For Bandit & Future & Hannah et al

Nothing will break your heart quite like a dog. Maybe it has to do with how you can just pour love into them and they pour it right back. It’s one of the most uncomplicated and unconditional things you get to have in a lifetime. You might believe that you take care of them, but without fail, and whether you realize it or not, you are just providing for them while they take care of you. It’s why in spite of their old age or illness, if we can’t let them go, they won’t let go either. They will stay with us past the point of their own comfort just because they know we need them so.  It’s why if they absolutely can’t hold on, they wander off to die so as not to burden us one last time. They protect us for as long as they can. It’s why when we lose them, and always too soon, it hurts in such a specific way. Because we love them, very simply. But also because they forgive us for everything, long before we can forgive ourselves. Because on the days that we fail at all of it, fail to even get out of bed, they stay by our side. It’s like they have a secret way of seeing people that looks past all of the knotted flaws and defenses. You are always the best version of yourself to your dog.  They are generous and unstinting and they redeem us. It’s why the time they gave you outweighs your broken heart and somehow you still know how lucky you are to have known them.

                                                                                

My Backyard

I have posted some pictures of my backyard, but let me explain.

First there are the bumble bees in all their finery. They inhabit my orchid blossoms just as they did last year, burrowing into each blossom with a diligent gusto. I would like to know what rapture they find there, or is it merely duty.  I posted here about these bees last year. There were five blossoms last year and every morning a squadron of five bumblebees arrived to hover, one for each blossom.  My question to myself last year was how they knew to send just that number? Were they communicating bee to bee to bud.

 This year there are 8 blossoms and a bee for each.  I am now happily convinced that they have some special ways. They count and organize and open these blossoms in a matter of a very few days.  And then this magical ritual is over.  The blossoms are spent, the bees are elsewhere.  That is until next year. I think that we humans completely underestimate or maybe just ignore the wonder of how smoothly the natural world operates without our intrusion or participation.  It is humbling to see it in this small yearly drama.

But it is also true that had I not written about it here, on this marvel of technology last year, I would not have trusted my memory to report with confidence that these little furry fliers had indeed showed up again in the right number for their buds. And that funny little fact, that the universe has so carefully designed an existence for these buds and bees, supports me in my daily round.  It is sensible this lovely backdrop called the earth.  It is not random, it is infinitely detailed and gloriously arranged so that buds will open and bees will answer their call.  How could I be lost in the stars?

And here are the roof kitties. Actually there are four, maybe five and they live on the roof across from my house. I have had a rule that feeding these guys was not a good idea, unless I could trap them so that they wouldn’t multiply to numbers that would no longer fit on the roof. But this year I have succumbed.

This little litter sits perched on the roof watching me weed the garden and hang the laundry.  They look right into my eyes and don’t scurry backwards from the edge unless the dogs have come out to complain and remind them this yard is not theirs.  As if they would venture down. They are a motley crew.  The four you see here and another very shy little tabby.  So now every morning and every evening when they come out to watch me in the garden, I put a bowl of food on the bodega roof and I watch them.  They parry and dodge, nudge and wait, but finally, I think they share more or less.  Their mother comes by at times, but sits back, as if she knows this food is for them.  She does not eat it. Their future is a little uncertain, there is danger in the world for them, but I have succumbed and with that surrender comes commitment.  I will do my best.

I got a call this morning from the Harrison Street Café.  A very presentable young man was calling to tell me that my daughter Erin’s cell phone was left there at the café.  He said he figured mom was the best number to call and so he did.  Harrison Street Café and my daughter are thousands of miles and a day’s travel from here.   How lovely that I can email her or call her sister and tell her where to find her phone. A beeline of a sort, thanks to human ingenuity.  How small is our world or how big is my backyard?  We are definitely not lost in the stars.

