Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Dancing Cheek to Cheek

Is this not one of the loveliest things that ever happened on film?? Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat. If you're in a hurry, skip the first two minutes, that's the singing- the dancing starts at 2 minutes. If you watch to the very end, you'll be amazed at how relaxed they are as they lean against the balcony when they glide to a close.

Snake in the house, and more

OK this ain't easy....but I must admit....here and now....full disclosure for all future tenants and visitors to this house I occupy....since I'm basically honest at heart...a total mess in a literal sense....but sane, steady, funny, real, here it is: my house is apparently infested with snakes.

I'm fairly upscale..I was considerably more upscale before I married years ago in a moment of passion that thrust me into another dimension, but I didn't care about that....I'm not a derelict....I have a good job....I've carried out my responsibilities....I've waited for what goes around to come around....that ain't happened yet.....but here we go: I had a dream. It was of an old farmhouse with a white picket fence and cellar windows...lots of kids....a tire swing in the yard....chickens running around.....a rough and tough and kind-hearted husband who could chop wood in a flannel shirt by day and keep us all calm at night while telling tales of his days as a sea captain....bringing home seashell bracelets and Captain Jack/Johnny Depp mementoes... for his 4 daughters and son, from foreign ports....

Basically, my dreams came true. Some of them. I mean, I learned long ago not to aim for perfection. But when you devise your dreams, and you set your goals, you often forget to take into consideration the fact that life sometimes,as they say, gets in the way. Shit happens. Noone has ever said exactly why we get into the messes/lives we do. Except maybe Buddhism. So maybe it's just all karma. Makes sense to me that we live, and live again, according to our energy output. Positive: you get to be more of what you were meant to be. Negative: uh-oh, sorrow and degradation. Hope: maybe someone, a friend from another lifetime will spot you and help you, while you are grovelling, and help you rise up to where you want to be. We've all spotted wounded elephants, folks whose deal wasn't as good as they seemed to deserve. We've offered them comfort. Some were ready for comfort, some weren't. Either way, we did our bit.

So as for the snakes in my house: I can't stand it. There was a five-foot snake in the bedroom closet UPSTAIRS a few weeks ago that appeared over my dear daughter's shoulder. We called for help, then days later we thought we saw signs (snake shit) OF ANOTHER....I have called exterminators. I have called the State Wildlife agency. Nobody really has any answers. My son in laws have helped, and we will do a purge in the next week or so, with brave men reaching behind the flimsy sheetrock in the attic and etc.... I doubt we'll outsmart the denizens of Eden.

As for me, I asked the doctor to prescribe Valium for sleep until I see it through. I don't feel guilty about that at all. I have cleaned out closets, thrashing with a broom there and under the beds....I have thrown mothballs everywhere...people tell me the water table is high after all the recent rains....and even insects can't stay undeground. But I will never really know. The house is big. There is a small opening somewhere. Could be very small. Under the radiators: snake shit, even in the bathroom I used so faithfully and innocently through the winter. Was there a snake right there,by my feet? These are black rat snakes: shy, sly, BIG. Some people say they must just live here. They got trapped somehow and just want to be outside. How will I ever know?

I am not Medusa, chthonic female monster, nor was I meant to be. I never hated men. Never for one moment stepped aboard the women's lib movement. Vive la difference! I loved men deliriously. I still do, and as I stir my coffee in the convenience store each morning, I glance around, out of the loop now...and feel sorry to have missed so many years of hungry men.

Am an attendant to my children, now grown, I'm one who started progress and swelled a scene or two. I started out strong. Now I sleep and must accept: I could wake with snakes in my hair, I could holler out from the shores, maybe lure a sailor or two. A bit obtuse, but still not ridiculous. Almost at times, a fool. But hanging on. Eating all the ice cream I want. Hoping still.

James Tissot: The Prophet Ezekiel

James Tissot: The Prophet Ezekiel

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Parting Words: Longfellow's Psalm of Life

In his dying days, my father quoted these lines to me from his hospital bed: the last three stanzas of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Psalm of Life"....good for all of us to consider (and to wonder "Where have all the poets gone?" - gone to flowers, every one).


He also recited Polonius's words to Hamlet: "To thine own self be true. And it shall follow as the night the day: thou canst not then be false to any man."

He, one of the all-time-great joke tellers, also, for balance, would have been glad to tell the story about the man with the ugliest pecker in the world. But I told him we have that on tape.


A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Breathing Right

Maybe a few times in our life, we breathe right. Some of us know from our experience of reading random magazines and informative literature, that there are some Tibetan monks and yogis who do it right all of the time. And we know, of course, from popular wisdom, that you can do some things right all of the time and you can do some things right some of the time, but you can't do all things right all of the time. But when it comes to breathing, which we do from birth til death, wouldn't you rather be in the minority of those who have "got it down"?

Every breath we take is precious. Sometimes we hyperventilate. Sometimes we get ourselves practically comatose. We need to. We're mostly young spirits, struggling along and alone with what the law allows and with what the doctor prescribes. We stare at ourselves in the mirror at the gym, hoping to see something worthwhile. Then later we primp in front of another mirror, to prepare a face to meet the faces we will meet. We forget that we are breathing, number one.

So here's to effort. Here's to concentration. Here's to self-awareness, and those who have it. It ain't me, babe.

Best Kentucky Derby ever! Mine That Bird! 50-1!

Kentucky Derby! MINE THAT BIRD! 50-1! The horse cost nine thousand dollars. The trainer, Chip Woolley, looking cooler than Woody Harrelson by a mile, is on crutches from a motorcycle accident and hauled the horse there himself with his pick-up from New Mexico. Best Derby ever! Those horses flown in from Dubai...not as cool. Calvin Borel's personality makes it all even better.

Now if I were a bettin' woman, I'd be doing fine today....I always go for the long-shots.

The Love Song of Alfreda Prufrock, tweaked for a woman's perspective, with apologies to T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of Alfreda Prufrock-

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the gentlemen come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the sweet men come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With my chin held high, color in my hair—
[They will say: “How that girl is growing thin!”]
My best black coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My neck scarf rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how her arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are muscled and tan and bare
[And in the lamplight, slung strong behind my chair!]
Is it remembering men getting dressed
That makes me so digress?
Arms that reach across the table, or help me wrap my shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the steam that rises from the pots
Of lonely women's soups, drifting fragrant out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by strong fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [a head grown old] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophetess—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am a goddess, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by his head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after our skirts that trailed along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am neither prophetess nor queen, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lady, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the queen; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the tops of my stockings rolled.

