. Too often, the poor darlings, when recovering from a case of TP, slap their foreheads and say, “What have I DONE?” Too late, way, WAY too late. They’ve already picked a fight with a guy two stones heavier, or micro-managed the best assistant in the world to the point where she quits on the spot, or, say, they've inadvertantly invaded Iraq.

Fortunately for the rest of us, TP also renders men extremely distractible; when we see one of them careening wildly off course, preparing to roll a grenade into someone’s life, or indeed into their own, it is OUR responsibility to make them an offer that will guarantee interruption. Oral sex would work, in fact according to the Sweet Potato Queens, just the OFFER of oral sex does the trick; you don’t actually have to do it to derail the onrushing disaster. When they show up to collect (if in fact they remember what the original offer was, or even that one was made), they can be distracted again by something else, like food. Or a soft porn flick.

Anyway, my friend’s suggestion is that men be declared handicapped, because indeed they are. With certification (granted them merely by their showing they in fact do carry the lumpy skin), they can have a much easier time navigating this world. Men can gently be diverted or distracted by anyone noticing one of them headed for trouble. They can have their own parking places, each place being the width of two normal ones so that they don’t risk having the paint job on their cars scratched. With designated parking for men, the rest of us can get out of their way when they’re pointed towards one of them; that way we don’t risk their ramming us if they think we’re trying to get to it first. (The fact that ramming another car does WORSE damage to the paint job than if someone merely opens her car door into a fender is, apparently, NOT THE POINT. Someone wants to take his parking space and NO FUCKING WAY, man.)

To help these poor creatures even further, we can at government expense give any man who seems to need it his very own little nation, tailored to fit inside the average two-car garage; these nations can take the form of miniature railroad layouts, for example, or modeled terrain with little lead soldiers, or GI Joes complete with tanks and IED’s (filled with paint balls, of course). These little setups would make a lot of gun and bomb noises, which seems to make men very happy.

We could provide men with (cute and bubbly) robot personal assistants, who will scurry at The Boss’ first directive, and pour coffee, and compliment them on their ties, and admire their new putters, etc. These robots could even clip the ends of The Boss’ cigars and then declare how it loves the smell of cigar smoke and could it have just one teeny little puff? Then (still scurrying) it could go off to make sandwiches for poker night.

The new self-lowering toilet seat is a huge step in the right direction. We have been much too harsh on the men who neglect to lower the toilet seat, insensitively calling them lazy or stupid or themselves insensitive. What has happened when they leave the seat up is a severe case of TP. Apparently just getting a glimpse of their lumpy skin brings on an attack; they are so busy admiring themselves they cannot REMEMBER to lower the seat. (Plus, if they touch the seat, they might have to wash their hands -- something to be avoided at all costs; it’s so DEMEANING.)

Now, I ask all of you to help this cause; please contribute any suggestions you might have. We’ve all had enough of this injustice; let’s give the poor bastards a break.

The Issue Isn’t the Issue, or Setting Up Housekeeping in Loop City

I live in a pretty weird town. Cochiti Lake is by God beautiful, and quiet, and the night sky is breathtaking, and I swim in the lake in the summer, I watch the snow evaporate (that’s right -- it doesn’t actually melt all the way) in the winter. I love my house, and I’m very happy here in the desert; never thought I could enjoy not-ocean, but I do, for the moment, enjoy it a lot. Yesterday, I closed my eyes and I swear the wind sounded just like surf, soughing rhythmically, breathing in and out -- very soothing and just as effective as the seashore in generating positive ions, at least in my tangled soul.

This is a made-up town; it arose from an ill-advised and ultimately doomed arrangement between the Cochiti Indian Pueblo and Great Western Corp, aka The Hunt Brothers of Greedy Texas (insert gasping sounds). There was supposed to be a large town here (on the choicest mesas on the reservation) of 40,000 souls, complete with schools and recreation center, indoor pool, golf course, riding stables, etc etc etc, and I’m sure that’s the way Great Western painted the future to the Pueblo. Plus there’s this lake, generously supplied by the Army Corps of Engineers (who had dammed up the fabled Rio Grande on Cochiti Land, without hardly a by-your-leave) conveniently if mysteriously accomplished moments before Great Western came up with this Andy Hardy scheme. This all happened in the late sixties/early seventies and it wasn’t long before everything went to hell in a hand basket. There are those who think that in fact, once Great Western discovered it was not allowed to buy the land but only lease it, they lost interest and decided to declare bankruptcy, big fat Chapter 11, abandoning the project and leaving what was here to the bemused Pueblo. They never knew what hit them. What remains is a hamlet of a couple of hundred houses, a golf course, and some hard feelings between the residents of Cochiti Lake and their reluctant landlord the Cochiti Pueblo. As far as I can see, ALL the present and surviving parties were royally screwed by the Federal Government and its co-conspirator the rapacious Great Western Corporation. We are arguing over very scenic chicken bones.

