Friday, August 29, 2008

thank you, barack


Earlier tonight I watched Barack Obama speak as he accepted the Democratic party nomination. I am no political pundit, nor am I particularly versed on politics in general. My agenda is generally so far from anything any mainstream American political candidate can muster that, unfortunately, I often pay them no heed. And though I am not naively touting the party line now, well aware of the shortcomings of the Democratic Party and even of Obama's campaign, I genuinely support Barack Obama. Furthermore, even if I didn't support him, I would still honor and respect him if only for his brilliant speech writing capabilities and his breathtaking skills as an orator. His speech tonight was certainly another spellbinding moment in his career.

I was gathered with some friends and my kids to watch the speech, and as we waited for Barack to hit the stage my younger son, G, asked if he could go watch a movie in another room. I told him no because I thought he should be with us for an important historical moment, the moment that a major political party in the United States finally, officially nominated somebody other than a white guy as the presidential candidate. Even if Barack does not assume the presidency, though I dearly pray he does, I felt this moment was of historical significance and that it was a worthy history lesson, a valuable moment to spend time with family, and if nothing else, an opportunity for the boys to get a good lesson in public speaking.

My friends and L and I watched the speech in rapt attention, and though I wasn't keeping very close tabs on him, G seemed kind of bored, and occasionally I had to stop him from fidgeting with a ball as the noise from him playing was making it hard for us to hear. So, imagine my surprise when we arrived home and G came up to me and said, "Mom, that speech was so amazing. I was interested in it the whole time even though I didn't think I would be. I even got tingles sometimes listening to it. I've never ever heard anything like that."

I asked him if he was glad I had made him watch it. He said, "Yeah," then hugged me and walked away.

Wow. For all that the American political process feels antiquated to me like a coal-fueled steam engine heading over a rickety bridge in the dark of night with no moon to guide, my heart sang for this moment. My children were inspired by the political process; they were inspired by a man participating in this supposed democracy who is doing his job well enough that an aloof teenage boy who would normally rather be playing video games listened with interest and "tingles" to a political speech referencing foreign policy, veterans' affairs, energy resources, tax cuts, the right to choose and same sex marriage. The acceptance speech from the US Democratic party candidate moved my thirteen year old boy to hug me in thanks for making sure he did not miss it, and this is a child who generally does not give physical affection without a struggle. Wow.

Thank you, Barack. Though I know this country and the world need a lot more than one man to bail us out of this handbasket to hell, I am sure grateful that you're hat is in the ring to try to help. Thank you for demonstrating to my sons that compassion, hard work, dedication and good communication are valuable to our society, and thank you for, perhaps, inspiring them to take up their civic responsibility someday soon. I am grateful for that.

I hope you and your beautiful family fare this arduous election process safely and come out thriving on the other side. And I hope I can soon call you the next president of the United States.

Monday, August 25, 2008

first night


(the moon as seen before the eclipse, through the Bone Tree)

Today Burning Man 2008 begins in the Black Rock Desert, and I will not be there. I feel good about that, although of course I would love to be there, because going to Burning Man in the first place was an amazing miracle that I thought I might never accomplish, and now I have been twice! So, to my dear friends on the playa tonight, I dedicate this poem that I wrote about my first night last year during the outstanding lunar eclipse. I hope you all the change the world, one dusty step at a time.


(during the eclipse)


we were bicycle pilgrims in the flat desert night
watched the looming moon disappear into eclipse
the absence of the silver brilliant sheen rendered the scene undercover
like an underground movement of salvation seeking souls.
hallucinated colors orbited the newborn stars of the falsely dark sky
the rust colored orb slowly arced through shifting star trails
and chaos reigned as the effigy burned by arson nearby.
but all around a neon city grew from the bottom up
the bare bones of geodesic domes filled with
towers of speaker stacks eager to create oases of sound.
the moon in totality loped at a timeless pace
we wondered like the ancients if the world was ending
or just beginning
and if we would ever see her silver face again.
our answer was to commence the ritual
fired up the gas generators to start the electric drums
that echoed over the long silent floor of the empty lake bed
now brittle, dry and alkaline.
the boom of the beat drove bodies to move
to shake and stomp and beg for the light
all the while worshiping the dark.
I danced the prayers of a thousand deities into white dinosaur bone dust
felt the mercury moonglow like liquid as it seeped
cold and crystal bright from the edges of the swollen shadowed satellite
witnessed the sky’s evolution from india ink to azure
my own shadow once again cast long on the ground by
the lunar spotlight shining just above the mountain horizon
where she headed for her morning’s rest.
but before the moon laid herself down
the beat belied a hint of brassy
the distant line of the opposite horizon
began to glimmer with a warm edge of daylight.
we were engulfed between cool blue waning
and golden dawn fire waxing
breathing in the powdered shells of trilobites
rising in fossil clouds from beneath our pounding feet
rising as the smoke from the still smoldering remains of the man
who we would resurrect only to burn again
and the music carried us
as our shadows centered into ourselves
balanced
rapturously
between the moon and the sun
in the exact moment
that our day was born of night.