Shall I pull my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white linen pants, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the seagods singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen the sea-gods riding seaward on the waves
Stirring the white peaks of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-gods wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown
~~~~~~~~~~~~


With my apologies to the purists - TC

Remembering 1918 influenza, and the 1976 swine flu shot, hoping for immunity

I have tried to explain to my kids that I am old enough to remember hearing stories from people who survived the 1918 pandemic influenza that killed FIFTY MILLION people worldwide. My mother's brother died as an infant then. My mother hadn't been born yet, but two older brothers had contracted the virus. Doctor Jacquish came and tended to the family through long winter's nights. He finally had to ask my grandmother to choose between two sons, the infant or the four-year old, because he had to work continuously to keep either child breathing, siphoning off fluids etc,...and couldn't tend to both. My brokenhearted grandmother had to make her choice, and she chose the four year old because, she said, she knew him better, and he knew life better. In her eyes, the baby would be welcomed back and restored to health by the angels he had so recently left. And so it was.

Noone knows what lies ahead. People don't want to hear, and can't believe, that such long winter's nights as my grandmother's could happen again, to them. I'm scared. I have listened for years to old scientists predicting with fearful confidence that another pandemic is coming. I hope this isn't it. But there's hope. I was vaccinated reluctantly in 1976 against a swine flu, along with about 25% of the U.S. population. That turned out to be a fiasco, which caused Guillaine- Barre syndrome in some people, against an outbreak that never materialized. My father, the doctor who gave the shot to my mother, my sister and me in our living room, always said those who developed that syndrome were hypochondriacs, though I swear I was never the same after that shot. But I've decided, using my ever-active-imagination, that maybe there's an upside.

Here's hoping that it's not illogical to think that that controversial immunization may have provided some protection to those who received it, and, through subsequent pregnancies and lactation, to children who are now young adults in the at-risk age group. Since I have five children in that demographic, I'm going with that.

Measuring out Life With Coffee Spoons, at last

I do understand so well
Now that I've lived through many moons
What TS Eliot meant by
life measured out in coffee spoons.

Each morning when I stumble downstairs
And barely have strength to move
I know that the coffee will help
And I measure that stuff with love.

Some days the filter’s still full
With the grounds of the day before
So I grumble and moan and rinse
And fill the gruesome filter once more

I measure generously with a spoon
That I have had for thirty years
I know just how to fill it and hold a high hump
No other spoon soothes my fears

that I won't have strong coffee
That I’m really alive
That I’ve slept through another night -
And risen again to go out and work:
It generally works out right.

Usually I remember to clean out the filter
And dry it the day before.
And, as I’ve said,
Sometimes I forget.
I’ll do this forevermore.

But how many more times?
And how many more spoonfuls
Of coffee will I measure out?
How many more cans
of Folgers Columbian
will I slobber into my snout?

My coffee and me
We’ll never part
I’ll never subdue to tea.
I’ll measure and filter and whimper til death
Yeah, T.S. Eliot and me.

"Fifty Years Seems But A Day"

I just can't begin to imagine
how the folks in the world
got so young.
It was only a quarter to seven
when I myself turned twenty-one.

But that clock is in some clock heaven
a gold watch my father gave me -
It was, (Lord!) nineteen-sixty-seven
when he made me that great martini.

And then there's a blur
and a swishing of years
and I swear that it didn't take long
To watch the world age
and decay and implode,
dragging little young me along.

I remember my grandma said once in the sun
as she brushed hair long since gone gray:
"When I think of my youth and my mother and friends,
Fifty years seems but a day."

To the Sweet little Moth on My Computer Screen

Your variegated wings
your microscopic antennae
and your half-inch spread
are so fragile and evanescent-looking
that I fear for your life
as I toddle off to bed for the night.
What will you do here
beneath these dim bulbs I leave behind?

I could take you with me
but you are so small you'd never make it up the stairs
in my warm hands,
not even riding on my shirt.
You'd be fearful when you heard me thrashing in my sleep and tearing the sheets to shreds, but now
I fear the very vibrations
of my tapping on the computer keys
are worrying your little heart.

But where, in fact, is your heart?
I see only your slim and toned little ant-like shape
adorned with wings
ready to fly about
in the vast night-time of this kitchen.
Your wings will carry you throughout the night, settling you here and there,
but your tiny little beating heart
may not rest well tonight,all things considered here in the changing of the seasons, with even the snakes in the crawl-space restless to get outside.

And how will I find you
and know of your well-being
tomorrow morning
when my mind is elsewhere
and I am
shambling at the coffee pot?

I will forget you tiny one,
and of course, you never knew me, nor had need to.
Your tiny destiny is all your own
and we are just strangers passing in the night.

I'll be tearing sheets and screaming at sounds and ghosts and memories
and other things you have no need of,
just take your little fate
and fly to safe harbor in this big old kitchen -
dark or not.

All Things are Possible if You Will Only Believe - The Reverend Claude Jeter and The Swan Silvertones

Equilibrium, Life is Good: To Hell with Murphy's Law

I'm not so sure that when all is said and done, I'd be proud to be the person who created Murphy's Law.I mean you would have to be young hot and glamorously cynical to come up with stuff like that. Sure, all that stuff is true some of the time: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." "Enough research will tend to support your theory". So who doesn't know that riff already? Who doesn't know that, sometimes at least, life seems that way? Only someone who hasn't been around the block much, or at least, read much research. But when you grow old, and your life is fading away - you were smart enough to have been cynical and flip at times- and, looking back, you know you could have have done better. So is something like "Murphy's Law" really the imprimatur you'd want to leave behind?

I'd much rather be the person who created a theory that gave people hope. Even old Mr. Murphy, on his deathbed, must have thought: "I was smart. I could have come up with something a little better, a little more helpful to all those who will come after me. I wish I would have used my wits, and become famous for saying something like "All sentient beings seek equiibrium." "True equilibrium is finally achieved only in death." Or better yet,"All things are possible if you will only believe."

Throat Singing Saturday Night

Well it's not exactly Jukebox Saturday Night, but here's what you can do, even ye of little faith: Listen to the Gyuoto Monks Tantric Choir, let's say "Tantric Chants for World Peace".....don't be scared of the word "tantric"- it's not all about exotic sexual positions that you're afraid you can't do...it's nothing like that. It's just something you should listen to...and carry on...steer the ship, cook dinner, tend the baby, phone your mother....just carry on, and let the music insinuate itself into your innermost reaches. Don't worry. Don't even try. Just carry on. Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead made this recording possible, so let's be grateful to him.

This music is dying out. Very few people can do it. Try singing from a whole bunch of places in your throat, all at the same time. It takes training, it's beyond most people's imaginings. Some Tibetan chanting makes use of musical instruments such as the human skull of a past master. This is not whimsical stuff. It resonates in your flesh and bones. As you listen carefully, (and sometimes it's so discordant that it really hurts), lifetimes resolve, dissolve, revolve, evolve. Concentrate. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

A 30 second sample:

My Mother's Nightgown, and my Daughters', and Mine: "Soft and Sweet, For Springtime Sleep"

Ok, I'm obsessed. I want a long silk charmeuse nightgown, like my mother used to wear, and I want it now. Maybe it wasn't charmeuse, it was probably something better, I wouldn't know and can't remember, but charmeuse sounds good right now. And so does a robe with maribou trim.

I was looking for a birthday present for my daughter online, and I checked out Victoria's Secret to find her something glam. She's a busy mom, wife, lady, and, so I was thinking, as you do when you buy gifts, stuff that may not even apply to the gift recipient, but you care, and try: I remember how it was to walk around the house in whatever you could grab to put on, and how it was to stand at the stove in the morning cooking bacon for the fam while holding up your husband's pajama bottoms because they're too big for you, but they're all you could find to hide your propers.

