Coyote Road

Caring for Fools

2012-01-08T19:26:00.001-05:00

“God takes care of fools and babies.”

That’s what my father says when he wants to own up to sayingsomething silly. Dad believes that God has a special place in his heart for, andspreads out his mantle of protection over, those unable to fend for themselves.I believe it too, because the classifications Fool and Baby pretty much covereverybody.

I see it all the time. We all get silly notions into ourhead that are just really bad ideas. We see something. We get a hankering forit. We devise and plot toward it. And all the while a little voice – a smartlittle voice inside our head – whispers: “Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.”

I want a convertible.

You have threetoddlers. Bad idea.

I want to move to Alaska to be with that girl.

Cold weather makes yousulk. Bad idea.

Sure, I can have a shot. It’s after 5.

You work until 7. Badidea.

I’ve been chasing that guy for months. What do you mean somethinghappened to his last girlfriend?

Bad, bad, bad idea.

And we whine when we don’t get everything we want. And we shakeour fists when God doesn’t answer every prayer. And then, if we are honest, andexamine our desires with a ruthless lens, it becomes painfully clear that a greatdeal of what we want is just plain wrong for us. Not to mention those around us

But we want extensively and with abandon. Our wants reachinto every corner of our being. They fill us up to the point where we areunable to see the pitfalls, the path veering into the briar, the rocky chasmyawning before us. We are fools, so blinded by an Aurora Borealis of desire thatwe trip down the road, blissfully unaware of all the dark shadows looming onthe way to our own personal Shangri-la.

But God – or an undefined higher power, or our higherselves, or whatever you believe has a better vantage point from which to viewour fumblings – takes care of fools and babies. We don’t get what we want. Weget what we need.

Blessed be.

Entanglements

2012-01-05T21:14:00.000-05:00

We humans are social creatures. But you would never know itfrom the all the ways we distance ourselves from each other. We keep each otherat arms’ length. We divide ourselves into factions to ensure that we (OK, wereally are just talking about our own individual selves, but ‘we’ sounds better)are taken care of. Us and them. You and me. Me and that other girl over there.

But unless you are a hermit on the mount or sociopathic lonewolf in the forest, you simply cannot get away. We build great societies. We construct vastpublic spaces. We encourage and celebrate our coming together in numbers largeand small. Our saddest stories are of lost love and betrayed relations. We aremade to be together. And I’d hazard to guess that both the hermit and the lonewolf are delighted when a seeker trudges up the mountain or into the deep forestfor a bit of advice and tea.

But we want complete control over the means and participationof our relations. We want to say how much togetherness is sufficient, and wherethe impassable lines lie. We want to determine which parts of ourselves weshare and withhold. We are, after all, unique, singular beings. We want connections, but we do not want to loseour sovereignty. We do not want to lose ourselves.

Yet while all those personal and societal rules ofengagement help us to avoid offense and keep us on the right side of the linebetween good conduct and bad form, they also hinder our ability to understandeach other. It is difficult to engage with another when you are worried aboutgetting too close, staring too long, speaking too intimately. Better to demur whentrue understanding may require a depth of involvement best defined as ‘entanglement.’

Yeah. That state where our connections become hopelessly intertwined,snarled, knotted. Messy. (Gasp!) But really. How do you truly know someoneunless you get close enough to smell them?

So I say: Let’s get involved! And not just on thesocio-political-macro save the planet/save the world level. No – let’s getinvolved with each other. On apersonal level. One on one. Down in the nitty-gritty where personal battlementsare erected and reinforced. Down where our underbellies are vulnerable to claws.Let’s conquer our shyness and dance with the stranger. Let’s disengage oursensibilities and talk about politics andreligion. Let’s belly up to the bar, invade each others’ personal space, andask intimate questions that are none of our business. Let’s get our facesslapped. Let’s call each other out. Let’s laugh and cry, shout and sneer, glareand wink. Let’s talk long into the night. Let’s get so close that we can smelleach others’ breath. Let’s get entangled like Romans at an orgy. Let’s get downon our haunches and stare into each others’ souls until we understand.

Let’s.

After all, we’re only human.

Shiny Bits of the Soul

2012-01-04T00:49:00.002-05:00

Potential.

You know. That thing, that energy, that art representing your [essential] self. All those shiny bits athand to make you a better, richer, bigger, fuller version. All those personal treasuresclamoring to be shared with friends and family and the whole wide world.

Yeah. That.

So, I have to ask: Is there anything worse than unrealized potential?

You know. Wasted talent. Ignored talent. Talent dumped onthe side of the road when the pack became too heavy. Talent left on a sunnywindowsill to dry out – choke out – for want of a splash of water to feed thespirit. Talent as blessed jewels thrown in a drawer of Someday. Talent pushedaside when reality got … real.

There’s a world full of people who bemoan wastedopportunities, wasted time, wasted lives. They curse decisions that took themaway from themselves. Away from the promised opportunities whispered in theirears by Talent as they slept. Compromises that steered them from the golden roadsthat led to the golden lands in which their best selves (best artists anddoctors and musicians and zoologists) dwelled. Golden roads now merged onto theserviceable macadam of obligation, practicality, and a faded Someday.

But, isn’t that just the way itis? We dream, we grow, we compromise, we understand. We put aside foolishness.We make do. We replace dreams with responsible choices. We construct lives ofmeasured contentment. We become accustomed to the road. We travel on.

But, I say we travel the wrongway.

I say, we may abandon our talents, but Talent is patient. Itwaits for us. It waits because - evenburied and ignored - it is an inseparable part of us. In every stage of life, from our Technicolor childhoods to thequiet blue evenings of our final days, it waits. It lurks, blinking at us fromaround random corners and peeping up from the hard soil of Too-Little-Time. It waits,ready to fly forth on the first breath of encouragement. And, if we ignore it,it lies dormant and waits. If we reject it, it lies dormant and waits. If wetake the path From, it lies dormant, waiting for one thought, one look, onereceptive ear, one indication that is time – finally time – to turn over that nextclump of fertilized soil from which Talent can take root – again – and bloom.

You know.

Like now.

Haiku 1/2/12

2012-01-02T21:22:00.000-05:00

Warm December eve
Transformed into icy dawn
Snooze button brings joy

On this first day

2012-01-01T02:49:00.002-05:00

On this first day of the new year, remember who decides ifyou will have a happy new year.

It’s not the politicians or the bankers. Not your boss orclub leader or mother-in-law. Not the police, your fitness coach, or yourpriest. It’s not even your wife and children. We all affect each others’ lives inways large and small. We all impact each other with our thoughts (orthoughtlessness) and our actions (or inaction). But it is what YOU think andfeel and do – it is how you act and react – that matters. It is you who decidesthe character of your year. And your life.

There are so many examples of the blessed who curse theirown existences, and the down-trodden who rise above. Some face seeminglyinsurmountable obstacles and overcome, while others are stymied by the smallestof hurdles. More than anything, it ishow they approach life, what they expect of life, what they DO with what theyhave that leads toward or away from joy.