And argue we do. If we can’t get a good scrap going with the Pueblo, then the local Anglos will start bickering among themselves. In this made-up town, everybody arrived from somewhere else (something like 40 different nations, for one thing, and easily two-thirds of these United States are represented in Cochiti Lake), bringing all their cultural baggage with them. This is a microcosmic melting-pot experiment, with no common cultural base, in a place where there is no political power to be had by anybody, but where the (mostly Euro-American) expectations are clear and immutable, and there was bound to be trouble. Politics here, or what passes for it, is in reality, great umbrage expressed by all parties, and never NEVER any kind of resolution. It might as well be France, for God’s sake. Or a particularly hellish community of mostly grumpy old men and the women who tolerate them.

Each of these grumps has his own issue, and he fights loudly, vigorously and relentlessly for it. He just won’t stop; it doesn’t matter that his issue has been overridden, has no other constituency, or is simply ridiculous and not going to happen. He clings to it, gets all red in the face to the point where one worries that he’s going to stroke out in the middle of his tirade (sometimes they do, being septua-, octo-, or nonegenarians and choleric besides), and will NOT be dissuaded. Issues range from how the Pueblo isn’t keeping the streets maintained, to accusations of fraud and mal/misfeasance on the part of the hapless members of the town assembly, to hysteria over town taxes.

BUT the issue is never the issue. Once I realized that, I was set free from taking any of these people seriously. They are all disembodied, free-floating outrage in search of an issue, one that will not expose nor threaten their real issues. They can god-damn around (my mother’s phrase describing one of my father’s favorite activities) and cause a lot of scurrying and side-bets on the part of their political representatives (again, the hapless assembly members), but they will not tolerate the slightest movement towards resolution. They CLING to their faux issue, as if it were life or death.

As indeed it is, at least in the psychological sense. There can be no resolution of their fake issues until the real issue is revealed, and the real issue cannot be revealed EVER because it would require great risk, exposing themselves as fraudulent entities in the extreme. The real issues are not political; the real issues have nothing to do with the community, nor even how they feel about living in the land of the Red Man (I think Indians might prefer to be called Brown these days, but what do I know). The real issues are: 1--I’m 75 years old and haven’t had an erection in 15 years; 2--I’m the youngest of 10 children and have never been listened to nor taken seriously ever in my life; 3--I came to the United States to get a little free speech for God’s sake, so speak freely I will and be damned to you; and 4--I am bat-shit wacko, jealous of the power of the elected government, want some for myself but am not willing to risk actually running for office, and so I just look for things to pick at, and be as nasty and patronizing as I possibly can in hopes of picking up a constituency that will do whatever I tell them, and voila, political power without the work.

The grumps, and even the assembly, as well as anybody who takes issue with the grumps’ issues, are trapped in a loop. As I said, the grumps themselves would never give up the loop willingly, simply because it’s much too comfortable inside it -- they’ve got a portable TV, a LazyBoy and a chamber pot right next to them. They know their script (which is the familiar tirade), they know what’s coming next (only more looping), they cannot be dislodged by reasoned debate (because the issue is UN-reasoned, and anybody that argues with them only perpetuates the loop), and they live very happily in there. Personally, I have not the slightest desire to expose the real issues specifically, nor even to break up the loops (though I feel wretched for my friends in elected office who feel it their duty to be responsive to the grumps, and who cannot seem to shake off the oobleck of the loop to effect real change). I only offer this whole thing as an example of looping, which is a very dangerous and growth-stunting way to live one’s life.

Loops are just another way of denial, and beyond that line there be dragons. I think Eric Berne, author of Games People Play and pioneer in exposing the psychological and emotional ploys of straw man or looping, described this syndrome as Uproar, or Here We Go Again. In relationships, we find ourselves feeling unloved or neglected or threatened or diminished or SOMETHING not good, and so we pick and pick at the other until we can find a good looping subject, trigger it and then, yeeHAH, a DOUBLE LOOP! Here we go again, and neither one of us has to look at anything scary. Life in the Bickerson household.

