what they never told me....

AFFIRMATION

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.

If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.

Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall

Copyright © 2002 by Donald Hall.
All rights reserved.

• they never told me i would take up sewing, knitting, but i have.

• growing a beard??! i know for certain i have never heard of this! shave! regularly!

• forget what number on the crossword puzzle i'm working on

• fall

洗たくの婆々へ柳の夕なびき
sentaku no baba e yanagi no yû nabiki

to the old woman
doing laundry, the evening
willow bows

issa*

1824

.日本にとしをとるのがらくだかな
nippon ni toshi wo toru no ga raku da kana

growing a year older
in Japan
is a comfort

One of Issa's patriotic haiku. The season word in this haiku, toshitori, ("growing old") relates to the year's ending; in the traditional Japanese system for counting age, everyone gains a year on New Year's Day. Shinji Ogawa believes that Issa may be punning with the words raku da ("comfortable") and rakuda ("camel"). Viewed in this light, the haiku's tone is "childishly comical."*

• to me though, i'll admit, i prefer hall's interpretation: that as we lose what we've believed is important, we come to know ourselves.

• age finally gifts us with
what therapy did not.

• and we surely do love our animal friends.



*translation and interpretation of issa's work by david g lanoue

dances to spring: 11:11 1.11.11

purple iris

white magnolia

blue primroses

forget-me-nots

violets

these are here now...

the rest will surely follow....

solstice celebratory things

and though
things are dark

deserving celebration are...

• the return of the light •

• the repeal of dadt •

• the eloquence of michael moore •

• cats •

• jasper, agate •

• irises •

• people that surprise you •

when faith, hope, and charity
are found in short supply--
take a nap.

please add some of your own.

no definitive why

NOT KNOWING WHY

Adolescent white pelicans squawk, rustle, flap their wings,
lift off in a ragged spiral at imaginary danger.
What danger on this island in the middle
of Marble Lake? They’re off to feel
the lift of wind under their iridescent wings,
because they were born to fly,
because they have nothing else to do,
because wind and water are their elements,
their Bach, their Homer, Shakespeare,
and Spielberg. They wheel over the lake,
the little farms, the tourist village with their camera eyes.

In autumn something urges
them toward Texas marshes. They follow
their appetites and instincts, unlike the small beetles
creeping along geometric roads, going toward small boxes,
toward lives as narrow or as wide as the pond,
as glistening or as gray as the sky.
They do not know why. They fly, they fly.

Ann Struthers
Copyright ©2009 by Ann Struthers

and so the question is why. everything, why? let us talk, then, of the seemingly knowable whys. why did i do that? why did he? why did she? why did they? perhaps even narrower than that; perhaps only i.

some answers are easy: i put on my gloves because my hands were cold. that's simple enough, isn't it? maybe this: i went to the store to buy milk because i had run out. (already for this i can think of a dozen other comments that would be necessary for you to fully understand my motivations, but i don't think they're important. yet who am i to judge?)

who am i to judge? that's the steam behind this train of thought. because as i thought about it i realized that the reasons for all motivation are unknowable. not by you, not by me, not by your mother who thinks she knows everything, not by that guy with all those books.

in psych 101 they teach about richard who, when he was in the school library, stretched his leg. it was cramped, what can i say? but martin, who was walking by, tripped on the out-stretched leg. both martin and marcy, who was watching, were sure richard had done it on purpose.

but what about the bigger things? alice marries lou. alice is sure it's because she's in love. lou isn't sure what love is but is delighted that now he will be able to fuck alice just about as frequently as he wants. both of their mothers think she married him for his money, and he married her for her looks.

her best friend credited it to his honesty and ability to hang shelves, and his best friend knew that he had finally found someone who actually thought he was smart. and her therapist knew that he was just like her father. or maybe pheromones.

when it came time to divorce, alice asked herself, why did i ever marry lou? she never even considered that possibly he smelled just like kindergarten. or that he looked like the salesman who sold her her lucky scarf. or chocolate.

we do this all the time, why did i.....? and we think we can figure it out. we can't.