So as you navigate the next 12 months, decide if you merelywant to face the year or if you might embrace it instead. Perhaps instead ofalways reacting and responding, you might decide to act and initiate. Maybe youcan carry the light rather than cursing the darkness. And, maybe your pursuitof joy might inspire someone else to choose a happy new year.

I wish for you great joy and an interesting year of light.

Happy New Year.

This is the moment

2011-12-25T02:44:00.003-05:00

This is the moment.

The trees have been trimmed. The wreathes have been hung.

The gifts have been bought and wrapped.

The traffic has faded.

The children are abed.

The last notes of “Silent Night” hang in the air.

And in this moment,

in this still moment,

there is time to pause –

not to reflect,

not to gather energy for the new day –

but to simply be.

And in this moment,

there is time to wonder,

and time to understand – if only for a moment –

what it means to be a child of God.

Silent Night, Holy Night.

Merry Christmas.

Perfect

2011-03-25T22:43:00.002-04:00

With all the craziness in the world – the wars and ever-present political upheaval, the economic hardships and social disagreements – it seems selfish to focus on the self. Who has the right (or the spiritual band-width) to focus on the individual when the whole world is going to hell in the often mentioned but never sighted hand-basket? While banding together and acting as a unit seems like the appropriate course – all hands on deck and all that – units are comprised of individuals. If we all rise or go down together, surely we must recognize that the ‘all’ is made up of tiny bits of ‘me’.

And not just the ‘me’ that goes to the supermarket, funds a retirement plan, complains about the potholes, snarls at the local news, has babies, wonders where the dreams went, and waits for the end times. No, the ‘me’ that came into the world with some kind of purpose and personal power – assuming that such a ‘me-being’ could perceive its own light.

So what about all the individuals that make up ‘us’ – that is, make the world go round, spawn the wars and economic schemes and personal disagreements that flow down all those dark rivers to the seas of discontent, that care about me and mine and maybe the tribe if it makes sense (that is, profits) me and mine? What about all the individuals who focus on beauty and clothes, bank accounts and jewels, affiliations and social status, race and creed? What about all the down-trodden who have not yet realized that they aren’t going to get a break – ever – regardless of what the teacher said in elementary school?

What about the kids who are bullied because they are attracted to someone of the same sex, or a different religion or race? What about all the teachers who want to be able to support their families by teaching other people’s kids? What about all steel workers who saw their parents raise their families on a living wage, only to be told that ‘outcome’ is now nothing more than a dream? What about all the artists, poets, musicians, comedians, lecturers, and philosophers who found a spark within, nurtured it, committed to it, only to be told that the new economic reality has no room for their gifts?

What about the lovers who seek someone – anyone – to share a life, a heart, a meal, a morning, only to be dissuaded by the drive for physical perfection and emotional disengagement? What about the spiritualists who are laughed at for believing that there must be something more than material scorecards?

What about the children? What about the children who believe that we know everything? That we are the fonts of wisdom, the lights that illuminate the roads they travel, that we are the leaders who know what is important and right, that we will never harm them or lead them astray, that we are the protectors of the good?

What about the children?

And. what about us?

We are given lives. And while we think they are given without strings attached, these lives come with reinforced spider webs attached. Do do do. Be be be. Act act act. Feel feel feel. Ignore, fail, compromise, lie down. Expectations. Biases. Fears. Hatreds. Preferences. Bargains. We are wrapped in cocoons that circumscribe our lives. We do not even know or feel when these attachments affix themselves. And we want to be so strong. We want to be so good and right. We want to fulfill. We want to resist the darkness. We want to be perfect.

But we can’t.

We can’t because we don’t know. We can’t because we don’t see. We don’t know that nothing is perfect. We don’t see that nothing is perfect unless we accept ourselves. Until we accept ourselves. Until we look into our own personal mirrors, into our own personal eyes, into our own personal souls, and decide to be content with what we see staring back at our own perfect selves.

Because the only perfection is the light that shines within.

In the Heart of Light and Shadows

2011-01-23T19:17:00.000-05:00

“I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything
I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

-- Anne Frank

I dunno, Anne.

As a child of the 60’s, I thought so too. Sure, I was aware of evil in the world. People who stole and murdered. People who took advantage of the weak and unfortunate. People who refused to extend the hand of friendship (let alone love) because the color of the other’s skin, or the tenets of his religion, or the country her grandparents immigrated from did not match theirs. I knew there were dark-hearted people who created shadows in America.

But there were also those who carried a light that shone from within their own hearts. There were the church folk and their God who said that we should love one another. And there were the musicians who sang on the radio urging us to “love one another right now.” And there were people in the streets who not only danced, but reached out a hand in friendship. Who wouldn’t be told who to love. Who started soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Who marched for the rights of people who weren’t members of their own tribe, and who taught at schools that weren’t in their own neighborhood. Who cried when the bad men killed people who wore a different skin color. These were the people who hoped and loved, who worked for a better day, and who stood up against the shadows in men’s hearts.

And these people are still in the world, carrying the light simply because it’s righteous and joyous.

But shadows still spread long and hard in the hearts of too many of us. Too many still hate – yes hate, not misunderstand, not mistrust, but hate – those who do not resemble them, who believe differently, who travel from another country to pursue the same dream (some of) our ancestors dreamt. Some who still hate those who want a piece of the pie we say is ours. And too many are willing to march and scream, and spit and snarl, and burn and kill, because they truly believe that those “other people” hate them too. Not because of what they’ve done, but simply because of who they and who those others are. It’s only natural, no?

So, I dunno, Anne. I don’t know if we are really good at heart. I don’t know if we are really bad at heart either. Maybe, just as sun and rain are good in the right proportions, just as tools and guns are only evil when you misuse them, and just as speech and literature can inspire or incite, we are good and evil in the same proportion and in the same manner that we spread the light or welcome the shadows. And, while maybe it is all just part of the ebb and flow of the human condition, I wonder if we can help each other now by shining a light into a shadow when we happen across it, rather than stepping in, and letting the darkness tint our better selves. Because Anne Frank also said: “I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”

We are not trapped in an attic, hiding from the shadowed hearts. We can carry a light in our hearts into the sunshine of now.

The Art of Misbehaving

2011-01-17T01:58:00.003-05:00

newyorkjet.com

The Jet's win over the Patriots this evening reminded me of a point of conflict embedded in human nature. We battle against bad behavior, but sometimes we can't help smirking when the bad boys triumph.

Prior to the game, the Jets, led by irrepressible coach Rex Ryan, got into the faces of the New England Patriots, trashed-talking about their ability to conquer the golden boys of winter. Fans and press alike tsk-tsked the team's antics as bad form, unseemly, and guaranteed to augur a humiliating defeat. For good measure, the Patriots stoically disciplined their own Wes Welker for similar poor conduct, sending a clear message that they would not tolerate such unsportsmanlike behavior.

