It's a miracle!

When you think about, being alive is astonishing, astounding, even mind-boggling.

First of all, of course, is the fact that one particular sperm had to reach that particular egg that particular time for you to be you and me to be me.  That's one sperm out of an average of 250 million.  

But even more than that, I consider how many hundreds of thousands of our ancestors had to survive plagues and famines and deadly creatures and lethal infections and accidents and wars in order for you and me to be here.  We are the descendants of survivors, beings who were strong enough, and smart enough, and adaptable enough, and lucky enough to have survived this harsh, dangerous world of kill or be killed.

We're not so different from those survivors in some ways, except that for a lot of us, our survival is pretty well assured.  This allows us to be  proud, to be lazy, to be wasteful, to be depressed or ornery or mean, to take for granted this miraculous gift of being alive.  But it also allows us to be reflective, as we have the leisure and security to be able to ask what it all means.  So it's only natural that we make up gods and goddesses, as every primitive culture has done since the beginning of humanity.  We need a sense of order to it all, a sense that someone is in charge, because without that, then what the heck does it mean?

I envy cheetahs and moths and squids and lichen.  They don't have these great big brains asking these great big questions.  Life doesn't have to mean anything at all to them.  To all other beings but us, life is just what it is.

I know that it's not possible for me to live in that fully present way.  Like all humans, I'm a storyteller, a meaning maker, a question asker.  But I can see the beauty of living without meaning, or at least without meaning appointed from outside of me.  That frees me up to create my own meaning, my own purpose, my own direction.  I don't know if I have free will, but I figure I may as well live as though I do, as  though I am able to make choices that are not necessarily determined by Fate or biology or upbringing.  

That leads, of course, to the question of what have I decided my life means?  You would think I would have answered that one by now, but I'm still thinking...  

A Boise love-fest

I'm home again after spending a week in Boise, ID.  This rather disrupted my holiday socializing plans, but it was for the happiest of reasons.  I was cast in a series of commercials for Idaho Central Credit Union.  This was far and away the happiest, jolliest, most rewarding on-camera shoot of my acting career.

I played the grandmother to a grown son, his wife, and their two teens.  And this family just loooves their credit union.  It's all we want to talk about, and we talked about it in a variety of fun situations.  What was best about this experience was that we five actors (as well as the chaperone to the youngest) bonded quickly and deeply.  The night I arrived, I met up with the men playing my son and grandson.  The three of us went to dinner and talked for probably three hours about everything under the sun.  Once everyone had arrived in Boise, we would all get together for breakfast (except for whomever had an early, early call time), and we always had dinners together.

The crew members were also absolute peaches, not a pickle in the bunch; upbeat, friendly, professional, and warm.  The fact that the actors shared such a familial chemistry added to the energy and chemistry of each day's shoot.  For example, on the last day, which took place in a studio rather than on a set, there was music playing all day and, me being me, I couldn't help but dance between shots.  And so other people also started dancing, and the director spontaneously decided to have the onscreen family dance for some of our shots.  I suggested to the client, who was the Big Daddy of this commercial, that the caption under us dancing should be "If you want to be this happy with your bank, join Idaho Central Credit Union".  In another section that day, the five of us were asked to sit on or stand behind a couch in different grouping, and the director used our affection and goofiness by having the family act silly with one another, then freeze for the camera.  It was so easy for us to play together; we felt free and unrestrained with one another, which made this whole week such a joy, such a pleasure.  

My "grandson" and I had one day off at the same time, so we took a Lyft to see a matinee of the new Spiderman movie.  I get such a kick out of the fact that a 70 year old woman and a 22 year old boy/man (and a dreamy one at that - he's going to turn into an amazing adult) can be friends without any self-consciousness.

I felt so comfortable with them all that I had to remind myself that they saw me/see me as a grandmother.  A colorful one, to be sure, and one with a lot of pizzazz, but definitely of a much older generation.  So it would surprise and delight them when I talked about sex or weed or farting, or any of the other subjects that one doesn't necessarily expect from a grandmother.  They forget, as I did when I was younger, that this old lady remembers being a teenager, a 20 year old, 40 year old, 60 year old.  All of those stages of life are still in me, so I am not one age but all those ages.  I know I am not of this era; all that dancing left me stiff the next day, and I am not on my phone every free moment.  (In fact, I read "Of Human Bondage" in its entirety during the week in Boise.)  But still, there is a much younger self living inside this wrinkledy face and weaker body.  It was so nice bringing her out to play with such lovely new friends.  I will remember this week with such joy for the rest of my life.

Today I am a crone

Today is my 70th birthday.  I happily accept, even embrace, the fact that I am now a crone.  We crones, after all, are the tellers of stories.  Having learned to keep our own flames lit, we are able to help others light theirs.  We know what it's like to be a child, a teenager, a young adult, middle-aged.  We know how to hold the torch for the promise and possibility of the future.  We are the receptacles of many, many life lessons, some of them learned the hard way.

The past is mine.  The present is mine.  I know that the future belongs to others, but I still have so many contributions to make.  I am proud to have reached this stage of life.  However much I might be invisible to the young, I also know that I am part of the clearing of the path they are walking now.

So give a cheer and a respectful nod to yourself if you are a crone.  We are rich in wisdom.  Let's be sure to stay interested and interesting.  There is much more still to come. 

Sourcery

 

In the seed is the daisy or the mighty green saguaro.

In the rain is the river that will feed the sea tomorrow.

In the match is the fire that becomes a conflagration.

In the step is the journey that becomes the destination.

 

In the hearts of the children

In the words of the leaders

In the deeds of the people

            Is the future

            Is the future

 

In the asking “How can I?” there begins a new invention.

In one voice is the founding of a movement of dissension.

In the kiss of the lovers is another generation.

In a song are ideas that could rouse a sleeping nation.

 

In the hearts of the children

In the words of the leaders

In the deeds of the people

            Is the future

            Is the future

Chauvin, Part II

I wonder what prison is like for Derek Chauvin.  He's in maximum security in Minnesota, and since Minnesota is where he was a cop, it's possible some of his fellow inmates were sent there because of his arrests.  I wonder how the black prisoners, especially, regard him.  Do the guards think of him as having been on their team because he also wore a uniform?  Or do they enjoy being in a position of power over a cop?

Does he feel any regret for killing George Floyd?  Does he feel he was justified and so unjustifiably found guilty?  Is he bitter and angry that he was sent to prison?  If so, angry at whom?  The bystanders who took the videos which were part of the evidence against him?  At Floyd for dying?  At the whole world?  Something turned him into a person capable of the ghastly, torturous killing of Floyd.  Did being a cop and dealing with lawbreakers and troublemakers all day turn him bitter, or did he bring that bitterness to the job?  According to Wikipedia, Chauvin's wife had filed for divorce the day before the murder of  Floyd, and after only a year of marriage.  I have to think that that must have contributed to whatever force of emotion Chauvin brought to the moment of Floyd's arrest.

I am intensely curious about this, and about people's behavior in general.  I suppose that's why I'm a writer.  I want to know people's stories, and since in most cases that's not possible, I make up stories for them, try to imagine what their lives are like, how they became who they are.  I just can't help myself.  Derek Chauvin is a person, after all.  Nazis were people.  Trump is a person.  Jeffrey Dahmer was a person.  Were they all born clean and whole and the circumstances of their lives turned them into the beasts they became, or were their souls twisted at birth and before?  What I'm most curious about is: What do (did) they think of themselves?

Love to Mom

The mother of a friend of mine died recently.  I asked my friend if there was anything she wished she could say to her mother now, and she said "I wish I'd told her I love her more often."  I immediately teared up because I have the same wish.  I don't have many regrets in my life, but one of them is that for too long, I took Mom for granted, and when I was a teenager, I was downright awful to her, neglectful, cranky, utterly unhelpful with chores even though she was working full time as a nurse.  She lived  long enough that I had the chance to mature enough to try to make up for those early years of self-absorption, but still, I have always wished that I'd been as loving toward her as she was toward me and everyone else who came within her orbit.  Now she's dead and every unspoken "I love you" clogs my throat.

After our parents died, my sister inherited the job of going through all the many boxes of memorabilia and photos which had rested, unopened, in their garage.  When I visited last weekend, sister gave me a packet of early writings, cards and letters she had discovered in that box, things I had sent to Mom and Dad which Mom had saved.  I was so indescribably happy to find more than a dozen Mother's Day and birthday cards I had sent to Mom over the years in which I wrote of my love, admiration, and appreciation of her and my deep gratitude for her kindness and wisdom.  These cards showed me that I had not been as neglectful as I'd feared, that I had told Mom many times how much I loved and cherished her.  It soothed my soul and untied a little knot of regret I'd been carrying in my heart.

I rediscovered this poem I had written to Mom, probably in the mid-90's, titled "Silver Memories": 

My lullabying Mama, rocking little Babs to sleep.

Yes, that's a silver memory I know I'll always keep.

My kitchen witchin' Mama making magic into dinner,

Making every crumb delicious.  Any wonder I'm not thinner?

My uniformed Nurse Mama, Florence Lindsay-Nightingale.

Still even now those healing hands can soothe me when I ail.