So I checked out Victoria's Secret, and there it was: something that made me break away from life in the here and now, cover my mouth with my hand to stifle an old woman's ever-incipient sob. The words: "soft and sweet for springtime sleep"....I want that for my daughter and for all my daughters, and for my son, and for my grandaughter, all my relatives, and for all the people I love, and for my friend whose husband just died, for my Boggle friends, and for people at work, and for the ladies at church, hell and for all the downtrodden, how about all the people in the world, and by God, the animals and the birds, and the flowers too.. ...(and even if they have one already)...and for...and for....yes, and for ME!!!

Just anything..."soft and sweet for springtime sleep" - how lovely the thought! I actually found my daughter something even slightly better than the pictured item, something mermaidy, as she has always been, (like me, though who would know? or remember? or care?) a mermaid at heart. The laced-trimmed ice-blue satin slip, just the thing. And so I ordered one for her.

But then...so...what about moi? Recently, my grown kids visited and cleaned for a few hours in the attic, gathering garbage bags of old clothes to take to Goodwill...they always hope I won't look...but when I did, I grabbed out a silk and lace slip that held memories for me...from many years ago...something negligible that deserved to be tossed, but nevertheless, I wanted it back. My kids looked at me in surprise, laughing good-naturedly, and said "When did you ever wear LINGERIE!?!?" As if that were an utter impossibility, as if I had never been young, beautiful, thin, sexy, swathed in silk and lace. But oh, by George, I was! A little chiffon here and there at least. They can't even realize it, and why should they, they probably only remember me at the stove clutching plaid flannels: hair like Medusa, feet like a reptile, heart like a wheel on fire.

Ah well. I will do it again. I will be comfortable. I'll have a touch of glamour. I will spend my slaughtered inheritance and my dwindled assets, and I will find the very finest and lightest silk sleeping gown. I will wear what my mother wore, what she and her sister wore in the late evenings under glamorous robes, when my sister and cousins and I were young adults, as we laughed and drank wine and told jokes, and smoked.... a gown like the one we had to cut off of her with scissors as she lay dying, to avoid causing her pain as we bathed her. One cut, straight down the back, so easy then to put it gently back around her.

I'll find me a nightgown, by God. And I might die in it too. But I'll pray for some soft and sweet springtimes of sleep before that day comes.

The Adventures of Olle

This is an old book that was given to me by my grandmother, who somehow got it from Sweden, her homeland. It is definitely out of print.

 

 

 

 

Patience With Others: Dalai Lama and Confucius

I love getting my weekly Dalai Lama quotes in the email, and I particularly love this quote about the impossibility of transference of inner development from one person to another. (If more people understood this, it would be easier for teachers and parents to accept each child's uniqueness.) But Chinese thought offers a gentle counterbalance in the I Ching, about how the force of a good strong personality can influence even the most stubborn people for the better: one of my favorite Hexagrams, 61, Inner Truth.


Dalai Lama Quote of the Week from Snow Lion Publications:

"...when you start practicing, you should not expect too much. We live in a time of computers and automation, so you may feel that inner development is also an automatic thing for which you press a button and everything changes. It is not so. Inner development is not easy and will take time. External progress, the latest space missions and so forth, have not reached their present level within a short period but over centuries, each generation making greater developments based on those of the previous generation. However, inner development is even more difficult since internal improvement cannot be transferred from generation to generation. Your past life's experience very much influences this life, and this life's experience becomes the basis for the next rebirth's development, but transference of inner development from one person to another is impossible. Thus, everything depends on yourself, and it will take time.

I have met Westerners who at the beginning were very enthusiastic about their practice, but after a few years have completely forgotten it, and there are no traces of what they had practiced at one time. This is because at the beginning they expected too much. Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds emphasizes the importance of the practice of patience--tolerance. This tolerance is an attitude not only towards your enemy but also an attitude of sacrifice, of determination, so that you do not fall into the laziness of discouragement. You should practice patience, or tolerance, with great resolve. This is important."

--from Kindness, Clarity, and Insight 25th Anniversary Edition by The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, edited and translated by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-edited by Elizabeth Napper, published by Snow Lion Publications
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now for the gentle counterbalance from the I Ching, Hexagram 61, Inner Truth:

Chung Fu / Inner Truth
above SUN THE GENTLE, WIND
below TUI THE JOYOUS, LAKE

"The wind blows over the lake and stirs the surface of the water. Thus visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves. The hexagram consists of firm lines above and below, while it is open in the center. This indicates a heart free of prejudices and therefore open to truth. On the other hand, each of the two trigrams has a firm line in the middle; this indicates the force of inner truth in the influences they represent.

The attributes of the two trigrams are: above, gentleness, forbearance toward inferiors; below, joyousness in obeying superiors. Such conditions create the basis of a mutual confidence that makes achievements possible.

The character of fu ("truth") is actually the picture of a bird's foot over a fledgling. It suggests the idea of brooding. An egg is hollow. The light-giving power must work to quicken it from outside, but there must be a germ of life within, if life is to be awakened. Far-reaching speculations can be linked with these ideas.
The Judgment

利 貞 利 涉 大 川 豚 魚 吉 中 孚

INNER TRUTH.

Pigs and fishes.
Good fortune.
It furthers one to cross the great water.
Perseverance furthers.

Pigs and fishes are the least intelligent of all animals and therefore the most difficult to influence. The force of inner truth must grow great indeed before its influence can extend to such creatures. In dealing with persons as intractable and as difficult to influence as a pig or a fish, the whole secret of success depends on finding the right way of approach. One must first rid oneself of all prejudice and, so to speak, let the psyche of the other person act on one without restraint. Then one will establish contact with him, understand and gain power over him. When a door has thus been opened, the force of one's personality will influence him. If in this way one finds no obstacles insurmountable, one can undertake even the most dangerous things, such as crossing the great water, and succeed.

But it is important to understand upon what the force inner truth depends. This force is not identical with simple intimacy or a secret bond. Close ties may exist also among thieves; it is true that such a bond acts as a force but, since it is not invincible, it does not bring good fortune. All association on the basis of common interests holds only up to a certain point. Where the community of interest ceases, the holding together ceases also, and the closest friendship often changes into hate. Only when the bond is based on what is right, on steadfastness, will it remain so firm that it triumphs over everything."

Ted Turner Sings "Home on the Range" on Meet the Press

I will post Ted Turner's very sweet and unadorned rendition of "Home on the Range" as soon as it's on Youtube.

I love Ted Turner and would go so far as to say I understand him. But that's only thanks to Tom Brokaw's questioning of him tonight on Meet the Press, and casual but steady observations of him through the years. I haven't even read his latest book, "Call Me Ted", but I look forward to it. Maybe I've been bamboozled. I thought before tonight that the conventional wisdom was that he was a jerk. But there's just no way, not based on what I just saw on Meet the Press.

He's no Donald Trump. that's for sure. The Donald lays it all out on the table for show and razzle-dazzle, a really fun snake-oil salesman. Ted Turner is just Ted Turner, laying out only what he wants, and most gently at that. On tonight's show, Mr. Brokaw discussed the troubled relationship Mr Turner had with his father, who never thought his son Ted would amount to anything because he was studying Classics at Brown. Ted answered, barely changing his expression, honestly and forthrightly, that his father's disapproval and subsequent suicide eventually made him a better person. He learned to keep on going and to set his lifetime goals impossibly high so that he would never lose energy or motivation. The man has done so much, and given so generously, to make the world, the WORLD, mind you, a better place. He allowed himself to beam just a little with pride when he talked about giving the U.S. government a bailout when they were "coming up short".

His interesting comment in response to Brokaw's question asking if Putin has kind of "a KGB look" was basically "Hey, they have a KGB, we have an FBI, both respectable organizations." Who knew? But I'd wager Ted Turner knows more about that than I do.