I recall when my hometown Eagles taunted the Patriots before the Superbowl. They were also roundly criticized, but, unlike Ryan, they bowed to that criticism, conceding that trash-talk had no place within a civilized game like football. Maybe there was also a bit of fear that the Eagles' bravado would rile an already worthy opponent, inflaming it into an unstoppable force. The Eagles lost, but I always wondered if they would have stood a better chance had they reared up and claimed their right to talk smack in a game that is roundly recognized as a war simulation.

Because, the Jets stood way up on their hind legs, got in the faces of their opponent, backed each other up in the face of disapproval, and won. They embraced their bravado and made it a necessary ingredient to their victory.

Sure, their is a bright line between acting up and criminal offenses, because there's a difference between conduct that annoys (excessive end-zone celebrations anyone?) and conduct that harms (helmet-to-helmet - ugh!). But, maybe we need to test the limits more often in this free society of ours. Maybe we need to question more regulations and tenets and decrees. Maybe we need to toss off the sheep's clothing that swaddles us. Maybe, in a society increasingly weighed down by rules of conduct for which no one can remember the genesis, what we need is a little more misbehavin'.

Sturm and Drang

2011-01-12T21:06:00.002-05:00

Philadelphia Mural Arts Project BRIDGE Mural (47th and Chestnut Street)

I find myself sighing a lot recently. Yes, so dramatic, but so necessary, so relevant, so purge-pregnant.

Sigh ...

So much upheaval in the world – shall we label it from the way back: Sturm and Drang? That resistance? That recalcitrance? That unwillingness to reach across the societal divide that originates within our own selves?

Surely, it has always been this way. But every time I ask someone: “Has life/politics/culture/religion/society always been this dramatic, this full of opposition and resistance?” she replies: “No, I have never seen things this out of sorts.”

Wars? Sure. Class, race, ethnic, political friction? Certainly. Intellectualism vs. down-home common sense? You betcha. I want guns; you want organic garlic. Yeah, man. We are at war with each other -- on account of rain. The individual irritants spread like a virus of discontent to families and affiliations and groups and societies and nations until the whole world is off balance – off-balance to the extent that there must be organized forces committed to the propagation of chaos. Something is pushing the unbalanced down a rabbit hole to that place where souls forget who they are.

Seriously, there are forces in the world that would rather say: “Damned it all to hell – with buckshot!” than: “Ohhhh, maybe I’m w-r-o-n-g.” There are those who pray for Armageddon, who believe sometimes you have to destroy something to save it; who truly think the enemy is MONSTROUS and incapable of humanity.

Not like us.

There are some who believe that the enemy is blocking the road to all that is good, and right, and deserved in life. Hell, if not for all those damned black hats, life would be a golden bowl of cherries! But, no one stops to think that maybe the enemy views us in the same black light. No one considers that we are the black hats in the hearts and minds of our enemies. Us and them. Light and dark. Up and down. Like in that old Pogo comic strip: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

But, what if when we saw the other guy struggling on the street, or read the account of someone’s life spiraling down, or suffered some indignity at the hands of a stranger, we resisted thinking: “Glad it’s not me,” or “Probably deserved,” or “Screw you and the horse you road in on!” and instead wondered: “Do I have the capacity to grasp his situation?” or better yet: “Can I help? At all?”

What if, them became us and vice versa. What if dark became light, the strange became familiar, and enemy became less than and closer to friend? What if all that resistance and complaining and shouting dissolved into dust on a table. And, what if we sat at that table, and looked across into the eyes of our brother?

Got Hope?

2011-01-09T02:43:00.001-05:00

Sigh.

I am an eternal, unapologetic optimist.

Oh, my faith can be shaken when enough dark clouds move in. I can see the evil in people, and the best-laid plan gone awry. I don't sit in the dirt on the prairie, refusing to acknowledge that the wheels have gone off the wagon. I get it. Bad shit happens. Sometimes bad shit happens for an extended period of time - centuries even of ill intent, unfairness, exploitation and down-right evil. And for some pretty suspect reasons, if you ask me.

But, call me Pollyanna because it doesn't take more than a whisper-thin ray of light shining through the dark clouds before I see a path to the good. Hope bubbles to the surface, the wind fills the sails, and we got a ballgame folks. Go Team Light!

So, I must be feeling a bit out of sorts, this morning because I am not feeling the light about Sudan's upcoming vote for independence. Today, the mostly Christian people of Southern Sudan are voting to secede from the mostly Muslim northern seat of power in a bid for independence and dignity. But, there are masses of billowing, roiling dark clouds in the sky over that African nation, and I am having a hard time locating that sliver of light.

Here is yet another people taken over and reorganized by a steady stream of invaders. A people blocked from development by a government eager to maintain control of oil. A people persecuted and tortured by their own government -- featuring an administration that denies providing material support to the gangs and slavers who happen to fall on the right side of the power and religious divide. A people who watch their sons forced to join an enemy army and kill or be killed, and who watch their daughters be raped.

And, we in the US and other western nations say we support this independence movement, but is it freedom or oil that drives us? I fear it is the latter. And, when your rich uncle offers to protect you from abusive parents while fingering the family silver you have to wonder why he stopped by. So, I am having a difficult time imagining how a sliver of light can find a space to shine in Sudan.

But maybe the Southern Sudanese have enough vision for hope. Over the next 6 days, they will participate in their vote for independence. They will brave tricks and threats (or acts) of violence, and vote for the right to chart their own national course. I hope they succeed. Then I hope they are able to hold off the coup-mongers and the First World predatory lenders and the all-purpose corrupt and faithless long enough to build a foundation from which to grow a nation.

I hope the light shines bright and strong to part the darkness.

Early Morning Snow

2011-01-07T08:08:00.000-05:00

I swear I didn't plan it this way. I just wanted to take a day off to hang out with my Mom.

Now the snow is falling this early Friday morning.

And since we, the people of Southeastern PA simply cannot remember how to drive in the snow from one storm to the next, the first sirens are wailing.
And the plows are running to and fro.

And my neighbor is cursing in that mild way of his.

And the snow keeps falling as if no one has anywhere to go.

And me? I will drink my coffee, munch on a pumpkin muffin, and wait for the morning rush to pass ...

So Much Air

2011-01-04T23:34:00.007-05:00

Photo: Swedish Yogini

My, but we’re a big-winded species.

From the first man who expressed himself with a look or grunt or drawing in the dirt, we have embraced communication as the holy faculty of humanity. Our ability to communicate allows us to share information, establish relationships, to build community and develop culture. It supports our survival and drives prosperity. Freedom of expression is the cherished liberty of the lucky, and one of the first casualties of the disenfranchised. To possess the capacity to express oneself and to be understood is a blessing.

But, God, sometimes we don’t know when to shut up.

