I just got back from a night swim at Janet Penley's. We had an interesting conversation about aesthetic: what and whom do we consider beautiful and why?
We each value our own versions of beauty--in houses and objects--but what is beauty?
Some people value physical beauty more than other people do. For some of us, the look of things matters very much while other people may place a higher priority on cleanliness or practicality or comfort.
I'm going to be thinking about that question for a while. I don't know the answer, but the question intrigues me.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Here's my Jackson--oldest grandson
This is the day of his first solo flight! His best friend moved to Colorado this year, and he's off to spend a week with him--SO excited.
Jackson will be a teenager in October and a seventh grader--he just graduated from elementary school this week. His grandmother (and everyone else) thinks Jackson is one awesome little guy.
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
William Carlos Williams
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This poem by William Carlos Williams (1923) has always been one of my favorites. When I'm driving and looking, I often say it to myself.
It has often been parodied by other writers, but it almost calls out for copying, doesn't it?
so much depends
upon
a blue chipped
colander
filled with red
berries
dripping underneath with
water.
or:
so much depends
upon
my favorite blue
Le Pen
its point pushing into
white paper
When asked what the poem means, here is what William Carlos Williams said:
["The Red Wheelbarrow"] sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall. He had been a fisherman, caught porgies off Gloucester. He used to tell me how he had to work in the cold in freezing weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. He said he didn’t feel cold. He never felt cold in his life until just recently. I liked that man, and his son Milton almost as much. In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing.
In Oregon last fall, I photographed a pink wheelbarrow on an early morning drive through the Columbia River valley. I think it was filled with pumpkins. Or maybe apples.
But when I look back at the picture, I notice that it is empty, a vessel that has potential to carry pumpkins or apples, and I notice that it is glazed, not with rain water but with dew.
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This poem by William Carlos Williams (1923) has always been one of my favorites. When I'm driving and looking, I often say it to myself.
It has often been parodied by other writers, but it almost calls out for copying, doesn't it?
so much depends
upon
a blue chipped
colander
filled with red
berries
dripping underneath with
water.
or:
so much depends
upon
my favorite blue
Le Pen
its point pushing into
white paper
When asked what the poem means, here is what William Carlos Williams said:
["The Red Wheelbarrow"] sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall. He had been a fisherman, caught porgies off Gloucester. He used to tell me how he had to work in the cold in freezing weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. He said he didn’t feel cold. He never felt cold in his life until just recently. I liked that man, and his son Milton almost as much. In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing.
In Oregon last fall, I photographed a pink wheelbarrow on an early morning drive through the Columbia River valley. I think it was filled with pumpkins. Or maybe apples.
But when I look back at the picture, I notice that it is empty, a vessel that has potential to carry pumpkins or apples, and I notice that it is glazed, not with rain water but with dew.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Favorite Things
Certain objects have imaginative juice, just as certain places and people do. Who's to say what quirks in my psyche fuel my love for Mini Coopers, for example? Is it a story embedded in my imagination that features a cute, retro, puppy-like car? Is it reminiscent of some old car I saw in a movie once upon a time attached to a story I don't remember? Is it a metaphor for freedom and individuality? Does a car have qualities I'd like to embody in myself, even though I don't know what they are?
Why we love what (and whom) we love is often outside the realm of reason. All we know for sure is that they make us feel happy whenever we encounter them in the geography of our imaginations.
The pleasure of the presence of our loved things may be as ephemeral as the flare of a birthday candle, here, then gone. But once we claim them as ours, we're always alert to their showing up, and we look for them like people in love look for their beloveds in a crowd. Our faces light up, we feel happy.
Or maybe we forget about them, then they appear out of nowhere, and we have to stop what we are doing to say, "Oh, there you are! I remember you! Come here."
Like the smell of cinnamon, the fragrance of sandalwood.
Thomas Moore writes, "The secular and the spiritual are two sides of the same coin. There is no separation between them. If you want to be spiritual, you have to live fully in this world--and vice versa."
Reading this line got me thinking about "ordinary things" that bring unreasonable pleasure.
I love colanders, bowls and handcrafted wooden spoons.
Patchwork quilts and mosaics.
Pictures of small houses, even dilapidated ones about to crumble into the ground.
Taking the time to brew aromatic tea, the way the leaves expand when I pour hot water into the glass pitcher.
The fragrances of lemons and oranges, jasmine, honeysuckle.
When I travel, I always pick up pine cones, smooth river stones and sea shells.
I like post cards, teddy bears, the color blue, silver and white jewelry, toy shops, bakeries.
I love the texture and smell of real books, especially when I own them and can underline in them, leaving tracks.
I like doors and windows, open to the outside, open to the inside.
Kaleidoscopes and marbles.
The pink and blue and green and red giraffe in my bedroom.
Maybe falling in love with things keeps our senses alive to the beauty all around us--and in my book, that's religion, too.
Why we love what (and whom) we love is often outside the realm of reason. All we know for sure is that they make us feel happy whenever we encounter them in the geography of our imaginations.
The pleasure of the presence of our loved things may be as ephemeral as the flare of a birthday candle, here, then gone. But once we claim them as ours, we're always alert to their showing up, and we look for them like people in love look for their beloveds in a crowd. Our faces light up, we feel happy.
Or maybe we forget about them, then they appear out of nowhere, and we have to stop what we are doing to say, "Oh, there you are! I remember you! Come here."
Like the smell of cinnamon, the fragrance of sandalwood.
Thomas Moore writes, "The secular and the spiritual are two sides of the same coin. There is no separation between them. If you want to be spiritual, you have to live fully in this world--and vice versa."
Reading this line got me thinking about "ordinary things" that bring unreasonable pleasure.
I love colanders, bowls and handcrafted wooden spoons.
Patchwork quilts and mosaics.
Pictures of small houses, even dilapidated ones about to crumble into the ground.
Taking the time to brew aromatic tea, the way the leaves expand when I pour hot water into the glass pitcher.
The fragrances of lemons and oranges, jasmine, honeysuckle.
When I travel, I always pick up pine cones, smooth river stones and sea shells.
I like post cards, teddy bears, the color blue, silver and white jewelry, toy shops, bakeries.
I love the texture and smell of real books, especially when I own them and can underline in them, leaving tracks.
I like doors and windows, open to the outside, open to the inside.
Kaleidoscopes and marbles.
The pink and blue and green and red giraffe in my bedroom.
Maybe falling in love with things keeps our senses alive to the beauty all around us--and in my book, that's religion, too.
Happiness
One of my favorite NPR programs (online only for us in San Antonio) is On Being with Krista Tippett. In this show, she is talking with the Dalai Lama and four other religious leaders about the pursuit of happiness:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/pursuing-happiness-dalai-lama/147
http://www.onbeing.org/program/pursuing-happiness-dalai-lama/147
Ordinary Things: a question
As I am finishing the Thomas Moore book this Sunday afternoon, I'm having a bit of an epiphany about colanders, those metal bowls with holes for the water to drain out.
I'll be writing more about colanders and spirituality in my next post--but for now, I'm curious about the ordinary things that you are attracted to, love to touch, smell, taste, look at, buy, hang on your walls, or give as presents.
Remember Julie Andrews singing "These are a few of my fav-o-rite things" in The Sound of Music?
Raindrops on roses
Whiskers on kittens
Brown paper packages tied up with string....
If you want to play Favorite Things with me, please send me an email and let me know a few things that, as Betty said on the phone today, "make your heart sing." Thomas Moore says that the "ordinary things" that we love can be portals into our souls.
I'm liking that word, portal.
I'll be writing more about colanders and spirituality in my next post--but for now, I'm curious about the ordinary things that you are attracted to, love to touch, smell, taste, look at, buy, hang on your walls, or give as presents.
Remember Julie Andrews singing "These are a few of my fav-o-rite things" in The Sound of Music?
Raindrops on roses
Whiskers on kittens
Brown paper packages tied up with string....
If you want to play Favorite Things with me, please send me an email and let me know a few things that, as Betty said on the phone today, "make your heart sing." Thomas Moore says that the "ordinary things" that we love can be portals into our souls.
I'm liking that word, portal.
Rodeo in Seguin
Today I drove to Seguin to see Will and Veronica and friends in a real rodeo. I thought it started at 3:00, but as it turned out, it started at 5:00, so I wandered around downtown for a while.
In a thrift shop, I overheard two men talking about singing gospel music in a home for "All-Timers patients." The patients sing along, they said. "They can't remember what they just ate for lunch, but they can remember the words to them songs."
By the time I met the Pritchetts at five, it was almost time for the women's event. Veronica, her sister, and two friends were a team--and Nathan and Elena and I (along with Will and several other friends) got to watch all four of the women's roping events.
I stayed for the first two of the men's events, then decided to head home about 9:00--it was an hour's drive each way, the longest I've driven solo for a long time.
Thanks to the body work I've been doing with Gabi Marcus, I had no pain in my leg all day. (And to think that just a little over a week ago, I was considering knee surgery!)
