HAPPY FRIDAY!

Yesterday, a FB friend posted about this phone number: 707-998-8410.

If you haven't called it, you should do it right now.

It is an elementary school's take on surviving and thriving. It's called PepTOC, a pep talk hotline done by children who are surviving and thriving through all the madness. [You can donate to the effort here if you are inclined. They are crowdsourcing funds to keep the number going.]

This is important and amazing - not only because their pure energy can be felt through the phone line. But also because according to recent studies, children (along with the elderly) have struggled during the pandemic on many fronts, but they are soooo resilient. 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't support them. It's just so wonderful that these teachers realized these kids had so much to give the rest of us. And then they gave it to us. 

As an old high school teacher of mine used to admonish when I was down, "you think you have it rough," read this. [And he was right, and only reminded me when I was on the upswing.] 

This is the opposite sentiment -- we're in this together, here's some pure joy and energy.

The ROI for dialing a number [we do this so infrequently anymore] is ENORMOUS. 

If you want to read/hear more about it, this piece by NPR is lovely. This piece is also lovely. P.S. #5 was my personal fave.

Teaser on YouTube:

If small children are not your jam, try this piece on sound art from the DF. I also found it soothing and lovely to think of city sounds as treasures.

HAPPY WEEKEND! 

Poetry Thursday, life right now for a lot of people

Every Verb is a Lesson in Longing or Dread

~April Freely

Dear Reader, it wouldn’t be a lie if you said poetry was a cover

for my powerlessness, here, on this plane

having ticked off another day waiting for her diagnosis to rise.

As the air pressure picks up, I feel the straight road

curved by darkness, where the curve is a human limit,

where the second verb is mean, the second verb is to blind.

On the other line, my mother sits on her bed

after a terrible infection. Her voice like a wave

breaking through the receiver, when she tells me

that unlike her I revel in the inconclusivity of the body.

+

At the end of the line, I know my mother

accumulates organ-shaped pillows after surgery.

First a heart, then lungs.

The lung pillow is a fleshy-pink. The heart

pillow, a child-drawn metaphor. Both help her expectorate

the costs to the softer places of her body.

After each procedure they make her cross,

the weight of the arm comes down. These souvenirs

of miraculous stuffing other patients on the transplant floor covet,

the way one might long for a paper sack doll made by hand.

Though the stuffing is just wood shavings, one lies

with the doll tight at the crick of an elbow at night.

Copyright © 2020 by April Freely. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 29, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Poetry Thursday, late but timely

For Black Children at the End of the World—and the Beginning

~Roger Reeves

You are in the black car burning beneath the highway

And rising above it—not as smoke

But what causes it to rise. Hey, Black Child,

You are the fire at the end of your elders’

Weeping, fire against the blur of horse, hoof,

Stick, stone, several plagues including time.

Chrysalis hanging on the bough of this night

And the burning world: Burn, Baby, burn.

Anvil and iron be thy name, yea though ye may

Walk among the harnessed heat and huntsmen

Who bear their masters’ hunger for paradise

In your rabbit-death, in the beheading of your ghost.

You are the healing snake in the heather

Bursting forth from your humps of sleep.

In the morning, your tongue moves along the earth

Naming hawk sky; rabbit run; your tongue,

Poison to the filthy democracy, to the gold-

Domed capitols where the ‘Guard in their grub-

Worm-colored uniforms cling to the blades of grass—

Worm on the leaf, worm in the dust, worm,

Worm made of rust: sing it with me,

Dragon of Insurmountable Beauty.

Black Child, laugh at the men with their hoofs

and borrowed muscle, their long and short guns,

The worm of their faces, their casket ass-

Embling of the afternoon, leftover leaves

From last year’s autumn scraping across their boots;

Laugh, laugh at their assassins on the roofs

(For the time of the assassin is also the time of hysterical laughter).

Black Child, you are the walking-on-of-water

Without the need of an approving master.

You are in a beautiful language.

You are what lies beyond this kingdom

And the next and the next and fire. Fire, Black Child.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Reeves. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 16, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.