It doesn’t matter if it is a cave painting (did you really need to draw 17 horses?) or email (I don’t care-delete. I don’t care-delete. I don’t care …), we have so much to say, and want everyone to hear it. Of course it’s important. Of course y’all want to know. And, as the channels become more sophisticated and less labor intensive, we have the opportunity to go tell it on the mountain. Loudly.

How many people will see my cave painting? Five? Okay, I’ll draw a dozen more telling it over the fire. Wouldn’t it be terrific if I turned it into a poem? More entertaining with a Greek chorus? I could cut a wider swathe with a printing press – Think of the numbers! Teletype, email, discussion board, blog – Facebook! My God, it’s Communication Nirvana! And, they’ll tell their friends – a thousand mountaintops!

So much talk. So much opinion. So much air. And not all for the good.

We educate, but we also gossip. We enlighten one moment and mislead the next. We manipulate and flatter, castigate and condemn. We assassinate characters as often as we redeem them. We lie. We read about the best and the worst of us. And, guess which we find the most compelling? We know what’s constructive and destructive in what we say. We say it anyway.

And in our net-centric, smartphone-enabled world, we say it farther and faster than ever before. We’re surrounded. To all the paper that ever was, add all the transmissions from radio and television, plus all the e-communication created in the last hour, and you have to make a real effort to evade the voices clamoring for attention.

But you can do it if you want to. Just disconnect. Yes, dis - connect. It’s an act of will against that human imperative to commune, but go for it. Go for a walk in the cold, dark night. Just you and the voice in your head. Tell it to shut up. Look up to the sky where the stars sparkle around the first sliver of the new moon. Resist the urge to comment. Exhale. Watch your breathe rise in a cloud of silent smoke and disappear into thin air.

New-ness

2011-01-02T10:02:00.009-05:00

It's 2011.
Another New Year.
Another chance to start anew.

We say our goodbyes to the old year like an friend - or enemy - departing on a train headed west.

We breathe. We tell ourselves that now is the time for a fresh start. Time to give up bad habits. To cultivate good ones. To make friends. To embrace family. To be more productive, more healthy, more loving and giving. To be the better/stronger/faster 'us' we've always wanted to be. The calendar turns over, and here is one more opportunity to reinvent ourselves.

But aren't those opportunities always with us?

Every time we wake up, aren't we starting anew in some sense? Every time we leave the house, step forward, begin something, every time we pause and reconsider, aren't we reinventing some portion of ourselves, our lives, our world views?

That is, if we want to.

If we want to, we can make a habit of examining the old, keeping the valuable, and shedding the outmoded like dry skin. Over and over again, we can look at each day and step and meeting on the road as an opportunity for new-ness. Almost as if we had a sun to rise every 24 hours, awakening us with a fresh new morning, we too can rise with the expectation that at some time during this day there will be a chance to experience something new.

Tough prospect, this constant review and reinvention, huh? Who has the time and energy - or inclination - for that?

But yesterday, you said, you said, you said: "It's a New Year for a New Me!"

So why is January 2nd less new-worthy than January 1st?

Blessed Christmas to You

2010-12-25T00:03:00.005-05:00

Christmas Eve is my favorite time of the season.

The malls are closed. The traffic has eased. Luminaries line the curbs of well-tended neighborhoods. The churches are filled with the glow of candlelight. The bouncy radio and television Christmas jingles -- accompaniment to all the frantic shopping and baking and wrapping -- give way to the pensive, poignant carols and hymns that always lead to ...

Silent Night.
Holy night.
Son of God.
Love's Pure light ...

Whatever you believe, whatever you hold dear, here's a free night of the quiet soul.

Enjoy.

And Merry Christmas to You.

Criminal Intent

2010-12-01T23:19:00.007-05:00

I was seven years old when I committed my first felony.

Okay, maybe it was only a misdemeanor.

I blame Mrs. Weinstein, my second grade teacher. Her dislike for me was evident even to my young mind, and who can resist acting out in the face of such disapproval?

Okay, maybe her disapproval started after my crime. I can’t quite recall. I am, however, quite certain that I was at least a little misunderstood, and could have used a bit more monitoring in those early years.

It was Sunday, and I always did my homework Sunday evenings, but this particular Sunday, my parents decided to visit relatives. In those days, I remember us visiting relatives quite often. Later, those visits tapered off. Maybe it was a consequence of my crime.

Okay, maybe it was because a slew of relatives died around that time. I am certain, however, that no one consulted me about visiting relatives. Or about the state of my homework. To be honest, I am not sure if such queries would have done much good, since I remember feeling quite surprised – and chagrined – to realize, upon returning home at bedtime, that I had not done my homework. And, it was due in the morning. And now I couldn’t do it, because it was bedtime. I was not lazy, mind you. It was bedtime, and I was not mistress of the clock.

There it was then: the genesis of my crime.

To appear at school without my homework was unthinkable (testament to my sense of responsibility and work ethic), so I put on my thinking cap and what I thunk up was the need for a note. You know – that golden chit. That get out of anything without a scratch card. That ticket to the mystical land of unaccountability. A note excusing the easily excusable. I could not do my homework at my regularly scheduled time, because I was visiting relatives.

Okay, not sick, troubled, or otherwise imperiled relatives. But this was America! The land of baseball! Apple pie! Station wagon trips to visit relatives!

Okay, we didn’t have a station wagon, but the rest of the story held a teaspoon of water. Who wouldn’t accept such an excuse?

I cannot remember why I decided against asking my parents to write that bullet-proof excuse note. I cannot remember why I thought it was a good idea to write it myself. I do recall being unable to find a pen. Or a pencil. I did find a pad of my mother’s Memo from Frances Rivers customized green note paper. And a crayon. A green crayon.

I practiced writing that note quite diligently, well past my bedtime. See, it’s hard work creating a reasonable reproduction of your mother’s writing and signature in green crayon. Especially when you are just learning to write in cursive. At some point, I convinced myself that my efforts looked authentic.

Okay, I became sleepy and convinced myself that my efforts looked authentic enough.

The next morning, Mrs. Weinstein called for the homework. I trotted up to her, smiled and said, “I have a note.” I recall handing it to her with a bit of a flourish. My teacher opened it, read it, and told me to return to my seat. She did not look at me. The rest of the school day passed uneventfully.

That afternoon, my neighbor Debbie and I skipped home. It was a beautiful spring day, and we had Wednesday Bible Study with Mrs. Carbo. Mrs. Carbo was a warm, heavyset woman with cotton white hair who favored floral print dresses. She was earnest without being simpering, and pious without being overbearing. All of the kids went to bible study whether they adhered to Christian concepts in their daily lives or not. I recall it being more than simply something to do.

We ran gaily into my house to deposit our books. And, found my mother and father seated at the dining room table. In our double income family, it was rare for both my parents to be home at the same time in the afternoon, but there they were, sitting together at the dining room table. Staring at me.