Gabi is brilliant at determining the source of pain (mine originates in the lower back) and her Neuro-Kinetic Therapy is exactly what I needed. I can't explain how it works, but the results are remarkable--just as they were several years ago when she banished some nagging pains in my hands.
In a thrift shop, I overheard two men talking about singing gospel music in a home for "All-Timers patients." The patients sing along, they said. "They can't remember what they just ate for lunch, but they can remember the words to them songs."
By the time I met the Pritchetts at five, it was almost time for the women's event. Veronica, her sister, and two friends were a team--and Nathan and Elena and I (along with Will and several other friends) got to watch all four of the women's roping events.
I stayed for the first two of the men's events, then decided to head home about 9:00--it was an hour's drive each way, the longest I've driven solo for a long time.
Thanks to the body work I've been doing with Gabi Marcus, I had no pain in my leg all day. (And to think that just a little over a week ago, I was considering knee surgery!)
Gabi is brilliant at determining the source of pain (mine originates in the lower back) and her Neuro-Kinetic Therapy is exactly what I needed. I can't explain how it works, but the results are remarkable--just as they were several years ago when she banished some nagging pains in my hands.
 |
| I love this little boy! He came up and sat in my lap and asked if he could come to my house; "Just me, okay? Nobody else." We have a date on Thursday when they get back from the beach. |
 |
| Here's how you cool off on a hot day: Just pour your own and everybody else's water all over your head. |
 |
| Nathan riding Yancey. |
Saturday, June 28, 2014
"Never change"
Today is the 17th anniversary of my daughter, Day, and her husband, Tom. I find myself asking the cliched question: Where does the time go?
That's the way with time: it flies. We change. We get older. Anniversaries are days to look at the wedding pictures and think: How young we are were! Time has brought Day and Tom two adorable sons and they have a great marriage, reminiscent of the kind of marriage Lloyd and Carlene had, a friendly easy-going marriage.
They had a beautiful wedding in Washington, D.C. Both my parents, my brother, his daughter, and his then-wife were there. Four of my friends and their husbands were there. I have happy memories of that day!
Anniversaries are also sad reminders that some beloved people in the wedding photos are no longer here--Tom's father and grandmother and my daddy, Lloyd. In several pictures I am dancing with my daddy at the wedding reception and he and I are both smiling into the camera, into this day.
I remember seeing Day's father for the first time at the wedding after our divorce was final that same month. He and I walked into the wedding reception together, but not really. That was sad. Children must love it when their parents are still together for their weddings--as was the case last month when I went to Jane and Dillon's wedding in Chicago and saw framed pictures of their parents' wedding on the guest book table.
I remember the night of the rehearsal at Day's wedding when the parents were asked to give the young couple advice. I didn't say anything--I wish I had. Day's father said two words: "Never change."
Those were the words we all used to write in high school year books: "Stay as you are; never change." We meant it as a Mr. Rogers sort of compliment: we like you just the way you are.
Change and growth and loss, though, are parts of the circle of life. Change is unavoidable--even though we wish we could pick the parts that would change and the parts that would stay the same.
I wish I had said, "Enjoy the changes!" or "Enjoy the ways your partner changes, as you do your own" or something to that effect. I hadn't yet found the strength of my own voice to speak out loud at a wedding rehearsal. On the heels of divorce--I thought that I had no words of wisdom to offer. I had a grateful lump in my throat, too, seeing my beautiful daughter embarking on a marriage I knew would be a good one.
That's the way with time: it flies. We change. We get older. Anniversaries are days to look at the wedding pictures and think: How young we are were! Time has brought Day and Tom two adorable sons and they have a great marriage, reminiscent of the kind of marriage Lloyd and Carlene had, a friendly easy-going marriage.
They had a beautiful wedding in Washington, D.C. Both my parents, my brother, his daughter, and his then-wife were there. Four of my friends and their husbands were there. I have happy memories of that day!
Anniversaries are also sad reminders that some beloved people in the wedding photos are no longer here--Tom's father and grandmother and my daddy, Lloyd. In several pictures I am dancing with my daddy at the wedding reception and he and I are both smiling into the camera, into this day.
I remember seeing Day's father for the first time at the wedding after our divorce was final that same month. He and I walked into the wedding reception together, but not really. That was sad. Children must love it when their parents are still together for their weddings--as was the case last month when I went to Jane and Dillon's wedding in Chicago and saw framed pictures of their parents' wedding on the guest book table.
I remember the night of the rehearsal at Day's wedding when the parents were asked to give the young couple advice. I didn't say anything--I wish I had. Day's father said two words: "Never change."
Those were the words we all used to write in high school year books: "Stay as you are; never change." We meant it as a Mr. Rogers sort of compliment: we like you just the way you are.
Change and growth and loss, though, are parts of the circle of life. Change is unavoidable--even though we wish we could pick the parts that would change and the parts that would stay the same.
I wish I had said, "Enjoy the changes!" or "Enjoy the ways your partner changes, as you do your own" or something to that effect. I hadn't yet found the strength of my own voice to speak out loud at a wedding rehearsal. On the heels of divorce--I thought that I had no words of wisdom to offer. I had a grateful lump in my throat, too, seeing my beautiful daughter embarking on a marriage I knew would be a good one.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Chapter 3: Dreams--Thomas Moore
Our night dreams are "vehicles of transcendence, means of going beyond the self yet within the soul."
"The dream realm is like a dark, narrow passageway with curtains at each end. They connect... the land of the soul with the day world. The curtains don't open wide, so we only glimpse the two connected realms, but glimpses are always useful."
Dreams take us into the world of images, not coherent and logical stories. In dream landscapes, images often seem all mixed up and we may want simple dream dictionary interpretations: If you dream of a horse, it means so-and-so.
This chapter talks about the individual myths that come out at night to play--and there is no one-size-fits-all guide for understanding the messages coming from dreams.
"You have a Buddha in you and a Jesus and a liberating Moses. In you is the spirit of Thoreau and Dickenson, Socrates and Lao Tzu. Your own spirituality has so much vast potential...."
"Birth is one of the major themes that need not be taken only physically. You are born again and again and again."
"The dream realm is like a dark, narrow passageway with curtains at each end. They connect... the land of the soul with the day world. The curtains don't open wide, so we only glimpse the two connected realms, but glimpses are always useful."
Dreams take us into the world of images, not coherent and logical stories. In dream landscapes, images often seem all mixed up and we may want simple dream dictionary interpretations: If you dream of a horse, it means so-and-so.
This chapter talks about the individual myths that come out at night to play--and there is no one-size-fits-all guide for understanding the messages coming from dreams.
"You have a Buddha in you and a Jesus and a liberating Moses. In you is the spirit of Thoreau and Dickenson, Socrates and Lao Tzu. Your own spirituality has so much vast potential...."
"Birth is one of the major themes that need not be taken only physically. You are born again and again and again."
Collisions in the name of religion
A friend attended a memorial service last week for a good friend and neighbor. She hoped--as we all do when we go to memorial services--that words would be spoken that would recall memories of her friend that would give comfort to those grieving a good man's death. Instead, the preacher used the final five minutes to preach about Hell. It was, she said, "spiritual bullying," putting words into the mouth of her friend to which he never would have agreed.
When I was a young woman, my then-mother-in-law tapped on her King James Bible and said, "Women don't have needs, of course, but men do. If you don't give them what they need, they will find someone who will." She saw the signs of our unraveling marriage, but she had no curiosity about the reasons. In retrospect, that moment stands out as one in which "the lights came on" in my mind and illuminated this: I had married her son when I was too young to know that I, a mere girl, had needs.
When the U.S. first went into Iraq, a woman visiting from out of town reached for my hands across the table at a restaurant and before I knew what she was going to do, she began to pray: "Dear God, Bless President Bush as he leads our troops into battle." Politics aside, I didn't want to be drawn into a public, hand-holding prayer, implicitly agreeing with someone else's words. I've never liked "words being put into my mouth" by someone else.
A woman I know told her gay grandson that he was "going to hell" for his sexuality.
All religions have toxic spin-offs: people who bully, ignore, judge, and club other people over the head with their own agendas. The Tudors, a series that focuses on the reign of Henry VIII, shows Protestants and Catholics of the 16th century inflicting unimaginable horrors on each other, including beheadings and boiling the "heretics" in vats of oil.
While I know and love many beautiful Christian hymns and traditional gospel music, I cringe at the "theology" of hymns that include phrases like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Soldiers of the Cross." Those kinds of songs, in any religion, perpetuate a dangerous metaphor: armies on the march to conquer others.
"Holy wars" and kidnappings and torture are going on today all over the globe. Power-hungry people form cults that, in extreme cases, wind up with followers drinking poisoned Kool Aid. I like to imagine what could happen if all religions were demilitarized and de-politicized.
Thomas Moore, (psychotherapist and former monk) in A Religion of One's Own, appreciates traditional religions, his own and others. But he believes that a spiritual life does not have as its business control and manipulation. David Whyte, another of my teachers, says, "If people don't have houses of their own, they will try to take away yours."