Grace, Part 2

In the early years of my schooling at a Catholic elementary school, I learned about Grace.

It was one of the most interesting and difficult to grasp concepts I remember learning.

I think if you asked each of the forty of us in that class what we took GRACE to mean, you would get forty different answers.

This is what I remember from those lessons: Grace is something that you want to collect - that you will bring with you from this world to the next. It is something only God can grant. Grace is not something you can buy or sell. [I guess I learned at a much later date about the buying of indulgences, note, this is quite different from Grace.]

There were ways that you could EARN Grace. I understood from what the teacher told us that Grace was earned by doing things selflessly; that you would never know when the Grace was granted, rather the heavenly tally was something God and St. Peter would know when you met them after death.

I am not sure that I was moved to try to earn Grace by that lesson. It seemed like one of those things that was so out of your control that you shouldn't worry about it. Besides how would you know if you had reached the correct level of selflessness? Wouldn't that just invalidate the action if you were worrying about whether or not your act was selfless.

By the way, I was probably seven when I was trying to assimilate this concept into my life.

I equated the concept of Grace with my dad who would literally give the shirt off his back if you needed it, even if you didn't ask for it. My dad never appears to stop and consider whether or not he should give. He certainly doesn't seem to worry about whether or not the act of giving is selfless.

In my mind, this meant that Grace was another one of those amorphous rules, like the Golden Rule, that you strove to achieve, but that was not something you could reach and then coast through. Rather it was like a heavenly measuring stick you needed to keep trying to reach. I don't remember fretting about it at all.

I had a classmate, though, who clearly spent much more time considering how to achieve Grace. Let's call her Melanie. I discovered Melanie's Grace quest by accident.

Our school, like many Catholic elementary schools, was on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We walked by it everyday. We played in its shadow at lunch and recess as its parking lot became our playground during school hours.

At this Catholic Church, like many others in the country, there is a morning mass every day. It starts at 8am and runs roughly thirty minutes. Though my dad's regular schedule when I was in school had him leaving the house by 7:30am, during Lent, I would often walk past the church parking lot in the morning and see his work truck, painted bright orange, parked there.

It turns out during Lent, my dad liked to go to morning mass every day. It is now his daily practice in retirement to go to mass every day. I started leaving for school as early as I could, and this was extremely challenging for me as I was almost always late for school. I wanted to spend a little more time with my dad, so my reasons for trying to make it to morning mass were anything but selfless.

I noticed, on those mornings that I arrived in time for mass, that Melanie was there. As I got one last hug from my dad [who we have to say is lovely and wonderful in so many ways, does not really do well will showing physical affection], I noted that Melanie was sitting in a pew outside the confessional.

It turns out during Lent you can also go to confession right after morning mass. Maybe not everyday, maybe only one day a week. I can't exactly remember. But on those days, I started to notice that Melanie would be late for school, but she never got in trouble. Being inquisitive and not employing filters, one day at lunch I asked Melanie about it.

Melanie was one of four classmates who came from an inordinately large family. The "large" families ranged from 8 to 12 children. And Melanie was number 10 of 12 in her family. Her mother prescribed to the healthy, earthy-crunchy lunches way before it was fashionable. So, there was Melanie with her perhaps homemade whole grain bread, thickly sliced, with peanut butter and jelly. I asked innocently why she was coming late to class sometimes.

She answered briefly, "I went to confession after mass." This is why I think it was every day during Lent because my response, probably read in my eyes widening, was astonishment and shock. Pretty sure my follow up question was, "What do you have to confess every day?"

She looked at me innocently and resolutely and said, "I'm collecting Grace."

We clearly had gotten different messages about earning Grace from the same lesson.

What does this have to do with Jamey? Sorry, it's getting long, you'll find out in part 3.

Poetry Thursday

Grace

~Sarah Gambito

You will transcend your ancestor’s suffering

You will pick a blue ball. You will throw it to yourself.

You will be on the other side to receive.

Green leaves grow around your face.

Hair stands on your body.