“Debbie, Felicia cannot go to Bible study. You’ll have to go without her.”

Not go to Bible study? What the hell? Debbie did the what-did-you-do? eye roll and left the way she came.

Seems Mrs. Weinstein’s calm acceptance of my forged note was a ruse. She wasted no time ratting me out to my parents as soon as I was out of earshot. I’ll bet it was the scandal of the teacher’s lounge.

So, I was confined to quarters without the benefit of clergy. Come to think of it, why would one deny a sinner exposure to the Lord and all his redemptive influences? Would not a better course have been to rehabilitate me with more religion? This is the same faulty logic that punishes misbehaving, under-achieving students by denying them extra-curricular activities. If they are not performing in school, wouldn’t it be better to rehabilitate them within structured programs than to loose them onto the unmonitored streets of temptation?

Okay, I don’t recall an extended confinement. And, I got to keep the crayon.

What kind of lesson is that?

Hunter's Moon

2010-10-22T00:29:00.013-04:00

I see the moon and the moon sees me, Under the shade of the collibah tree. I say to the moon that shines on me: Shine on the one I love.

My Mother used to sing that to me.
In fact, she would sing it to me tonight with very little provocation.
Moms are like that.
The moon - just another mother - is like that.
Talk all you want about reflected light.
She shines.
With very little provocation.

A Breath of Bliss

2010-05-26T21:43:00.007-04:00

Have you ever experienced a momentary sense of bliss? As if you passed over a ley line, or brushed against a barrier between worlds, or something magical brushed by you – only for an instant – then moved on?

I feel such every once in a while. I felt it this evening. A brief sensation when it seems everything converges to create a sense of right-ness, right now. Always I am driving, and I get this feeling that I just passed something wholly good, and meant for me in particular. A sweet pause, that lingers, captured by inadequate memory. I have no idea what this good is. No thought or action brings it on. I have nothing with which to predict it, or attempt to reproduce it. There are no markers with which to identify the cause. It is invisible and silent and non-manifest. And, yet it gently triggers ever sense simultaneously.

I have come to recognize the ghost of a scent, a taste, a sense of pressure. And, it produces a breath of well being that is just passing by as it registers. Then it is gone, and it is so remarkable that I cannot mourn its passing.

Perhaps it is a coincidence of firing synapses and air pressure. Or a dream teasing from the sub-conscious. Or spirits playing tag.

Whatever it is, it is only for a moment. Then gone. And, I am left in bliss.

Good News Story

2010-04-14T19:09:00.015-04:00

"If it bleeds, it leads."

That is the mantra of news.

We humans love drama, and drama all too frequently equals blood, horror, and bad circumstances that cannot be fully absorbed by the average guy or gal. We "tsk" and cover our eyes (forgive those who peek expectantly through their fingers, please). We saddle up and rally around the down-trodden whilst gossiping about their victimization and distress. We do our civic duty and wait for things to fall apart. We are the light-seekers who peer into the darkness. We are the audience for the blood-thirsty 6:00 local news. And it is the body counts that make us so high.

Then that damned good news comes along, and we don't know what to do with ourselves.

Do we celebrate the happy outcome? Sure! Yea! Another one for the good guys! Or do we crouch under the weight of our baser instincts and move on, looking for the next disaster, grousing that the body count is low?

Well, allow me to pummel you with this smiley-faced balloon:

There's this dude in Florida named James King. A girl who attended his former church went missing, and he decided to enter the alligator-infested swamps of Winter Springs, FL to find her, armed only with his bible, water, snacks, toilet paper, and a GPS-enabled phone. She was missing for FOUR DAYS. He found her, bug-bitten, dehydrated, but otherwise unharmed. He called the authorities, and brought her back to her grateful family.

Now in this disgusting social climate, we are a suspicious lot. So, James King was questioned by a dutiful police force to ensure that he was a hero, not a perpetrator. Do your recall a time when we took our heroes at face value? Well that time is not today. James King, however, is apparently a king among men, because he raised no red flags. He is a bona fide hero. Good for him.

Now I don't care what his politics are, or what his religion is (James King reported that while he searched, he recited the Bible verse that reads: "Trust in Yahweh with all your heart, and don't lean on your own understanding. And, he will direct your path.").

This man didn't have to do anything related to the girl from his church. He could have gone to breakfast, watched a game on TV, read a book, worked a crossword puzzle. Instead he went looking for a lost 11-year-old girl with Aspberger's, and found her. Alive.

"There she was, sitting on a log," he said, "looking expectantly, like, 'You're finally here.'"

How is it possible to have a better day than that?

Well, At Least We Did Not Shoot the Children.

2010-04-05T21:47:00.009-04:00

Oh, wait ....

View Wikileaks video: http://www.collateralmurder.com/

I get it.

I know with certainty that without the brave men and women who are willing to stand watch on the wall against all aggressors, to travel thousands of miles to keep the wolves from our shores, to protect our way of life, to protect our freedom and treasure, to sacrifice blood and limb and soul ...

Without the stout-hearted individuals who answered the call to war, we would be lost. Soft targets in a dark, ever-dangerous world.

But, when these fine, brave men and women travel overseas to pick up a gun, launch a helicopter, and police an area, they take on more than the risk of life and limb, more than training and duty. They take on the responsibility for not just their lives and culture, but that of the innocents who travel within the fogs of war.

I can not imagine the pressure. I cannot image the day-in-day out twitched-muscle fear of soldiers who must measure each mission, each step, each minute in units of survival-units, waiting of the next ditch or block or citizen to be the end of everything he or she has lived for.

But, see? That just makes it more important to do the right thing. We come over here/over there with messages of freedom and justice and unmitigated rightness. Well, if we are going to take on that glowing mantle, then we have to glow.

Being stressed out, or tired out, or bored, vengeful, scared, or rationalized, or preemptive, or in need of one damned moment of humorous respite -- none of that justifies brutality or carelessness or collateral anything.

Hell no, I haven't been to war (unless you count Thanksgiving dinner), and I do not know what it is like when every act or step could be my life. That does not excuse me, just as it does not excuse you from recognizing right from wrong.

The Magic of Good Mojo

2010-03-18T21:49:00.010-04:00

Tribune Photo by
Heather Charles

Optimism.

That bright spring light of the mind and soul. That boon from god that allows us to get up every morning, to hope for a better day, a better vision, a better apple, car, job, song, story, life. Optimism, even when leaning flat against reality, lets us believe that in the end, EVERY LITTLE THING is gonna be all right. Truly. In spite of everything else.

In spite of the darkness that lurks along our paths. In spite of the sadness, fear, hatred, anger that brushes against us. In spite of all those helpless days and hopeless feelings. In spite of all the things we think we could resist outright, if only we were stronger, smarter, better, prettier, more talented, more MORE.