Money’s a loop. Over the years I’ve learned (and have mixed results in remembering) that money is NEVER the issue; when we fret and squeal and wail and wring our hands over the lack of enough money, we can entertain ourselves thusly for days, and never deal with the fears of personal insufficiency or impotence that is the real issue when it comes to money. Of course we need money -- the capitalist system we all slave under has made it the sine qua non, but it isn’t important; it’s only important in forcing us to attend, and examine for weaknesses, the limits of the paradigm. (Well, that and financing one more trip to Hawaii.)

What is required to break any loop is to change the subject, inject a new idea, e.g., to suck it up, take the damned risk and move on. THAT’S where the growth is. It's just that it takes more courage than most of us have, and confidence that we can do better, which is even rarer. Diogenes is still out there groping around, isn't he?

On the block

The thing about writing, for me, is that I can’t imagine just letting it loose -- typity typity typity type, dancing or marching its own way along. I seem to need some kind of a chart, a map maybe, before I can even begin the Thing. Without the map, I have no faith in the process (I’m so TIRED of that word); I hold deep envy for those who can keep journals, jotting down in the language of chit-chat, this and that, not caring a whit whether it’s interesting or not, just strolling over their day again, setting it to rest. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I wonder if they sleep better than I do, having given themselves a chance to parse the events and activities that took place before their rest, like putting clean dishes away: glasses in one cupboard, by size; silverware in a drawer, by configuration; that kind of thing. I think I’m too impatient to care what HAS happened -- I want to go on and see what’s next, or, if I’m tired, just to sleep; unfortunately without a working journal, I have to leave it to my unconscious to deal with the Stuff of the day, and sometimes it scares itself into complete wakefulness.

So anyway, about writing a Thing: with such dependency on a Map, I have first to decide what point I want specified; if it were a Google map, I’d want an address first, and then I’d pick the manner of the journey. What in the hell do we do, or DID we do, when it was time to set out across the plains, just to head vaguely west? Or cross the ocean, any ocean? Just step out there? Make our own maps while we were at it? Clearly so. There must have been a time when I wasn’t this unnerved by the lack of a precise destination; my curiosity knows no bounds in the realm of information, so I can’t imagine what stops me short of easy, fluid writing -- there’s a prong collar around my fifth chakra, that’s what it is.

Grreta is one of those dogs that go absolutely nuts in thunder; her terror is so great that she loses all sanity -- it’s blind, deaf, senseless horror. One of her spells can be mitigated or delayed by dressing her in a very snug doggie cape (not feasible in the desert in the summer), or, we’ve just discovered, by putting on her training collar -- complete with prongs. The thing about a prong collar is that it fits very closely around the neck, rather like a choker necklace on a person, and is not particularly bothersome until some pressure is put on the leash, and that pressure (according to Cesar Milan) feels like a more like the disciplinary but not necessarily aggressive grasp of an alpha dog, or the dog’s mother teaching a graphic lesson. That is reassurance to a dog, to Grreta, and she feels she can stand down from her usual posture of shepherd, caretaker, because somebody else can take charge for a while. (If she’s hysterical, she can’t very well take care of the rest of us, and that helplessness makes her feel even MORE upset, and so it goes.) The only other way she can feel off duty is to be in her crate, where she can shudder and shake unobserved.

I love my crate, my bedroom and the bed in it; for an apparent extrovert, I surely do crave my solitude. That ought be a good thing for one born to be a writer; there are few more solitary pursuits. To avoid the guilt of not writing, the crippling block, other than taking to my bed (such a Victorian concept), I suppose I can only put the demons to rest by applying my own prong collar, or holing up where I don’t have to talk to anybody, and certainly avoiding my computer, whose blank screen admonishes and seduces simultaneously. Problem is, not only is that lonesome, since I’m deprived even of my own company, but also without some kind of human contact, the stimulation of companionship, my system slows and slows until there’s barely any juice flowing of any kind. What can follow THAT is pretty horrible in itself: a migraine, or a first-class depression.

WHOA! We won’t go there this time, although I’m sure we’ll have to sooner or later.