Whether we choose to live in a room of an Already-Built House or to camp out on the fringes of town in a tent, Moore might say that we--ourselves, by our own lights--should decide what to keep inside.
When I was a young woman, my then-mother-in-law tapped on her King James Bible and said, "Women don't have needs, of course, but men do. If you don't give them what they need, they will find someone who will." She saw the signs of our unraveling marriage, but she had no curiosity about the reasons. In retrospect, that moment stands out as one in which "the lights came on" in my mind and illuminated this: I had married her son when I was too young to know that I, a mere girl, had needs.
When the U.S. first went into Iraq, a woman visiting from out of town reached for my hands across the table at a restaurant and before I knew what she was going to do, she began to pray: "Dear God, Bless President Bush as he leads our troops into battle." Politics aside, I didn't want to be drawn into a public, hand-holding prayer, implicitly agreeing with someone else's words. I've never liked "words being put into my mouth" by someone else.
A woman I know told her gay grandson that he was "going to hell" for his sexuality.
All religions have toxic spin-offs: people who bully, ignore, judge, and club other people over the head with their own agendas. The Tudors, a series that focuses on the reign of Henry VIII, shows Protestants and Catholics of the 16th century inflicting unimaginable horrors on each other, including beheadings and boiling the "heretics" in vats of oil.
While I know and love many beautiful Christian hymns and traditional gospel music, I cringe at the "theology" of hymns that include phrases like "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "Soldiers of the Cross." Those kinds of songs, in any religion, perpetuate a dangerous metaphor: armies on the march to conquer others.
"Holy wars" and kidnappings and torture are going on today all over the globe. Power-hungry people form cults that, in extreme cases, wind up with followers drinking poisoned Kool Aid. I like to imagine what could happen if all religions were demilitarized and de-politicized.
Thomas Moore, (psychotherapist and former monk) in A Religion of One's Own, appreciates traditional religions, his own and others. But he believes that a spiritual life does not have as its business control and manipulation. David Whyte, another of my teachers, says, "If people don't have houses of their own, they will try to take away yours."
Whether we choose to live in a room of an Already-Built House or to camp out on the fringes of town in a tent, Moore might say that we--ourselves, by our own lights--should decide what to keep inside.
"Another day at the office" texted by Will
The driver of the blue car was pushed a long way on the tracks before coming to a full stop. Fortunately, he walked away.
This is what my son does in his outdoor "office": cuts people out of crashed cars, dives into water to rescue people who've decided to ignore the Low Water signs, and climbs ladders high enough that it's a good thing his mama doesn't get to watch.
Chapter 2: A beautiful bowl, a letter in the mail, a gift in shiny paper
What I like about Thomas Moore is that he believes that everyday moments are infused with "the spiritual." Some people (like his famous friend, the late James Hillman) and his revered old uncle are "allergic" to formal religion, yet they live almost monk-like lives, attuned to nature or farming or a particular vocation. Others, like Thomas Moore himself, are still connected to a traditional faith, though not in rigid ways.
A mystic is one who devotes his or her life to the mysteries, someone who seems to get the Big Picture every day.
"Ordinary mystics" are people who gets flashes of the Big Picture through doing something that softens their boundaries with other people or with work. He suggests ways that we can have a more mystical awareness of beauty--and that while doing the things that bring beauty, we can "get lost" in it and feel more connected to the divine aspects of ourselves and other people:
To make a salad in a pretty wooden bowl and appreciate the beauty of the vegetables and the wood.
To write a letter and send it to someone in the mail.
To read poetry and look at paintings--or make them ourselves.
To wrap a present in beautiful paper and deliver it to someone on an ordinary day.
To offer hospitality to others and to enjoy their ways of being hospitable to you.
To plant flowers in a garden.
To volunteer your time to teach other people.
The list could go on and on--but the point is: to find something you love and do it with your whole heart, thereby participating in "the divine" part of yourself, the creative part.
Many mystics say "that you have divinity inside you; it is not only on the outside. If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against the mysterious creative forces. You can't know yourself completely, and you may realize... that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality. If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become? The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self."
A mystic is one who devotes his or her life to the mysteries, someone who seems to get the Big Picture every day.
"Ordinary mystics" are people who gets flashes of the Big Picture through doing something that softens their boundaries with other people or with work. He suggests ways that we can have a more mystical awareness of beauty--and that while doing the things that bring beauty, we can "get lost" in it and feel more connected to the divine aspects of ourselves and other people:
To make a salad in a pretty wooden bowl and appreciate the beauty of the vegetables and the wood.
To write a letter and send it to someone in the mail.
To read poetry and look at paintings--or make them ourselves.
To wrap a present in beautiful paper and deliver it to someone on an ordinary day.
To offer hospitality to others and to enjoy their ways of being hospitable to you.
To plant flowers in a garden.
To volunteer your time to teach other people.
The list could go on and on--but the point is: to find something you love and do it with your whole heart, thereby participating in "the divine" part of yourself, the creative part.
Many mystics say "that you have divinity inside you; it is not only on the outside. If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against the mysterious creative forces. You can't know yourself completely, and you may realize... that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality. If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become? The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self."
This dangerous-looking tool is called....
A mezzaluna: A half-moon knife.
Day told me about a chain of restaurants in Washington and New York called Chop't. We don't have these in Texas yet, so I did some research online and began watching videos on You Tube about chopped salads.
With a mezzaluna you can chop all the vegetables, nuts and fruits at once into small pieces, then mix in the dressing of your choice.
By cutting the vegetables, fruits and nuts into dime-size pieces, you get a wonderfully textured salad, more appealing to me than traditional salads of large leaves and chunks.
Until I ordered this mezzaluna from Amazon, I made a few using a regular knife. I would go to Trader Joes and buy a "salad kit" and add other ingredients and cup up everything small--or I'd bring home a salad from the Whole Foods salad bar and cut up everything in small pieces.
This kitchen tool makes all that so much easier. Herbs, cashews, boiled eggs, a leftover strawberry, avocado, kale, beets, celery--imagine the possibilities!
Thomas Moore: Chapter One
begins like this:
"The Lord is my shepherd" is a beautiful psalm, but people are tired of being sheep. Fewer are willing to do whatever the priest, rabbi, or minister tells them.... Fewer want to curtail their sexual interests because a celibate or a sexually repressed or obsessed cleric tells them to. Fewer women want to remain second-class observers to a male-hierarchy."
Parts of formal religion rankle many of us. And yet, Thomas Moore's book is about--forgive the cliche--not throwing the proverbial baby out with the proverbial bath water.
Once I told Carlene that I didn't believe some of the things I had grown up believing. Without a whiff of judgment or discomfort, she said, "That's like I drive a Buick and you drive a Mini Cooper." Or--in her famous philosophy of life: "People are different."
The roots of my childhood religion are twofold.
In my family, we went to the First Baptist Church twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday nights. Our variety of "Baptist-ness" was an easy-going and optimistic container for growing up in. We had stained glass windows, hymns we all knew by heart, and sermons that featured more love than fear.
The family I married into was a different strain of Baptist. I met my future-husband at Evergreen Baptist, one of those small wooden churches "out in the country" when my daddy was leading the music for a summer revival. Those folks served the best sugar-laden and fried foods anywhere. But the sermons could scare you to death with visions of Hell.
"The Lord is my shepherd" is a beautiful psalm, but people are tired of being sheep. Fewer are willing to do whatever the priest, rabbi, or minister tells them.... Fewer want to curtail their sexual interests because a celibate or a sexually repressed or obsessed cleric tells them to. Fewer women want to remain second-class observers to a male-hierarchy."
Parts of formal religion rankle many of us. And yet, Thomas Moore's book is about--forgive the cliche--not throwing the proverbial baby out with the proverbial bath water.
Once I told Carlene that I didn't believe some of the things I had grown up believing. Without a whiff of judgment or discomfort, she said, "That's like I drive a Buick and you drive a Mini Cooper." Or--in her famous philosophy of life: "People are different."
The roots of my childhood religion are twofold.
In my family, we went to the First Baptist Church twice on Sunday and again on Wednesday nights. Our variety of "Baptist-ness" was an easy-going and optimistic container for growing up in. We had stained glass windows, hymns we all knew by heart, and sermons that featured more love than fear.
The family I married into was a different strain of Baptist. I met my future-husband at Evergreen Baptist, one of those small wooden churches "out in the country" when my daddy was leading the music for a summer revival. Those folks served the best sugar-laden and fried foods anywhere. But the sermons could scare you to death with visions of Hell.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Rodeo Practice, Horses--and Camels,Oh My!
Yenna, Elena, and Jack the Pony
Arriving to watch Elena's mom and dad practice roping for Saturday's rodeo.
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| Dinner at El Chapparals |
Right there on the rodeo grounds were camels!
Diana's house story
The following email from Diana Storrs is one of the reasons I like to do this blog! You'll see why when you read it--and she gave me her permission to post it here. Thank you, Diana!