Then Mr. Brokaw read a statement from Jane Fonda about how Ted can't "open himself" to religion or the Holy Spirit. Hogwash! No wonder they couldn't stay married! What could she, with all her ups and downs, insecurities and "right ideas", know for sure about the inner workings of someone so private, humble and steady? (I'm under a spell.)

"Ted Turner!? Humble!?", you say? I'd say yes. In response to Mr. Brokaw's question about whether he prayed, Mr. Turner replied that he prayed for his friends when they were ill, but that he tried to keep the prayers short so as not to clog the airwaves.

And then, at Tom Brokaw's request,and because they are apparently friends, Ted Turner closed by singing one verse a capella, without the chorus, of "Home on the Range." It was lovely.

Ineffable Experience at Lamayuru

 

 

 

 

all photos by Raum Feur

Ineffable Experience at Lamayuru

My daughter Honna and I actually saw this happen in Lamayuru! We were there when the photos above were taken. It was not a large group of people, it was a more-or-less private celebration by the monks and local Buddhists to welcome a visitor, a monk supposedly very close in rank to the Dalai Lama. We stood with the group as banners waved and the monks' hauntingly beautiful instruments and horns resounded across the valleys. We watched the progression towards us of the monk, travelling in a caravan of white Jeep-type vehicles toward the monastery. We were not forewarned, and thought we were only visiting for a quick look at the monastery on our way to Domkhar to view the LEHO projects and the Women's Alliance Group. But our host surprised us by asking casually if we would be interested in taking a little detour and visiting Lamayuru. We had tea and soup at a cavernous cafe there at the monastery, and noticed monks tending to instruments and donning robes and headgear casually here and there, as if getting ready to go to a band practice. - (I think some of the cool looking guys in cargo pants and t-shirts who were working in the cafe morphed into the transcendent figures on the mountaintop, all the better)- We barely sensed the growing anticipation at the monastery, because the "vibe" was so cool, calm and collected.

Travels on the Leh-Srinigar Road and Beyond

This is a post from July 08 which I have dug out because it's about my trip with my daughter through Jammu and Kashmir, specifically Ladakh. For some reason it was still in the "edit" column and I apparently never published it to the blog. But in light of recent horrors in Mumbai, which some analysts attribute to disputes over Kashmir, it seems timely to describe some of the beauties of the area which we experienced. If you scroll down to late July and early August (click on "older posts"), there are many photos of this trip, still not 100% organized, but enough to give you a feel for this magnificent part of the world.
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Cannot believe the wonderful trip we took with Mr. Tashi from LEHO...the vehicle was small and the LEHO people, Dr. Mohammed Deen and Razia Sultana were so helpful in making the arrangements, which involved helping to transport LEHO-connected people from one town to another. They were all concerned if we would be uncomfortable. "Oh no it'll be fine" I said, little knowing what a full spectrum of comfort levels there are in this world, and in particular along the Leh-Kargil road.....so arduous but so incredible. The engineering feat of creating this wonderful road, with its stone walls, so much of it in excellent shape, is an endeavor most Americans couldn't imagine....the workers live in tents along the way, working for months at a time before taking breaks to go home to their villages.

Everywhere we went the hospitality was so generous, kind, gentle. My photos, if I ever get rested enough to upload them, will confirm the utter beauty of the homes and the hard work the people do with ease and love. We slept in a tent on the top of a Ladakhi roof in the village of Dumkbar. If we would have done any sleepwalking outside the tent we would have fallen off a ledge into oblivion. I usually go to the bathroom several times a night but this was definitely not an option...the toilet would have required a trip down stairs through the home where people were sleeping, and then outside along a narrow path through a garden.I t was what they call a dry toilet which is a hole in the ground. The toilet was not the problem, just the location of it, one misstep in the nighttime could have ended in disaster. At the home we were staying it was very clean, everything was clean and beautiful, shrines and holiness throughout.

The ride was so harrowing and backbreaking I can't believe the fascinating things that happened along the way and the people we met and all that we learned. I would do it all again tomorrow if I had a chance.

Unfortunately Honna's camera memory card of the trip got scratched and so much of it all is lost we think. It's a true heartbreak. But we have to accept it and move on. We still have enough to design the brochure that LEHO needs, since they acknowledge forthrightly their weakness is in written English documentation of their work. They do have a logo but I think it needs help. They appoint the head of their greenhouse projects in each village and then provide materials and training for start-up, but then back off, and let the villagers run it themselves, dropping in now and then to offer help without insulting the pride of the villagers. Everyone profits, and everyone must pay some money into their business, machine repairs etc. We also visited a self-starting children's school that runs for an hour each night, at 7:30 after work is done, just to learn one English word a day. I will look for flash cards with pictures on the baclk to send them. Also it amazes me that they apparently don't grow or know about kale, which loves the winter. so I'm going to send some seeds.... The winters are so hard and these LEHO projects are designed in conjunction with 4 other NGOS to help improve the villagers life.

We just happened to be present at Lamayuru monastery when a new Rimpoche arrived for a visit in a caravan of modern white jeeps.We saw them weaving back and forth across the mountains from a long way off. All the monks played their ancient instruments and wore the ancient ceremionial garb for the arrival, the most ancient Ladakhis and Tibetan refugees in traditional garb spun prayer wheels and sat along the road, waiting for him. I don't know how they have the strength to walk so far and up such hills. We also visited Alchi monastery, absolutely impossible to describe the ancient beauties, efforts, and mysteries there. These monasteries have as much and maybe more spiritual oomph than anywhere I've ever been. When you consider how remote they are, how difficult they are to reach even in 2008, you really do have to wonder how they could build gilded statues of Buddhas encrusted with semi-precious stones two stories high- a thousand years ago!

But most importantly perhaps, we saw the LEHO (NGO) works in progress, microhydroelectric power in action for grinding almonds, extracting the oil, and grinding barley. The community all benefits from each product through a cooperative unit, with the European Union at the top of the pyramid of engineers and donors. No USA support of LEHO to speak of yet, but we will research that and set up a fund for interested donors. Swedish and French very large donors of equipment including weaving looms, spinning and wool carding machines. I bought one shawl that will supposedly support a village for a long time, and empower women to have their own money. Many of the projects are arranged so that the women don't have to ask their husbands for money for household expenses, which is considered to be humiliating.

We were entertained in every household we visited- every greenhouse, every root cellar, every poultry farm, every apricot drying scheme, every garden, by kind gracious, gentle, laughing, happy people, offering us butter tea and regular tea and biscuits and very crunchy almond barley mix...We rode much of the journey with traditionally dressed Ladakhi women, sleeping on one another's shoulders etc as we bumped along.

I hadn't realized the importance of the slight change in altitude and keeping hydrated for the return to Leh, which is higher altitude. Last night I had my first episode of true frightening death-defying pain, getting an hourlong headache in which I thought my brain was exploding. Never in my life experienced such pain, it was beyond belief. Honna did her kind care and pranic healing, and just her kind hand on my brow and to be able to hold onto her arm was such a comfort. I couldn't get out of bed for another twelve hours as it subsided. I thought it was cerebral edema (for which I had brought an emergency supply of predisone but didn't use) but Honna softly and gently said not to worry, it was just lack of proper hydration on our journey. The Ladakhi women don't drink water on their journeys so I was trying to be one of them and not be so American with my water bottle, but I am what I am, and the water is so critical at altitude..you have to drink it all day long from safe water bottles, everyone does, plastic which can be refilled at certain places, but plastic in general is frowned upon in this most ecologically aware part of the world...they put America to shame here in Ladakh, because their ecological schemes are so advanced and so gentle...