Enter Laughing

This was forwarded on to me seven years ago; seven years is not only a Biblical span of time, it is also a couple of generations in InternetSpeak, so it must be time to put it out there again. I have chuckled to myself many, many times over the years since I first read this, and now I want to have it handy to re-read whenever I need a belly laugh. Most of my friends and family have dogs, some of them also live in the wild West, many with me in New Mexico, as does the original authoress (maybe it was the subliminal influence of this story that first enticed me here), and both groups will appreciate what follows.

Those of you somehow fail to find the humor, please add something you DO think is funny to the blog. This will be the entry for senseless laughing, okay?

My apologies to Anne V, and to the chat group in which it appeared sometime in the last century [rec.pets or some such].

Dogs in Elk

Anne V - 01:01pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1318 of 1332)
Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not, unfortunately, a joke.

AmyC - 01:02pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1319 of 1332)
Um, can you give us a few more specifics here?

Anne V - 01:12pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1320 of 1332)
They're inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored with it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this morning.

AmyC - 01:19pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1321 of 1332)
Oh. My. God. What sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the situation, I'm afraid you're not going to create enough of a diversion to get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a hose on the festivities?

Ase Innes-Ker - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1322 of 1332)
I'm sorry Anne. I know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also incredibly funny.

Anne V - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1323 of 1332)
Elk. Elk are very big this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They aren't rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage. Other dogs are working on them from the outside. It's all way too primal in my yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone else’s house, which is where they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for them. Hose failed. My new hope is that if they all continue to eat at this rate, they will be finished before the houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, God - I know it's funny. It's appalling, and funny, and completely, entirely representative of life with dogs.

Kristen R. - 01:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1324 of 1332)
I'm so glad I read this thread, dogless as I am. Dogs in elk. Dogs in elk.

Anne V - 01:41pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1325 of 1332)
It's like that children’s book out there - dogs in elk, dogs on elk, dogs around elk, dogs outside elk. And there is some elk inside of, as well as on, each dog at this point.

Elizabeth K - 01:57pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1328 of 1333)
Anne, aren't you in Arizona or Nevada? There are elk there? I'm so confused! We definitely need to see pics of Gus Pong and Jake in the elk carcass.

Anne V - 02:03pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1329 of 1333)
I am in New Mexico, but there are elk in both Arizona and Nevada, yes. There are elk all over the damn place. The dogs don't look out very often. If you stand the ribcage on end they scramble to the top and look out, all red. Otherwise, you kinda have to get in there a little bit yourself to really see them. So I think there will not be pictures.

CoseyMo - 02:06pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1330 of 1333)
"all red;" I'm not sure the deeper horror of all this was fully borne in upon me till I saw that little phrase.

Anne V - 02:10pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1331 of 1333)
Well, you know, the Basenji (that would be Jake) is a desert dog, naturally, and infamous for its aversion to water. And then, Gus Pong (who is coming to us, live, unamplified and with a terrific reverb which is making me a little dizzy) really doesn't mind water, but hates to be cold. Or soapy. And both of them can really run. Sprints of up to 35 mph have been clocked. So. If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say, pleasant.

CoseyMo - 02:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1332 of 1333)
What if you stand the ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?

Anne V - 02:18pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1333 of 1333)
They wedge their toes between the ribs. And scream. We tried that before we brought the elk home from the mountain with dogs inside. Jake nearly took my friend’s arm off. He's already short a toe, so he cherishes the 15 that remain.

Linda Hewitt - 02:30pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1336 of 1356)
Have you thought about calling your friendly vet and paying him to come pick up the dogs, elk and letting the dogs stay at the vet’s overnight? If anyone would know what to do, it would be your vet. It might cost some money, but it would solve the immediate crisis. Keep us posted.

ChristiPeters - 02:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1337 of 1356)
Yikes! My sympathy! When I lived in New Mexico, my best friend's dog (the escape artist) was continually bringing home road kill. When there was no road kill convenient, he would visit the neighbor's house. Said neighbor slaughtered his own beef. The dog found all kinds of impossibly gross toys in the neighbor's trash pit. I have always had medium to large dogs. The smallest dog I ever had was a mutt from the SPCA who matured out at just above knee high and about 55 pounds. Our current dog (daughter's choice) is a Pomeranian. A very small Pomeranian. She's 8 months old now and not quite 4 pounds. I'm afraid I'll break her.