My dear friend,
I read your blog about tiny houses with great interest. None of the condominiums and houses I lived in during my marriage "fit". They were selected and purchased by my then husband, with one goal in mind, to keep buying up, to have the biggest, best property with an ocean view he could possibly find. I patiently packed and moved nine times during those thirty years, always making the next, "better" house as beautiful and artful as I could. Placing each expensively framed print in just the perfect spot, arranging the beautiful furniture with the best flow and feng shui possible. Looking back over those years, I see now that I was something of an ornament in those spaces, the trophy wife. I didn't realize it then and would never have thought it so, without having it brought to my attention in later years by discerning friends.
The final house from which I fled, was my husband's dream. A designer house with his coveted, designer ocean view. He sold it after I left, his dream crushed. My anguish and culpability now stay, for the most part, carefully shut behind a stout door in my heart. Troy, who is my heart, told me once that the "bank vault" of my heart had finally been overdrawn. All the personal recriminations of that time are a story for another day.
What I really wanted to share with you is that I found my perfect fit in a modest, two story home, built in 1941. I was only its second owner during its long life and I treasured it beyond all expectations. It sorely needed a loving touch when I bought it and I stood in one room after another and vowed to myself that someday, every view into every adjoining room would bring beauty, joy and peace to me first and then to anyone else who looked. I very nearly achieved that goal when fate stepped in and I walked away. I didn't flee this time. I departed graciously and gently.
I will always miss that home. Memories of my son, my friends and family, all of whom left a bit of themselves there, will forever remain with me. It was my first "fit" and like a first love, can never be replicated.
Keep blogging, Linda! I love it and you!
Diana
My dear friend,
I read your blog about tiny houses with great interest. None of the condominiums and houses I lived in during my marriage "fit". They were selected and purchased by my then husband, with one goal in mind, to keep buying up, to have the biggest, best property with an ocean view he could possibly find. I patiently packed and moved nine times during those thirty years, always making the next, "better" house as beautiful and artful as I could. Placing each expensively framed print in just the perfect spot, arranging the beautiful furniture with the best flow and feng shui possible. Looking back over those years, I see now that I was something of an ornament in those spaces, the trophy wife. I didn't realize it then and would never have thought it so, without having it brought to my attention in later years by discerning friends.
The final house from which I fled, was my husband's dream. A designer house with his coveted, designer ocean view. He sold it after I left, his dream crushed. My anguish and culpability now stay, for the most part, carefully shut behind a stout door in my heart. Troy, who is my heart, told me once that the "bank vault" of my heart had finally been overdrawn. All the personal recriminations of that time are a story for another day.
What I really wanted to share with you is that I found my perfect fit in a modest, two story home, built in 1941. I was only its second owner during its long life and I treasured it beyond all expectations. It sorely needed a loving touch when I bought it and I stood in one room after another and vowed to myself that someday, every view into every adjoining room would bring beauty, joy and peace to me first and then to anyone else who looked. I very nearly achieved that goal when fate stepped in and I walked away. I didn't flee this time. I departed graciously and gently.
I will always miss that home. Memories of my son, my friends and family, all of whom left a bit of themselves there, will forever remain with me. It was my first "fit" and like a first love, can never be replicated.
Keep blogging, Linda! I love it and you!
Diana
A Religion of One's Own, by Thomas Moore
In college, I don't remember reading Virginia Woolf's book, A Room of One's Own. What I do remember of it is summed up in the title and the one famous line--that every woman writer should have money and a room of her own.
Whoa! Whaaat??? Run that by me again?
This may or may not have happened, but it's the way I remember it: All of us in that sleepy summer classroom at St. Mary's University heard those words and reached for our cigarettes and lit up together, as if on cue, as if to inhale the words! Lighters clicked around the room. The room filled up with smoke. Something in our minds shattered that day.
It wasn't the "writer" part that struck me as so radical in the late Sixties; it was the "woman" part: that a woman should have money (which I didn't ) and a "room" of her own (which, already married at 18, I didn't). I took it literally--as was my style of taking things in those days--and began to fantasize about what a room of my own might look like, should I ever have one. Money--well, I'd get to that later maybe.
Since I had so early aligned myself with another person "til death did us part," I was already on a shared road. I was a passenger in a car someone else was driving. But a seed was planted in my imagination, one that would be dormant for a long time, then would grow like Jack's Beanstalk.
Last week, I checked out a new book by Thomas Moore (author of Care of the Soul)--A Religion of One's Own. Here's the epigraph of the first chapter: "Every manifestation of the sacred is important: every rite, every myth, every belief or divine figure." (Mircea Eliade).
I'm only a few pages in, but I'm intrigued enough to turn this blog space into a conversation with the book as I read it. I'd love to hear what you think--should you care to ride along with me, or beside me in your own car, or by foot or by train.
I'm starting to sound like Dr. Suess, and it's five in the morning, so I'll stop right here for now.
Whoa! Whaaat??? Run that by me again?
This may or may not have happened, but it's the way I remember it: All of us in that sleepy summer classroom at St. Mary's University heard those words and reached for our cigarettes and lit up together, as if on cue, as if to inhale the words! Lighters clicked around the room. The room filled up with smoke. Something in our minds shattered that day.
It wasn't the "writer" part that struck me as so radical in the late Sixties; it was the "woman" part: that a woman should have money (which I didn't ) and a "room" of her own (which, already married at 18, I didn't). I took it literally--as was my style of taking things in those days--and began to fantasize about what a room of my own might look like, should I ever have one. Money--well, I'd get to that later maybe.
Since I had so early aligned myself with another person "til death did us part," I was already on a shared road. I was a passenger in a car someone else was driving. But a seed was planted in my imagination, one that would be dormant for a long time, then would grow like Jack's Beanstalk.
Last week, I checked out a new book by Thomas Moore (author of Care of the Soul)--A Religion of One's Own. Here's the epigraph of the first chapter: "Every manifestation of the sacred is important: every rite, every myth, every belief or divine figure." (Mircea Eliade).
I'm only a few pages in, but I'm intrigued enough to turn this blog space into a conversation with the book as I read it. I'd love to hear what you think--should you care to ride along with me, or beside me in your own car, or by foot or by train.
I'm starting to sound like Dr. Suess, and it's five in the morning, so I'll stop right here for now.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Thirty Girls, a novel by Susan Minot
This novel is based on a true story--sadly one of many true stories about young children kidnapped by rebels in Uganda.
The book alternates between the stories of the two main characters, Jane and Esther:
"Esther is a precocious Ugandan teenager who is abducted from her Catholic boarding school by Joseph Kony's rebels and, along with twenty-nine of her classmates, forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities in the Lord's Resistance Army. Jane is a sensual, idealistic American writer often waylaid by romantic pleasures who has come to Africa hoping to regain her center after a devastating marriage." (from the flyleaf)
It's not clear whether or not Jane ever realizes her part in helping Esther heal. Jane is there to write the stories of these girls, but their one personal encounter is profound for Esther. Jane listens as Esther tells for the first time what has happened to her; Jane listens without judgment, she is careful not to interrupt Esther's story with wise words or advice. She simply listens, then moves close to Esther to touch her.
Only after telling the story is Esther able to weep and scream and bang her head and her body. She has finally broken the silence imposed on her for years. "My chest was breaking apart. A chunk split off and another wave of crying came and when I thought there was no more to break another piece would crack off. I could not breathe. I gasped at air...."
Afterwards: "Then my fist was limp beside my face and it was quiet. Some time passed, I don't know how long....The boulder in my throat was gone and instead I felt a space open in me. The space was soft....When I stood up I had a feeling of peace....The sound of everyone talking was like a pretty song. People were like bells, each one ringing in his or her own special sound...."
"After that day, when I see a person cry I see they are on their way to feeling better."
The book alternates between the stories of the two main characters, Jane and Esther:
"Esther is a precocious Ugandan teenager who is abducted from her Catholic boarding school by Joseph Kony's rebels and, along with twenty-nine of her classmates, forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities in the Lord's Resistance Army. Jane is a sensual, idealistic American writer often waylaid by romantic pleasures who has come to Africa hoping to regain her center after a devastating marriage." (from the flyleaf)
It's not clear whether or not Jane ever realizes her part in helping Esther heal. Jane is there to write the stories of these girls, but their one personal encounter is profound for Esther. Jane listens as Esther tells for the first time what has happened to her; Jane listens without judgment, she is careful not to interrupt Esther's story with wise words or advice. She simply listens, then moves close to Esther to touch her.
Only after telling the story is Esther able to weep and scream and bang her head and her body. She has finally broken the silence imposed on her for years. "My chest was breaking apart. A chunk split off and another wave of crying came and when I thought there was no more to break another piece would crack off. I could not breathe. I gasped at air...."
Afterwards: "Then my fist was limp beside my face and it was quiet. Some time passed, I don't know how long....The boulder in my throat was gone and instead I felt a space open in me. The space was soft....When I stood up I had a feeling of peace....The sound of everyone talking was like a pretty song. People were like bells, each one ringing in his or her own special sound...."