Teaching us good manners just in case we meet the Queen,

And singing silly songs while making dirty dishes clean.

Putting love and band-aids on our ouchies and our bruises.

No one yet has patented that special touch she uses.

My Mommy being joyous while dispensing hugs and kisses.

No, there's never been another like my lucky Daddy's missus.

A different kind of person (or How I am like my mother)

Dad's job as a geologist kept the family moving frequently during my childhood, about every year and a half or so.  Because of this, Mom (and all of us) had the chance to start freshly in introducing ourselves to new neighbors, playmates, etc.  I remember Mom saying, more than once, "I wish people would see me as an exotic, mysterious woman."  I, and probably my siblings, would laugh outright at this, because Mom was the most open, warm, welcoming, friendly, least exotic person who has ever lived.  I thought, and perhaps said, "If you want people to think you're mysterious, you have to act mysterious.  Hahahahaha, Mom, you're so silly."

So naturally I find I have exactly those same thoughts about myself.  I tend to be very animated when I converse, very lively, always trying to come up with bon mots and witticisms, taking spotlight, making faces, waving my hands about.  And what I wish I could be is serene, calm, relaxed, appear wise and mature and, yes, ever so slightly mysterious.  Hahahahahah, Granny Owl, you're so silly.

I wonder if everyone has the same fantasy of a different self, a better self.  And maybe the different sort of life which that self might live.  Maybe calm, serene people wish they could be more animated when they talk.  Maybe mysterious people wish they could be more open.  I guess this is sort of like the hair phenomenon: people with curly hair wishing it were straight, people with straight hair wishing it were curly.

I suppose I could take my own snarky advice and try acting more serene and wise and quiet.  I have my moments.  But that's not me.  I'm an emotional, expressive, funny, forceful person.  Ah me.  One lifetime is not enough.

Living a wild, hard life

I have always been attracted to pioneer life, elemental life, life in a natural setting, a life of self-sufficiency.  The Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House" books were my favorites when I was a child.  I read them again and again, imagining myself as a settler living on the plains and in the forests of a barely-civilized country.  When "Survivor" had its first season back in 2000, I thought "This show has been created specifically for me, this is the setting in which I will be truly tested" and applied a couple of times, without success.

I have often been heard to say, in all earnestness, that I long to be tested, to be challenged, because I want to see what I'm made of.

Well, I finally realized that that is absurd.  I, we, all of us are tested and challenged every single day.  Every decision we make reveals what we're made of.  Every occasion we encounter is something we have to rise to.  Every sentence we speak, every person we do and do not let into our lives, the work we've done, all of it has always revealed who we are and what we are made of.

So I already know what I'm made of.  Every part of my life shows it.  For better or for worse or for some glorious mess of both, this, right here, right now, is who I am.  I'm not some half-baked version of myself waiting to rise to some challenge in order to be fully baked.  I decide how to respond to the events I face, and my life discloses if I have chosen rightly.  I don't need "Survivor" to show me who I am.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Dancing my ass off in private

Last year I discovered the joy of putting on rock music and dancing my ass off.  It was a way to move, to exercise, to lighten my spirit and forget the anguish that accompanied the twin catastrophes of Donald Trump and COVID.  Last year's Granny Owl thought it would be so cool to post videos of me, in my pajamas, 68-69 years old, overweight, dancing with abandon and joy, with no care taken of how it looks.  I thought it would give everyone, young and old, every body size, the idea that dancing around the living room can be fun and wonderful and carefree, the chance to be funky and silly and happy.

I'm not so naive that I didn't know I would be judged, and probably often very harshly.  I had already composed a response to those kids who called me ugly or fat or ridiculous or whatever.  I was going to write a post in which I told them that I hoped for them, if they were lucky enough to live as long as I have, that will they have people around them and support them and cheer them on.  I was going to change the world.

This year's Granny Owl is glad I never had Sweet Hubby make videos of me dancing to post on YouTube. These last couple of years have revealed even more blindingly than ever before how cruel, angry, and ugly people can be toward one another, the accusations and put-downs and threats they will hurl at friends, at family, at strangers.  I want nothing to do with any of that.  I don't need to be famous and I don't want to be judged.

So I'll just keep dancing for my own damn enjoyment.  I know I'm cool.  Sweet Hubby knows I'm cool.  That's all I need.

The voices in my head

I recently returned home from Goshen, IN where I was guest of Goshen College as winner of their 2020 Peace Play Prize.  As part of the prize, I was given the chance to speak to several theater classes as well as conduct a playwrighting workshop.  I also got to see 3 performances of my winning play, with audience talkback after each performance.  So all in all, I spent a lot of my time there talking about what it is to be a writer, specifically a playwright.

"Where do you get your ideas for plays?" was the most common question, especially "Where did the idea for this play come from?"  I don't always remember when each play was born, but I do remember exactly how this one came about.  I was tutoring a very talented 10 year old who was already a rather scarily good writer.  I suggested that we both create a character from scratch.  She wrote an entire one page story, which ended with an older woman happily, peacefully strangling herself with the chain of her locket so that she could be with her beloved dead son.  I discovered Lucinda Celeste.

I say 'discovered' because Lucinda emerged on paper that day almost fully developed.  She already had a name; I could already picture her (in her 50's, short gray hair, wearing old clothes); I knew her son had been used against her in some ghastly way; I knew she was going to have to make a choice about whether to capitulate to the government or fight back.  I had not been thinking about any of this, and was not at the time (probably mid to late 90's) politically active nor aware at all, although political activism was Lucinda's life and eventually became part of mine.

It's a strange thing to be asked to talk about the writing process.  It's so hard to describe how it happens: the rush of energy when a new play is flowing out of my pen; when loads of raw material is heaping up in a great, messy, glorious mound; when the un- or sub-conscious have opened themselves up unfettered.  It almost never feels as though I'm doing anything at all besides taking dictation.  I'm fairly sure the material comes from me, but it doesn't feel like that.  It feels as though I am a vessel, a conduit, for something that exists outside of me and wants expression.  Even though I work on my plays really hard and often for a long time, I can hardly ever say about them "I did that, I  made that happen".  It's more like "I allowed that to happen, that happened through me".  But that can be difficult to convey to people who want some sort of concrete answer.

"What do you write about?" is another frequent question, also difficult to answer in any sort of tidy way.  I don't write about things so much as I inhabit worlds which are different from mine, sometimes greatly so, sometime only a bit.  Even when a play is based on people I know or on direct experience, I'm not writing about those people or those experiences.  I'm living in a world peopled with characters who are full-bodied and complete.  I can hear their voices, I know their surroundings.  All I have to do is understand what they want, these characters, what is driving them, and what is getting in their way.  I often have no idea how their story ends when I begin.  But those stories are so real to me, so tangible, so vivid.  How to talk about all of that in a way that makes sense?  Or in a way that can teach anyone else to be a writer, because each writer has to find her own way of accessing imagination, her own way of inhabiting the world of the story.  I don't know that the way I write could or does resonate with anyone else, but it's what I know.  No, it's not something I know; it's something I simply surrender to.

How long for a song?

Sweet Hubby and I watched "Bohemian Rhapsody" last night, and it got me thinking: I wonder what it actually looks like when someone writes a song.  In movies, it's always made to look so easy.  Songwriters in films come up with one phrase or a few notes and suddenly have the song in their heads and down on paper.  But my experience as a writer is not like that at all.  The closest to the real thing I can remember seeing is Jane Fonda pounding away on a broken manual typewriter in "Julia".  

I've only written a couple of songs, but they are of the "A-B-A-B-A and so on" variety, with about as much nuance as a Sousa march, clump-clump-clump.  What does it take to come up with a song a real song with verses and chorus and bridges, a song that builds in intensity or tells a story, a brand new arrangement of a very limited number of notes and possible tempi?  

I know what it takes to write a play, at least the way I write a play.  At first it's almost always being caught up in a spark, an excitement, the dazzling promise of a new story or character idea that flows onto the paper in a rush until the heat has cooled.  The next day, reading the initial draft can sometimes ignite the same fire.  If it's a short play, sometimes two days (for some people two hours) is enough to get down a rough draft.  Full lengths take longer, but not much longer when the fever is upon me.

But then comes rewriting, editing, refining, polishing, exploring, trying trying trying.  A completely different part of the brain has to come forward and make itself heard.  Conscious choices have to be made.  Characters have to be forced to do what the story needs them to, not just whatever impulse inspires them to.  Delicious lines have to be cut and new lines need to be invented, and they have to have the same flavor, the same passion, the same flow as those first impulses.  There are readings, feedback from fellow writers, more rewrites.  Writing a play that's as good as I want it to be can take a long, long, long (I really don't want to admit how long for some of them) time.  So I do wonder, does it take that long, take that much work and sweat and thought, to write a song?  I'll have to ask Stephen Sondheim, should I ever run into him.  "So Stephen, how long did it take you to find a way to rhyme 'raisins' with 'liaisons' in a way that would scan correctly?"  I do wonder.

Dancing and death and stuff

As I was dancing my ass off recently, it occurred to me to tell Sweet Hubby that if I should happen to drop dead while dancing, he is to remember that I died completely happy, fully alive, and full of joy.