Lori Shiraishi - 02:38pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1338 of 1356)
Bet you could fit a whole lot of Pomeranians in that there elk carcass! Anne - my condolences on what must be an unbelievable situation!

Anne V - 02:44pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1339 of 1356)
I did call my vet. He laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can be summed as, “What did you expect?” and, “No, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.” He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am almost surrendered to the absurdity of it.

Lori Shiraishi - 02:49pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1340 of 1356)
"He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home." So he can fall down laughing in person?

Anne V - 02:50pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1341 of 1356)
Basically, yeah. That would be about it.

AmyC - 02:56pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1342 of 1356)
“No, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog." Oh, sweet lord, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a woman of superhuman patience. Wait -- you carried the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?

Anne V - 02:59pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1343 of 1356)
“the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?" No, well, sort of. My part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had to go to, and say, “Yeah, ok, whatever,” when it was suggested that the ribcages, since we couldn't get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldn't be left there, be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored with it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very loud, one singing, one snoring.

Lori Shiraishi - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1344 of 1356)
"And very loud, one singing, one snoring." Wow. I can't even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the inside of an elk.

Anne V - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1345 of 1356)
Reverb. Lots and lots of reverb.

Anne V - 03:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1347 of 1356)
I'll tell you the thing that is causing me to lose it again and again, and then I have to go back outside and stay there for a while. After the meeting, I said to my (extraordinary) boss, “Look, I've gotta go home for the rest of the day, I think. Jake and Gus Pong are inside some elk ribcages, and my dad is coming tonight, so I've got to get them out somehow.” And he said, pale and huge-eyed, “Annie, how did you explain the elk to the clients?” The poor, poor man thought I had the carcasses brought to work with me. For some reason, I find this deeply funny.

(weekend pause)

Anne V - 08:37am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1395 of 1405)
So what we did was put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be plunged into a de-elking solution and let in the house. Then I went to the airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs, and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very frightening glimpse of something moving around in there if you watched long enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I was sure they knew it was open, and then I fell asleep.

Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that it's just the houseguests. It wasn't the houseguests. It was my dogs, having an attack of teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the curtains with remarkably bloody little feet.

Here are some things I have learned, this Rosh Hashanah weekend:
1. Almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases;
2. We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk carcasses out of our yard;
3. The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street; and
4. The dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them, from either side.

Anne V - 09:58am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1401 of 1405)
What I am is really grateful that they didn't actually get the damn thing in the window, which is clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didn't arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.

AmyC - 09:59am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1402 of 1405)
Imagine waking up with a gnawed elk carcass in your bed, like a real-life "Godfather" with an all-dog cast.

Anne V - 10:01am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1403 of 1405)
There is not enough almond milk in the world to solve an event of that kind.

Only connect

When Israel and [name anArab entity here] start going at it, we all get panicky; it seems reasonable to do so. There is so much grim determination on one side, and so much hysteria and irrationality on the other, that we can't imagine any possible non-violent way out of it. And sooner or later, somebody we know personally, or maybe even we our own se'f, is going to have to get into it. Death, and lots of it, is going to come around and demand some red meat, right here in our home town, all because of something that we can't even see, much less control or even restrain.

Already death itself is being used as a tactical, even strategic weapon; we count up the number of daily deaths in Iraq, we compute it by the month and year, we subdivide it endlessly: what's the civilian count? the number of American kids lost? how many suicide bombers this week, and how many did each take out? And now we're doing the same kind of ticking off in the current Hezbollah vs. Israel skirmish. We're told that in Arab Islamist circles, Hezbollah has good street cred because it's been able to keep parity with the number of casualties it inflicts on Israelis, in proportion to the number of casualties it sustains on its own side. It also gets extra points, along with al Quaeda, for the most grisly type of killing -- beheadings are particularly enhancing to the terrorist's rep.

Death is interesting, it's worth parsing and writing down and publishing everywhere, as if it were not already written into the script of everyone's life. Everybody will die; it is a truth that affects the way most people live, however we deny it. There is a social fascination with the manner of dying, or with the number at any one time, but four people die of old age for every one spectacular death, and who makes note of this? Who grieves for them? Just the ones who know them personally, and even then many are grateful for the life more than they grieve the death. There is a reason for every life, beginning to end, but to accept, ACCEPT, death, to live with it, requires a completely different experience of grief and loss.

It is then a question of importance, isn’t it? Like: how is the life well-lived more significant than the honorable death? How is one well-connected life more significant than reading of these anonymous but sensational deaths?