On the way back we were nearly out of gas and it was very dark on very windy roads along cliffs. We saw ancient remote statues - gilded and bejewelled- of various deities in the temples along the way. Even though it's only a few hundred kilometers to Dumkbar along the Srinigar-Leh road, it took about eight hours with all our stops along the way. It was a hard and exhausting journey but when we arrived, and sat on a dirt floor by candlelight with the beautiful men and women, looking at their cooperative efforts in handicraft, and drinking butter tea sitting by the looms and woolens and grains, helping to box them up to take to market the next day, it was an ineffably beautiful end to the day. In the car the next day the ever-jolly Ladakhi women took turns grabbing my thigh and shaking it and saying how strong I was and how young I look! I have a hard time accepting compliments, but it is amazing and shocking to get compliments from the people I admire most in the world for their strength and beauty. However life in the mountain villages is hard, and people whose age I estimate as 60 or 70 are actually only in their forties and fifties, but still beautiful beyond words....

I am beyond happy, beyond blessed,beyond wonder, so full of gratitude for this experience....Love to all...Please become aware of Ladakh. Honna and I will be trying to raise awareness in the USA when we return. As I've said, we are responsible now for making a brochure and other literature as part of our arrangement with the NGO LEHO to go to the outer villages and homes.ALthough Leh is a wonderful bustling tourist destination with its share of hustlers and vendors just like any other tourist town, Ladakh is an unspoiled, almost unspoilable region of the world. I haven't been able to upload photos, the time is too long, but no picture could ever capture the pure goodness and beauty of Ladakh.

Wasting Some Time Staring at the Stars

I was supposed to be in bed already, work tomorrow and all that. But I grabbed a bag of granola and started staring out the windows looking at the stars, and wondering about the universe. WHAT IS IT THAT WE HOPE IS OUT THERE?

I imagined someone like me, light years away, starting to grow old, tired and feeling lazy, holding onto a granola cereal bag and staring at her sky, wondering what her children are doing and whatever happened to the men she loved in her life,,,,munching away and staring at some distant planet that might be earth, and imagining that maybe it's better here,and in her helpless kindness, wishing us well.

George Mallory's body: Alabaster on Everest

 

In May of 1999, when George Mallory's body was discovered frozen into Mt. Everest, the skin of his back gleaming in the sun like alabaster seventy some years after he died, I wrote a poem. I've lost the poem but I remember posting it at www.mountainzone.com, where it was absorbed into the ethers.

I had been feverishly following the Mallory-Irvine Research Expedition online, buying my kids t-shirts in support of the search, and listening with them to the reports broadcast by Eric Simonson from Everest. Conrad Anker made the find, later describing it this way:

" I saw a patch of white, that was whiter than the rock that was around and also whiter and whiter than the snow that was there, and went there. And within a few minutes of being there realized that this wasn't a body from recent times; it was something that had been there for quite awhile..... He seemed to be at peace with himself. He had been there quite awhile, and there was something very, very subtle about his being there, not really scary and violent. "


The photographs of the body were beyond thrilling to me. There's no way to express the poignancy of the image. Mallory's arms reaching upwards, his bleached white body melded to the mountain forever, his earnestness so clear even in death, trailing bits and pieces of wool and cotton clothing still, even a clearly legible name-tag sewn lovingly into his shirt. The thought that his camera might be found, and a statement by the Kodak company that they very well might be able to develop the film, was truly provocative.

How does someone tackle the likes of Mt. Everest, the high odds of death, the altitude, the weather, the strain? What shadows and forces would drive a man from the safe haven of life in Cambridge to the highest and most difficult peak in the world? He and his friend Andrew Irvine succumbed while struggling together to this peak, casting logic aside, the bond between them unfathomable to those of us ordinary mortals who lust only for what's close at hand.

Mallory was famous for responding to a reporter who asked why he wanted to climb Everest: "Because it's there." Reporters continued to ask him variations of the question again and again. "It's of no use", he said. "If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life".

So to the nice woman who recently asked me what I would take along to India next week to occupy myself, and why in the world I would go to Leh ( a mere 11,000 feet) and the Tibetan plateau, I defer to Mallory, who found it hard to explain, but shut them up by saying "Because it's there."

-repeat from 6-08

Something I Can't Explain: How I ended up at Lamayuru Without Even Trying

When I was young I longed for the Himalaya, and read National Geographic after National Geographic, longing especially for landscapes like this. I had a catalogue and ordered the postcard below about 20 years ago, from Snow Lion Publications in Ithaca NY. It bumped around. I put it on the refrigerator for a year or two, then sruck it in my bedroom mirror for awhile, and finally put it into a photo album of photos of my children when they were young, hoping maybe that someday someone would understand, for whatever it was worth, what landscape I always longed for, and how I lived it out, and tried to instill it in my children's lives etc. that the Tibetan Plateau and all the areas surrounding it, were where I felt I belonged. I wasn't really sure where exactly this place was, never paid much attention to the fine print on the back of the card, but assumed it was in Tibet.

I have no idea why it is I've always longed for solitude in remote regions, I would certainly imagine though, based on what I've learned in this lifetime, that there's a reason for that longing, and that it need not be questioned. Why did I dream of monks in the Himalaya, and wish I could be a calm, beautiful attendant on them, by lamplight, rather than dreaming of being, say, Jacqueline Kennedy or Meryl Streep or Madame Curie? I honestly don't know. N'importe.

And then last week, a few of my children found that photo album and produced this old postcard for me to see, the one that was stuck on the refrigerator years ago.

When I went to India this past summer, I decided to stay in Leh only and to be grateful for that, at my age and at that altitude. I wanted to go to Tibet, but this was close enough, within a hundred miles of places I had dreamed about, I figured. But by an effortless chain of events, I ended up travelling rather extensively with my daughter and the NGO LEHO into more remote areas of Ladakh. I just realized last night that the postcard I bought twenty years ago, was a photo of Lamayuru Monastery, in Ladakh, India!. My daughter and I visited Lamayuru in June, (our driver made an unplanned detour) and witnessed the rare visit of a very high-ranking monk, who arrived in a caravan of vehicles amidst all the ancient fanfare and horn-blowing of monks with precious ancient instruments, and gathering of aged Tibetan refugees who had walked for miles and who sat curbside spinning prayer-wheels for hours....

So much happened when we were there, hours sacred and remote from earthly concerns....That day is a mystery unto itself. I could never explain it in a million years, and so it is. I was there. And not only that. It happened without me struggling for it. It happened because I just put myself in God's hand and went alone to India with no script. And then, blessing upon blessing, with my daughter, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, by my side. Put the picture of what you want in front of your eyes, and it may come to you!

Enough mystery for many lifetimes.

 

Oh and By The Way, When I was in northern India, in the Himalayas, this past summer, they were praying for Obama

I can't believe I never told the stories in my blog about how the people I met in remote areas of India this summer were really attuned to the U.S. election. They hoped Obama would win. I was in the Himalayas, northern India, in Jammu and Kashmir, in a particular area where Muslims and Buddhists coexist peacefully. I had always wanted to go there, and I got there as if by magic. That story is well-documented in my earlier posts. I rode in cabs through desert terrains, and a driver would swing his head around to me and ask about Obama, and add hopefully, that he hoped Obama would win. This happened in some of the most remote places on earth.

Once in a jewelry store in Leh, Ladakh, India,near the border of Pakistan and China, I bought a ring, lapus lazuli, for a few dollars more than I should have, ten instead of five, rupees being my downfall. I joked with the store owner, I liked him: you charged me too much. He spoke a little English. He was kind, and funny, as kind and funny as any businessman can be. My daughter and I returned the next day, we struck a bargain, I exchanged one ring for another, he was very nice and very cool. We had a rapport. We laughed together. I told him he should come visit me in the U.S. sometime. He laughed a stoned, shoulder-shaking laugh and said "Are you kidding?! They would never let me into the U.S! I am a Muslim, I am Pakistani! With a name like mine, I could never get a visa into America.!"

And then he winked. Well, maybe someday. Maybe someday when America is ok again.

Getting real with Obama. Camelot (for velveteen rabbits) is about to begin.. God Bless America! And God Bless Barack Obama!