But when I think about our deaths, mine and SH's, I realized with a cold shudder that someone is going to have to clean up after us.  Someone, probably a niece or nephew, is going to have a come into our home and make a decision about every single tchotchke, scrap of paper, utensil, t-shirt, earring, photo, etc.  To whomever she or he or they end up being, first of all, my deepest apologies, and second of all, my deepest thanks.  Do what you like with all of it.  Keep it, share it, sell it, donate it, throw it away.

I've hoped that someone might enjoy our vast DVD collection, but now I realize the younger generations stream their movies.  Same for our CD collection.  Same for our book library.  Our stuff is the stuff of an older generation, a different time, already artifacts.  It's hard to imagine anyone will want any of it.  It's too bad just to throw it away, but if someone keeps it who doesn't want it, then it is clutter and a burden. 

Sigh.  I wish we had less stuff.

Is it all just going to end up on a trash heap?  Or worse, in the ocean?  Even if we start lightening our load of possessions, as we do in very small increments, it still goes somewhere on the planet.  SH does his best to find someone who wants what we're giving away, and that's reassuring.  But most of it is going to outlive us even after it has outlived its usefulness.  I am painfully aware of how all this stuff burdens not just us and those who come after us, but the planet as well.  It already exists, so me getting rid of it just moves it someplace else.  

Why do we have all this stuff?  My closet is full of clothes I don't wear.  Every article is nice and fits and is perfectly fine, but I tend to wear the same clothes over and over, so too many garments hang there unused.  I keep photos I don't look at and books I haven't read (yet, is what I tell myself) and scraps of paper with ideas for writing and mementos of occasions I barely remember.  And that's just my stuff.  SH's stuff triples the load.  I feel terrible for whomever has to deal with it in the end, and even worse for this poor planet who will have to deal with it into eternity or until full decomposition, whichever comes first.

I think we humans hold onto the artifacts of our lives, maybe partly because we want to remember our pasts, but mostly because we don't want to become nothing, don't want to face how ephemeral we truly are.  Our stuff says "I was here, I was this kind of person, I did this, I owned that."  This is a first world problem; not only a problem plaguing members of the first world, but a problem with which we first worlders plague the rest of the world.

Simple - but not easy

 As insipid a saying as it is, and as often as I sneered at Nancy Reagan for promoting it, finally it does come down to just saying no.  I'm speaking specifically about kicking an addiction, but the same simple wisdom applies to making all kinds of personal changes.  Say no to playing one more round of Candy Crush.  Say no to eating unhealthy foods.  Say no to being an asshole.  Say no to putting up with what you hate.

Join all the programs you are drawn to, go to rehab and therapy and meetings.  It will still, finally, come down to that moment when you say no.

If all that no feels too negative, then say yes.  Yes to taking a walk through the woods, to reading a book, to calling up a friend, to getting around to mowing the lawn, cleaning out the refrigerator, visiting Grandma, learning a new language, sitting quietly with a cup of tea or glass of wine.  Yes to eating what you know is good for you.  Yes to being more patient with your kids.  Yes to quitting the job you can't stand and trusting yourself to find another, better one.

It always has and always will come down to me - and you - making a decision and making it stick.  It's that simple.

Damn.

Observations about Randy Newman. Also Dumbo.

A friend recently, and rather inexplicably, sent me the first season of Saturday Night Live on DVD.  I'm not sure why.  We hadn't talked about it, and I was never a consistent viewer.  But I thought it would be fun to take a look at this phenomenon, this long-running show, to see what all the fuss was about.

In the first episode, Randy Newman was one of the musical guests.  He sang his lovely "Sail Away", a song I've heard many times.  For some reason, I'm not sure why, perhaps because of my growing political awareness, I heard it with sharper ears this time, and discovered an element of the song I'd previously missed.  I don't know if it was the lyric "You'll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey tree", or the refrain "We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay" that made me perk up and pay attention, but I suddenly understood that this song is sung from the point of view of a slave trader trying to convince Africans to come to America, where they would, of course, not be as happy as monkeys in monkey trees but would be sold in auction, Charleston Bay being a notorious slave trading port back in the bad old days. 

I've mentioned this observation to friends since then, and for some of them it is a revelation, as it was to me, and to some, it is more "You're just now recognizing that?"  Sly Randy Newman, hiding a harsh, devastating message in a lyrical, sweet-sounding song.  Makes me wonder what else I've missed, in Newman's songs and in other artworks in general.  Artists always have something to say; pretty pictures are never pretty only.

And speaking of observations, this next one is from a bit longer ago and has not been accepted by everyone I've shared it with.  I grew up watching and delighting in the classic old Disney animated films. and as an adult have collected them on DVD.  Many of them contain cringe-worthy moments or characters, such as the awful "What Makes a Redman Red?" musical number from my beloved "Peter Pan".  As a child, of course, I had accepted that song as a fun characterization of Indians.  But watching and hearing it as an adult, I actually gasped at how insulting it is to native peoples.

Anyway, when I purchased "Dumbo" and watched it for the first time in more than a half-century, again watching with more politically awakened eyes, I saw something which once again made me gasp with understanding.  The adult elephants in the movie all have small ears, which makes them Indian elephants.  These are the female elephants who ridicule Dumbo and his mother, Mrs. Jumbo.  Dumbo, of course, is ridiculous to them because of his big, floppy ears.  Those ears mean he is an African elephant.  Oh my gosh.  Mrs. Jumbo had sex with an African.  

Could it be that this is the actual reason he and his mother are unacceptable and unaccepted?  Was this racist element conscious in the minds of the writers?  It seems pretty obvious to me now, and there are those characters the crows, clearly supposed to be Negroes, to cement my belief that this story is racist in the most casual, and therefore the most dangerous, way.  Which is exactly how racism has lived in this country for centuries: acceptable, unexamined, usually not even conscious, and all the more insidious because of it. 

Wow. 

HEADS UP - email subscription changing details

This is a testing post in preparation for moving to a different email subscription provider since Google has decided to remove that capability from their blogging product. We have a replacement and are in the process of changing over.

For all existing email subscribers, you should not have to do anything (except perhaps click a confirmation link in the first email after the changeover). Details to follow in a couple days.

Thx for your patience,

Sweet Hubby (Granny Owl's tech support team)

Humanizing the scenery

Mom died in 2016.   Dad died in 2017.  Sweet Hubby's mom died in 2018.  Our adorable little Stachie kitty died in 2019.  2020 was COVID.  And Donald Trump was there through it all.  It's been a bad few years.  But I'm aware that they haven't been nearly as bad for me as for many others, what with war, famine, tyranny, violence, and whatnot.

I know, I know.  Our own is the only pain we truly feel and every person's problem is her worst problem, no matter how insignificant it might look to others.  Comparisons are pointless, I know, I know.  But still, I can't help but wonder what life is like for others, to try to put myself in their place, and to keep some perspective on my own ups and down.  Sometimes when Sweet Hubby and I are driving somewhere, one or the other of us will say "Look at all these other cars, these other drivers.  Every one of them is going someplace.  The life of every one of them is as meaningful to them as ours is to us."  It's a small observation, but it wakes me up every time.

It seems to me that it's vital that each one of us think about the other person, about other people.  Grant him his humanity.  Remember that your life is just as much mere scenery for her life as hers is for yours.  We've got to remember that we share the planet and that all of us want to live decent lives.  We must see the fullness of the life of other people, if for no better reason than because then the fullness of our own lives might be recognized.

Gratitude

When I wrote to the young woman who sent me Robin Wall Kimmerer's gorgeous Braiding Sweetgrass, I promised her that I would let the book, its deep wisdom, affect me.  I have not consistently kept that promise, but this morning, it came to mind as I was picking blueberries from the bushes in our backyard.

I remembered to be grateful to Sweet Hubby for planting these bushes.  To the soil and sun and rain for nourishing them.  To the berries themselves for feeding us and the birds.  To the good genes which have given me the gift of a body that has remained healthy through so many decades of wear and occasional abuses and neglect.

It's such a small and often silent thing, gratitude, but I find myself feeling less empty when I give it.  It has been suggested to me that this blog too often shares dark, angry, sad thoughts, and it's true that I am often most inspired to write when I'm confronting some challenge or chewing on despair.  I know that we humans grow emotionally from our dark times; there's little incentive to grow or change when we're happy and content.  But I know I can choose which thoughts and feelings to give energy to, and would do well to focus more on what I am grateful for than what I'm ashamed of, angry at, and sad about.  

I am grateful for the family, the time, the country I was born into.  I am grateful for the meandering and rocky path which brought me finally to Sweet Hubby.  I am grateful for whatever mysterious whim helped me decide to live where I do, because I love it so.  And I am grateful for you, because if you are reading this, you are my friend.  

Who am I in this?

Do the women who live a more (native/natural/indigenous/elemental/earth-based/primitive/tribal - take your pick) life than mine ever think to themselves "My legs used to be hairy but now they're smooth and I'm growing a beard"?  This is the kind of thing I have the luxury of thinking about.  Do they?