 

If it’s true (and I’ve been told it’s true) that all these particles that make up this thing I am (and the thing that is you) were forged in the furnace of some dark dark night, were made in the belly of some distant star, is it any wonder I feel so unmapped? Uncharted insides with valleys I can’t see the bottom of, maybe tiny glowing fish swimming through the lowest reaches, somewhere down past my toes. And maybe my freckles are not freckles, but pin-points on a globe, places where the things I said to you once bubbled up from, where that one dream about the ocean occupying a corner of my bedroom came from, places where something has been discovered or uncovered or lost. And if we spin as fast as they say we do, is it any wonder I’m often so dizzy, dazzled and uncertain, unsteady on my feet as we careen through so much unknown matter and space between matter. I want to know and I don’t want to know, curious but so in love with mysteries. How lonely and harshly lit might it be if everything was suddenly revealed, forever stuck being exactly what it is?

"I grow old"

When people think of old folks do they imagine Seymour Glass’s fat lady, sitting on her front porch in her rocking chair, swatting flies, probably ill with some old person’s disease, listening to her radio turned up loud? Or J. Alfred Prufrock, questioning whether he dare disturb the universe or eat a peach: “I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” But that’s not it. That is what I thought of old age when I was young and looking at it from afar.

Now, I think instead that being old is more like life was when I was young and I could call up a friend to say, meet me at the high school parking lot with your bike and a sandwich. Let’s go exploring. Or when I could wander up to the grade school ball field and find a pick up softball team. Possibly short in the outfield, but so what. Alone, yes, in that I went home to my own room and only shared some of my thoughts but with plenty of good and invigorating company.

Of course summer would come and we would claim to be bored at times, but still it flew by. But those days then and now, when we claimed boredom, were so still and hot that simply gathering and breathing seemed sufficient activity. We shared the air, the day, our passing thoughts. Then as now this self-same sensation lives in me. Of a day passed in good company to no effect that the world will notice, but all the same, sweet and shared.

And then comes the day when we are on the merry chase for a new experience, a road trip, a day in the country, a movie, a new project. Fully aware that the project is ephemeral, an enthusiasm that we enjoy, but will not save the world.

This is the benediction that is well-spent on the young and the old. We are here to discover ourselves, our surroundings, our commonalities; it does not require tangible results. It requires a mind at work, sifting, musing, and gathering sense, breathing deeply the cause of human existence. Still hoping that things were turn out alright, but now not just for ourselves, but for the world entire.

Why are blank pages so terrifying? Come to think of it, why are most things so terrifying?

There’s really no way to start but to start. Maybe a sharp intake of breath, squeezed eyelids and one step. Like blank pages. Like the running leaps we took out of the hay loft as children, time to barely notice the dust motes swirling in impossible patterns, the bright bars of sunlight, before the jump, the nothing, just your banging heart. I try not to think too much of the future these days. I know it is not promised. I’ve seen it snatched away. It’s easy to build castles in your head. It’s less easy to try and wrap yourself around this very moment, the only one you have, no running commentary, no safe distance, no smirk. Just you. The feeling of falling. Your banging heart.

Sometimes it feels like everything I do is for an audience of ghosts. I am confounded by the weight of this time I have been given that you were not, and the notion that I cannot, CAN NOT, misuse it. But it's hard to wake thanking every day, especially knowing it was a similar day that took you in the first place. I want to carry you into the future, tucked safe in the folds of my mind and upper chambers of my heart. How is it that life can be more, but still so importantly, elegy after elegy after elegy?

"Your absence has gone through me   

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color." -W.S. Merwin

Notes for a Quiet Revolution

My daughters and I started this blog so that we could have a place to put our thoughts and talk about how to live in the world, something akin to writing letters. Emails are too short, Facebook too public. I had changed my place in the family by leaving for a foreign country. No more Sunday dinner discussions, no impromptu bull sessions. I needed a place to think out loud. Over the past year of wondering about how to live in the world in this letter to my daughters, it has become clear to me just how difficult it can be.


All of the hubbub around the book and movie “The Hunger Games” has pointed out that we and most especially young adults need a hero. It is particularly satisfying that the hero has a female face. Katniss Everdeen stands on moral ground in that story, in a world driven by style without substance, she is a hero.