It makes all the difference to bring these ideas home, to make a connection to the dying one, to our own death, to death itself. By forging that bond, we give meaning and strength to our lives. A well-connected life lives far beyond itself. Everything we touch is changed. Whatever life's wounds, they are healed. Whatever its griefs, they are reconciled. Whatever its grudges or fears or pain, they are salved by the experience of solid connection, and it is only in some part that we do so intentionally. It is the result perhaps of an intentionally connected life, but we do not have to intend to heal or reconcile or entertain; you only connect, and these are the result.

The means of making connection is actually pretty easy: just love, as hard as we can. We don't have to like it, but we do have to accept everything around us -- that's love: acceptance. It's easy, really, once we get the demons of Principal or Pride or Ego or Fear out of the way. THAT'S the hard part, and the combining of thousands of ego-driven maniacs into one hare-brained Cause makes for a great deal of noise and disruption, not to say confusion of issues.

Let's not give in to the silky seduction of panic; we can't think or connect while in a panic, and in fact we don't have to try. We are all Leopold Blooms in the face of worldwide horror ("I'm hysterical! I'm in pain and I'm hysterical! I'm wet, and I'm in pain and I'm hysterical!"). The reports of increasingly bad news gives us a good excuse not to risk making and maintaining our direct connections. Our personal connections are a greater threat to the ego than a hundred bus-bombings five thousand miles away, and so we're tempted to seize any excuse not to address them -- way too scary. Let's go see "Jaws" instead of staying home and engaging with people we love, and who challenge us far more than does a movie or a war.

International strife is big, big, big, but it isn't real. We learned three years ago that it truly doesn't matter how we feel about a particular global adventure -- we can't do anything about it, nor about its outcome. Ninety-nine percent of us are too far removed from the War button or the Peace button to have any effect whatsoever on the pushing of them. So nevermind. We can hope and we can pray, but we simply can't afford to waste time fretting about them, nor distract ourselves from the here and now.

Here is where we are, now is what matters. Period. Connect, and love harder.

Woo-woo, YOOhoo!

Come on, we all think about it. At three in the morning -- Fitzgerald's long dark night of the soul -- or when spooked by a glimpse of deja vu or a flash in the peripheral vision, or someone's unexplainable return from death's door with a guaranteed-to-be-terminal illness, we give ourselves over for just a moment to ponder The Other Side. Ooooo. Western medicine, the scientific method and firmly institutionalized religion all conspire to scare or mock us into Not Going There; all three have, after all, invested centuries in controlling the social paradigm. As long as they can keep us frightened for our health (and going into surgery isn't FRIGHTENING???), and worried about looking silly, not to mention unwilling to risk eternal damnation, they can pretty much have it all their own way. We'll accept wholly what medicine and science and religion tell us is good for us, and readily hand over our lives to those whose arrogance is unrestrained, and whose political interests rest in themselves and in their self-serving institutions.

But don't get me started....

Anyway, given my rebellious streak and my 'satiable curtiosity (Kipling's Elephant's Child, look it up), I've been willfully wandering around in ontology, metaphysics, the nature of consciousness, ET's, alternative healing, the life of the spirit, that kind of thing, for a couple of decades now. The other given is that I'm incurably practical, and so I've never been carried away by The Occult, and I'm suspicious of those who are. God knows there are charismatics and charlatans anywhere, in any paradigm, and this field seems to have more than its share of dreamy-eyed nutsoids, people who get their frissons in the methods of getting the information and mostly ignoring the information itself. ("Methods" can include trance-channeling, astrology, Ouija boards, Tarot, guided meditation, hypnosis, past-life regression, even acupuncture and similar energy work, stuff like that.) These methods are remarkable in themselves, but too many people get stalled on how bizarre they are, become addicted to fooling around with the medium (so to speak) and don't go the next step, which would be to explore the territory when they get there. For my part, I don't even think about the media anymore -- don't have time, I'm too busy taking in the sights and cogitating the significance of, say, reincarnation, or ready and easy communication with non-carnate spirit beings, from which I can get some sensible explanations of why we do what we do. (More Oooooo.)