i have spent my entire life, as, perhaps, have many of you, wondering why. this and that. and it suddenly just occurred to me that i would never find out. there would never be definitive answers; there was never a way to find an absolute, positive, unquestionable, undebatable why.

we don't know why. we fly. we fly.

flipping the american bird

it was the best of times....

it certainly isn't news that new technologies make the world smaller; songs celebrate that like it's a good thing. what are the actual dynamics of a "smaller world"? we become aware of ways of being: thinking, dressing, eating, talking, believing, that we'd never imagined. and some are thrilled, and some are made afraid, leading to fear's eternal partner -- hatred.

i'm sure no generation since the beginning of generations has escaped this duality. thing is, somehow i figured that some day, like now, my lifetime, "we" would "wise up." we haven't. we have the greatest power humans have ever had to be a literal part of lives anywhere on the globe; why fear invasions from space? we've got your mosque burners right here.

but let's dig even deeper, because, as you know, some of those unwanted mosques weren't mosques at all. this brings us to another feature of a smaller world, the tremendous ease of fear-mongering. when an "other" becomes apparent, someone will also appear who can gain something from demonizing them.

the catalysts for these thoughts are several. watching adults convince other adults that health care would include death panels. watching adults convince other adults that mexicans, or muslims, are here to hurt you. they came for the mexicans and i said nothing....

watching jon stewart equate truth-tellers and lie- tellers since they both raise their voices, then watching keith olbermann and rachel maddow try discussing/debating that with him. (though "can't i see you (and you me) as you (or me) and not as truth-teller or lie-teller, not as blue or red, but just as us?" is a valid question.)

then ted koppel piles on, lamenting a newstime past that never existed, even in his own newstime past. then olbermann responds, with great insight. and then the rest of the world piles on. and i have to tell you that i'm watching the truth being thrown out with the bathwater.

part of the facilitation of this roil are... (drumroll) ... the new technologies. and while i am saying that the new tech- nologies have allowed a fuller blossoming of propaganda than humans on earth have ever seen, [propaganda by definition being the convincing of the many by the few things that are not, when un-spun, true], they have opened my door too.

there have always been liars, and there has always been a moneyed class. and since the moneyed have always controlled the media, the moneyed have always had the ability to spread whatever it wants, wherever it wants. and if you disagree, well, we have ways....

remember when pocket calculators cost more than iphone4s do now? one no longer needs to be of any certain class to get one. at our fingertips we have: all of history, much, from the most recent century or so, with actual tape, film, and video. there no longer has to be any debate as to who said what to who. koppel is wrong: until now there has been no uncorrupt news. but there is now.

what we have now, with msnbc, with progressive radio, and with "the record," is the ability for the unmoneyed to reach the entire planet with the truth. and with the proof to back it up. with twitter and youtube and blogs, we can keep up with each other in an instant.

who is telling the truth and who is lying is no longer up to the observer; when anyone says, 'i was never there,' within an instant the video proving the lie is up online.

so no. the equivalencies have it completely backwards. fox is proven to be lying night after night after night.

if they're the same, it's like the teacher saying to the bully who was beating up the skinny kid (captured on iphone), "now i don't know who started it, but you both go to your desks and i don't want to hear from you again."


simple: that teacher is ignorant. even simpler: i am not.

this is the end, my friend

SIGN THE OLBERMANN PETITION

dancing from cats

THE CAT'S SONG

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture
of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm

........mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?

Can you run.. up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes.

I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Marge Piercy

The cat’s song from Mars & Her Children (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). First appeared in Matrix 28 (Spring 1989). Copyright © 1989, 1992 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc.

(this halloween, learn to dance)

sanity

When you're fat....

you think about fat all the time. I wonder if it's the same if you're gay, or if you're black -- do you think about that thing about you that you know others see about you first, that thing about you that makes you different, that makes you, it's clear, stand out?

Slowly, crepuscularly slowly, it is being accepted that perhaps your gayness is something you've inherited; perhaps it isn't a choice after all, perhaps, in fact, you're not deviant, just different.