"After that day, when I see a person cry I see they are on their way to feeling better."
And then there are days like this...
I've been thinking a lot about what we all call busy-ness--and resolving to avoid using that word, to be more present to each moment as it comes, and yet I manage to keep getting caught in that net: keeping promises and doctor's appointments, keeping clothes and house and car clean enough to pass.
"What are you doing?" we ask each other. In reply, we either use the word, busy, or we recount all the things we've been doing--as if we get extra credit for accomplishing a lot.
On Sundays I am rarely busy and sometimes find myself prey to the rare feeling of loneliness. Solitude is one thing; loneliness is another.
Loneliness has its own anatomy. It creeps up. It strikes out of nowhere. It hulks around, menacing, throwing cold water on projects that just hours before were colored with energy and enthusiasm. It engenders self-pity for no particular reason. It convinces you that you are peripheral to everyone else's life--though you know deep down that this is not entirely true.
"But this is the kind of day you've been waiting for!" part of me says to the whining part of me that's wallowing, "A day to just relish spending the day with a good book!"
Sundays are usually the days when the door is open to Loneliness, when Happiness is elusive for a few hours, hidden behind a cloud. I know this kind of Sunday well, but I also know that by night Loneliness will have tired itself out and gone on down the road.
I tried to remember all the things I've been planning to do when a totally free day arrived: to start walking, to open the Vitamix book and try out some recipes, to organize photos on the computer, to clean out the storage room--as if every blank moment must be filled up.
Finally, I got up and rearranged a few things and organized drawers and hauled three plastic bags of things to Goodwill. Then I put things on the curb: a basket, an old rug, a screen, a bunch of magazines, some odd candle holders that I never use.
By morning, everything was gone from the curb, just as loneliness had vanished. By morning, I noticed that every crepe myrtle on the street is in full hot pink bloom and that birds are pecking around the yard looking for bread crumbs, and that Blue, the Mini, is covered with pink.
"What are you doing?" we ask each other. In reply, we either use the word, busy, or we recount all the things we've been doing--as if we get extra credit for accomplishing a lot.
On Sundays I am rarely busy and sometimes find myself prey to the rare feeling of loneliness. Solitude is one thing; loneliness is another.
Loneliness has its own anatomy. It creeps up. It strikes out of nowhere. It hulks around, menacing, throwing cold water on projects that just hours before were colored with energy and enthusiasm. It engenders self-pity for no particular reason. It convinces you that you are peripheral to everyone else's life--though you know deep down that this is not entirely true.
"But this is the kind of day you've been waiting for!" part of me says to the whining part of me that's wallowing, "A day to just relish spending the day with a good book!"
Sundays are usually the days when the door is open to Loneliness, when Happiness is elusive for a few hours, hidden behind a cloud. I know this kind of Sunday well, but I also know that by night Loneliness will have tired itself out and gone on down the road.
I tried to remember all the things I've been planning to do when a totally free day arrived: to start walking, to open the Vitamix book and try out some recipes, to organize photos on the computer, to clean out the storage room--as if every blank moment must be filled up.
Finally, I got up and rearranged a few things and organized drawers and hauled three plastic bags of things to Goodwill. Then I put things on the curb: a basket, an old rug, a screen, a bunch of magazines, some odd candle holders that I never use.
By morning, everything was gone from the curb, just as loneliness had vanished. By morning, I noticed that every crepe myrtle on the street is in full hot pink bloom and that birds are pecking around the yard looking for bread crumbs, and that Blue, the Mini, is covered with pink.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Two Texas Day-Trips
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| On Thursday, Cindy and I drove to Lampassas, a small town north of Johnson City, to visit her brother Ron. Here they are in front of one of Lampassas' downtown murals. |
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| On Saturday, I drove to Canyon Lake, to celebrate Sharon's husband's birthday: 86-and-a half! |
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| Diana (from Minnesota) and Ben (from Texas) are practically newly-weds |
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| Sharon, Linda, and Diana in Sharon's inspiring garden. In my next lifetime, I'm ordering a Green Thumb like Sharon's! |
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Sharon and Van have just celebrated their 41st anniversary and planning a celebratory trip to Hawaii in December! |
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Tiny: A Story About Living Small
"A house is basically a self-portrait," said someone in the film, Tiny.
I've always loved looking at and photographing small houses, even abandoned ones, even falling-down ones. At a time in my life when the house I lived in wasn't a fit, I wrote a book called Women and Houses. I never published it, but the manuscript got me into the Breadloaf Writing Conference.
The book's quotations included this one by Winston Churchill: "We shape our houses, and afterwards, our houses shape us."
When I was living in that house, I collected miniature houses: clay and wood and fabric ones, bird houses, doll houses, charms.
When I was living that house, I used to love looking inside the open windows of other people's houses, especially at night, when other kinds of lives were framed in open windows. The urge to glance into other people's windows (passing by, not going up close like a Peeping Tom) is so common it has a name: crystoscopophilia.
The question of houses and what they mean has always intrigued me. What is home? What is beauty? What is comfort? And--what do we really want to do in houses? These questions are beautifully addressed in the film (on Netflix), Tiny: A Story About Living Small. I watched the hour-long film and smiled the entire time I was watching it.
I live in the "cottage district" of Alamo Heights--and my house is one of the smallest ones--about 1000 square feet. It fits perfectly and I love every square inch of it. Behind my house is a garage apartment where I lead writing groups. If--back when I was living in a house and a marriage that wasn't a fit for me--I had seen this house, this life, this space for writing, I would have said, "That is it, that is exactly it."
I lived here first as a renter. After a couple of years, my parents bought the house and gave it to me as a Christmas present--and I was euphoric! Once it was mine, I put in wood floors, added a screened-in porch, updated the orange and avocado kitchen. Year by year, as I could afford it, I've turned it into a place that fits like Goldilocks' bed, just right.
The houses in the film are about 125 square feet--and simply beautiful. The couple who made the film also built the house--for $26,000. Included in the documentary are short interviews with other Tiny-Housers; it's fascinating to see what people can do with spaces the size of my bedroom. The ceilings are high, and sleeping spaces are always in a loft.
This is a not a project fit for everyone--me, for example. To actually build a house with my own hands, to have only a shower and a compost toilet, to use a ladder to get to bed: these are not ingredients in my personal fantasy life. But I can imagine, if I were younger and proficient in building, I might like a tiny house on wheels for a second home.
Zoning is such that you can't just build a tiny house and plop it down anywhere; you have to abide by building codes. If the house is built on wheels, it can sneak by--because it's considered a temporary structure.
The Tiny House movement is growing. Books like The Big Tiny, a Memoir remind me of the days in the 70s when Joy and I pored over books about hand-made houses--houses built with reclaimed lumber and stained glass windows. If you go to Tiny Houses on the Internet, you'll find great photos and blogs by architects and amateurs who have chosen to go small for a variety of reasons. Some downsize to the extreme for ecological reasons; some want to challenge the idea that bigger is better; some say that feel they are living larger by living smaller.
I've always loved looking at and photographing small houses, even abandoned ones, even falling-down ones. At a time in my life when the house I lived in wasn't a fit, I wrote a book called Women and Houses. I never published it, but the manuscript got me into the Breadloaf Writing Conference.
The book's quotations included this one by Winston Churchill: "We shape our houses, and afterwards, our houses shape us."
When I was living in that house, I collected miniature houses: clay and wood and fabric ones, bird houses, doll houses, charms.
When I was living that house, I used to love looking inside the open windows of other people's houses, especially at night, when other kinds of lives were framed in open windows. The urge to glance into other people's windows (passing by, not going up close like a Peeping Tom) is so common it has a name: crystoscopophilia.
The question of houses and what they mean has always intrigued me. What is home? What is beauty? What is comfort? And--what do we really want to do in houses? These questions are beautifully addressed in the film (on Netflix), Tiny: A Story About Living Small. I watched the hour-long film and smiled the entire time I was watching it.
I live in the "cottage district" of Alamo Heights--and my house is one of the smallest ones--about 1000 square feet. It fits perfectly and I love every square inch of it. Behind my house is a garage apartment where I lead writing groups. If--back when I was living in a house and a marriage that wasn't a fit for me--I had seen this house, this life, this space for writing, I would have said, "That is it, that is exactly it."
I lived here first as a renter. After a couple of years, my parents bought the house and gave it to me as a Christmas present--and I was euphoric! Once it was mine, I put in wood floors, added a screened-in porch, updated the orange and avocado kitchen. Year by year, as I could afford it, I've turned it into a place that fits like Goldilocks' bed, just right.
The houses in the film are about 125 square feet--and simply beautiful. The couple who made the film also built the house--for $26,000. Included in the documentary are short interviews with other Tiny-Housers; it's fascinating to see what people can do with spaces the size of my bedroom. The ceilings are high, and sleeping spaces are always in a loft.