I recognize that every one of my problems is a first world problem.  (Side note: I have an idea of what the third world is and who is supposed to be in it or of it, but what the heck is the second world?)  And every one of my privileges is a first world privilege.  I flick a switch and have lights and warmth.  I turn a knob and have water, hot and cold and clean.  When I notice them, I am thunderstruck by the enormity and inequity of my completely unearned privileges.  I wouldn't last a day in a primitive, elemental world.  Or a war-torn world.  I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to cope or exist.  Yet there are millions of people who do.

So what am I supposed to do with this understanding?  I can't apologize for the luck of the circumstances of my birth, which I had nothing to do with.  I can at least say that I do see it, the disparity between how I get to live and how those millions live.  But so what if I can acknowledge that I'm better off than most people and through no virtue of my own and no fault of theirs?  What good does my acknowledgment do anyone?  It's like the announcements which have become standard before cultural events, acknowledging that the event takes place on the unceded lands of the indigenous peoples who occupied them before the lands were stolen.  So what?  The ruination of these peoples isn't undone or healed, no reparations are made, the native cultures are not restored so what good has been done?

I guess what is incumbent on me is what always has been: to live as kind and generous a life as I possibly can; to offer help where I see it's needed; not to take one moment nor one part of my life for granted; and for heaven's sake not to complain about my ridiculously trivial problems.  But still, what good will any of that have done to correct or balance the inequities of the world?

I know that life is just what it is, the world is just what it is, and there has probably never been a time in all of human history when there weren't some who lived better than others and that's just the fact of it and not my problem and not my responsibility.  But still, I just can't help but keep asking myself "Who am I in this?"

I saw something

Last night I saw something, or was inspired, or had a revelation, a moment along those lines.  It was about a play I started years ago, and have always wanted to return to, but hadn't gotten back to yet.  It's about four generations of women living together; the oldest is slipping into dementia; her daughter, in whose house the play takes place, is trying to hold the family together; her daughter is angrily bitter from a recent divorce; her daughter is recklessly throwing herself into the future.  I love love love this play, at least what it might be.

I hadn't gone searching for this inspiration.  I hadn't (consciously at least) been thinking about this play.  The moment came from the magical mire of my imagination. But all in that moment, I saw that the play belongs to the two older women; the other two are subsidiary characters who show up in the oldest woman's moment of clarity; I need to know their stories, but only tell bits of them.  I saw a new possible structure for the play, that it needs to take place in stages, and what those stages should be.  I even saw a complete scene unfold, one that made my heart feel sore and soft.

Also unbidden came the thought "This is the one.  This is the play I will finally get right.  This is the one which will get noticed."  I suppose I've had the same thought about other plays; I don't actually remember if I have.  But the thought was strong and terribly exciting.

Now, of course, comes actually having to write the darned thing, choose each word one at a time, in the hope of being able to fulfill on that thrill of promise and possibility which came to me all in a flash.

Love and death

I think about death a lot.  I don't know if I think about it more or less than most people, but I do think about it a lot.  And it scares me, I admit it.  There are so many ways to die, and a lot of them are painful and some of them are gruesome and we don't get to know when ours will happen nor what it will be like.  (Yes, I use 'nor'.  I can't help it.)

Mostly, though, I'm not thinking about my own death, but about Sweet Hubby's.  Even just the thought sometimes feels almost impossible to survive.

But - Sweet Hubby and I have had good lives, and have shared a good life, for a lot longer than some people get.  We've had our injuries and crises, but nothing that has left either of us diminished.  I need to remember that, focus on that, be grateful for that, instead of being so fearful.  And I am, terribly terribly grateful for this life and for this marriage.  I am grateful to Sweet Hubby for being the wind beneath my wings, and to my family for giving me wings in the first place.  So I'll think about that.  A much nicer thought.

Those damned Christians

I am reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's beautiful, poignant book Braiding Sweetgrass.  Early in the book she shares the Native American legend of Sky Woman, a story full of the bringing of life, the sharing of resources and spirit, growth, soil, animals, plants, harmony, beginnings.

Compare that to the legend of Eve, a story of exile, shame, guilt, the curse of menstruation, the pain of childbearing.  I can't help but wonder why anyone would choose to believe in a god who is so judgmental, so cruel, who forbids the first humans to hunger after knowledge and punishes them and all of us ever after when they disobey.  And we do choose what to believe; let's make no mistake about that.  

So much has been lost to the world by the Christian/European purposeful, systematic destruction of this country's indigenous cultures.  (The same is probably true of Australia and Africa and no doubt anywhere in the world where superior weaponry overwhelmed and decimated superior thought and natural ways of living and relating to the natural world.)  I don't kid myself indigenous people's didn't struggle or wage wars or dominate others.  But the way they have been treated, mistreated, virtually eradicated by intruders and conquerors is an almost unfathomable wrong.

I despise religious institutions, most of which were at first attempts to codify spirituality but soon devolved into being about power and suppression and wealth and division.  I find Catholicism especially disgusting, and, again, wonder why anyone continues to buy into an institution that has given the world the Magdalena laundries, the schools that tore indigenous children from their parents and hammered on them to drive out their native languages and customs, the priests who have abused legions of children without consequence, the towering cathedrals full of gold set in starving towns and cities.

I know it is considered rude at best and shockingly inappropriate at worst to denigrate other people's beliefs, to which I answer "Have your beliefs, cherish them, follow them, but do not for a moment think yours take precedence over anyone else's, that yours are better, than anyone but you needs to believe what you believe.  Your relationship to the Great Whatever is yours alone.  Be content with that and quit judging everyone else."

As Richard Dawkins points out in The God Delusion: there are no Christian or Buddhist or Jewish children.  There are only children born to Christian or Buddhist or Jewish parents.  Left to themselves, every child to would come up with her own mythology and origin story and tenets.  If only we were all allowed to do that, to decide for ourselves individually what we believe, what makes sense to us, what helps us answer the unanswerable questions of how life began and what it all means.  If only.

One last quote from someone who was a heck of a lot smarter and more eloquent than I:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people
Livin' for today
Ah

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

The glee club

I have soliloquies going on in my head (mind? brain? imagination?) pretty much non-stop.  And because I figure I'm probably like everyone else, I assume you do, too.  These un-throated voices have been given lots of names: old tapes, itty bitty shitty committee, etc.  I call mine the glee club.

While these voices address an infinite number of topics, there are prominent recurring threads which have been with me my whole life.  They are:

1) I'm ugly, fat, stupid, old, a worthless idler, a fraud.

2) I'm special.  I'm capable of special things, I'm meant to do special things.

These feel very, very personal, of course, but I'm also guessing they are fairly generic and that most people have some version of both.  But I'm curious about that.  What does Trump say to himself?  I'm thinking that if he has only one of those voices, it's probably loud and fierce, and it's a toss up which one it might be.  What were the messages my dad gave himself?  He was clearly wrestling with demons he wasn't able to talk about.  What were his inner soliloquies?  The woman at the bus stop, the grocery clerk ringing up my produce, the daughter of my friend who died.  What do they think about?  Not the conscious thinking of "here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm going to do", but the sometimes insidious, constant background chatter that tells us who we are and what we are or are not worth.

3)  This one is a question, The Question.  Everyone has a central question, a question that is never answered and the asking of which defines us and guides our actions, our choices, our entire journey.  The Question is always particular to each person.  "Am I winning?"  "Can I trust you?"  "Am I safe?"  Mine is "Do you still like me?"  Not "Do you like me?", because I've always known I could get people to like me.  But it's fear of losing that affection, that amity, that haunts me.  It has caused me to hang on to and keep feeding friendships which are no longer alive.  It causes me to spend hours and hours on email every day (I guess the way some people are on social media).  It eats up Christmas, which, since I stopped giving and receiving presents,  has become a time of writing and mailing soooo many cards, even to those people with whom my only connection is that once-a-year hello.  In the past, it has inspired me to make myself the center of attention in every classroom and party.  Since people might not still like me if they knew my true self (see #1), I would at least make sure they found me entertaining and amusing.  (I can see now that I may have been exhausting to be around.)  

Since uncovering that question, pulling it to the surface so that I can work with it instead of simply being driven by it, I find I am more able to calm down and allow people to take me or leave me as they will.  I don't want my whole life to be about being liked.  There are so many more fruitful pursuits than that.  I accept that some people will, indeed, stop liking me at some point, and some will even actively dislike me, as difficult as that is to believe.

One of the most important steps in maturation is taken when we stop defining ourselves by what parents, teachers, friends, our culture tell us we are and begin deciding for ourselves what we want, what we can do, where we are going.  Another step is to stop letting those internal voices define us.  They will always be there; at this point I have no reason to think they'll disappear.  But I don't have to listen to mine, don't have to believe them.  Whether I'm stupid or special doesn't matter.  I just am who I am, I do what I do, I behave how I behave, I improve in the ways I am able to, I indulge in weaknesses sometimes.  I am responsible for myself.

I'm still intensely curious about you.

It's ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ot!

There is a remarkable heat wave where I live right now.  Remarkable in that it's earlier than usual, and also because it's all anyone seems to be talking about.  Yesterday it got up to the 90's inside the house.  Hardly anyone has air conditioning, you see, because this kind of heat is not expected, not here, not this early in the summer, not for this long.