You look at old photographs

that say:

The bread is warm!

A child is a blessing!

That’s what I said!

I meant it!

You could say this is a poem.

Like the great halves of the roof

that caved and carved together.

Found us before words

and tender-footing.

Before wrongdoing

and the octaves of blue

above us all.

Copyright © 2018 Sarah Gambito. Used with permission of the author.

I swear it is a complete coincidence that I chose this poem for today and also felt called to write about grace. Seriously, I chose this poem weeks ago. I just reopened it today to add a photo.

Grace, part 1

I have a friend at work, I'll call him Jamey, not short for James, just Jamey.

He is an original.

He seems to the outside observer to be slightly off. Actually, he just doesn't care what you think, and he is willing to be "ridiculous" in order to make you smile, make a point, or just entertain himself. He delights in your belief that he is ridiculous; and his very being challenges you to be some more authentic part of yourself that is associated with whimsy or joy or both.

Jamey loves to talk to strangers; rather, he loves to make strangers his friends. He knows the name of every person we pass in the halls at work from the maintenance crew to the vice presidents. Often, he knows the name of their family members and inquires about their latest trouble or triumph.

There is no one I have seen that doesn't meet Jamey with the greatest smile, head tilt or shoulder drop - the sure sign that someone has really seen you. He never addresses someone without truly wanting to make a connection.

He is the kind of person you meet and instantly know you have found one of your tribe.

But from the outside, we might look like the most unlikely of friends.

Over the year plus that I have known him, though, I have learned to see that he shows that whimsical side in a carefully choreographed, even though it may seem haphazard, way. He is not open and vulnerable with just anyone.

I told you, he is one of my tribe.

Jamey seldom rests, either sleeping or sitting still. He is almost always exhausted and subsisting on daily runs and breakfast biscuits from the same (unnamed here) fast food restaurant. I imagine him ordering at the drive-through, but also wonder if he doesn't know the name of all the workers and their family members, too.

You might also think he was textbook manic/depressive.

If you peel back the layers, though, there is more evidence for a soul struggling with dark and light than a brain misfiring despite its best attempts at "normal."

Jamey loves music, especially of the stringed variety, preferably guitar. He makes them. And then he gifts them. They are art through and through.

He likes to give his gifts as anonymously as possible. I rationalize that it is because he wants to remove his presence from the gift. He wants the gift to be pure gift, not generosity, but purity of freedom. That's not quite right, but I need more words for gift than I can recall at the moment.

If you probed Jamey, and he were feeling particularly open and willing to be vulnerable, he would admit that he gifts the guitars in a spiritual way; that he thinks the guitar is finding its way to the soul that needs it, for whatever reason. I might say the guitar is Jamey's spirit animal; and I would say that his guitars are alive.

Jamey often speaks through music in his life outside of work. And Jamey's work outside of business hours is his life. He is that extremely rare person who is inordinately good at his work, yet that work does not dominate his mind or soul.

Our work is not creative work, though Jamey's title is "author" - an apt title though the work he does is anything but cathartically creative. It might be covertly creative as he tries to weave bureaucratic language into as authentic a portrait of a people as possible. But it is relentlessly bureaucratic, the definition of boring. So, Jamey build guitars, breathes life into inanimate pieces of wood, and sometimes plastic, weaves strings into these newly animated appendages and then hands that life/spirit to someone who needs it.

In his other work, the work outside of work hours and not in our building, he ministers to the dying.

I drew the picture of the work work and the guitar work so you could see the contrast - and begin to capture the meaning of giving life in all aspects of Jamey's toiling.

Others have said to me that Jamey's sometimes depressive mood comes from his work with the dying. They say it in an accusatory tone, one that makes you see that they think he brings it on himself.

I think it is just another generous, humble life giving act that is at the base of his being.

These acts, done without need for recognition or recompense, bestow on us that ineffable nourishment I will call here Grace.

