Exercise in Mischief
Weaving webs of intrigue
And knotting people tight
Is such a nasty pastime
But it keeps me warm at night!
The Villain of the Piece
10
Today is a Great Day
By the way, today is especially delightful in my own life as it’s the sixteenth anniversary of my marriage to the most astounding and outstanding man I know. Happy day, my love, and here’s to many, many more.
Home and Deranged
A Particular Kind of Homesickness
The road we ride is an old back road, a highway that goes nowhere fast,
and as we drive and drift and dream, we see the present meet the past,
the way that it has always done from cities to the countryside,
the way we know that history recycles us, and far and wide,
we all return to what we’ve known and circle back to home and hearth
whether together or alone, to best-loved places on the earth.
Is it just crazy, that we long to find ourselves in Mama’s arms,
in childhood’s safety, in our fondest corner of our homes, our farms,
our gardens, houses, classrooms, fields? Is this insanity, or just
finding our life and hope and heart in best-loved places, as we must?
Return to rooted, distant loves, become simplicity and grace,
and find the fields of gold we seek in each his own familiar place.
For So Many Reasons
Every Fourth of July I am filled with ambivalence. I feel so deeply fortunate to have been born in a country where I live a very privileged life: I can afford to live in a spacious, comfortable house, own a car that I can drive when and wherever I choose, eat (yes, too much, and that I have the choice of changing as well); more importantly, I can vote in any election–though I have sincere doubts that we are as close to a ‘one man, one vote‘ nation in effect as we are on paper–and I can say what I believe, and believe what I wish, and choose my own friends and live as I please.
At the same time, I am constantly troubled by the many self-proclaimed ‘patriots’ whose views of freedom translate what I see as privileges into their personal Rights without regard to how they might impinge on the health, safety and happiness of the people directly around them; who preach (because they are free to do so in this country) against the rights of the poor, the downtrodden, and especially of those who simply differ from themselves because they believe (and are free to do so) that the poor, downtrodden and different are inherently wrong or evil and that what applies as a Right to oneself is an undeserved privilege to another. It frightens me that the very freedom to think and decide for oneself is applied to people I would disagree with vigorously and even think dangerous in their views, even while it pleases me that I am free to oppose them.
What is called the United States of America is far from a land of wholly united people–this present time is no different from our past, if perhaps a bit more polarized than some eras in that regard. I’m constantly hearing the language of ‘freedom’ morphed into the language of making others change to suit our own personal ideals of how to live a good and just and proper life, not just here on our own soil but around the globe, and this too is not new but is no less fearsome a characteristic of our frailty as both individuals and a nation. We are spoiled, self-centered and arrogant in so many ways.
Yet the general goodness of living in a widely varied, opportunity-loving, favored land never leaves my heart and mind, either. Even if I define its better qualities differently than any number of my fellow citizens would do, I am aware of my good fortune in living in a place where that is both legal and generally acceptable, and where the very spirit of the country’s foundation says I should actively participate in making it as bold and just and generous as it can be. So though a part of me withers at the very idea of anyone needing political, legal or military systems, I am grateful to those people who throughout our history have committed with sincerity to their thirst for justice and making things right in the land and done those kinds of work to make it possible.
I just heard someone say a variant of the (true) old saw about ‘the guy who wrote the manual isn’t the one that actually does the job’ and am reminded that those who framed our constitution and envisioned as the nature and future of our nation could never have known exactly how it would unfold in practice and over time, even though they did live, work and die under that constitution as well. We all only do the best we are able, and as it happens, those of us who now live, work and die in America have a setting in which it’s possible for more of us to do so at an acceptable or even high level if we, too, commit to it and live our many-colored versions of the dream the best that we can.
Show of Fireworks
Across this piece of Texas sky,
Local alchemists and
Magisterial teenagers are casting
New and sparkling stars, comets,
Blazing suns shot out of
The hands of these earthbound gods
Into the deepening blue-black night
And turning the sky of the
Lone Star State into great
Galaxies of momentary stars
Notes on the Fourth of July 2010
Bedazzled
All through this night, a sparkling sky shouts out in dazzling handmade stars
of hopes and dreams, of glories past; what we believe makes the future ours–
our splashy, gleaming, naive wants, our bold wild brashness, sweet with pain
at the memory of what all this cost, this wealth of joy–this the faint refrain
as the night grows cold and the ashes drift: that our predecessors paid with life
to buy our present comfort, give us our privileged pleasures free from strife–
this tinge of sorrow underlaid still cannot dim, and never mars,
our gladness that that price was paid, so we fire our dazzling handmade stars–
our banners raise with collective pride, with staunch salutes and our boastful hymns–
at least until we wake up unchanged, long after the final firework dims.