(the man still smoldering as the eclipse wanes)

Saturday, August 16, 2008

elemental



I have been noticing the parade of time lately
marching jubilantly across my friends’ faces,
fertilizing each life stage my sons race through and
dragging down the soft contours of my frame

a silent river, invisible and swift, carrying away
one day after the next
edging flowers out of the earth
trampling them then back to loam,
building our young from seed cells to
marbled flesh grown
on to lanky strong bodies
that eventually curl to shrunken shells
of themselves

our bodies are mere mile markers in this race of indefinite end
that turns brown to green to yellow orange red brown again
feel it gaining speed each turn of the season
frost floods of spring barreling down mountain streams and
fall’s hurricane winds whipping wildly through trees
a frenzy of change, of cycles, reprise
with power and momentum that never cease

yet

in the eye of this storm I find I’m defenseless
flailing and grasping to reign in my senses
to come back to the moment and be here right now
to witness, experience and listen to how
amidst this rampage of growth and decay
imperceptibly the most devout of songs plays
the undercurrent, the harmony heard only
when we deign our minds still
the thrum rises up like a sap
with which our veins slowly fill
with its essence of each moment existing tranquil
deliberate and wholly in the now
each separate zen instant
ending adamantly as it begins
the force of the stillness sets the mind to spin

it’s inscrutable this paradox of time raging on
composed of a train of never-ending seconds
individually lethargic, gradual, brief
but time that deft bandit gathers them, a nimble thief
leaving only traces and memories on our minds and our flesh
like the skin now threadbare that covers my breasts
they’re silt-dust soft as a favorite shirt worn see-through
the caress of aging that I never quite knew
to expect or to love as these lessons I learn
for youth and days past it’s so easy to yearn
but the element of time our compassionate master
nudges us onward sometimes slow, sometimes faster
to the inevitable and gorgeous culmination of our days
and we have the great joy of indulging on the way
in each second, instant, moment, hour, year and phase
and I am gathering my rosebuds while I may
and I speak to suggest that you do the same
but unlike the poet of that phrase’s fame
I implore you to endeavor that your gathering persist
long beyond the days of your prime

time does what it does and there is no denying
but how we define its impact is our way of trying
to live absolutely our fullest and best
to soak it all up before our shells rest
to make peace with ourselves and our own perfection
as creatures laconic without resurrection

I know, I say it all the time- we die!
but dear ones my point is to see through the lies
of the inequity of age and the falsehoods of danger
so we will live and live and live
and never be as strangers
to each other, to experience and
to our own corporeal selves
we are so blessed to inhabit this realm

time giveth and time taketh away
but even in the taking there are gifts that remain
so hold them, examine them, let them wide in
feel it move across your skin
I am absorbing this lifetime and letting it
win

Friday, August 15, 2008

irony


I just returned from a trip to New York City to visit my sister. I consider myself a country girl and choose to live way the hell out in the mountains, and I like it that way. I do, however, very much enjoy the city. I love to see all the people and daydream what their lives are like, and of course in New York the diversity is fantastic. There are so many languages, so many styles of dress, so many colors of skin, and so, so many fabulous foods to eat from all over the globe. I also love concerts and museums and busy excitement, so the city is a great place for me to visit, then I am perfectly content to get back to my crickets and sunrises at home.

On this particular trip I enjoyed a couple moments of great irony. On our first day in town, my sister asked the boys and me if we would mind to help her catch up on her gardening. She has a plot in a wonderful, reclaimed lot full of flowers, herbs, veggies and artwork that is clearly a haven for the community. We dug in the dirt, pulled weeds and helped her harvest tons of green beans, tomatoes, basil, carrots and hot peppers. I love to garden and was so glad to have the chance to help my sister, but I couldn't get over how ridiculous it was that I had to go on vacation to one of the biggest cities in the world in order to be able to garden. At home I have a very small flower and herb garden I keep up, but I am entirely too busy, thus far, to invest in a veggie garden. I hate that I don't have one, and one of these days I will, but right now school, work and single parent homeschooling has ruled it out. Funny, huh?