This is all background for some of my upcoming blogs, ruminations on what these explorations have turned up. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I can claim to know where to get them, and, believe me, they don't lie in the smug and drawling catch-phrases of our institutions. I've heard some great stories in this time: the history of the planet (longer and more complicated than you think), the inexorability of karma, the delusions of power vs. strength, and, yes, the nature of consciousness. It's a lot to swallow, and as I've said, I don't swallow much without long and careful examination. (Figuratively speaking, of course.)

But it is interesting, and fun to contemplate. Besides, it can't hurt to loosen up the preconceptions, right? Want to come along for the ride?

While I'm whining...

Then there’s the Great River Journal dilemma: this is a (very) slender quarterly I dreamed up a year and a half ago. [LINK] I imagined a forum for writers and poets and naturalists and artists and essayists (ahem), one that would reach to and from the length of the Rio Grande (Great River, get it?) valley, would serve the pockets of arts and culture that are so significantly ignored by self-important Santa Fe and perpetually self-deprecating Albuquerque. It had not escaped me that this strip of territory is positively loaded with creative people, STARTING with the Pueblo artisans, and continuing with Hispanics and Anglos who have been irresistibly drawn to the area by the extraordinarily intense creative energy to be found here. Many, even most, don’t get as far as a fancy gallery, or published (twenty bucks says that less than ten percent of really good writing ever gets to print); indigenous artisans scramble for the Indian Market and can scarcely be found anywhere else or at any other time of the year.

Well, anyway -- up jumps the silly Nobility part of me, and I get this little magazine going. I whip myself and loyal, apparently tireless Mary up into a frenzy of begging for written material, and then editing and scanning and formatting photos and drawings, and then laying out and printing and folding and collating and stapling, and whining for subscriptions and advertising, and mailing and pressing copies into the reluctant hands of passers-by, and applying for copyright, and putting it up on its website, and then wheezing with exhaustion of mind, body and checking account, over and over and over again.

The Journal was just about to be euthanized from lack of funds before its fourth issue, when a Cochiti Lake community organization gave us money to keep going. I was grateful, and relieved of COURSE, and kept going. The cycle was repeated another time, and we bought a computer layout program because Microsoft Word was making us both nuts (and you know what we’re talking about -- I won’t elaborate on the random and whimsical defaults to superscript or font changes or the arbitrary and hilarious reduction of margins to half and inch, resulting in absolute chaos and panic and rage).

That program and the next issue used up most of the gift, and just when we were (this time slightly less reluctantly) going to give it up, a most generous donor gave us even MORE money. SO, having slain our aged and stuttering large format printer with the fall 2005 issue, we bought a new slick, quiet printer, with which to produce more pages of color (what good is a periodical about the arts if it can’t be reproduced in color?). I took a deep breath and decided that if the Journal was going to continue to improve, we needed to shape up the website -- it’s the way of the world now, after all. Mary has a friend and former student who is a web-designer and we contracted him for a very good price; his spiffed-up version of the Great River Journal website is beautiful, no question, and accurately reflects the feel of the magazine itself. (The new site will be up shortly -- watch this space.) Having bought the printer, having bought the paper and the ink cartridges for the two latest issues, we have just enough money to pay the designer. We might have the wherewithal to print one more issue (if we don’t go nuts on color, and just photocopy most of it), and then we’re back to begging.

I’m tired just thinking about it. Not that we haven’t had help, not at all. There have been local friends who have been very helpful -- with drawings and photos, with subscriptions, and the grunt work of folding, collating, etc., and coming up with articles, some more cheerfully than others -- and God knows I’m thankful to and for them. None of them, however, wants to cough up the commitment of time and energy that I need to keep me slogging along. I’m, frankly, burnt out on the whole thing. I don’t WANT any more donations, I want it to DIE!

And then there’s the guilt. I have equal amounts of guilt for wanting to give up the Journal (a) after such good monetary support and admittedly a lot of flattery about the finished product each time; and (b) guilt for my not insisting on enough time and creative energy to do my own writing. Looks like I can’t win this one, doesn’t it?

GGGHHHH. August fifteenth is the deadline I set for submissions: that will be the crunchola (though I’m -- obviously -- feeling it already). Maybe there won’t be enough material for a fall issue. I can only hope not; then it won’t be my fault if it slips gently into that good night.

Angel on a Bulldozer: First second thoughts

My God, what have I done? As Alec Guinness said that in "Bridge Over the River Kwai" we all said, "Well, DUH," and waited for him to make it right. I have no fuse plunger to fall on here, but I surely wish I could blow this whole thing up; do blogs have to be attended every single day? What about the days when I wake up stupid from having thrashed all night worrying about the danged blog?