Well, you have to know one thing: optimism goes a long way toward setting the stage for triumph. Just believing in something - preferably your own self - is a shield of courage that protects you as your dare to take that first step of the journey toward whatever new day that has grabbed your imagination.

And when optimism is mixed with a dream and a plan and willing people who know how to help you mix and bake your personal recipe? People who know how to buck you up when the shadows stretch across the path? Well hell. Suddenly, you find yourself much further down the road than your first dreams ever led you to believe was possible.

So, this month, Chicago's Urban Prep Academy announced that every single member of the school's first senior class - 107 of them - had been accepted to college. Young men who came from destitution and swaddled futures. Young men who had hardly dared to dream of much of anything. Young men who doubted that academic success was in their future. Young men who entered the school unable to read at their grade-level.

Now, you can sniff at the uniforms and complain about the demands and other trappings of a highly controlled environment. But before you do, you should ask the graduating seniors if the jackets and ties, the gender segregation, the extended school days, the constant messages commanding FOCUSFOCUSFOCUS, the extra English credits, and the long commutes were at all worth it. Ask them if the ability to call everyone they know to shout, "I got in!" was worth it. Ask them if forcing the shadows on the road to retreat in shame was worth it.

Class of 2010: Go on with your bad selves.

Dear God ...

2010-02-27T16:23:00.011-05:00

What the hell is going on?

Indonesia?

Haiti?

Now Chile?

Forgive my presumptive complaining, and maybe this isn't your handiwork, but:

An 8.8 Earthquake (because a thousanth of that wasn't enough)?

400,000 made homeless in an hour?

Another opportunity to saddle up, and dig out the dead?

Another opportunity to be woefully unprepared?

Another opportunity to see our daily problems as petty echoes of true suffering?

Another opportunity to rise to our better selves?

Seems to me that someone's nudging us down the highway toward hell.

Can you point us toward a rest stop?

Go World!

2010-02-12T23:15:00.007-05:00

photo: Getty

2010 Winter Olympics have opened!

photo: Getty

Oh Canada!

And, sadness for the fallen Georgian athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili who died in practice opening day.

Buried - Part Deux

2010-02-10T12:09:00.015-05:00

Sometimes, you just have to sigh and put it down.

As my Mom says when she wants us to place things in their proper perspective: "No matter what you do, the sun's going to come up tomorrow morning like nothing ever happened."

Work, politics, relationships. financial concerns, religious conflicts, disaster, oppression. Sometimes it all seems so relentless, like a blizzard birthed clear across the country, flowing eastward, eastward, Eastward, Ho! All the preparation in the world comes down to doing what you can do.

And the sun will rise tomorrow.

And we will start again.

A few hardy souls

DO have to say one thing though:

Hey! Did you have to park so close to my car???

Buried

2010-02-06T18:15:00.013-05:00

This is my car.

This is my car on snow.

Any questions?

This is Steph and Ry who started the community car clean-off. Thank guys!

Just goes to show, when the world or life or a random circumstance buries you ...

There's always someone to help you dig out.

Happy Shovelling ...

Snow Day!

2010-01-30T16:48:00.003-05:00

Remember those snow days when we were kids?

We didn't have the Weather Channel, Accu-Weather, or Doppler 5, 000,000 (yes, I know. I make it sound like these technological advances are reliable). We had a guy in a plaid jacket and seventies-wavy hair standing in front of a monochrome map with cardboard suns, clouds, H's and L's waving his hands as if conjuring.

And, he gazed hopefully into the camera. Hopeful that we'd believe his forecasts, and hopeful that he would be right. Most of the time he failed, becoming a weather seducer who couldn't deliver the goods.

So we'd hear snow and cross our fingers and pray, only to wake up to grey skies and brown lawns. But, every once in a while, the weatherman would call for empty skies, and we'd wake up to steadily falling snow. Snow on the cars, snow on the trees, snow on the lawns, and - most importantly - snow on the hilly roads the school buses had to navigate.

Snow day!

My Dad would growl about the need to shovel, and curse the passing plows who undid his hard work, but Mom understood. There was nothing more magical than an unexpected day with nowhere to go and no means to get there. Snowmen, snow angels, and Devereaux Hill sled runs awaited!

See, when you are used to the unrelenting brown and grey of the southeastern Pennsylvania winter, the white winterland truly is a wonder. So today, after the weather-scientists forecasted no precipitation, or a snow shower, or a dusting maybe, the snow began to fall. Steadily.

Ooops.

Oh.

It stopped.

No, now it's started again.

What Do You Do?

2010-01-14T21:33:00.019-05:00

Photograph:
Ivanoh Demers/AP

The sun emerged for the first time in days, but I have this cold spot within that it was unable to reach. What do you do when an earthquake or a tsunami or a war over there brings suffering on an incomprehensible scale, and a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand faces of immediate human misery stare blankly from a darkened world stage?

What do you do (emphasis on any word)?

Do you make a contribution? Do you say a prayer? Do you watch? Do you go? Do you slide into numbness before the videos of bodies in the streets and reports of children with shattered torsos crack your carefully crafted sense of detachment?

Do you cheer on anyone capable of lending a hand: the doctors, the nurses, the disaster coordinators, the Haitians working without sleep, the American firefighters who go anywhere anytime?

Do you publicly (or quietly) suggest that anyone who suffers that much must have committed some grave sin? Do you wish we would spend our charity at home?

Do you see yourself, your mother, your father, your child in the man/woman/child on the TV? Do you thank God it didn't happen to you?

What do you do?

Doctors Without Borders: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86019&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=1
Oxfam America: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=85998&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=2
Yéle Haiti: http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86026&id=18575-11540594-URZ84Fx&t=3

Full Long Night (Blue) Moon

2009-12-31T19:18:00.011-05:00

It's a cold, rainy New Year's Eve, and the full moon has taken cover behind the night clouds. We can take that one of two ways:

1) Ominous signpost (eek!), as in: there's something about a blue moon not showing her face on New Year's Eve that doesn't bode well for the coming year, or

2) Crossroads signpost (eek!), as in: the second full moon in the Long Night December has withdrawn to give us a little moment to get our (collective?) acts together, and decide which way our (individual?) futures run.

Four paths converging. Which way to go?

Head north into the night, and ride it out alone in the cold comfort of some dark mixture of fear-ignorance-loathed-to-try?

Head south to the Party with the bright lights, the Hail Fellow Well Mets!, and the company of the inebriated, where tomorrow's hair of the dog competes with the sting of regret?

Head east to the measured consumption of wine and cheese, networking, home by 12:30 - "Love to stay, but the babysitter, you know..."?

Or, head west on a crooked path that meanders into God-knows-where - "but, hey is that a blue moonbeam sneaking out to shine down yonder? No? No, really, I think it is!"?

So many choices, and here we have a brief (some might say manufactured for the holidays) respite in which to pause and reflect, to decide what version of ourselves will ride the year. Is it Reluctant You, Risky You, Responsible You, or Courageous You? Is it Confident You, Clever You, Dark You, or Shining You? When we cross each other on the path of 2010, who will we meet?