This is it, history in the making....Time for a new kind of Camelot. Not a black Camelot, not a New Age Camelot, not a Baby Boomer Camelot. Not a Wall Streeter's Camelot. This could be a global Camelot of a whole new texture and hue: a velveteen rabbit Camelot.

Times will be tough. We'll be a nation, a world, of velveteen rabbits...becoming real by love and care and use and sacrifice. The world is ready. Barack Hussein Obama is going to bring change that we will feel. I'm a little scared. And so excited. We're gonna get real!

RIP Madelyn Dunham

It's beyond sad. Barack Obama's grandmother, one of his nearest and dearest, and one of the most influential people in his life, died today, the eve of Election Day.

I can only imagine all that she and her husband went through after their adventurous daughter went off into the wild blue yonder for awhile, then brought back an actual African-American child, for them to love and care for. And they, who sure look like conservative folks to me (from their photos), did their absolute best and just got into it, and helped to raise the amazing man who, with a heavy heart, will become triumphant tomorrow night.

As one of my friends said in an email today: "They had such a warm and loving relationship. He must feel so torn right now. Poor baby."

But above all, I love what my eldest daughter said in a text earlier this evening: "Extra special angel pulling for him. Bird's eye view tomorrow."

Casting a Spell on Halloween

Casting a Spell on Hallowe'een - again (from October 07)

One of my daughters called from far away and asked if I was ready for Halloween, She told me it was her favorite holiday when she was young because the house felt so magical. I live away from the hurly burly of town and don't have many trick-or-treaters anymore, but I know my precious 2-year-old granddaughter Maya will come by, and that is inspiration aplenty. I have always loved to cast a spell on this wonderful night. Or rather, I allow the night to cast a spell on me. It's easy! Here's how.

Put on a cape. Put a pumpkin on the porch and hang up a respectable looking litttle skelton (not a silly or scary looking one), to remind you of your mortality. Set out a bowl of apples from the farm market, a kind of apple you don't usually eat, a true tasting apple that tastes like it just came off the tree. No mass-market red delicious, try McIntosh or Winesap.

Make the house smell like it should. Get out the dark molasses and bake some gingerbread. Put some cider in a pot on the stove and add cinnamon sticks and cloves. If you have the spot, build a big fire in the fireplace. Have plenty of low light in every room of the house, but no overhead lights, just candles and lamps with soft bulbs. I have a wall sconce that holds half a dozen candles- perfect for this night.

Put on Van Morrison or Bob Dylan or whatever you love, full blast. Lay out some Hawthorne and Poe books. Hope to see a beautiful child at your door. Dance.

Remember that it is All Saints Eve, All Hallows Eve- a tradition regarded in one form or another across history and throughout many cultures, particularly those with Gaelic roots, as a time when the dead are near. With the changing seasons, the death of nature's summer vibrance, the harvest over, the falling of leaves and the natural melancholy of fall, there is a momentary crack in the veneer of life. Stay attuned to the restless spirits wandering free of the grave tonight. Welcome them in. Grant them peace. Hope for wind.

from www.thehurlyburly.blogspot.com October 07

Encounter of the Primary Kind: Adventure for an Old Lady

Ok Ok, nothing to hide: I had a little fling over the weekend. A stranger passed through town and was spending some time in the same glam spot where I was having an after-dinner glass of wine. He was swarthy, a little younger, an adventurer like me....and, like me, wanted to have a nice time with no drama and no attachment, preferably no names. He may do this every night, me not so much, but it doesn't matter. This was a new kind of thrill for me, living in the sticks as I do. When we met, we spoke strictly in French, since he was from Montreal. I started with the intention of saying in French that I studied French intensively forty years ago, but it came out rusty and wrong: "I have been studying French intensively for forty years." He laughed and kidded me about that, and we were off and running....literally talking and laughing the night away.

I had said something like "Ah oui je parle bien le Francais, mais il y a quarante ans je l'ai etudier. Et apres avoir bu, je le parle beaucoup plus couramment"- He understood the last part, even though couramment is not quite the word I was looking for. It worked. There was a definite spark. That doesn't happen often in these parts!

It was fun. When he told me he had been to Nepal and Everest Base Camp, I was a goner. I did have to gag a little when he said he had been a diving instructor at Club Meds all around the Caribbean, from which I inferred, with my usual cynicism, that he had probably contracted various and sundry diseases d'amour (who doesn't fall in love with the Club Med French diving instructor?) and so I made a solemn pact with myself to not relent to his charms. He was charming, and completely reasonable. He doesn't seem to mind hefty old ladies, we are apparently kind of his niche, or one of them, and he knows how to be attentive, kind, also funny. He calls us by our French names...in my case, Therese. He moves on leaving only a light footprint... So where's the harm? God bless him! Wish there were more of him!

My kids (a few of them were there) were great sports- slipping me a hotel room key and breath mints ostensibly because I had gone over my usual two glasses of wine and 9PM (self-imposed) curfew, and shouldn't be driving home, but winkingly allowing me to pretend for a moment that I might take this random encounter a few steps further. Well as I said, this guy is an apparent specialiste in old ladies, and knows enough not to press his luck. He was charming, lovely, at one point in the wee hours, outside, even grabbing me, laughing, into the dark and unoccupied parking lot booth as if we were teenagers..saying "Let's think about this for a little bit." That was a true highlight of my recent life!

I hesitated to sit on his lap for fear of squishing him, but he was game for anything, and so I did, strong passionate man that he was! We took a car tour of the town and got pulled over by a police officer around 3AM because I was trying to help him find his car...luckily we hadn't really been drinking for several hours.....and so escaped the hand of the sheriff....

So all in all, a really fun night for a woman of a certain age. I didn't ask for or even want to know his name. We've been around the block, loving life, no need for worrying. No need for that key, although he liked the idea. I just laughed myself all the way home. He even visited me at my house the next morning, no idea how he figured that one out, but he's smart, and he's a man, and a gentleman, and you know how that goes! In the course of that morning visit he actually demonstrated on my living room floor how to do the cha-cha, a dance that disturbs me (hearkening back to my dancing school days in junior high with red-faced boys in white gloves, which this man definitely was not!).

I feel good that I took the right road when the path diverged. Could have been my last chance - and it was a really great one! This is all I am going to tell- that's the truth the whole truth the only truth, so help me....no further details will be forthcoming! Inquiries will receive no response. Toodle-oo!

What It's Like Having Adult ADD or ANY ADD (What Many Teachers Hate to Understand)

I have been very busy for the last week or so, up in my head. The world, the house, (the school) have been whizzing past my super-highway mind. It's as if I'm trapped in the back-seat of a speeding car, barely able to count the telephone poles along the way, let alone focus on scenery.

I ate and slept at fairly appropriate intervals. I watched the news. I went to work. Occasionally I would see a pile of stuff here and there. Some stuff in the sink, some mail or clothes in piles here and there. I might wonder vaguely about it and briefly check off that it wasn't always like that, in that place, just kind of interesting for a moment as I walked through the room. But I couldn't think of what it was or where it was supposed to go or who was going to change it. I didn't care and I didn't try to figure these things out, because I was way too busy up in my head. I was tired, having travelled over the weekend. I was worrying about other things, thinking about other places and times and various people, and always, very very busy, with miles to go before I slept.

I remember around Sunday I saw an unopened can of Spaghettios in the middle of the kitchen floor, which made me begin a whole stream of free-association, thinking eventually of how sweet my grand-daughter is, and how maybe she moved it there or how much she might like it, and I've liked looking at it there every once in awhile, and have walked past it dozens of times without ever registering any reason or need to pick it up and move it. I kicked it once in a fit of pique while looking for my spatula, it's still there on Wednesday. I've enjoyed it very much, it hasn't bothered me a bit. I live alone. No reason why it should bother anyone else, either. It's mine.

Getting out the door in the morning is hard sometimes. Spinning around in circles, upstairs, downstairs, looking for shoes, looking for pocket change for lunch, looking for eyeglasses, car keys, and noticing lots of fun things along the way. An old birthday card from one of my kids, on the back stairway, a bracelet I haven't seen in years in the drawer where I'm searching for socks, The Economist issue I thought the mailman stole, voila!, under the bed, a bill that needs to be paid, in the cushions of the couch, a long-lost eyeliner in the pocket of my sweater, and hallelujah! a twenty dollar bill, on the dining room table right in front of my eyes! OH and there's a can of peas on the kitchen counter! I love peas! I forgot about peas! I could have eaten those last night! Or put them in my omelette this morning. Shoot! Too late now.