Sweet Hubby and I have fans going in almost every room, and our poor little kitty in his fur coat is sprawled on the floor, barely interested in food, which is also remarkable.  I'm not working out, am not focusing well on anything, but just sweating and drinking water and staying as cheerful as possible, or at least being not too crabby.

This kind of swelter, of course, brings to mind global warming, more aptly called climate change.  It's difficult not to feel terribly anxious about the catastrophe we humans are making for ourselves and the planet.  I'm more worried about the melting ice caps, because once they melt, they ain't coming back until another ice age.

However, I've decided that, rather than be anxious about something I have no control over, I'm going to be very philosophical about this wretched mess.  It looks as though we humans simply aren't going to make the changes we would need to in order to reverse, halt, or even slow the damage we are doing.  And in the end, we are only damaging ourselves.  The earth will heal just fine after we're gone.  Look at Chernobyl, which has become a lush natural preserve after all that devastation.  True, we're taking a lot of other species down with us, but life will continue on the planet once we've done ourselves in.  I certainly can't point a finger at anyone else.  I still drive a car.  It's a hybrid, true, and I take the bus a lot (pre-COVID), but I do drive.  And I travel by plane (pre-COVID) and do all sort of other activities that contribute to the degradation of the planet.  And even if I stopped all of that and lived much more simply, me doing it on my own wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference.  The changes have to be global and they have to be mandated and that's just not going to happen. 

So I'm going to live and enjoy my life, with apologies to the generations to follow.  I'm still going to recycle and compost and turn off lights and take the bus, but I'm going to stop feeling so anxious about it all.  Earth will abide.  We humans will get our just desserts.

Kids - who needs 'em?

I have never wanted children.  Maaaaaybe if I had ever married someone who a) I thought would stick around, 2) would be a great dad, and 3) wanted children himself, I might have considered it.  But my first husband had already had two, to whom he was a neglectful dad, and he'd wisely chosen to get a vasectomy.  Sweet Hubby most definitely does not and has never wanted to be a father.  And I just haven't ever felt that maternal pull.

I am curious about how it is that some people know they do want children.  Where does that impulse live?  In the uterus?  In the guts?  In the mind?  I think about being a mother, and immediately what comes to mind is "Whew, glad I didn't."  My life would have been so different.  Maybe better in some ways, although it's hard to imagine it could be better than it is now.

Part of not wanting to have children has been about enjoying the freedom of choice and movement I have always had, but part of it is just plain cowardice.  I think being a parent takes more courage than just about any other venture I can think of (although bungee jumping is high on the list of scary stuff).  I can barely imagine what it must be like to allow one's child to cross the street alone for the first time, or how hard it must be when their hearts or bones get broken, or when they make choices that seem destined to end in disaster or are simply too different from what one would choose for them.  My life must have been terribly challenging for my parents since just about every choice I made as a young adult probably seemed perilous and way outside their square-cornered boxes.  They tried to advise and sway, but mostly resigned themselves to letting me make my mistakes and then pay the inevitable prices.  Could I do that, or have done that, if it were my child?  All I can do now is wonder.

No, I'm glad to have lived my life as I did, and don't regret nor grieve my childlessness.  However, as I age I find myself wondering who will show up for me when I'm old, old enough to need  help and company and cheering up.

When Mom died, which was unexpected, my sister and brother and I immediately showed up for Dad.  I mean immediately.  He and Mom had been on vacation, on a river boat on the Mississippi,, and my sister and I were there are the airport to greet him when he flew home alone.   We basically never left him.  My sister especially, with the rest of us pitching in, spent the next - and last - year of his life making sure he was taken care of and not alone. 

Who will do that for me if and when I need it?  I'm pretty close to my nieces and nephews, but none of them lives close by, and they all have their parents and their children and their lives.  I can't really expect them to stay with me (although I do expect visits and will make sure they know that, gosh darn it).  If SH dies before me, who will ease the aloneness?  Thinking about this is the one and only time I wonder if maybe having kids might have been a good idea.

Is it possible to adopt a 40-year-old, do you suppose?

Is this how Tippi felt?

I'm sure I'm not the only person (I tend to assume that if I have a thought or feeling, most people have had the same thoughts and feelings; I think of myself as sort of spectacularly average) who has fantasized about wild animals being drawn to me, because they recognize my Snow White-like grace, charm, and innocence.  I've imagined birds landing on my finger, wild bunnies taking carrots from my hands, raccoons exploring the contours of my face, deer approaching to be petted.

This fantasy, of course, ignores the fact that wild animals are wild.  What they know how to do is survive in a world where they can only eat what they kill or find.  Actual encounters with wild animals are dangerous, and would be made more so if I actually gave expression to that fantasy.

This has been brought home to me just recently.  Three times this week, I have been divebombed by different pairs of crows as I walked through my neighborhood.  I understand they were only protecting nests, and they didn't hurt me or anything, but even so, it was scary.  They flew so close, I could feel the rush of air from their wings as they went by, and they cawed loudly right into my ears.  They were relentless, truly committed to driving me away, and no matter how many times I assured them that I was just trying to get home, they kept at me for several blocks. 

If (or perhaps when; I tend to think it's inevitable) there is a massive infrastructure breakdown of some kind, and there is no grocery store and no hot and cold running water, I don't think I'm one of the people who will survive.  Nice to know the crows will be all right, though.

A reluctant lark

I wish I were more like my mom.  She was the nicest, most good-natured, loving person ever born.  But I'm more like my dad, moody, spiky, with a tendency toward passive aggression.  Like Dad, I was a natural night owl, and could barely stand Mom's morning cheer.  When I was a teen, she would come into my bedroom and throw open the curtains, singing "Rise and shine and greet the new day".  No matter how much I growled or whined, she never seemed to catch on to the fact that her a.m. energy was too much for me to bear gladly.  Although I eventually became less grumpy when I woke up, even into adulthood, even into seniority, I could stay up until midnight or later and sleep until mid to late morning.

The past few years, though, I have been alarmed to see myself turning into a morning lark, unable to sleep past 6:30, sometimes awaking as early as 4:30.  I see now that when I was wishing to be more like Mom, I should have been more specific.  This was not the trait of hers I wanted to emulate.  These days I find myself nodding off at 10:30 in the evening, sometimes missing chunks of whatever movie Sweet Hubby and I are watching or whatever book I'm reading.  I fight the sleepiness, grimly avoid going to bed until at least 11pm, but my days of being a night owl seem to be behind me.

Of course I realize that it makes perfect sense to simply surrender to sleepiness whenever it occurs, taking a nap or going to bed early, waking up when my body is ready to.  Why fight it?  It's not as though I have a job I have to get to, or deadlines I have to meet.  Why all this resistance to my natural, though changing, rhythms?

I've come to see that it's a matter of identity.  I have always identified myself as a night owl.  There have been times I would stay up all day, all night, and all the next day and be perfectly fine, with no loss of energy or spirit.  So to find myself snoozing and snoring before the crack of midnight makes me feel old and not myself, not who I think myself to be.  Giving up my identity as a night owl feels like a concession to age, like taking the legs off my step bench in order to still do those vigorous workouts without collapsing.  And if I make those concessions, isn't that just admitting I'm old, and won't the aging process speed up because I'm conceding?

Since I can't seem to change my body, I guess I need to change my attitude.  So here goes:

I am grateful to have lived long enough to experience the ravages and detriments of aging.  And I'm going to do my best to live as though aging gracefully will extend my healthy life by ten years.

So there.  

Divorcing friends

I'm over-socialized.  The drive in me to make lots of friends comes from the childhood years when my family frequently moved from place to place.  (No, we were not military nor running from the law.  The transfers were part of my dad's career as a petroleum engineer.)  I was so terrified of being lonely and alone, I quickly taught myself how to show off, attract attention, put on a real dog-and-pony show, be everyone's friend and the teacher's pet.

So now I have too many friends.  Some of them, a lot of them, are terrific.  But there are some I don't really feel very connected to, and some I like a whole lot but our paths just never seem to cross.  Especially at Christmas, when I'm sending out cards, I find myself wishing I had fewer friends so that I could really nourish the connections with the ones I have, stay in closer touch.

It always feels weird to me when a friendship just sort of fades away, because I'm never sure if I should do something to revive it (keep sending that Christmas card, send a "let's get together" email) or simply ignore it.  The latter feels to me an awful lot like ghosting and I'm just not comfortable with that.  It's too indefinite.  Are we still friends or not?  So every once in a while, I suggest to a friend who has become distant that perhaps we should mutually agree to let each other go, with all blessings and good wishes.  Retire the friendship with open eyes and a fond farewell.

What's funny is that there have been several cases when the person in question will adamantly reject the retirement.  "Oh no, you can't get rid of me that easily.  We're still friends!"  And then I never hear from them again.

Maybe it's this year of COVID lockdown which has made me ever more aware of the fact that I want to live a simpler, less crowded, less hectic life.  I've spend so much energy juggling the balls, spinning the plates of all those connections, and while that has filled my life with wonderful people and adventures and experiences, it has also taken me away from the quieter pursuits I'm now more in love with, such as writing and reading and sitting in the open air listening to trees.