Not so small victories

homage to my hips
By Lucille Clifton
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,  
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Lucille Clifton, “homage to my hips” from Good Woman. Copyright © 1987 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted with the permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Source: Good Woman (BOA Editions Ltd., 1987)
Borrowed from Poetry Foundation

Today I mark 12 weeks of re-learning to eat healthy (and love the body I am in at any weight).

My not so small victory is that I have lost 20 lbs.

I am trying to change my relationship with food ... not just that I want to eat healthier foods. I want to use food as nourishment. I want to taste my food. I want the meals that I eat to feel satisfying.

I realized not so long ago (in relationship to my time on earth), maybe ten years ago, that I was an emotional eater. I realized it while I was on a meditation retreat. Going deep into myself caused me great anxiety, and I discovered that I tried to take refuge in food. Shoveling is what I called it.

What I didn't understand at the time was that coping with anxiety was not the only time I was compelled to shovel food.  [Subsequently I shoveled when sad, angry, grieving.]

I also did not connect shoveling with feeling deeply unsatisfied. I didn't note how I could not taste the food as I shoveled.

I thought the not tasting and not feeling satisfied had to do with how fast I eat.

I don't know if I will ever master mindful eating, especially as it pertains to slowing down the eating process.

But I can now say that after eating not just healthy but really good tasting food for the last 12 weeks (mostly thanks to my amazing housemates), I notice when I feel unsatisfied and when I don't taste the food.

It has nothing to do with what I am eating and everything to do with my emotional state.

I am getting much better at noticing my emotions; and my discomfort at having to deal with so many emotions.  Noticing the food I eat, tasting the flavor, feeling satisfied and nourished, is one way that I have accomplished this.

I am still working on how to more effectively feel my emotions. That is to say, how to allow my emotions to move through me without trying to stifle them by numbing.

I am learning to notice the desire to be satisfied and how food does not bring the salve my coping mechanism had led me to believe it would.

This not so insignificant victory of shedding unnecessary weight is a leap forward on loving myself, feeding my body and soul, and treating myself in the ways that will keep me on this road to self love.

April again

[April 18]
First there were días nefastos. And those were hard enough. 

Excruciating if I am going to be honest. 

I would do any thing to numb myself, food, drink, binge tv, sleep if I could manage it. And if I could get through those days without crawling up into a ball on the floor then I could make it through the month. 

But then April struck again and again, with a vengeance unimaginable if you haven't suffered loss after loss. 

It really is like trying to keep your head above water as the waves crash around you and the riptide tries to pull you out into the ocean of grief. 

The valiant thing would be to face the grief. But the truth is I don't always feel I have the strength. 

I was taught to not cry. I was taught to be the toughie as my dad calls me. 

For better or worse I also carry in my DNA the tendency to hold things in. And to explode when I cannot stand completely still or can no longer keep the lid on. 

Picture the bottle of soda exploding. A bottle because it is clear And you can see the eruption coming. 

In the past five years I have sometimes practiced not exploding. Noticing and holding back even as I could feel the emotions course through my body: back pain, stomach aches, stiff neck and painful jaw.

No matter how hard to try to hold back the tide, it comes. 

Explosions inside your body are painful. And dangerous. 

[April 19]
The first tears are the hardest. They cut. Hot, painful, angry tears.

If I get one out, the anguish of getting it out leaves me exhausted.

I fight the urge to get through that first tear like a baby fighting sleep: irrational, angry, self-destructive.

A friend had asked me, maybe more than once, what I had planned to do. She asked what support did I need. I was confused.

It is not that I had forgotten. It was that I was trying so hard to forget. Work had obliged piling insane amounts of tasks in front of me. I greedily volunteered to do more work! What a team player.

But then I was just hiding. 

And feeling grumpy.

Something stupid happened at work. I left super late. I was upset as I walked to my car (oops to the parking lot where I usually park but hadn't parked).

Everything felt stacked against me. Hot tears in my eyes for no apparent reason.

Then I remembered. It was five years since I had talked with my sister. 

And the memories came flooding back, but not like memories, like the most vivid deja vu you have every experienced.