So that is what I want to think about. How to stand on moral ground in a world driven by imperatives that are amoral at best, fraudulent at times and often just plain wrong. I suppose those politicians on the right would claim that their morality is self-evident and unquestionable, but I think not. Those on the left make the same claims. But I see a system that in its entirety chugs along on dollar bills and avarice. One man gives the birther movement a million dollars because he wants Israel to be able to continue building settlements and he doesn’t trust our current president to support that. Gun manufacturers fund legislative lobbyist to encourage laws that endanger people, but sell many, many guns. We carry on a violent and unsuccessful war on drugs and fund private prisons to hold offenders without thinking of a better way to tackle this problem. And a better way is to many of us so obvious. The war machine builds unbelievably costly jets that are already out dated and cuts funding to schools and the poor. It is easy to fall into thinking that there is nothing I can do. The wheels that turn are too big. The piles of money too high, the influence purchases peculiar solutions.


But 99% is a big number. It signifies millions of people who together have power. A friend of mine reminds me that it is well past time to begin living the life that we claim to want to live. In many ways we do live that life, eating local food, buying second hand or local products, making ethical choices where ever possible. And just now there are signs that the internet makes a difference. It gives power to our voices. Look how ALEC is being challenged, losing funding from Coca Cola, Pepsi, Mars candy and MacDonald’s. It seem like a drop in the proverbial bucket of corporate voodoo, but it is good news, all the same. It must have dawned on those corporations that the people who buy their products are the ones kicking up the fuss. I think , if we add daily life changes, not just the electronic and virtual ones, we will have the makings of a quiet revolution.

So what do I mean by daily life changes? Shift your thinking and you will change your behavior. Change your behavior and you will shift your thinking.
Here are some ideas about changes in thinking….and/or behavior..

Stop drinking coca cola, a non-food product that is reported to remove rust. Stop feeding it to your children.

So change your behavior, drink water or mineral water. Add lime or a little fruit juice. If you do that for a couple of months, the next time you have a coke, it will taste way too sweet and not even quench your thirst. I guarantee it.


Don’t eat anything that comes in a box. Buy fresh food and prepare it, including cereal. If you can’t make it or bake it, buy it from a local baker or restaurant. Who knows what is in the food tha comes in a box that never rots or molds or changes as nature intended it. You may find that you feel way better in two months’ time. Your body doesn’t need preservatives.


Even if you have a car, try to live as if you don’t. Now that I have been car free for five years, I have to say the only times I am late for class are when I have borrowed a car, I cut the time short to get there, because I can and then can’t find a place to park. I know how long it takes to walk or take the bus. There are glitches involved in not having a car. Things that are to heavy to carry, days that are too hot to walk far, but if most of us didn’t have cars, we would think up some pretty creative ways to deal with that. Walking is a pleasure, if the bus breaks down, it is not my problem. For the really luxurious days there are taxi cabs. No fuss no muss and a brand new person to talk to. Peace and exercise, what a concept.


Plant some food, somewhere, anywhere, on your roof in an empty lot near your home in your back yard, in a pot on the patio. Remember what a tomato tastes like? Whatever you want to savor…grow it. During the war 40% of the produce consumed in the US came from victory gardens. And you will remember what a miracle it all is. Tasty tomatoes, zucchini the size of a baseball bat and you cannot weigh or measure what is missing from the earth. We have forgotten that dirt and topsoil are very special and we need to be careful with them and we have not been careful with them. Evidence the reported perfectly safe roundup, turns out is not so safe.


So dirt. That brings up another topic. Composting and worms, a magnificent team. Your garbage, your fallen leaves, your grass clippings, pile them up, add some worms and you have good earth, brand new ready to go in a matter of months. No plastic bags needed. Just a big pile.



The really cool thing is that as the 99%, if we make a change, it is a big change;
99% of us walking or cycling to work, 99% of us growing half our own food, 99% of us not drinking coca cola. Imagine it, it is magnificent and sweeping and within our power.....