And by the way, if you're reading this, you are not somebody I want to let go of.  In case you were wondering.

No wonder people believe in Heaven

I find it terrifying to know that I'm going to die without knowing when nor how.  But I'm going to.  It's certain.  So what does it all mean, this life, this momentary time?

I didn't have children so am not leaving any of my genetic material to humanity, but even if I had, so what?  I would still die.  Even if a child of mine had created a way to make plastic truly biodegradable and had therefore helped extend the reign of human life on Earth for decades or centuries - so what?  We hairless monkeys would simply continue to have to fix the terrible messes we make and end up extinct anyway.

Does knowing death is inevitable make individual life pointless?  As brief as a mayfly's and as driven by appetites.  Or does it make every moment precious beyond belief?  This rare, exquisite, brief gift of being able to experience the richness of the planet and of each other.

I suppose it has to be both, because neither exists without the other.  Deep joy without the knowledge of loss would be flat and easy to take for granted.  The terror and sense of pointlessness would be unbearable without the occasional experience of deep joy and sensory pleasure.

Without subscribing to it myself, I understand religious belief, the need, the hunger for something to give meaning to life and offer the possibility of eternity.

Weight and Liz Cheney

Weight has always been an issue for me, as it has been and is for every woman (perhaps for every person) in Hollywood.  Perhaps for every American.  Perhaps for everyone in the world.  Even when I was young and lithe and limber and strong, I never felt thin enough.  But I do love me some food.

Three times I have had dramatic weight losses.  What is common to them all is that they happened to me and were not the results of any commitment or resolve on my part.

1) In 1976 I had a bad sore throat for 12 days, couldn't swallow at all.  The weight I lost then stayed off for a long time.

2) In 1991 my thyroid went hyper-active and my metabolism speeded up so drastically that I lost weight no matter how much I ate.  I went down from the size 10 I had been to size 4.  It was several months before I finally went to the correct doctor, got the correct diagnosis and the correct medication.  That weight came back.

3) In 2000 I moved away from Los Angeles, lived on the central California coast, and started a new life.  I exercised more, discovered all sorts of community dances, and fell hyperbolically in love.  Weight simply fell off without me thinking about it.  That weight stayed off until menopause hit me like a hot brick.

I'm not happy with my weight now, and with more reason than I had at any of those other times.  The trouble is that I haven't proved to myself that I can lose weight by choice.

I exercise every day, sometimes two or three times a day.  Clearly my problem isn't activity but food, which I use the same way I use video games and movies - as a way to avoid deep, troubling, sorrowful, conflicted feelings.  So naturally I'm not eager to deny myself one of my avoidance mechanisms, when it will mean experiencing all those feelings: what it's like to live with the tensions, anxiety, and rancor of the COVID era; my outrage at what the Republican party has turned into (I never would have thought that Liz Cheney would become one of my heroes, but she certainly is right now.  Surely some of her Republican colleagues are squirming with shame as she models integrity and courage.  No wonder they want to kill her off.  She's making the rest of them look like the stinking cowards they are.); how much I miss my mom and being near my family; my feelings about my sister-in-law; doubts about whether I have it in me to write a superb play; terror about the inevitable fact that I'm going to die without knowing when and how.

I have to believe in myself right now, tell myself I can instead of that I can't.  "I can't" is a powerful phrase and takes a lot of spine to overcome.  "I can" has a different power, the power of the possible, the power of the unknown, the power of belief over certainty.

So here goes.  I can.  

The Oscars and racism, Part 3

The exchange with my brother continues, and once again, I find I am inspired to examine my own thoughts and opinions in order to understand and express them more clearly.

I had claimed that he and I have no idea what it is to be a POC in this country.  Which isn't completely true.  Certainly we have ideas about what it might be like.  But Bro objects to my saying that we can't truly know what it feels like to move through the world with black skin.  He contrasts my avowed inability to imagine that with my sympathy/empathy for the situations in which Palestinians live.  (This conversation about the Oscars has grown branches and twigs and leaves.)

It's true that I have been to Palestine, or what used to be Palestine.  I have had conversations with Palestinians, visited some of them in their homes and orchards, seen the spent tear gas canisters and rubber bullets lying about, seen the walls and barbed wire and check points, the Israeli solders patrolling the streets with their rifles.  I have read books written by Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Brits about life in Israel.

Still, I continue to assert that I don't really know what it is to be Palestinian, what it is to be black, what it is to live the life of the oppressed, because even if I could imagine it fully and deeply and truly, I could also stop that imagining and go back to my safe, un-oppressed life whenever I choose.  I can't possibly know what it is the live an oppressed life and not be able to get away from it.

I used to think about what it would be like when my mom died.  I could easily make myself cry with those imaginings, they were so vivid and emotionally powerful.  But when she did actually die, it wasn't like anything I had imagined, and that was mostly because I could never leave that state of grief, couldn't get away from it, but had to live with it all day every day.  And even this is not a completely analogous situation (the difference between the imagined and the actual), because grief eventually fades. 

The Oscars, Part 2. Also Karma.

After my previous post celebrating the diversity on display during the most recent Oscar telecast, I got an email from my brother discussing his objection to the possibility of the Oscars being given for what seemed to be political reasons, or for any reason other than rewarding exceptional talent and skill.  His comments caught me by surprise, because I had felt that every award this year had been earned and that none had been given simply for the sake of political correctness or forced inclusivity.

Our exchange did get me thinking, though, about what truly was the reason to celebrate this year's diversity.  I was able to express my response only clumsily at first, until I finally saw that what is truly cause for celebration is that more stories are being told, more kinds of stories about more kinds of people; more voices are being heard; different kinds of experiences are being shared.  Oscar voting has always been led by the voters' biases, allegiances, and subjective tastes, never simply by recognition of the most exceptional work.  (The example I used in responding to my brother was the year, 1969, in which "Oliver!" won Best Picture over "The Lion in Winter", which to me felt like a travesty.)  That subjectivity will always be an influence in the rewarding of any works of art.  How splendid that the subjectivity and biases are finally starting to point in more directions than just toward the work of white men.

Sweet Hubby also added to the conversation that it's not just a matter of who gets nominated and who wins the vote.  It's about who even gets the chance to work as a filmmaker, whose vision has a chance to be seen, whose voice is  heard, whose story is told.  This country, this world, is so rich in diversity; how splendid that that diversity is showing up on screen.  That's what I celebrate.

Okay, on to the other part of this entry: Yesterday I visited an elderly friend of mine.  She's a lovely woman, part of a spiritual group I have been with for many years.  She is also responsible for me traveling to Israel and Palestine a few years ago, a journey I had long imagined but might never have made on my own.  So she is certainly a valued friend, who is now living alone in senior housing.  It's a nice enough place, but still, my friend moved there during COVID and because of that has been in virtual isolation for almost a year, just at the time when her mental and physical powers are diminishing and limiting what is possible for her.  I know she both needs and deserved attention from friends, and I was happy to go, but really it would have been easier for me to have stayed home, where I could have given time to the several projects calling for attention.  I sort of didn't really feel like making the effort.  So I was looking at why I had.  I was under no obligation, had made no promise, and she has no particular expectation of attention from me.

I realized that I visited her for the same reason I remove nails from the street.  On some level, I seem to believe that if I save someone else's tire from puncture, then somehow my tires will be saved as well.  If I visit my lonely elderly friend, then when I'm lonely and elderly myself, people will visit me.  I know that this is not scientific nor reality-based thinking.  Plenty of people who do magnificent acts of generosity wind up with cancer or in car crashes.  Moving this nail will not save me from the next one.  I do know that, and I pride myself on not being superstitious.  But my own actions have revealed to me that I seem to be a believer in some kind of karma.  So I'm going to keep removing nails from the the street.  Just in case.

And the Oscar goes to...

This is the year that the Oscars became truly diverse.  Not symbolically.  Not with tokenism.  But truly, authentically diverse.  So many actors and filmmakers of different colors - and a second female Best Director!  The tide is turning.

But there are battles still to come.  If everyone is going to get her fair share, some people are going to have to give up theirs, and they may not want to.  I may be one of those.  I want to be generous, support what I believe in and know is right; I want to make a difference.  But on my terms.  I don't want to risk anything big or important to me.  I'm not a Tubman.  I'm not proud to admit this, but it's true.  I hold the right ideals, but don't actually want to do very much about them.  Like most people of privilege, I enjoy what I have and don't want to give any of it up.  I just want the brownie point for right thinking, as though that were enough.

I know it's not considered progressive to think in terms of a zero sum game, but certainly for everyone to have enough, those with more than enough are going to have to let go of some of what we have, right?  Is that how the country will become more fair, more equitable, more just?  Is that how the old, old wounds of racism and inequity will heal?  Can they heal?  Surely these wounds were inflicted so long ago, they have scarred over.  Which may take excision to remove.  Which is a more violent process than  healing. 

I don't know.  Equity seems almost more out of reach than ever these days.  For one thing, there are so many of us, and so many are so angry, no doubt partly because of the changes happening all around us.  That anger is fear-based, people afraid of change, afraid of losing what we've got, and that fear makes us brittle and suspicious.  It's discouraging. 