Whoever it may be, I hope that we will love and help one another. I hope we see the best in each other's eyes, peeking out like an errant blue moonbeam in the last moment of the year.

The happiest of New Years to you and yours.

Post-Christmas Fog

2009-12-26T22:54:00.016-05:00

Dear me.

The snows came and went.
The rains came and went.
The presents have been bought, wrapped, delivered and unwrapped. Some may even have been returned and exchanged for other booty by now.

And, here in Pennsylvania, the fog has rolled in. It's that post-Christmas fog that usually descends on us as a result of too much food and wine, too much song and gifting. Tonight that expected mental fog has actually manifest as real, water-suspended-in-air fog.

Perhaps all that running from store to store, all those online shopping bits and bytes, all that toasting and roasting, all those Joy-filled carols, all those Warmest Wishes for a Happy Eid, Happy Divali, Blessed Solstice, Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa actually raised the temperature here in Pennsylvania, giving the post-holiday fog a physical form.

There's something fitting in that, because fog quiets things, tones it down, slows us down like a soft, cool blanket. Despite what you hear, you can actually think within a blanket of fog seeded with sedatives. Less input to distract and all.

So before the fog lifts to let in the New Year with its celebrations and resolutions and raised expectations, take a moment to relax.

And, Warmest Wishes for a Blessed Fog.

Merry Christmas to All

2009-12-24T23:06:00.005-05:00

Moon over Malvern

Christmas Eve 2009

May your heart be filled with love and light.

May those you love be close at hand, and if not at hand, then in heart.

May this season of light carry through to the next.

May you get the chance to give and receive, to help and be helped, to love and be loved, for it is when both sides of the equation are realized that we are truly blessed.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good life.

Family

2009-12-22T22:37:00.009-05:00

Rivers Family 1967

(I'm the one in the cat's eyeglasses)

Family.

We take it for granted,don't we? Those people we have grown up with. Those people we have joined with. Those people to whom we claim allegiance for all the right (and wrong) reasons.

Unless we don't have it. Or, at least the piece of it we most desire.

Then, we rail at the heavens, demanding justice, demanding love, demanding understanding, demanding some explanation for why the vision of family that somehow nestled in our heads and hearts is not the family we experience in real life.

When we are content with our families, it's all OK, all warm expectation of that existence we happily take for granted. Arguments and angst? Meaningless in the long rolling skein of time. When we are not content, we withdrawal into our own, or join another tribe, or want without fulfillment. We are disconnected. We are tribal animals that either embrace the pack, or become some distorted, pack-less, falsely contented rendition of ourselves. Or who we (think we) were "meant" to be.

Then come the holidays with their ability to illuminate and emphasize. And, they are never more powerful than when they are the winter holidays. Those chilly, golden times that begin with Thanksgiving and conclude with Happy New Year! Those times when we return to the nest, or write, or at least call to say, "As the year winds down, I remember you. I remember us. I remember what it means to be a part of something greater. And I want/need/have to say: 'I love you."

I love you.

Is that not the best of all the things that could be the expected?

I love you.

Really.

Wow.

Second Snow

2009-12-19T20:31:00.007-05:00

2nd Snow of 2009, Malvern, PA

December 19, 2009

Eeesh! Best laid plans and all that.

I planned to take my Dad shopping, but the snow fell and fell and fell, so I watched it fall instead. I would like to say that the snow turned out to be an ill-timed but welcome respite from the rush-gush-rush of the Christmas season, but the truth is that I have not felt all that rushed. Other concerns have crowded in: work, finals, economic concerns, artistic exercises, political snits, blah, blah, blah ... Christmas is creeping up on the radar in that slow, steady way that big events travel. You know: far away, far away, far off, still a-ways, RIGHT THERE (!) in all its panic-inducing glory.

For now, I will just watch the snow fall; let the random, inescapable carol float in; admire the lights and decorations of the committed; and anticipate that moment when Christmas seeps in to fill my heart with golden light.

It always does, and it's always right on time.

Ow - My Head ...

2009-12-16T23:10:00.003-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Can someone call me a doctor? No, really. I have insurance.

(Turn off the music at the bottom of the page. Unless you prefer the distraction.)

New Moon-y

2009-12-15T19:56:00.007-05:00

Well, thank GOD it's a new moon, because I am in dire need of a new cycle.

For some reason, I feel a little divorced from the Happy/Merry season. I see the lights. I see the trees. My breath floats in my face in the night. I am assaulted by the music at every turn. I have eaten too many cookies, and have sipped my share of wine (and eggnog). I have even bought a few Christmas gifts.

So why am I unseasonably unseasonable?

Maybe it's this long-running health care fiasco. People taking up sides on account of politics, not even bothering to make a coherent case anymore. People voting for hysteria with their mouths, and for the status quo, because status quo does not require vision. People standing on the side of those who put profit over lives, while other stand on the side of ... what? Compromise? Bi-partisanship? A bid for ANY bill over NO bill? All the while, sifting the dust in their empty pockets for a bit of self-respect. People demanding without heart, and waxing passionate without muscle. I do not think there is a health care plan that covers those ills.

Ah me.

Then there are the soldiers, sailors and marines deploying before Christmas. Yes, deploying anytime is not a cause to celebrate, even in those fabled "times of necessity," but before an emotional holiday like Christmas, and with so much resistance to the war? Well, it just feels like those sugarplums are still backstage looking for their dancing shoes.

Ah me.

Then there is this Christmas 2009 shopping vibe. Do we guard our wallets until we are SURE we have navigated the economic shoals? Do we shop till we drop in support of the Good Ol' American Economy? Do we take this opportunity to shift from gain to love, from Wii! to joy, from the glitz of Christmas lights to the Silent Light of the winter sky?

I don't know, so I will just say, "Ah me."

Thank GOD for the new moon and a new time to turn toward joy (to the world).

Incontinence

2009-12-14T21:08:00.012-05:00

What to do when you are up to your ass in commode content, and you haven't a clue how to dig yourself out?

At some point, the crap rises so high, that your survival hinges on being really clear on:

a) Which way is out.

b) Why we want to get out.

c) What we plan to do when we get there.

At this point, I am convinced that we haven't a clue about any of it.

Ass? Elbow?

This healthcare thing? Surely we couldn't be more incompetent if we sat down with a cabal of stooges and created a three- year plan for launching a crack house.

Perhaps I am being simple-minded. OK - I'll own simple-minded. Sue me. Slay me. Prop me up in an endless line of patients awaiting a life decision from their health insurance companies. Better yet, poke me in the eye with a ballpoint pen covered in hot sauce.

But.

Surely, there is some sense in re-engineering a system of hospitals, clinics, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies that relinquish their lauded pledge to heal in favor of shareholder profits.