This is a not a project fit for everyone--me, for example. To actually build a house with my own hands, to have only a shower and a compost toilet, to use a ladder to get to bed: these are not ingredients in my personal fantasy life. But I can imagine, if I were younger and proficient in building, I might like a tiny house on wheels for a second home.
Zoning is such that you can't just build a tiny house and plop it down anywhere; you have to abide by building codes. If the house is built on wheels, it can sneak by--because it's considered a temporary structure.
The Tiny House movement is growing. Books like The Big Tiny, a Memoir remind me of the days in the 70s when Joy and I pored over books about hand-made houses--houses built with reclaimed lumber and stained glass windows. If you go to Tiny Houses on the Internet, you'll find great photos and blogs by architects and amateurs who have chosen to go small for a variety of reasons. Some downsize to the extreme for ecological reasons; some want to challenge the idea that bigger is better; some say that feel they are living larger by living smaller.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Serving Life
I just watched an unforgettable documentary on Netflix: a story of prisoners in Angola Penitentiary who become hospice volunteers.
These young men look like strong, healthy basketball players, but they are lifers, sitting beside the dying in prison and doing everything they can to make their deaths less lonely.
The ones chosen for this work are good men who did bad things. By the end of the film, you see them doing in prison what--to me--must be the hardest job of all, and doing it with love and respect for their fellow inmates.
I felt drawn in to their individual stories: the crimes that got them there in the first place, their insistence on taking responsibility for their actions, and their dedication to changing their lives while serving life sentences. Drug addiction is a common denominator, abandonment by their parents another. But one man--who probably represents many--had a "good childhood" and still "took the wrong road."
"My daddy always told me 'Don't make your bed hard,' but I made my bed hard," one said.
Through volunteering, some learn empathy for the first time. "That could be me lying in that bed," they say.
If young people could have an experience of volunteer training and work before they take the wrong roads, what a different world it would be!
These young men look like strong, healthy basketball players, but they are lifers, sitting beside the dying in prison and doing everything they can to make their deaths less lonely.
The ones chosen for this work are good men who did bad things. By the end of the film, you see them doing in prison what--to me--must be the hardest job of all, and doing it with love and respect for their fellow inmates.
I felt drawn in to their individual stories: the crimes that got them there in the first place, their insistence on taking responsibility for their actions, and their dedication to changing their lives while serving life sentences. Drug addiction is a common denominator, abandonment by their parents another. But one man--who probably represents many--had a "good childhood" and still "took the wrong road."
"My daddy always told me 'Don't make your bed hard,' but I made my bed hard," one said.
Through volunteering, some learn empathy for the first time. "That could be me lying in that bed," they say.
If young people could have an experience of volunteer training and work before they take the wrong roads, what a different world it would be!
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Getting to keep these knees!
As I told the radiologist who did my knees and back, I love looking at x-rays! I always linger and try to steal glances into the suitcases going through security, too.
Anyway, being in a waiting room with limping people, I felt downright spritely today! The pain in my legs: I have some exercises and plans for dealing with it. It's coming not from my knees (just as I'd been told by others) but from my lower back. At least now I have some pictures to show off--without needing a cane or a walker. There's a BIT of scoliosis and some disk issues, but not severe.
These are the foods Dr. Fuhrman (a doctor and nutritionist I watched on PBS) says we all need to eat every day:
G: Green tea, green vegetables
O: Onions
M: Mushrooms
B: Beans and berries
S: Seeds
I had tempura onions and salad for lunch at Fujiya Gardens and am about to make myself a cup of green tea to celebrate and start my new regimen of exercises.
Whew! No surgery after all!
I met with a very kind and "old school"orthopedic surgeon today who said that my knees are no worse than anyone else's my age--and that the only place I have "no cartilage" is in my knee CAP of the OTHER knee--which is why I cannot and never will be able to squat properly, Carlene-fashion.
I can give up squatting, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!
As for the pain while driving, he gave me large doses of ibuprofen for driving days--and is sending me a report from this exam in the mail, including certain exercises for the back, which is actually where the problem is.
I'll be doing shorter drives for a while and being careful how and what I lift and doing prescribed exercises, yoga and possibly pilates.
This is one of those do-it-yourself things, turns out, and I'm hugely relieved that surgery is not in my summer plans.
I can give up squatting, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!
As for the pain while driving, he gave me large doses of ibuprofen for driving days--and is sending me a report from this exam in the mail, including certain exercises for the back, which is actually where the problem is.
I'll be doing shorter drives for a while and being careful how and what I lift and doing prescribed exercises, yoga and possibly pilates.
This is one of those do-it-yourself things, turns out, and I'm hugely relieved that surgery is not in my summer plans.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Keys and Knees
On Saturday night, after writing group, I met three friends at The Arcade for dinner. As usual, I walked in with my keys in my hand, not taking the time to put them in my pocket book. I put them on the table, had dinner, then walked out without remembering to pick them up.
They were--and still are not--anywhere to be found. Bummer! I've been thinking; now I have to spend $250 to get new keys!
Later, this afternoon, my obsession about keys was eclipsed by a bit of worry about knees.
I got a call this afternoon with results of my MRI--and it turns out I have "significant osteoarthritis" in my right knee ("Bone on bone, no cartilage") alone with a ganglia cyst, whatever that is. Long story short, I'll be calling a knee surgeon tomorrow and making a decision: whether to have a complete or partial knee replacement or get some injections to postpone the inevitable surgery.
New keys and new knees in one month--that may be the title of my post one of these days.
In the meanwhile, I'm almost relieved--to at least have a name for what's been going on. When I know what to call something, it's a lot easier to know what to do about it.
They were--and still are not--anywhere to be found. Bummer! I've been thinking; now I have to spend $250 to get new keys!
Later, this afternoon, my obsession about keys was eclipsed by a bit of worry about knees.
I got a call this afternoon with results of my MRI--and it turns out I have "significant osteoarthritis" in my right knee ("Bone on bone, no cartilage") alone with a ganglia cyst, whatever that is. Long story short, I'll be calling a knee surgeon tomorrow and making a decision: whether to have a complete or partial knee replacement or get some injections to postpone the inevitable surgery.
New keys and new knees in one month--that may be the title of my post one of these days.
In the meanwhile, I'm almost relieved--to at least have a name for what's been going on. When I know what to call something, it's a lot easier to know what to do about it.
Lamb In His Bosom
Reading this historical novel, Lamb in His Bosom, has been as close as I've ever come to meeting my own ancestors, farm people of strong constitutions and hard work. The book is set in the 1800s, so these characters belong to the generation of the grandparents of my grandparents, and they live in swampy, flat, piney woods south Georgia, as did many of my people.
I read the spoken accents and colloquial expressions of these characters, the roots of my own speech. I read "Oh Law" and "Little Fellers" and "Crazy as a bat" and other expressions used by the Carver family and they sound familiar to my ear.
With no birth control, women in the novel give birth at home, as my grandmother Rose did. These characters had so many children that by the end of their childbearing years, they seemed old and worn out. Cean's mother--by the time she was sixty--was crippled, demented, and blind, and she had to be carried from room to room by her children. Cean, the main character, gives birth to fifteen children, including a set of stillborn twin boys.
Today we use the word, busy, to account for our luxurious choices: to have lunch with a friend, to watch a Spurs game or a movie, to take this trip or that trip. But our busy-ness is a choice. We buy our shoes and clothes ready made--while women like the protagonist, Cean, planted with her husband in the fields, stayed up at night to tend to sick children by candlelight, spun the cloth, then made the clothes for her children, her husband, and herself. Once she was struck by a rattlesnake, then picked it up and killed it. Once, she had to watch her husband kill her favorite calf because they needed meat and leather for shoes. They made medicines out of herbs and stitched up broken skin with sewing thread.
While reading this book in the luxury of my air-conditioned house, I've been struck by the comparative ease of my life and my good fortune to be born in the 1940s instead of the 1840s--when children were "taught their letters" by their mothers but who could, presumably, read only the basics.
To ride an oxcart to the coast to trade what little they had for what little they needed was a privilege of the men only. Women and children stayed home, tending the crops and the house. The world of women was very small--encompassing, in Cean's case, only the seven miles between her house and the house of her parents. There's no talk of friendship, no libraries, no schools, no doctors, and no grocery stores.
These people were not overly expressive of their affection for each other, but they showed up for each other to help get work done and babies delivered. Love was demonstrated, but not talked about. Children died, and their parents grieved. Parents died, and their children grieved. They sang the same hymns that I grew up hearing and singing and playing on the piano, one of which provides the title for the book.
When I was considering divorce, I remember that Betty and I asked Mimi, my grandmother, "Did you and Papa have to work on your marriage?"
"Oh yes, Honey, we had to get up early and milk the cows and gather the eggs and make the butter and kill the chickens. "
Working ON a marriage was a concept she didn't get. That's a modern dilemma--one that people have time to think about when they aren't so busy surviving.
I read the spoken accents and colloquial expressions of these characters, the roots of my own speech. I read "Oh Law" and "Little Fellers" and "Crazy as a bat" and other expressions used by the Carver family and they sound familiar to my ear.