Still, there was the Oscar telecast, which showed the whole world what a fairer world can look like, a world in which talent and skill are rewarded regardless of color and gender.  That's something.  That is something.  After all, with enough drops, the bucket will eventually fill.

To my friends and family, just in case

I can't help but think about what life will be like, what state I'll be in, should the worst happen and Sweet Hubby dies before me.  (He has promised I get to go first, but we both know a promise like that can't always be kept.)  I've been composing a message that I would want to send to the most important people in my life, should that happen.  I'm writing it now because I don't know if I will be capable of it then.

"Dear loved ones, I'm going to need help to survive this.  I need someone to make sure I eat once in a while, and drink lots of water, and take a shower now and then.  I need to know that Flow is taken care of.  If you are able, please come, for a few hours or a few days, whatever you can do without neglecting your own life.  I'll have the futon set up.

"But please only come if you can be with me as I go through this.  Don't try to make me feel better.  Just be with me.  It's probably going to be hard and scary.   I have to know that you will take care of yourself, too.  If for any reason you can't come, know that you will never have to apologize or explain.  I trust you to know what you are capable of, what you have to give.

"Someone please step up and coordinate with the others.  Thank you in advance for your love and company."

I'm fortunate to have people in my life I could send this to, people I trust, people who care and will show up if they can.  May there never be a need.

Big guns and small changes

I have just read an editorial describing Russia's military build-up along the Ukraine border.  The editorial claimed Russia's intentions are unclear.

In my experience, people who carry guns want to use them, find reasons to use them.  Russia's intentions are absolutely clear: to intimidate and threaten and prove they are ready and willing to carry out their threats.  They have the weapons and they have the will, and there's not much doubt they will use both.

I suppose if I were in charge of a country, I would understand the desire/need to take what I wanted from whomever else in order to grow/succeed/feel safe.  But since I'm not in charge of much of anything, I look at acts of aggression, such as Russia's toward Ukraine and China's toward Hong Kong and Taiwan, and wonder at what seem unnecessary and rather barbaric greed and shows of force.  I know there is always a complex dance going on between countries as each one tries to maintain and improve its standing in the world and the lives of its people - or at least of its leaders.  But will we as a species ever outgrow the need to aggress against others?  Because of course the national aggressions are only larger and more formidable examples of the smaller aggressions humans inflict on one another every day.  

And maybe that's the point I'm trying to make to myself.  I can't do much about Russia militarizing its border with Ukraine, but I can certainly become more aware of my own acts of aggression, hostility, threat.  When I'm at my most sensitive, I understand that even speaking sharply to someone, or being sarcastic, or gossiping, all are ways I assert my power, or try to.  So I guess if I do those, I oughtn't to be surprised that the leaders of countries do the same sorts of things on a much grander and more dangerous scale. 

Will it really make a difference if I finally rid myself of my own hostility and unkindness?  I suppose if everyone on the planet were able to, there might be a chance we could all settle down and create a finer and more equitable life for all.  But I am just one, so could my own healing actual help heal the entire planet?  It doesn't seem likely.  It's also all there is for me to do, because if I can't, how can I expect anyone else to?  

"Oh Lord, thy sea is so big and my boat is so small."

The luxury of my feelings

Lately I find I'm terribly sensitive and feel fragile.  A recent minor and quickly corrected miscommunication with a friend left me weeping for an hour.  I get inordinately angry at inanimate objects, overly frustrated when something I'm cooking doesn't turn out, and I sometimes become rebellious against Sweet Hubby so quickly and unexpectedly that it takes us both by surprise.

As lovely a marriage as we have, as splendid a husband as he is, SH and I most definitely butt heads now and then, and when I'm as emotionally thin-skinned as I am these days, I usually end up fighting harder than I need to.  I'm up against a lot when we disagree.  He is highly educated with, as I like to joke, "more degrees than a thermometer", while I'm a college drop out.  He is an only child who never had to learn to share and is used to being in charge of his life and not having to compromise, while I grew up with siblings.  I often come to him for help (usually with the tech which dominates our lives), while he almost never turns to me unless he is sick.  And he is a man.  All of this places him in a position of invisible power, power he would never consciously wield, but which is understood in a native way, the way dogs understand who is alpha and who needs to show her belly.  The trouble is, I'm used to being the alpha in my own life too.  I'm not educated, but I'm terrifically smart and strong.  But because of the advantages I'm aware he has, I too often feel powerless.  When he and I are toe to toe, all I've got is guts and instinct.  Fortunately for me, he is man who can be reasoned with, who can listen and explain or amend.  But that's only when I come at him with reason.  When I lead with the heat emotions, as I seem to be doing more of lately, then he also fights from a place of defense and survival.

I understand this emotional fragility I'm feeling.  Four years of the ignorance, hypocrisy, corruption, and mendacity from the Trump administration, and this last year + of COVID anxiety, as well as the social and racial divide that has come noisily to the surface rightly demanding to be dealt with, along with the continuing and growing threat climate change poses, these circumstances have worked on all of us, grinding away at our sense of safety, our hope for the future, our trust in our leaders.  I'm surprised any of us are still standing.

Yet even as I give way to tears, self-pity, and lashing out, I'm aware that the ability and right to have and express these feelings are privileges not afforded to many people.  I don't imagine the people in Yemen, in Syria, in Palestine, in COVID-ravaged households have the luxury of pouting because their avocadoes have brown spots, or of throwing temper tantrums because their marriage partner said something that hurt their feelings.  I don't imagine the people living in the ever-growing number of tent communities around the city have the luxury of saying "I'm bored, I kind of don't feel like doing anything today, I'm slightly depressed and think I'll just pull the covers over my head."  I don't imagine someone who is working full time from home as well as educating and entertaining four children has the luxury of saying "I'm so sensitive, I should just take a day off."

We feel what we feel, we think what we think.  I know that.  But I also know that it behooves me (isn't that a great word?) to stay as aware as possible of how fortunate I am, not to take it for granted, and always to keep in mind that indulging my feelings is a luxury I have not earned but have been given by the good fortunate of whatever mighty forces come together to make up my life.

Naked I stand - and stand and stand and stand

In my rather unstructured life, I've had many, many jobs: bank teller, ticket seller at a porno theater, guinea pig contestant for game shows in development, Paddington Bear in children's cancer wards, carpenter on a crew building sets for fashion shows, imagination tutor to a 10-year-old, Amtrak reservation clerk, hogie-maker, vehicle maintenance clerk for Coca-Cola, office manager for a Beverly Hills real estate company.  

The job I had longest is one of the least conventional. For 30 years, I was an art model.  This is the job that was both easiest (no training necessary, no special skills needed besides the willingness to be naked in front of strangers and the ability to hold still) and the hardest (it can be very, very boring and sometimes painful).

When Sweet Hubby and I flew to Tennessee early in our marriage so that I could meet his (devoutly Baptist) mother, the subject came up of what I do for a living.  I was concerned about losing her approval, but certainly didn't want to pretend to be other than I am, so I said "I'm a model for art classes", hoping the art in the classes would redeem me.  She gave it a moment's thought, then asked, in her thick accent, "With or without clothes?"  "Sometimes with but usually without."  She thought for another moment, then said kindly "Well, you just keep warm."  And I knew we would be all right.  Which we were.  

For some reason, I have always been unself-conscious about my body.  In the first class I was hired for, I had a moment of queasiness in the second before I took off my robe, but once I'd passed that marker, I was at ease for the remainder of my career.  I was always treated respectfully, usually as an object (this is one arena in what objectification is appropriate), although in some of the classes I modeled for frequently, the teachers and I, and sometimes the students, dealt with one another as people with personalities and lives outside of class.

I was much in demand (my ego loved that) because I enjoyed taking eccentric poses, with twists and bends and off-kilter balance.  My favorite classes were the ones in which I did mostly short poses, one minute, five minutes, ten minutes.  My least favorite were the sculpting and painting classes, which called for one pose for the three hours of class for a series of up to ten classes.  Those were awful,  Even a reclining pose is painful after a while; something always hurts or goes numb.

Fortunately for me, art classes need every sort of body, so I continued to do this work even as I aged, gained weight, became less strong and less limber.  At one institute, there was a teacher who gave anatomy classes; for the class on skeletons, he hired a thin model; for the class on muscles - you get the idea.  I was hired for the session on fat and aging.  Which didn't bother me at all.  I know how old I am, and I know what I look like.  I was happy to be someone who could cheerfully fill that need, as older models are harder to find.

I don't know why I'm so comfortable naked. There's something about bodies which intrigues and enchants me.  They are so fragile and so resilient.  So beautiful and so odd looking.  They betray us in so many ways, and also are able to heal themselves almost miraculously.  We identify and are identified with them and by them, and yet they are are not who we are; they are merely the meat package which allows our Selves to experience the world.  What a gift that is, to be able to smell baking bread, and hear a Scott Joplin rag, and see the intricate mosaic tiling of a mosque, and taste a perfectly ripe peach, and feel the velvety fur of little girl cat Stachie.  To be able to hold another person's body in an embrace.  (Oh my lord, do I miss hugging.  How have single people survived this era of distancing?)  I think we should all stand naked in front of a mirror now and then and celebrate what we see, with no judgment nor condemnation, but just to glory for a moment in the gift of our corporeality. 