We should still remember, when dawn returns and celebratory displays will cease,
that it’s best for us to light the skies with our stars for prosperity–and peace.
Foodie Tuesday: Thirst Quenching
Drinks. I love food and all of its crunchy, salty, sweet, chewy, tender, steaming, spicy, bold, sour, gooey goodness, but let’s face it, all of that goes down better with a good drink or two. At the moment, I need to behave better than I have for the last number of months, so I’ll be living on the memory of all of the tasty liquid loveliness while sipping lots of cold, clear water for the nonce. This isn’t forever, and I know I feel better when I give my poor beleaguered body an occasional break from the excesses of travel and lazy eating and all of those other happy tortures that tempt and taunt in ever-increasing increments until it’s time for one of these breaks. And believe me, I’ve nothing against a crisp fresh glass of water. Or twenty.
Still, I do enjoy the wide variety of ways one can slake one’s thirst beyond refueling the necessary percentage of corporeal content with good old aitch-two-oh. That glass of lemonade made glinting green with alfalfa was a quintessentially Berkeley taste that was remarkably enjoyable in its grassy clean refreshment on a warm sunny day. I’m not sure if I felt more like a retro-hippie or a happy cow while sipping it–not much matter there; the only important thing is that it tastes great.
Mostly, it’s a grand thing when the drinks complement the context. Sipping ‘hay clippings’ in earthy, counterculture country like Berkeley just feels mighty apropos. Wetting one’s whistle with a gingered Irish whiskey based drink in a pub while nibbling at hot fish and chips works like a, well, a lucky charm. Tipping back a glass of icy white rum with lime when sharing conversation with the cosmopolitan bar owner who made them and hearing about his history as an opposition newspaper editor in Noriega’s Panama, as a banker, and as a descendant of an old family determined to help shape the new Panama by subtler means, through ecological work, by working for social change, and by teaching others both by example and in simple, heartfelt conversations over a drink–that’s a combination perfectly designed to make a moment of what could be mere small talk into a cultural, educational and personal exchange to remember.
Because we all thirst for something to drink. It’s essential that we replenish, you know, our bodily fluids. But far more than that, when we sip we are in communion, in a way. There’s the affinity between the drink and the situation, and between the drink and the food, to be sure. But a drink with another person can easily create, regardless of its contents, a real contribution to building affinities between those who share the drinks. Those that already existed, they can grow stronger. Some meetings of people need that nice drink to invent the possibility of affinity. The raised glass is the opportunity for a new meeting of minds, and maybe of hearts.
Then again, sometimes a refreshing drink is . . . just a drink.
Mirage sur la Mer
Summer Phantasy
One day in my car when I was a-glide
and watching the highway (mostly),
I stopped for a fellow who thumbed a ride
to go farther west, more coast-ly–
After all, the sun was high in the sky
and the temperature creeping northward,
so it seemed a mercy to take the guy
and deliver him farther forth-ward–
He was pleasant, and smiled, and tipped his hat,
but I’d hardly call him talkative,
which I took as caused by the reason that
in the heat he’d been too walk-ative–
So we rode along, Silent Sam and I,
toward the coast and the broad blue sea,
’til I blinked in the glare of the sun to spy
his hat lying next to me–
No sign of the smiling, silent bloke;
what a startled twitch I made!
My sunglasses flew right off and broke
as if put to shame by a shade–
Well, I got to the shore soon after that,
keeping watch on the highway (mostly),
and was glad for the shade of the shade’s broad hat,
if a shadowy gift, and ghostly.
The Song Rises above All Else
When the night is long and the day after it dawns dark and grim, sing.
When winter is colder than the inmost heart of death and is finally supplanted by the least promising spring, empty of graces and starved for new, green life, sing again and sing out loudly as you can.
When age and infirmity and dangers of every kind are buffeting all the lovely youth and strength they can find in this sad world into terrible dust-devils of desiccated sorrow, sing with all your heart and soul and make the most tuneful, joyful, glorious prettiness that you can float into the air, and know that your song, no matter how wholly alone it may float up, is powerful enough to rise above it all. This is the only way that any of us will rise above it all. And that we will, so long as we sing.