With no birth control, women in the novel give birth at home, as my grandmother Rose did. These characters had so many children that by the end of their childbearing years, they seemed old and worn out. Cean's mother--by the time she was sixty--was crippled, demented, and blind, and she had to be carried from room to room by her children. Cean, the main character, gives birth to fifteen children, including a set of stillborn twin boys.
Today we use the word, busy, to account for our luxurious choices: to have lunch with a friend, to watch a Spurs game or a movie, to take this trip or that trip. But our busy-ness is a choice. We buy our shoes and clothes ready made--while women like the protagonist, Cean, planted with her husband in the fields, stayed up at night to tend to sick children by candlelight, spun the cloth, then made the clothes for her children, her husband, and herself. Once she was struck by a rattlesnake, then picked it up and killed it. Once, she had to watch her husband kill her favorite calf because they needed meat and leather for shoes. They made medicines out of herbs and stitched up broken skin with sewing thread.
While reading this book in the luxury of my air-conditioned house, I've been struck by the comparative ease of my life and my good fortune to be born in the 1940s instead of the 1840s--when children were "taught their letters" by their mothers but who could, presumably, read only the basics.
To ride an oxcart to the coast to trade what little they had for what little they needed was a privilege of the men only. Women and children stayed home, tending the crops and the house. The world of women was very small--encompassing, in Cean's case, only the seven miles between her house and the house of her parents. There's no talk of friendship, no libraries, no schools, no doctors, and no grocery stores.
These people were not overly expressive of their affection for each other, but they showed up for each other to help get work done and babies delivered. Love was demonstrated, but not talked about. Children died, and their parents grieved. Parents died, and their children grieved. They sang the same hymns that I grew up hearing and singing and playing on the piano, one of which provides the title for the book.
When I was considering divorce, I remember that Betty and I asked Mimi, my grandmother, "Did you and Papa have to work on your marriage?"
"Oh yes, Honey, we had to get up early and milk the cows and gather the eggs and make the butter and kill the chickens. "
Working ON a marriage was a concept she didn't get. That's a modern dilemma--one that people have time to think about when they aren't so busy surviving.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Spurs and Pasta
Watching the Spurs play and eating Nellie's pasta--the recipe I posted a few days ago!
The pasta is delicious, I must say!
I'd never started a recipe with raw linguine in the pot with vegetables, so I was dubious--but it turns out just great. I made the whole recipe--wish I'd invited company over to share.
The pasta is delicious, I must say!
I'd never started a recipe with raw linguine in the pot with vegetables, so I was dubious--but it turns out just great. I made the whole recipe--wish I'd invited company over to share.
Tom and Will
When I think of good fathers, I think of my son, Will, and my son-in-law, Tom.
Here's Will at Christmas with his family. He loves being a dad.
Since this picture was taken, little Skippy (the puppy in Nathan's arms) made an unfortunate meeting with truck tires ] and has had a successful surgery to repair his broken hip.
Yesterday, Nathan said Will was his "best buddy in the world."
Elena threw something on the floor, and Will said, "No Mam!" and she said, "I want to say I sorry."
After she apologized, she said, "Is it funny again now?
Here's the Leary family in Falls Church--last summer when they were visiting us in Texas. Tom and Day met when Day went to a Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C., senior year in college.
Tom coaches the boys in sports and supports Jackson and Marcus in whatever they choose to do.
Not only does he bear an uncanny resemblance to my daddy when he was young (pictures show that they could be brothers!) but--like Lloyd, he always has an arm around his Day and the boys.
Jackson is about to graduate from sixth grade.
Marcus has an excellent new music teacher this year in third grade. On concert day, he woke up at five in the morning so excited about what he'd be wearing. He asked his parents, "What are you most excited about in my concert?"
Since this picture was taken, little Skippy (the puppy in Nathan's arms) made an unfortunate meeting with truck tires ] and has had a successful surgery to repair his broken hip.
Yesterday, Nathan said Will was his "best buddy in the world."
Elena threw something on the floor, and Will said, "No Mam!" and she said, "I want to say I sorry."
After she apologized, she said, "Is it funny again now?
Tom coaches the boys in sports and supports Jackson and Marcus in whatever they choose to do.
Not only does he bear an uncanny resemblance to my daddy when he was young (pictures show that they could be brothers!) but--like Lloyd, he always has an arm around his Day and the boys.
Jackson is about to graduate from sixth grade.
Marcus has an excellent new music teacher this year in third grade. On concert day, he woke up at five in the morning so excited about what he'd be wearing. He asked his parents, "What are you most excited about in my concert?"
A climate of kindness....
These three stanzas are part of a blessing for fathers in his book, To Bless The Space Between Us:
For a Father
The longer we live,
The more of your presence
We find, laid down,
Weave upon weave
Within our lives.
The quiet constancy of your gentleness
Drew no attention to itself,
Yet filled our home
With a climate of kindness
Where each mind felt free
To seek its own direction.
As the fields of distance
Opened inside childhood,
Your presence was a sheltering tree
Where our fledgling hearts could rest....
For a Father
The longer we live,
The more of your presence
We find, laid down,
Weave upon weave
Within our lives.
The quiet constancy of your gentleness
Drew no attention to itself,
Yet filled our home
With a climate of kindness
Where each mind felt free
To seek its own direction.
As the fields of distance
Opened inside childhood,
Your presence was a sheltering tree
Where our fledgling hearts could rest....
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Father's Day
My daddy, Lloyd Harris, was and forever will be my model of fatherhood. He was loving, protective, kind, and generous. In almost every picture, his arm is wrapped around the rest of us--just as he wrapped his entire life around the people he loved.
 |
| 1951 just after Bob was born |
 |
| 1967: my wedding day |
 |
| Day, Granddaddy Lloyd, and Will |
 |
| 1996: Will's senior year of high school |
 |
| 2001: meeting Baby Jackson in Virginia |
 |
| 1972: Granddaddy Lloyd with Baby Day |
NPR.org - Charles Wright: The Contemplative Poet Laureate
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Friday, June 13, 2014
Lamb In His Bosom, a novel by Caroline Miller
Margaret Mitchell, the second Georgia writer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for a novel, wrote this to the first Georgia writer to win it, Caroline Miller:
"Your book is undoubtedly the greatest that ever came out of the South about Southern people, and it is my favorite book."
Sinclair Lewis wrote, "There is a sense of beauty here."
If I made a movie based on this book, I'd choose spare drumming as a sound track, if any. The book is set in "Georgy"--and the language captures the simple rhythm of the speech of these Southern people in the early 1800s.
I'm pausing at the halfway point, totally absorbed in this story, the language, and the lyrical descriptions of the natural world of Georgia, my home state.
When Cean, the main character, hears that her sister-in-law is leaving her brother, Lias, Cean is unable to capture her feelings in words:
Cean's heart fell: a parting is sadder than a death, Ma always said, for two people are dead to one another and yet go on living--as though you might cleave a body in twain and set the severed halves apart and leave them to bleed helplessly for one another. A parting breaks the sacredest vow that any woman or man can make....til death do us part, so help me Godamighty.
How can Caroline Miller write so evocatively about a time a hundred years before she was born? I keep wondering.
She takes the reader into the interior world of the "womenfolks" and the "menfolks" and weaves an unforgettable tapestry of a time and a place.
"Your book is undoubtedly the greatest that ever came out of the South about Southern people, and it is my favorite book."
Sinclair Lewis wrote, "There is a sense of beauty here."
If I made a movie based on this book, I'd choose spare drumming as a sound track, if any. The book is set in "Georgy"--and the language captures the simple rhythm of the speech of these Southern people in the early 1800s.
I'm pausing at the halfway point, totally absorbed in this story, the language, and the lyrical descriptions of the natural world of Georgia, my home state.
When Cean, the main character, hears that her sister-in-law is leaving her brother, Lias, Cean is unable to capture her feelings in words:
Cean's heart fell: a parting is sadder than a death, Ma always said, for two people are dead to one another and yet go on living--as though you might cleave a body in twain and set the severed halves apart and leave them to bleed helplessly for one another. A parting breaks the sacredest vow that any woman or man can make....til death do us part, so help me Godamighty.
How can Caroline Miller write so evocatively about a time a hundred years before she was born? I keep wondering.
She takes the reader into the interior world of the "womenfolks" and the "menfolks" and weaves an unforgettable tapestry of a time and a place.
Today is the Sleep and Read Day
Elena was here for twelve hours yesterday--long enough for us to go to the mall and buy matching blue Crocs and amble around with her in the fire truck stroller you can rent at North Star; long enough for me to make two pies while she napped; long enough for us to meet Freda at the pool--which was Elena's favorite thing. "Today was a good day!" she said. It was a wonderful day--and today I'm just going to re-charge my battery.
I loved watching the little kids introducing themselves to each other in the baby pool. One little guy kept retrieving an octopus and bringing it to Elena. Is this the new Two Is the New Twelve, or what?