And it goes without saying that skin-color is not a choice, but don't a lot of people feel that "they" don't have to act "that way"?

I have two primary doctors, my GP and my cardiologist; both are tall and thin, i'd describe him as lanky, her as sleek. He, the cardiologist, is white, be-speckled, she is long-haired and so pretty that you know being a model would have been an option. She is also black.

Neither are, as far as i know, gay.

It's clear both have made decisions about their lives-- perhaps difficult ones. That both are full-time physicians, full-time parents, spiritually involved, illustrates this.

Though both may do some forms of physical-fitness regimen, that's not why they're tall and thin; they were born that way. Just like the black guy and the gay one: this is the way they are.

And so am I. Despite all evidence to the contrary, and it is all to the contrary, short and fat is a natural state of being, a way one is born; i asked my GP if she could be shaped like me even if she did choose to be and of course the answer was no.

I also asked her, according to her experience, if i could choose to be like her (the thin part, not the tall and black, of course). If ability to change is borne out by statistics (as has been used as an argument in the nature of gayness), the answer has to be a loudly resounding , "No!"

Her experiences predict the same as that of the many published reports: only 5%, at most, of people who attempt to lose weight permanently are successful. My cardiologist reported a higher number, 20%, which he believed was due to greater motivation; still, in that case, four out of five patients failed.

Being fat, then, is being a failure; when what you inescapably are is seen as changeable, like the belief that prayer can "heal" homosexuality, those who believe that assume you have failed (unless you are too lazy even to have tried).

Is it any wonder that it is so easy to fall into the trap where self-esteem's only source is the report from the scale?

The assumption about fat people, by thin people and fat people alike, is that they should, and can, be thin. I suddenly realized this year that i had spent a fair part of every day for nearly 60 years thinking i should be "repairing" something about myself, that i was, intrinsically, in the wrong. At all times.

And quickly added to this: that the same was probably true for almost every other woman alive; tell me this isn't oppression? Tell me that anyone who assumes i am lazy, un-intelligent, un-motivated, boring, slovenly, or worthless, because i am fat, isn't oppressing me? I live in a society in which the assumption is ubiquitously that fat is sin, not characteristic.

*I cringe when i hear Oprah berate herself for gaining back some weight; is it even possible, in this society, to define one's lifestyle not as 'letting herself go' but rather 'letting herself be"?

Does fat come with health consequences? Of course! Diabetes, heart disease, and more. But, and i know I'm not original in stating this, but the stress of living all the days of one's life seeing oneself, and being seen by others, as a sinner is not healthy either. I'm not debating that there is a relationship; I'm arguing that the relationship is inherited, not made. If someone is fat, start early with diabetes and cholesterol treatment. Don't ask your patient, your friend, your child, to do something they cannot do, and then judge them for not doing it.

You wouldn't do that if the subject were sexual preference. I know you well enough to know you would not. And if you did, it would say more about you than about your lesbian friend.

My tall, thin, beautiful doctor had never had anyone tell her that they had been beating their head against a wall for 60 years. That when you're online you don't reveal you're fat because that might just invalidate everything you say to just too many people. That people have told you they would love to be friends with you but they just didn't like fat people. That neighbors don't look at you when you meet in the street. And that these things had been happening for 60 years. And you've blamed yourself.

Tyra Banks dressed herself up in a fat-suit; she looked like she weighed over 300 pounds despite being as tall as she is. "The people that were staring and laughing in my face -- that shocked me the most," Banks said. "As soon as I entered the store -- when I went shopping -- I immediately heard snickers. Immediately! I just was appalled and hurt! There's no excuse for rudeness. There's no excuse for ugliness. And there's no excuse for nastiness and that's what I experienced,"

"It seemed like the last form of open discrimination that's okay, and I deci- ded to put on a 350-pound suit myself and live that life for a day and see what happens. And it was one of the most heartbreaking days of my life."

it is true that body shape and size, like race, sexual preference, mental illness, and more traits they're learning every day, are inherited, not chosen, and thus no more than these other traits should it be judged.

lily pond (lotusgreen)

*she has since retracted those statements