Looking back, looking forward

Friends and I were Zooming recently, and one of them was talking about how, now that the time of lockdown may be coming to an end, he regrets he didn't read more last year.  But I think we should all be very gentle and kind to ourselves, instead of judging or criticizing.  For one thing, of course, if you want to read more, or do anything you haven't done, start now.  But more than that is the recognition that this has been an incredibly stressful year, politically, socially, physically, emotionally, and mentally.  It's an accomplishment to have gotten through it with our spirits intact.  It's not nothing to still be able to be cheerful and to greet the longer, warmer days with expectation and eagerness.

Also, Sweet Hubby and I have agreed we are going to carry masks with us from now on.  It was great to go through an entire year without a cold, so any time we are in a restaurant or theater or plane, if someone is coughing and sniffling, we can protect ourselves.  I wish I'd had a mask on the tour through Spain my sister and I took a couple of years ago.  One of our fellow tourists got on the bus with a bad cough, and within a week, almost everyone was sick, some of us direly enough to need a trip to the hospital for x-rays and medication.  Now that would have been a good time for a mask.  

Yes, him again

My sister pointed out to me that I had goofed in my earlier post "Joe and Don" when I wrote that Trump was longing for a return to the McCarthy era - in the 1980's.  Of course McCarthy was in the 1950's.  I was terribly embarrassed about that gaffe, until I realized why I'd made it.  As I was writing, I wasn't thinking about McCarthy; I was thinking about Nixon.  That was the corrupt government I lived through.  Another time when the men in power were unworthy; a time when citizens lost faith in our leaders.

So if you caught that blooper, now you know where it came from.

And since we're on Trump again, I just have to say how disgusted I am by Trump's statement that during the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, the rioters and police were hugging and kissing, all great pals.  Please, please tell me that there is not a single person who has seen the footage of that event who doesn't recognize this statement as a pure and obvious falsehood, who doesn't realize that Trump is a pathological liar, a fraud, a dangerous buffoon.  I mean, how naked can a lie be?

Are we so irreparably adrift that there are people who will accept the despicable ignorance and outright mendacity of this statement?  I am so worried about my country.  I believe that everything that has gone wrong, every mistake and bad choice in U.S. history, is catching up to us: every native killed, every slave whipped, every unfair law, every instance of greed and cruelty shouting down reason, kindness, and justice.

I believe that most of those mistakes are made because we as a nation worship the wrong things: money, power, possessions, sex, fame, gossip, youth, and beauty.  We've turned our backs on even the pretense of being true to the founding and amended principles of this country.  There is no pretense that the will of the people is respected, as evidenced in Georgia, where Gov. Kemp has signed into law a bill curbing voting rights, a bill which is overwhelmingly unpopular by the citizens of that state.  The naked, naked corruption and hunger for power.  I'm sick to my stomach. 

Anger

Sometimes I will be suddenly gripped by an outsized anger, a feeling of aggrievement, of frustrated desires, of powerlessness.  Those feelings become so strong so swiftly that I am almost always taken by surprise.  I have finally learned that my best course when this red darkness is upon me is to shut my mouth and remove myself from the scene, because I know that if I speak, it will be to lash out, to accuse, to blame and criticize.  It is usually in conversation with Sweet Hubby that these flare ups happen, and even though part of me wants to lash out, feels justified - I wouldn't feel this way unless something egregious had actually been done to me, right? - another part of me, the part which remembers going through these episodes so many times in the past, wants to protect SH from the barbs and shivs sticking out of my soul.  

Such an episode occurred two nights ago.  Man oh man, I really wanted the relief of venting and blaming.  But no, I didn't want that at all.  (Oh thank the Great Whatever for the wisdom which occasionally accompanies aging.)  The goddess prevailed over the seven-year-old girl who felt she had to fight for her life.  I went silent and took myself into the bedroom to read.  I figured if there were actually some problem, if  some slight injury had actually been inflicted upon me, it would be better discerned and addressed at a cooler time.

This side of me is pure Dad.  I think he probably had these surges of inchoate anger more often than he was ever able to address verbally.  His jaw would clench and toxins sometimes hissed out of him almost silently.  As a child, I couldn't understand why had had gone dark and glowering, and of course I went through a period of believing his torment to be my fault.  Gradually I came to see that he was battling inner demons, battles for which he had no vocabulary and few tools.  Because he couldn't articulate his inner world, I have never felt as though I knew him very well.  Seeing some of the same rages in my own life has given me more compassion for him.  I'm sure that, like me, he didn't want to scare or alienate the people he loved.  He just couldn't help himself.

Like Dad, I have an enormously generous and loving partner.  When SH came to bed that recent night, he lay close enough that I could have his affection if I wanted it, even though I stiffly rebuffed his slightest touch.  He didn't get huffy, didn't try to make me talk, didn't storm out, but simply asked if I wanted him to sleep in the guest room.  I managed to give him permission to stay; that was about all I trusted myself to say.  So we lay there, both of us hoping for the relief of sleep.  I don't know what he was thinking, but in my mind, silently, over and over, I was saying "Please don't die while I'm being a bitch, please don't die while I'm being a bitch."  

The next morning, I was predictably softened and apologetic and he was predictably kind and loving, as I knew he would be, and we were closer than ever all that day.  How lucky am I?

Joe and Don

Like many folks, I have always wondered what the Again in Make American Great Again refers to.  When was it that Trump and his followers thought the country was great?  In reading Heather Cox Richardson's magnificent and very disturbing book of American history, How the South Won the Civil War, I believe I have found the answer to that riddle.

Trump would like to go back to the early '50's.  And we just about have.  That's the era in which Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy pretty well tore the country apart, abetted by those whose purposes he served.  

The Trump era, which continues still, is chillingly like the McCarthy era: An unworthy man suddenly given an enormous spotlight and microphone.  The bitter partisan hatred.  The stubborn, prideful ignorance of the people in power.  The flagrant abuse of that power.  The unashamed hypocrisy.  The demonizing of groups of people.  The unsubstantiated accusations.  The slavish, cowardly devotion by those who know better to a mean-spirited man, a greedy man given everything and wanting more, a stupid man, a man who delights in poisoning his country.   Can you even tell which one I'm talking about?

I hadn't seen this before, because I was young enough during McCarthy's reign not to remember living through it.  I only knew it after the fact as a brutal time of corruption and destruction.  But now that I've seen its similarities to the time of Trumpism, I can't unsee it.  

This face

My mirror shows me what I look like when I pose.  Now, thanks to Zoom, I know what I look like when I talk, laugh, listen ,think, and eat.  It has been a bit of a shock and plenty dispiriting.  Hard not to judge myself for all of these supposed flaws: the places where my skin is mottled, the thin lips, the pouches under my eyes, the looseness under my chin, the incipient jowls.  (Jowls?  Really??)

During and after every Zoom session - and oh my lord, there are so many - I have to remind myself that this is an older version of the face which won me Sweet Hubby.  (Having boobs helped.)  I'm so glad I don't have to wonder if it would now; the deal is sealed.  This is the face my Mom loved, and would love still.  And this is the face everyone knows me by.  Everyone else is used to it.  Only I am taken by surprise.

A modern conundrum

For political matters, we don't turn to scientists.  So why do so many people turn to politicians in matters of science? 

This being human

The United States is a country with too much religion and not enough spirituality.

Being human means knowing our lives are finite, which raises all sorts of natural, stimulating, and unanswerable questions.  Why am I here?  What does it all mean?  How did it get started?  Is it random or is someone/something in charge?  What am I supposed to do with my time?  Does it make any difference if I'm wicked or good?

Every primitive society has come up with some sort of answer to those questions, almost always involving a god or panel of gods or mountain of gods.  It's reassuring, of course, to believe in a god who is watching over us, wise and pure, who knows all and understands all and has a plan.  The trouble I have with religion is that we are only learning while we're asking the questions.  Learning stops when we think we have an answer.  To have faith in a religious system means swallowing a whole bunch of nonsense.  (The punchline "It's turtles all the way down" comes to mind.)  (Also, who were the children of the animals Noah saved supposed to mate with?  Each other?  Ick.)  I understand the comfort of religious faith.  It takes a certain amount of courage to be willing to be uncomfortable with deep, deep questions for which there are no answers.

In this country, maybe in all countries, spiritual emptiness accounts for an awful lot of behaviors as we try to fill that hollow place with sugar, money, belongings, fame, success, addictions, etc.  We spend our energy and focus on such trivialities.  One example that comes to mind is the enormous fuss made about the fly that landed on Pence's white hair during a debate.  Really?  That's what we want to give our precious life force to?  Video games?  Conspiracy theories?  Endless shopping?  All these distractions from substance.  It sometimes seems to me that a life spent watching flowers grow would be just as full as any life spent doggedly chasing money.

I know I sound a little sour here.  I think this era of COVID and masks and Trump and QAnon and rancor has ground me down, seriously, though not permanently.  I'm the opposite of Charlie Brown.  I love people; it's humanity as a whole I'm having a very hard time with right now.