I might just have created a monster here. Bear with me, my friends -- we'll press on as best we can. Today IS a stupid day, and I have a couple of errands to run first thing, so I'll get back to business in the heat of the day (which is well established by 11 a.m. -- is there anyone outside of the Bush administration who still thinks global warming is a CONTROVERSY?) and try to be, if not brilliant, vaguely entertaining.

In the meantime, I'll make myself a nice LIST (I can hear King Listmaker Justin now, "Nyah nyah, Mom's making a li-ist") of the things I want to talk about and then I can just tick them off. I have some old stuff mouldering my docs folder; if this gets to be too much, I'll resurrect some of it and do some copy/paste art.

I will also, of course, take special requests. Martina? Helllp me!

Okay, it's a really old photo, but it's how I see myself

I trip over my own threshold

I’m late arriving to the Blogosphere, though I have since 1995 sent out email journal entries of a sort each time I’ve left one part of the country for another, in an effort to keep track of the friends I’ve left behind. This is new behavior for a military brat; we usually just press on and don’t look back, and that’s a damned shame. Only the most tenacious of my friends (like Susan née Coop, the best leg-clinger since Howie Morris on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows”) have managed to track me as I wander around the globe. The big loser in my old pattern was of course, I: trying to avoid the pain of separation, I just denied it all, looked forward to the next adventure and if people missed me, then that was their problem. Lonely out there, though, in Adventureland; it only took me 50 years to feel it, and it hurt! Hurt enough to drive me to extraordinary measures, i.e., to Writing.

I have had the mother of all writing blocks all of my life; writing (albeit infrequent) personal letters wasn’t as difficult for me as Writing Lit/Crit/Poetry/Essays, etc., since in correspondence there’s a connection to be made and maintained, so this bold step into actually keeping in touch with some detail was not as brave, nor as doomed, as would be a decision to Write (L/C/P/E). So, in my two major cross-country moves since 1995 (I didn’t count the 4 house-to-house moves in Atlanta), I wrote letters to my friends, and it was okay, on the whole. They seemed to enjoy them, and I felt I had found a place to put all my conflicting and burdensome feelings, a place other than in my digestive tract. I eventually put the Georgia-New Mexico letters up on our website -- http://www.villawisteria.org/JulsJournal/JJIndex.htm -- and got some surprising responses from all over the place. This was getting perilously close to Writing L/C/P/E, though, and it scared me, so I quit. I’ve still sent individual emails out to friends and family, but they’re usually short and mostly have to do with logistics or research into what TV to buy, etc. -- they’re not very newsy nor admittedly very self-revealing either.

There is one correspondent of mine who encourages me to pursue Writing L/C/P/E, and who is thoughtful and gentle enough not to pressure me in any way. Martina is a good friend, and was once a client of mine (I had a small but thriving Reiki practice in Atlanta); we know each other really very well, and she is a scholar, with a lively and curious mind. She wants to know the stuff I know (that’s the scholar part), and she wants to help me get it all out (that’s the friend part -- Martina knows that if I don’t dump some of this data in my head, I’ll blow up, fry my disk, pick your favorite metaphor for intellectual overload). Periodically, she’ll pose a puzzling question, asking my opinion about the nature of consciousness, or about relationships, or about nature vs. nurture, or something she has just mused about. I am enough of a yammerer to take great delight in opinionating; while I’m caught up in the sound of my own voice, asitwere, I quite forget that I’m WRITING, and really do enjoy it. After the fact, when I get wobbly and self-conscious and self-deprecating, I’ll ask her where the hell this is all going, what’s the hook, what’s the point, and she says, “Nevermind, just keep responding.” So I have, and here I am, and I’ll keep pounding away and be as brave as I can in the process.

Thank you, Martina. And thank you to all of my friends and family who have waited so patiently for me to set some of this stuff down; I am grateful to you all, more than I can say.

It is my intent not only to answer Martina’s questions (each and all of you can pick through those answers for what you find true for yourself, and blithely and confidently ignore the rest), but also to set down stories and events of my life as they come to me. My children have asked this of me, but I haven’t until now been able to contemplate actually doing a memoir, telling them smugly that I have been too busy LIVING my life to take the time to write it all down. They have also been patient, and I thank you, my dears. I hope not to disappoint.