Little kids just walk up to you and say, "Hi, my name is...." and you're instantly friends for five minutes. Little kids find a grandmother in the baby pool something of a novelty, I think--and they want to show you what they can do, just as they do with their own grandmothers.
I have new chairs on the porch. "I love your new chairs, Yenna!" she said. "Pretty!" Then she looked in my closet, as she always does, just in case there's something for her. She saw a caftan she'd never seen before. "Pretty! Is this new? Where you got it?"
This morning, my kitchen is strewn with pots and pans and flecks of whipped cream on the back splash and I was awake half the night with Full Moon energy--so I'm ignoring all the things I probably should do and going back to bed with LAMB IN HIS BOSOM, a Pulitzer Prize winning book by Georgia writer, Caroline Miller. My friend Deb is writing her dissertation on Caroline Miller and Carlene just read the book last week and called to say I should read it.
Then I'm going to go get an onion so I can make Nellie's pasta recipe. I changed my screensaver to bright yellow and poked around on Facebook where I found some long lost cousins and that's about all I can say for myself this morning--just settling in for a long summer's nap. This Texas heat was broken last night by a nice storm--but knowing SA, we'll return to the sweltering heat by noon.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Sherry's blog: Writing For Self Discovery
http://writingforselfdiscovery.com
This is Sherry's blog--Diana's friend in Bali.
This is Sherry's blog--Diana's friend in Bali.
A correspondence between Diana Storrs and her friend Sherry
I haven't met Sherry--but Diana is a good friend and a member of my Sunday writing group. Last week she read this exchange between her and her best friend. I liked it so much I asked if I could post it.
In September of 2011, Sherry invited Diana to come to Bali to spend three months with her:
"It's a magical place! We could rent a villa and have massages (about $10 for an hour and a half) and flower petal baths (soooo cheap) and eat the most magnificent food for pennies, and take yoga at the yoga barn (fabulous thatched roof open air platform overlooking the rice paddies..."
Diana thought about her offer for a while and then responded with this email:
Dear friend,
I have been reflecting...and wanted to share my thoughts with you...When I first read your plan, the part of me that is still that 18-year-old native Minnesota girl wanted to shout, "Yes! An adventure with Sherry?! Where do I sign up?" But, my friend, I have not yet evolved to the plane you occupy.
This Bali chapter is so purely "Sherry." Our lives may have taken different paths, but we will know each other. That you would ask me and that I would consider it attests to that mutual knowledge. I'm thrilled for you!
Here are some thoughts I jotted down:
You're a leaper. I'm a plodder.
You're a dreamer. I'm a realist.
You define your space. I'm defined by my space.
You are a visionary. I'm a pragmatist.
You have the soul of a poet, an artist, and a muse. I'm a bean counter.
You are a charmer. I can be charming.
Your spirit is like a hummingbird. My spirit lives inside a box inside a box inside a box.
You are watched. I watch.
You have one toe touching a branch. I'm deeply rooted.
You touch the face of God. I kneel before Him.
You sing. I pray.
You fly guided by the stars. I navigate with a compass.
You fly. I feed the pilot.
You continue to fly. I became grounded.
You are the incense. I light the incense---and sneeze!
You will always be my best friend.
Diana
On September 13th, Sherry wrote back:
Wow, girlfriend! I think I need to take writing classes from you! However, you have it all backwards...I have not evolved to the plane you occupy. I'm still mentally 18 believing I can do it all, be it all, have it all, experience it all. You are the one who has made peace with life and can be content with what is....The fact that you gave it a moment of consideration thrilled me to the core, to the marrow! Thank you for that. If I am to have a travel companion, one will manifest....
Thank you for the poetic rendering of who we are. I will print it and keep it to remind myself of how others probably see me...or at least one another...and use it as a guide for all the areas that would benefit from refinement.
Your BFF Sherry
In September of 2011, Sherry invited Diana to come to Bali to spend three months with her:
"It's a magical place! We could rent a villa and have massages (about $10 for an hour and a half) and flower petal baths (soooo cheap) and eat the most magnificent food for pennies, and take yoga at the yoga barn (fabulous thatched roof open air platform overlooking the rice paddies..."
Diana thought about her offer for a while and then responded with this email:
Dear friend,
I have been reflecting...and wanted to share my thoughts with you...When I first read your plan, the part of me that is still that 18-year-old native Minnesota girl wanted to shout, "Yes! An adventure with Sherry?! Where do I sign up?" But, my friend, I have not yet evolved to the plane you occupy.
This Bali chapter is so purely "Sherry." Our lives may have taken different paths, but we will know each other. That you would ask me and that I would consider it attests to that mutual knowledge. I'm thrilled for you!
Here are some thoughts I jotted down:
You're a leaper. I'm a plodder.
You're a dreamer. I'm a realist.
You define your space. I'm defined by my space.
You are a visionary. I'm a pragmatist.
You have the soul of a poet, an artist, and a muse. I'm a bean counter.
You are a charmer. I can be charming.
Your spirit is like a hummingbird. My spirit lives inside a box inside a box inside a box.
You are watched. I watch.
You have one toe touching a branch. I'm deeply rooted.
You touch the face of God. I kneel before Him.
You sing. I pray.
You fly guided by the stars. I navigate with a compass.
You fly. I feed the pilot.
You continue to fly. I became grounded.
You are the incense. I light the incense---and sneeze!
You will always be my best friend.
Diana
On September 13th, Sherry wrote back:
Wow, girlfriend! I think I need to take writing classes from you! However, you have it all backwards...I have not evolved to the plane you occupy. I'm still mentally 18 believing I can do it all, be it all, have it all, experience it all. You are the one who has made peace with life and can be content with what is....The fact that you gave it a moment of consideration thrilled me to the core, to the marrow! Thank you for that. If I am to have a travel companion, one will manifest....
Thank you for the poetic rendering of who we are. I will print it and keep it to remind myself of how others probably see me...or at least one another...and use it as a guide for all the areas that would benefit from refinement.
Your BFF Sherry
Friday, June 6, 2014
Traveling At Home
When I travel, I always want to bring home certain tastes from the road. Even while enjoying a delicious cup of tea or a bowl of unusual soup, I'm imagining recreating the experience back home.
My new mantra is "I don't want to be busy all the time; I want to slow down and be present in the moments." I've decided to start with brewing really good tea, not the usual Lipton varieties.
I'm remembering a great iced tea that Janet and I had at one of the cafes at the Chicago Art Institute, a simple black tea with some unidentifiable "notes" going on. I asked our waitress, and she said it was a Rare Tea Cellar tea with citrus; I wrote down the name of it so I could look for it in Texas. We also drank a cream soda with ice cream in it that tasted like the Dreamsicles I loved as a child.
I'm remembering the delightful Caribbean pumpkin soup we had at The Lucky Platter--a mix of spices, peppers, pureed pumpkin and bananas. While we were unable to get the actual secret recipe, the chef named the ingredients and we're now on a search for a version of the recipe that will replicate the experience of a memorable dinner in a cafe Janet and her family have enjoyed for over twenty years.
I'm remembering some fruity non-alcoholic cocktails we enjoyed as we overlooked Chicago from the 96th floor of the Hancock building. They were made of fresh fruits--just delicious!
Part of the experience of drinking or eating something new is the ambience of the place where we meet it, how we felt, the conversations at the table. Like traveling eyes, the palette wakes up on a trip. We take pictures, buy postcards and souvenirs, and search for recipes and spices that will bring back the Happy-Travel moments.
At the airport, returning home, I bought a Little Debbie. I wasn't ready for the party to end, and I reached for a little comfort food of negligible nutritional value (okay, none!). Eating it, I was taken back to Lawrenceville, Georgia, the "new" town to which we moved when I was sixteen. We were living in a rented house and I'd not yet made close friends. My parents started buying boxes of Little Debbies and orange sherbet, and we ate them at the kitchen table just before bedtime. Sugar packaged in little cellophane bags--creamy white icing between two gooey oatmeal cookies--made those nights seem happier, a little festive.
I have in a wooden recipe box hand-written recipes that my parents and their friends gave me in 1967 for wedding presents. I have Melba's Brunswick stew;Elizabeth's French coconut pie; my daddy's recipe for spaghetti sauce ("Cut up the onions real good so you won't get a belly ache"); Carlene's Nabisco pie; and my former mother-in-law's recipe for butter beans with ham hock and just a touch of sugar "to round out the flavor."
When I got Nellie's recipe for pasta this morning, I remembered our days of leisurely walking the streets of Florence ten years ago, then meeting on the balcony each night with ingredients for bruschetta When we share recipes, we're getting as close as we can get to sharing a meal with the people we love. Does anything bring back memories like food?
Every time I eat a Little Debbie, I'm back home in Georgia with my family.
Every time I eat anything Italian, I'm in Florence with Nellie.
Now--every time I drink really good tea (bought some at Teavana this morning)--I'll get a flash of a great week with friends in Chicago.
A delicious-looking recipe from Nellie
My new fav recipe really GOOD! And so simple.....INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
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