Then, lo! the sky cleared for an hour or so this afternoon, molecules in my brain mysteriously aligned in a different way and I felt like a newborn babe seeing the world for the first time.

I realized that the house was a wreck and that it looked literally, like a hurricane had blown through. I thought Ha! I can change this very easily if I want to, and I don't need to, nobody's making me, but wouldn't it be nice?? I'll do a wash of this clothing pile...oh and look...there's more over there! Why don't I put all these shoes in one pile? What a great idea! What is that empty cabinet in the bathroom? So pretty! Oh...I remember now. It's for all the clean washcloths that are piled in the hallway. Look at all that stuff in the kitchen sink! It's dirty dishes?! Who knew?!?!?! Let's see how do people do this when it's such a mess? Where do people start? Turn the water on. Organize the dishes a little, pots with pans, glasses together, silverware all together. Ok, I get it, it's all coming back to me now. It's easy! What's this? God almighty, I nearly forgot that I have an automatic dishwasher! What a great invention!

I've always been like this. It's not senility, but it borders on it, even if you are five years old. The short-term memory is not working properly. When you're young it manifests and translates as multi-tasking. You just keep moving along, running into what you want as you move. I had five kids and kept everything bubbling along 24-7. It was wonderful, I loved every second of it, but it was a series of searches and discoveries, and a wild one. I would save little messes the kids made...toothpaste mixed with peanut butter in dollhouse dishes and stuffed into the mouth of a teddy bear, for instance, which I would save for hours, even days, because such things were so curious, fascinating and wonderful to me, to be cherished rather than wiped anxiously away.

I feel very proud of myself for restoring a tiny bit of sanity to my environment today, but it would probably take years to correct all the collateral damage of years and years of being so "busy". (If you were a young schoolchild, wouldn't it be great to have some help with all this stuff in the world?) People like us often enjoy our peace and quiet. We can come up with great ideas if we have the room to breathe. Minimal stimulation once in awhile, please, and don't chastize. You think I should know where my eyeglasses are, let alone the strap they hang around my neck on? Think again.

I benefit from a helping hand. Just a little, not too much, don't want to lose track of anything since my mind works differently from most people. I really do know the general location of the essentials, whether I saw them one minute or five years ago, or twenty. I don't need structure, structure, structure. Let me loose or I'll fly off like a goose. I need someone to realize that my wings are strong and my vision is good and my brain is ok. I like FORMATION. I like having a destination. I'll follow a leader. But I need my space. And I like it up here in the quiet sky.

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It seems most teachers can't stand kids (or adults) like this. I am blessed to have children (and a few co-workers) who understand and occasionally help me (carefully), without me even realizing it's help, lest I bolt. Sometimes it's just a few days of major disorganization that get out of hand. Brain chemistry fluctuates, things can get really messed up, but then the sky clears.

If teachers could offer just a little gentle good-natured help for a student who can't find his homework in his bookbag, or even kindly organize his binder papers once in awhile without making him feel stupid, understanding what those papers may have been through at home,(ADD runs in families, who may all have trampled on that paper on the kitchen floor this morning without even realizing it, while looking for the Cheerios and its accoutrements) life could be better and a slew of ADD medications wouldn't be a teacher's only prayer and solace.

The meds can help, even transform, a student's life, and keep the teachers from tearing that student to shreds, but wouldn't it be nice if students weren't treated and prodded like cattle? And if we could help them fly in formation without bringing them down from their gentle winds?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy Birthday Dear Julina!

Barack Obama: Radiant, Crystalline, and, Don't Forget, Half-white, a member of the largest human race, the mixed race

I have always been puzzled about why Barack Obama doesn't admit that he's half- white. At the very least, he could remind folks once in awhile, a little more emphatically: Don't forget, I'm actually half white! He has beautiful color, is a beautiful man, and is proud, as he should be, of his black heritage and cultural exposure in all directions. But as the climate of racial hatred fueled by McCain's campaign grows, why not speak up as a member of the largest human race, the mixed race?

We know he's cool, and those of us who understand the coolness factor understand why he doesn't want and shouldn't need to explain himself over and over, but things are getting frightening out there. The wackos are oozing out of the ducts.

Barack Obama, soon to be our first "Black president"- was raised in a white world by loving white grandparents, who must have struggled originally with the consequences of their daughter's insatiable wanderlust. The black part- and the middle name Hussein part- were virtually negligible parts of the young Barack Obama. His father, from whom he got his color and his middle name, was not present in his life, didn't help raise him, was just a guy he met once or twice. His mother, the one who sought exotic couplings and affiliations, wasn't there a lot of the time, and died young.

Like any other young person in our increasingly diverse world, Barack Obama tried to piece together his identity as he grew into adulthood. His mother, more of an archetypal figure in his life than an actual fleshy protector and teacher, provided an impetus for him to think beyond the limited confines of his grandparent's nest. His father, mystery man from Africa, provided the impetus to search out, identify with, and contribute to the black community, which, stick a pin in a map, turned out to be Chicago.

So his mother and grandparents raised him as well as they could, from midwestern small-town boy to increasingly competent and thoughtful young man, through Punahou and Harvard and on into Abraham Lincoln's old stomping grounds, and now onto the world stage.

All of Barack Obama's transitions have been carefully documented, and make sense, and produced a radiant man with a crystalline mind and heart, who stunned many of his Harvard professors and classmates with his aura of potential greatness.

And still, gratis of the ugliness of the McCain-Palin campaign, people this week have called from angry crowds such things as "Kill him!".

There have been comparisons made of Obama to JFK, Lincoln, and even Christ. I pray that Barack Obama is able to serve America, develop his considerable gifts, and that, in the fullness of time, people who "called for his head" will grow to understand and appreciate that he has always had the country's best interests at heart, and may very well be the best of all worlds.

Physics for Poets, Basically: The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics

I think it's time for me to post (again) something I was fascinated by early on in my life, thanks to our physics teacher Dr. Althea Johnson at Ellis in Pittsburgh,something that I should have developed and stuck with, Physics, and in particular: The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, embedded in the I Ching ("Far-reaching speculations can be associated with these ideas") and other esoteric philosophies, eons ago. Even little Wikipedia says "These laws (sic) are often associated with concepts far beyond what is directly stated in the wording"

1. All molecular processes seek equilibrium.

2. Equilibrium is attained only in entropy (death).

But there are variations, and exceptions, and bifurcations to everything, even this rule, and fighters, amongst physicists, against that thermodynamic rule: there don't seem to be many steady states. SO just get ready for what lies ahead, keep your heart simple, uncomplicated, and open. Get ready to move, if necessary. Get ready to stand firm, if you must.

_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_

Just for fun and beauty: From the Wilhelm/Jung version of the I Ching:
61. Chung Fu / Inner Truth

above SUN THE GENTLE, WIND
below TUI THE JOYOUS, LAKE

The wind blows over the lake and stirs the surface of the water. Thus visible effects of the invisible manifest themselves. The hexagram consists of firm lines above and below, while it is open in the center. This indicates a heart free of prejudices and therefore open to truth. On the other hand, each of the two trigrams has a firm line in the middle; this indicates the force of inner truth in the influences they represent.

The attributes of the two trigrams are: above, gentleness, forbearance toward inferiors; below, joyousness in obeying superiors. Such conditions create the basis of a mutual confidence that makes achievements possible.