Walk a Mile in My Baby Shoes
I’ve been thinking about childhood. The freshness and innocence, the naiveté and helplessness, the curiosity and amazement at every new thing–and everything is new–and of the naturally self-centered universe one forms because self is all one knows. I’ve been thinking about how all of these qualities, so clear and natural in childhood, repeat throughout our lives in cycles. Varied by age and circumstance, and certainly by our own personalities as they develop, but there and recurrent all the same.
I’ve been thinking about how little we are all aware of these cycles and patterns in ourselves over time. We humans, though we congratulate ourselves as Homo sapiens, intelligent beings, are poignantly–sometimes poisonously–unwilling and even unable to truly see ourselves all that clearly. It’s not terribly hard to be self-aware, to know the good and bad of one’s personality and character and style, but it’s amazingly uncommon that we choose to acknowledge it, let alone are able and willing to do anything useful to control or change what we can or should. Most of us are rather childlike, if not infantile, in that respect. We want forever to be loved and be the center of the universe in that way we sensed we were as small children, before knocking up against whatever form of reality dented that illusion for the first time.
For the very fortunate (like me) it’s easy to look with a critical eye on those who are in the midst of childlike neediness because of their poverty, ill-health, lack of education or resources, old age or difference from the popular norms. Easy to forget that I don’t have the same obvious petulance or beggarly qualities only because I am so fortunate, so well off and well fed and loved and young and-and-and. I am the lucky center of my universe for now. It’s simple to be placid when I’m so rich.
I can only hope that this good life not only continues to keep me content, but that it affords me the leisure and good grace to look a little less harshly on the struggles of others. To be more patient and understanding when someone else is in that childlike state of need, whether for the starkest, plainest of dignities–sheer life not being at imminent risk–or for food and shelter, for health and wholeness, for peace and hope. If I can’t be an agent of change, bringing those gifts to those who need them, at least I must try to remember what it is to be in that fragile state and know how much I depend upon the rest of the world myself for being, by contrast, not in my childhood of utter need.
Starring Roles
Malignant or Maligned?
Are pigeons the oppressors or the oppressed? Having been a-traveling a bit recently, I was reminded of the omnipresence of pigeons, those birds noted as the comforting signatories of nature’s profound adaptability and variability, and less kindly but perhaps a bit more succinctly, as flying rats. Yes, I have seen a pigeon perch with apparent deliberation on the roof edge over a family’s picnic table, point its posterior in their general direction, and release a firehose-worthy arc of nastiness that sent the poor humans scattering for shelter. While I’ll readily agree that pigeons are known disease-carriers, that they tend to crowd out less aggressive and smaller birds from their habitats, and that they are notorious painters of streaky badness upon all and sundry within their aim, I still harbor a fondness for them in small doses–and preferably from a safely higher position.
Part of the sympathy stems from knowing that their widespread propagation was partly human-driven, as growing and/or roaming anthropoid populations gradually displaced native ones over time (also human, among many other creatures), and as people also on occasion deliberately imported various kinds of pigeons to new locales for other reasons. Certainly part of the feeling stems, as well, from knowing that we people-types are largely responsible for the decline and sometimes extinction of whole species–the rule rather than the exception, when it comes to pigeon families. The Passenger Pigeon is only the most obvious example of what has happened and is happening still among pigeon-kind, and no coy and cuddly images of how we embrace the Dove of Peace can counter that fact.
But let’s face it, this is neither a scientific treatise nor a polemic indicting all mortals for such depredations. We are a merciless lot, generally, and I am not in the least exempt from all ignorance or guilt. No, honestly, what struck me as I was pigeon-watching along my way on this latest outing was a much shallower, yet still pleasing and even, intermittently, refined aesthetic appreciation of the breed. I simply like watching their fluttery interplay. Their tumbling and stumbling acrobatics in a pool of water. I like watching how they quickly establish a pecking order whenever a group assembles, how they strut around preening and showing off for each other with a certain amount of pomposity and frivolousness, and turn instantly to blurry streaks catapulted into the air if they sense any danger, which includes the slightest movement of air around them or a change in the light. In short, I like anthropomorphizing them and being amused at how like them we are, squabbling and flirting and showing off and taking wicked potshots at each other and everything around us. I like watching them fly in such smooth synchrony when they circle their way through an updraft, and burst into chaotic motion when anything disrupts the flow. And of course, magpie that I am, I like looking at the myriad colors and patterns and iridescent gleaming streaks that paint the birds into something less commonplace than such a common creature ought to be.
Art-Colored Glasses 