I remembered the pit in my stomach when my brother called to tell me that my sister was in the hospital. I had just sat down at my favorite cafe to work. Work was not easily achieved at this point only seven months in from my brother's death. Quiet time to work usually set me down the grief spiral. But I had been determined to work, to be productive, to concentrate long enough on something to make progress.

I breathed deeply and tried to talk myself off of the ledge.

I called my sister's phone, and she picked up. She gave me the briefest version of what was going on ... the doctors did not know what it was. She sounded tired. She sounded scared. But like the dutiful older sister, she pivoted the conversation. I told her about my committee giving me a hard time about setting up meetings so that I could move forward with my exams. [I had already had to postpone them after my brother died. Seriously, though, what was I thinking, I couldn't focus for an hour, how was I going to make it through seven days of writing their three damned papers?]

She told me how sorry she was that they were making it so hard for me.

She comforted me.

That is exactly who she was ... not wanting to talk about her own grief over our brother or her fear about this mysterious illness. [Now we all wonder if this wasn't her body exploding because she did not talk about the grief.]

Tears streamed down my face as the memories flooded ... not the hot tears that fight their way out of my eyes. These were the faucets tears, they stream right down my face, no strangled breath, no heaving chest, no visible emotion, just the tears channeling rivers down my face, splashing onto my glasses and creating wet spots on my shirt.

If my tears could work this way on the regular, maybe ...

[April 24]
For the next several days, I said aloud I was grieving to quite a few people.

Yes, I do want an award for that. It is hard.

Maybe it is especially hard for me to ask for help.

Maybe I just needed to say aloud that I was grieving so I could encourage myself to continue to walk through that door.

It did not get easier to relive the horror of those days five years ago. There is no closure to be had.

But it did get somewhat easier to release some of the grief through tears... usually at 4 am which is weird and tiring.  I spent the entire week exhausted. I hid from people over the weekend.

I want to acknowledge that beyond being really hard, I was able to notice pleasant.

I take them as signs from the universe encouraging me to be grateful that I am breathing in and out regardless of how much pain I feel.

There was the gray fox waiting for me to pass by on the road home.

Of course, the dog and cat greeting me everyday with their comfort, sometimes portrayed as their need for attention.

There were all the pink trees and flowers blooming because spring has finally sprung.

There were countless check in texts and messages reminding me that I am loved.

And there were these signs, chalked strategically outside my home ... I know they were not meant for me, but they sure felt like they were speaking to me on that day. 

Rallying for Their Lives

[sometimes I put something in the draft folder and forget...]
I attended the March for Our Lives rally in Princeton this weekend.

Here are some of the pictures from the crowd.

I was late. After rising too early for a weekend, I had to go visit the vampires in anticipation of my yearly physical. I walked to and from the lab, racking up 3 miles before 9:30am. I was so tired, once home, I crawled back into bed to rest.

I was late. But I arrived in time to hear the last of the students giving their statements and rallying calls.

I wish I had heard them all.

They are our future ... and if these students represent the best of their generation, I am impressed.

I am hopeful.

I am grateful.

We need hope in our future right now, we need it more than anything else.

[after the rally, folks dropped their signs in front of the Panera, site of a shooting just the week before. The restaurant was closed "for remodeling" at the time. The signs were all gone the next morning, but I think this was an awesome impromptu message.]

Rumi ...um, Poetry Thursday

And don’t think 
the garden loses 
its ecstasy 
in winter. 
It’s quiet, 
but 
the roots 
are down there 
riotous. 
~Rumi

Poetry Thursday

The Endless
~Timothy Donnelly

I saw a yellow butterfly
flying
in my opinion
the wrong way, flying across
the sound
to Connecticut

I saw a cormorant
oily-looking
flying
close to the sea’s surface
precisely
as I floated on it on

my back in
the attitude of the crucifixion
minerals in my body
in
conversation with
the minerals of the sea

about the sun
how can I possibly
add
to what’s already been said
so well
by the ancients

and said with
an austerity I’ll never
know
it is an honor to take
a backseat to the ancients
who knew how

I was a fat white fish
dissolving
under the sold-out stadium sun
like a god
but like a god
I could live through anything.

end of an era

I have been holding on to some news. I am not sure if it is because I was in a bit of denial or because I was worried that if I said something, it might not work out.