The character of fu ("truth") is actually the picture of a bird's foot over a fledgling. It suggests the idea of brooding. An egg is hollow. The light-giving power must work to quicken it from outside, but there must be a germ of life within, if life is to be awakened. Far-reaching speculations can be linked with these ideas.

DON'T NEED NOTHIN'! How to Face the Future with Equilibruim

I don't want anything right now. Not a single thing. I'm in a state of equilibrium, and it's insatiably gratifying. I don't need money. I don't need gratification from the latest stock market figures, or the latest presidential polls, I don't need steak or veggies with cilantro and snazzy sauces. I don't need wine or vodka. I don't need chocolate or coffee with sugar, not even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread, or a good book or a good TV show. I don't need antidepressants, and I doubt I even need Metamucil. Actually, I don't need a thing. Nope. I'm done for the day.

And at midnight or 4 AM, when I wake up frantically throttling my own throat in some dreamstate-self-strangulation, wishing I was deader than a doornail, as Grandma used to say, I hope I'll remember this wonderful moment of equilibrium, which lasted nearly five minutes, a blessed bit of eternity.

A Tolerance For Insanity: Quetzalcoatl's Return in 2012, This Year's Election, and the Nobel Prize in Physics, all rolled into one blogpost

Listening to tonight's Presidential debate, I realized my mind was wandering- I do have a certain tolerance for insanity as well as for bores...sometimes I think I've pretty much heard and seen it all, but, despite my hopes that it's time to settle back to the simple life of pastels and lace and pleasurable memory lapses for which I cannot be held accountable, I know that can't possibly be true.

I have been reading and kind of struggling, nightly for a few weeks- (nightmares and weird associations gratis with the experience) - through Mr. Pinchbeck's "2012:The Return of Quetzalcoatl " He's taken all varieties of the Carlos Castenada drugs and experiences and consulted the priestesses and shamans and carefully steamed his reliability quotients up the wazoo. But the man has got a brain. A big unintegrated ridiculously thirsty ego most of the time, but hey, he is really trying to get it together, and if you were living the 60's to the hilt, you can follow him. Tedious, but you can follow him, and wish him well, even wish all of us here on earth well, by the end. He does inspire and speak sanely at times. There is not a single conspiracy theory or new-age strategy or idea that he doesn't more-or-less validate, from aliens to crop circles and beyond, so whatever you've been doing to keep your wildest thoughts and associations at bay, get ready, cause he'll hear you out. He's uneven. He jumps around, embarrassingly. You wonder what his latest therapist has prescribed to "talk him down." But you can, if you have a certain tolerant spirit, hear him out, and wonder what's coming.

Personally I'm already convinced that it all has to do with the Hadron Particle Collider, and that today's two Japanese and one American Nobel Prize winner of the Physics award for their work in the most puzzling and topsy turvy symmetries in the universe - particle physics at its most exciting- are in places where Mr. Pinchbeck is trying to go. I would secretly rather have been a particle physicist, spending a lifetime involved with the development of the Hadron Particle Collider, or just a fly on the wall of the men who won the Physics award today. Hindsight!

I have an inkling of the mysteries involved. The collider and the physics prizes interest me immensely, who wouldn't find it all fascinating? -(oddly the people where I work aren't as excited as I am to talk about it- ). So I will toss and turn myself to sleep with my boredom at the debate- and my inkling...tiny inkling....of universe upon universe, time upon time, unfathomable but utterly true underlying principles of physics, validated today by people in Stockholm with clearer minds and better credentials than me and poor Mr. Pinchbeck, who has done his best, and thrust himself into an Amazonian version of the Carlos Casteneda fray, and come back to tell the tale as best he could.

The Nobel prizes thrill me to the core, must have been my grandfather who got me excited about them decades ago- I love the Physics one but the Peace Prize is the golden ring- and this year in particular- is making the Chinese government very nervous in light of the potential win of the imprisoned dissident Hu Jia. On Friday I will wake up very early, as I did last year, and get online to watch the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize from Sweden. So thrilling to see the small crowd gather outside the beautiful and mysterious 18th century doors at The Swedish Academy in Stockholm's Old Town, to see an elegant man appear to meet the press.

That old Mr. Nobel, dynamite maker, really got some stuff going.

Bob Dylan's Newest Album, Tell Tale Signs, Due out Next Week, Sneak Preview from NPR

This is an exclusive preview of Bob Dylan's new album, due out next week.

Thanks to Justin Wolfers of the New York Times column "Freakonomics" for bringing it to our attention.



http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95047293

Prescience From Steven Holmes in The New York Times September 30, 1999

In all fairness, I must admit this nine year old article, sent to me by a Republican friend today, is a little startling.

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

Why I like Jack Cafferty: Just watch his reaction to Sarah Palin last week!

This is that week-old? clip of Sarah Palin and Katie Couric that everyone has seen skewered by Tina Fey etc. But this version is worth watching, just to be reminded of who Sarah Palin really is as we go into tonight's debate.It's so good to see Jack Cafferty, so human, so rational, so sincerely upset, and not afraid to admit it. Watch all the way to the end. Poor Wolf Blitzer, trying to keep things objective.

Steve Fossett in Shambala: Fossett's Plane Wreckage Likely Found in California

In the last several days, personal items of Steve Fossett have been discovered near Mammoth Lakes Califormia, and this morning it appears the wreckage has been found,
so I re-post my blog entry from last Fall, in his memory:


One of the greatest adventurers of all time, a man who pushed himself to achieve physical feats that noone else on earth has ever achieved, has vanished from the face of the earth. He apparently removed his Breitling wristwatch with its Emergency Locator Transmitter, grabbed a bottle of water, jumped on a single-engine plane and disappeared.

Did he really crash into a remote Nevada cul-de-sac where even the best technology in the world can't find him? Or did this world class adventurer enter a place where he languishes in peace and from which he may still emerge? A man so interested in human limits as he was might not have ignored accounts of mystic transfigurations and superhuman accomplishments emanating from the Himalayas.He was a good-humored and down-to-earth businessman and family man, but certainly not a simple man. He could have read the most esoteric literature on earth for all we know. Few could know the heart or mind of a man like Steve Fossett. How many of us could inspire the likes of Richard Branson to engage with Google Earth to create a special set of all new high-resolution images so that computer-savvy people world-wide could conduct a search for his missing aircraft?

And yet, he's gone. Some conspiracy theorists say Fossett disappeared into Area 51 near Roswell. Some say maybe he had enough, was growing old, and went off to his own private island to live in obscurity with a newfound friend. Would a man of his caliber do that?

There are far more intriguing possibilities. For instance, ancient accounts tell of Shambala, a paradise that is not visible on this earth, to which entry is gained only by the achievement of certain levels of physical, mental and spiritual disciplines through yogic techniques. Why couldn't it be something like that? Mircea Eliade wrote about it. In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, the objectivist philosopher, wrote of a utopian society created by brilliant industrialist drop-outs who used illusion and mirrors to hide access to their mountain kingdom. How about that?

Listen to Shakespeare: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And finally, remember the words of Christ: "In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you."

Let's hope that Mr. Fossett is somewhere in the universe reaching the new heights that he deserves to reach. I often take heart from this old Scottish proverb, and I hope Mr. Fossett would at least be able to say: "I am wounded but I am not slain. I shall lay me down and bleed awhile, then I shall rise and fight again."

Thinking Lovingly of Harvest in the Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir

This design was on the main pillar in the main room of the home where we stayed in Dumkhar in Northern India this summer. When I asked about its meaning and snapped a photo of it (during an electrical blackout) I was told, to the best of my understanding, it brought blessings at harvest time. Now there's another idea for a tattoo.

 

Neil Young Original "Harvest Moon"

My favorite song of all time: just enlarge it to full-screen size (by clicking the little square at the bottom, second from the right), turn it up, stand up from your computer and dance to it, wherever you are, nobody will mind. It's just a marvel, so beautiful, utter perfection. Try not to cry. I'm so glad I was alive, and young, when Neil Young was creating and feeling like this, and putting it out there for us to feel it with him. It's a better world, for having transcendent love songs, sung like this.