On our last day in town we visited a P.S.1., a satellite MOMA gallery. It was awesome! There were several exhibits I really liked including one called "Arctic Hysteria" which featured, amongst other things, a stuffed, white, arctic hare perched mystically at the edge of a round, lighted pool of water as if the fellow were in the middle of scrying some future torment for its human adversaries. His colleague, above, holds a small plate of milk and was animated by a motor so he trembled, thus the piece's name, "Trembling and Honoring." How good is that?

There was also a collection of socio-political activist artwork from and inspired by the 60's and 70's called "That Was Then... This Is Now." Naturally, I thought this was great. I love revolutionary artwork and do believe that art is a natural forum for creating social change, so I am always glad to see it in action. I find it inspirational.

Honestly, I am a bit of a museum slut. It does not take much to turn me on when it comes to creative expression because, for the most part, I am just so freaking pleased when people take the time to do anything out of the ordinary to share their own unique perspective with the world that even if the work does not appeal to me personally, I am glad to have seen it.

So the second moment of irony came at the P.S.1. The gallery has an outdoor installation of large, round barrels full of plants and vegetables, again, another constructive way of employing urban space to hold aesthetic and oxygen-providing greenery. But this installation did not stop at plants. Oh no, once again I found that I had traveled 750 miles to the city to indulge in a simple country pleasure. This time it was hanging out with their chickens. You see, I don't have chickens of my own, even though I would really like to, because my husky dog loves to eat them. So at a hip, urban art gallery in Queens, I got to chill with some quaint country fowl. They were cute. It made me happy.

After all, I love irony.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

blogs are amazing: a post for cassi


I have blogger's guilt, which is a silly self-imposed phenomenon, but nevertheless I am feeling it because I have sorely neglected this blog for the last year. Though the truth is, my blog is still serving me. As you may know, I started graduate school this summer. It has been an amazing whirlwind of an experience in which first I had this wild hair idea to go back to school against all adds, and next thing I knew I was doing it.

Now, I love it! So far, at least. I completed my summer semester with a 4.0, thoroughly enjoyed all my classes, learned a great deal and realized I am absolutely on the right path for myself at this time. One of the things I have realized through this process, first in applying to the program then in doing my coursework this past semester, is that my writing joints are well lubricated even though it has been seven years since I was last in school. Blogging did this for me! If you read my first post you will see that one of my intentions in starting this blog was to give myself a constructive outlet with some degree of accountability so that I would write and keep writing. At that juncture, I was specifically missing the structure of a formal educational environment that would force me to think critically and write proactively, so I made that for myself with this blog. Now that I am back in school, I don't need it as much, so I am writing here less. C'est la vie. But I love this blog and suspect I will always tune in from time to time to put in my two cents. I can't help myself. My brain churns out penny thoughts at an alarming rate. I've got to stash all that intellectual loose change somewhere.

The other thing that is amazing about blogs is how it connects people. Twice in the last year I have had lovely experiences in which someone who read my blog had been connected to me in the past or was going to be connected to me in the future. When I met the beautiful and talented Yoni Love online through myspace, she said to me, "I have been wondering when we would meet." She had been introduced to my blog through a midwife teacher we share, and she was already intimately acquainted with my writing when I wrote to her to ooh and ahh over her gorgeous yoni paintings (please check out her artwork, like the piece above, and contact her if interested in prints of her work). In fact, she had shared one of my poems with a birthing family to ease them in a difficult time. Wow.

Recently, I was contacted by a former acquaintance who had the mixed fortune I did to grow up in the same backwards, blue-collar suburb of Pittsburgh from which I so gratefully escaped. That place always felt to me like a prison, a stifling, choking vortex of unhealthy attitudes and suffering people that I prayed through my youth to leave. And my suspicions were correct; my life blossomed in a liberating and healing way when I relocated. Every now and again I hear from folks still living in that same community, and all too often they are still stifled and stuck there carrying on the same attitudes and oppression that our families and neighbors bore before us. Once in a while, though, I meet up with a light that shone through, someone else who realized that, though they may stay in that place, they need not live that oppression and that they can seek emotional, spiritual and physical health through a different paradigm. Though I haven't spoken with her, Cassi, for whom I wrote this post, connected with me to say that she, too, has a passion for midwifery, and knowing midwifery as I do, I realize that if she holds dear the values of midwifery, she has come a long way since those dark Shaler days. I am glad you found me, Cassi. I am glad we can look behind us together and realize we are not stuck there. I would be glad to stay connected into the future.

So today, in honor of the gifts this blog has given me, I have decided to breathe a little new life into it. I've got a handful of small posts I have been meaning to add, and I will try to get them up in the next few days. School starts in one week, so before I get carried away by the rapid river of academic assignments, I'd like to dip my feet into this babbling brook of my creative writing a few more times. Thanks, "just a position." And thanks to all of you other writers out there connecting and sharing in our global community. Yay us!