I got a job.

It's in New Jersey.

So I have been packing up my life.

And, as my car decided to keep to the timeline I imagined, even though I stepped away from the PhD program.

That is to say, in January it started falling apart, slowly, and painfully (for me).

There was no way to take the car with me. I couldn't even get it south so I could give it to my father's friend. Though I think I have successfully convinced my dad that it wasn't a good idea to give it to the friend who couldn't possibly have the money to sink into making it really drive-able again.

So, I had to make a decision of what to do with the car, the little green machine that has been my constant companion for the past 16 years.

It drove me cross country, away from my ex-husband, into my new life in Oakland.  It drove me to the next new life in New Mexico.

It served as my phone booth on those long drives between Oakland and Oxnard ... and sometimes, when I couldn't bring myself to talk to others, as the safe space where I could sing or cry or both.

It was faithful and dependable and constant.

I agonized about the decision, truth be told, though I might not have shown it. In the end, I decided to donate it to KQED in lieu of all the donations I have not been able to make in the past few years. Even as I was sure it was the right thing, it was so painful to let go.  I drove it down to the big avenue below my house so that the flatbed truck could more easily hook it up.

As I walked back up the hill to my apartment... to that messier before completely packed state, downcast and tears in my eyes, I spotted a car just like mine parked just where mine had been not twenty minutes earlier.

I am not sure what it means except that I thought, oh, you came back... may my little green car be happy either in someone else's home or as the parts that make other little green cars go...

Poetry for a Troubled Monday

you can listen to it here.  It is long but so worth it.

  

What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do
~Parneshia Jones, 2017

Dawn oversees percolating coffee
and the new wreckage of the world.

I stand before my routine reflection,
button up my sanity,
brush weary strands of hair with pomade
and seal cracked lips of distrust
with cocoa butter and matte rouge.

I ready myself once again
for morning and mortify.
Stacking poetry and bills in a knapsack;
I bundle up hope (it’s brutal out there).

For a moment, I stand with ghosts
and the framed ancestors surrounding me.
I call out, hoping she can hear me
over the day-breaking sirens—
hoping she’s not far away,
or right down the street,
praying over another dead black boy.

How will we make it through this, Ms. Brooks?

                     Hold On.

When she held a body,
she saw much worse than this.
I know she was earshot and fingertip close to oppression.
She saw how hateful hate could be.
She raised babies, taught Stone Rangers,
grew a natural and wrote around critics.

She won a Pulitzer in the dark.

She justified our kitchenette dreams,
and held on.
She held on to all of us.

                    Hold On, she whispers. 

Another day, when I have to tip-toe
around the police and passive-aggressive emails
from people who sit only a few feet away from me.
Another day of fractured humans
who decide how I will live and die,
and I have to act like I like it
so I can keep a job;
be a team player, pay taxes on it;
I have to act like I’m happy to be
slammed, severed, and swindled.
Otherwise, I’m just part of the problem—
a rebel rouser and rude.

They want me to like it, or at least pretend,
so the pretty veils that blanket who we really are—
this complicated history, can stay pretty and veiled
like some desert belly dancer
who must be seen but not heard.

                     Hold On.

We are a world of lesions.
Human has become hindrance.
We must be stamped and have papers,
and still, it’s not enough.
Ignorance has become powerful.
The dice that rolls our futures is platinum
but hollow inside.

Did you see that, Ms. Brooks?
Do you see what we’ve become?
They are skinning our histories,
deporting our roots,
detonating our very right to tell the truth.
We are one step closer to annihilation.

                    Hold On, she says, two million light years away.

She’s right.
Hold On everybody.
Hold On because the poets are still alive—and writing.
Hold On to the last of the disappearing bees
and that Great Barrier Reef.
Hold On to the one sitting next to you,
not masked behind some keyboard.
The one right next to you.
The ones who live and love right next to you.
Hold On to them.

And when we bury another grandmother,
or another black boy;
when we stand in front of a pipeline,
pour another glass of dirty drinking water
and put it on the dining room table,
next to the kreplach, bratwurst, tamales, collards, and dumplings
that our foremothers and fathers—immigrants,
brought with them so we all knew that we came from somewhere;
somewhere that mattered.
When we kneel on the rubbled mosques,
sit in massacred prayer circles,
Holding On is what gets us through.

We must remember who we are.
We are worth fighting for.
We’ve seen beauty.
We’ve birthed babies who’ve only known a black President.
We’ve tasted empathy and paid it forward.
We’ve Go-Funded from wrong to right.
We’ve marched and made love.
We haven’t forgotten—even if they have—Karma is keeping watch. 

Hold On.
Hold On everybody.
Even if all you have left
is that middle finger around your God-given right
to be free, to be heard, to be loved,
and remembered…Hold On,
and keep
Holding.

Poetry Thursday

Let no man pull 
you so low 
as to hate him.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

pure joy

A couple of months ago, a friend asked me to her birthday celebration -- a bonfire on a remote beach on the new moon. When the day came, I almost bailed. I was tired. Depressed. Bereft, really, if you want to know the truth. But, I had made a promise, and I am nothing if not loyal to commitments I make to others. So I dragged my ass out of my apartment and drove the 40 miles over hill and dale to the remote beach chasing the setting sun.

A funny thing happened on that twisty turny road... I had a little moment.   As I was turning some corner, looking at the trees, watching the sun and wondering if I would make it there while there was still light, a thought popped in my head, "joy."  I looked around me, at all the beauty, and I realized what I needed more of in my life was joy.  Not just any joy, but pure joy.  I knew it because just seeing that beauty, I experienced pure joy.

As I write this, a single tear runs down my cheek, but it is not burning this time because joy engenders tears as much as pain does.

So I have been seeking expressions of pure joy -- whether mine or others.  Here's one. 

This is Dexter. I met him briefly on another drive to a remote beach.  When he saw new people, his first response was to pick up this huge buoy as though it were a ball and suggest we play with him.  Look at this marvelous ball I have found he seemed to be saying. 

Here are some other pictures of sights I found to be full of joy or that produced feelings of joy.

 The tiniest sand dollar I have ever found.

 The happy cows on the road to Point Reyes Light House.  It was really the tiny baby cows (yes I know there is a name for them), but I didn't snap a picture of them.

This tiny dog having a great time on a walk... and the one that I didn't snap a picture of ... his owner told me he waits patiently for the walk to the post office because at the end of waiting there is a treat.

It's the little things that bring us pure joy.

Perspective and Gifts from the Universe

A friend 

is one 

that knows you 

as you are, 

understands where 

you have been, 

accepts what 

you have become, 

and still, 

gently allows 

you to grow.

~Elbert Hubbard
Philosopher, Author, Publisher

[I saw this posted, and mis-attributed to Wm Shakespeare, and had to investigate.  The author's life story, and the number of quotes of his that we use in daily life are amazing. ]  

I had the opportunity to meet Bruno, pictured above, on my short jaunt into Chicago in August.  His life is worthy of a children's book.  Maybe someday I will get around to that one.  His life, and his owners, brought me some perspective at a challenging time.  When I see his little face, I remember how important it is to not judge a book by its cover.  I remember the power of love and how unexpectedly it can come - or maybe that it can come in unexpected packages.

We rarely have control of the gifts the universe will bestow.  The best we can try to do is be receptive when they land on our doorstep.  And, of course, to be thankful.
I am thankful! Still working to incorporate into my life all the gifts I received on that trip to Chicago.

Poetry Thursday, Rumi ... again

The garden 
of love 
is green 
without 
limit and 
yields 
many 
fruits 
other than sorrow 
or 
joy.






Love is 
beyond either condition: 
without 
     spring, 
without 
     autumn, 
it is always 
     fresh.
 ~ Rumi

Poetry Thursday ... what the world needs now...

Somewhere somebody 

must have some sense. 

Men must see that 

force begets force, 

hate begets hate, 

toughness begets toughness. 

And it is all 

a descending spiral, 

ultimately ending 

in destruction 

for all and everybody. 

Somebody must have 

sense enough and 

morality enough 

to cut off 

the chain of hate and 

the chain of evil 

in the universe. 

And you do that by love.

 
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr 

– “Loving Your Enemies Speech”

 Nov. 7, 1957

[emphasis added]

Poetry Thursday

Great peace
is found
in life's
little pleasures.
~Chaucer

Got to spend time with these lovelies last week... truly this is pleasure.

finding hope

Usually, on a Friday, I try to post some articles... but I just switched that super lean post to next Friday.

Right now it is nearly Thursday (6/16), and I have just finished a marathon day of listening to the Democratic filibuster (why doesn't it have two l's?) while I worked on several projects.

I am a news nerd, well, just nerd in general, so it is not surprising that given the opportunity, I might tune into just this kind of thing.  At various points in the 13 hours I watched/listened, I also listened to other shows.

But, I felt I needed to stay with Chris Murphy and his crew, not only out of solidarity for the cause, but because they were doing it right. I knew that the chamber they were standing in was empty but for those talking or waiting to talk.  I needed to be their witness.

Witnessing is so very important.

And this is a cause that pulls on my heart like many others do not.

I had nightmares, as a teacher, of having gun violence in my work place ... long before Columbine.

I remember the day Columbine happened.  For some reason, I was home from school that day, maybe it was our spring break.  It was the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that was bad enough.  But it was a school. And no matter the compassion I have for Dylan and Eric, my heart breaks for the survivors (including the families of the casualties).

Years later, I was colleagues with someone whose mother was the crisis liaison for the schools.  The story of what her mother went through was just as devastating all those years later when we spoke about it.

I marched with the Million Moms in DC.  But we couldn't, for some reason, sustain the effort.
-----
Long before I knew what personal tragedy felt like, I was already mourning deeply the loss of people to this kind of massacre.

Each one of these tragedies tears at my soul in almost as deep a way as the loss of my siblings and my dear Sergio have.  It seems impossible that these people who I do not know, who I will never know, reach me at this level.  But, obviously, it is much bigger than just crazy empathy.

I won't lie... I feel as deeply for those who perpetrate these crimes.  Their need, their pain is more than palpable. But like the child molesters, no pain or injury can justify hurting others.

The bottom line is the pain/grief is almost crippling for me.
----------
This time, I felt that same urge Chris Murphy did ... before the day had ended on Sunday, I reached out to two women I know only through my pseudonym on fb to start something.  We have already planned a strategy meeting for next week ... we have already started a fb page for organizing.

And then, this filibuster.

I think I learned more about hashtags today than I might need to know.  I might be a master hashtagger now... something I thought I would never truly understand.

Indirectly, this will help me with all the other work endeavors I undertake.

Then, one of those women suggested I tune in to CSPAN and Chris Murphy's filibuster.

I didn't get excited, just interested.

I felt the need to stay.

It wasn't until we were rounding the 12th hour together and I was working the hashtags as hard as I could that hope started to creep in.

Let's be clear, it doesn't feel good exactly... it just feels the tiniest bit lighter to have hope... being hopeless is like living at the bottom of the well.  I have pledged not to be there anymore for any length of time, let alone live there.  So, I needed hope. I craved hope.

And in the working of the hashtags and the finding community with people I don't know -- people I may not have very much in common with, I found hope.

And it is sustaining me tonight -- almost euphorically.

I already have a post for tomorrow, it is Poetry Thursday after all.

So, I may have to update this next week after we have the vote... it's ok if the GOP fucks up today (THURSDAY which is actually yesterday by the time this is posted) because if they do, then we will just mobilize to get them voted out.

I am contemplating what it means that this kind of work gives me hope.

I keep dropping the red cape, and it keeps flying back on to my shoulders.

Too tired and too late to really worry about this now... tomorrow is another day.