Surely, the high road runs toward "insuring" that the "richest country on the planet" is the place where the world's "best medical structure" takes care of everyone.

Surely, those other countries that provide universal healthcare have the right of some part of it.

Surely, the duly elected Representatives and Senators, the men and women of the people, are for the sick and the lame, the indigent and the desperate, the child in pain, the man injured at work, and the woman supporting her family while waiting for the results of her biopsy. And, not nestled in the pockets of the Connecticut- based insurance companies, as Joe Lieberman is.

Surely our President and all his peeps are willing enough and strong enough to shrug off the lobbyists, the political dogma, the commentators, both Houses of Congress, and party pressure to delivered what they promised us.

Surely, there are those among us who recall the good goal. Yeah, the one that promised no one would be denied healthcare. Period. The one that is slipping away under the momentum of people who only have to say, "No." to win the argument. Those that only have to turn away, to make any - any - argument against, and hold their breath until they turn blue, to foil the purportedly good intentions of a dream team.

Am I simple-minded? Pollyanna-fied? Pathetically enamored with the dream?

Because, there are folks out there who make very effective hay out of partisanship. To them, the other party is the enemy, and the defeat of the enemy is the most important thing - always. And, they reject the need to listen to any other source of reason than that which comes from the lips of their own tribesmen.

See, our tribes now elevate incestuous resolve over reason, and we are no longer capable of fighting tribal doctrine. We can only nod and smile. Or nod and shout. Or mutter, shake our heads, and seek sedation in whatever form is available.

Meanwhile, our dreams slip away; we become disappointed, jaded and de-fanged. We rail against the "fat cats"; we snarl at the opposition; we blame everyone but ourselves; and we sink into the inebriated dream.

We are so easily disenfranchised, because we are too hungover to demand the reality we dreamt of, in the long ago.

First Snow and Waning Moon

2009-12-06T08:41:00.005-05:00

First Snow in Malvern

Yesterday, the first snow of the season hit the Philadelphia area. This morning, it lies heavy on the evergreens and coats the branches of the maples as if something thought to create art. Something new. Meanwhile, the moon has passed through its magical, mad phase of fullness, and is on the wane. One thing begins, another ends, and both do so with regularity. Of course, these are only two of the wheels constantly turning in the universe. The seasons, the phases of the moon, the days and nights, the years, the galaxies, the lives – all turning, all travelling cycle after cycle.

People are like that. Going through phases, choices, passages of life, over and over and on to the next. There’s this theory or philosophy or religious dogma (pick your descriptor) that defines life as a never-ending series of wheels. We jump to, hang on, and cycle through. If, at the end of the turn, we have learned the featured lesson, we jump to the next wheel. If, however, we fail, we must remain for the next turn. It’s a string of over and over agains until we master the lesson. We must learn to progress to the next lesson, the next program, the next life. And it does us no good to abandon the wheel; it will simply keep turning¸ and, one day we will jump unawares and find ourselves on that old wheel again. Only the lesson will have become bigger, longer, uglier, hairier. And, perhaps without the nice parts – like good relationships or pleasant scents or distracting music – once available to make the process more palatable.

So, the world turns, the galaxies rotate, and our lives come full circle with an alarming frequency. Observing this doesn’t seem to matter. We repeat the same bad choices. We ignore the signs that would help us to master the lessons and warn us against the same old pitfalls. We forget all that occurred in the last cycle as if we had more important things to remember. And, we complain that the wheel does not turn fast enough, as if we weren’t the ones always trying to shift into reverse or drag our heels when the ground passed by.

When we do succeed and move on, we are not quite sure how we did it. Or how to replicate the results. Or how to help our loved ones negotiate the same turns. All we know for sure is that the seasons, the world, and we keep turning as regularly as the rising sun. And, perhaps we should view such turnings as not a second chance to fail, but a reasonably long chain of opportunities to become our better selves.

President Obama Should Listen to Some Better Voices

2009-11-30T23:04:00.005-05:00

You might dismiss Keith Olbermann as a liberal, partisan operative. You might squirm as you watch him wallow in his own brand of snarky grenade throwing. But there's no denying it -- the man have a way with a Special Comment. Here he counsels President Obama to throw off the self-serving advice of his military advisors, reject the loaded demands of his opposition, and resist the (continued) escalation of war.

The President needs to listen to our better voices.

Let us love one another ...

2009-11-29T00:35:00.024-05:00

Mom & Jackie at our crazy, patchwork Thanksgiving table.

For decades, holiday dinners equaled high drama for my family. Suppressed feelings, hurt feelings, submerged anger, expectations gone awry – all these simmering feelings seemed to boil over at table during the holidays. You’ve seen its like on TV: the shouting matches, the tears, the storming exits, and those who sat through the storm, nibbling on pie, unfazed. Why, we even had a surprise proposal made and declined at table, which pretty much rocked Mothers’ Day dinner.

Thanksgiving held a particular pumpkin flavored drama. Angst over turkey and all the trimmings. Amazing that we kept coming back year after year.

Then, somehow, all the drama seemed to dissolve.

I cannot even pinpoint the year. Maybe (some of) the crazy people stopped coming. Maybe (some of) us realized that we could manage our relationships with dialogue rather than avoidance. Maybe we all realized that we love each other, and when we remembered to notice the love, then that was truly enough.

Somehow, the holiday at the Rivers’ table became cordial, then pleasant, then downright happy.

We have grown and grown up.

We have added family members through

birth

and osmosis,

And, with good food (Jackie really is the best Thanksgiving cook EVER),

good people,

and good conversation,

there really is an incredible lot to be thankful for.

So in this world where political, economic, environmental, cultural, religious, gender, racial, ethnic and personal tides threaten our sense of self and right and wrong; where dark forces seek to frighten us into embracing dubious agendas; and where it is so easy to turn off rather than stand up, I think it important to remember who we are and who we love. And, if you think you have no one to love, I will go out on a limb and say you’re wrong. Unless you choose it so. Hell, come to our house. We’ll LOVE talking the ears off of new people!

Let us rail against the darkness. While we're at it, let us appreciate the blessings we know, and work to recognize those we have yet to acknowledge. Let us reach out. Let us love one another. Let us give thanks that by reaching and loving we enlighten the darkness.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Everyone.

The Skin Between

2009-10-31T23:10:00.010-04:00

Hunter's Moon over Malvern

(October 4, 2009)

Ahhh ... too cloudy for a Hallowe'en Moon ...

The Skin Between

They say the skin between the physical and spirit worlds grows thin during the month of October, and thinner still during the night of Hallowe’en. Now is the best and greatest opportunity for all manner of wraiths, ghosts, disembodied and dead personalities to pass through the curtain from the hidden realm of the spirit to the prosaic land of the living. Before I heard this, I wondered why I have always felt freer, lighter, and happier in October. I sensed an air of expectancy, as if something special waiting just around the bend (Now, I still wonder, but what’s life without a bit of mystery?).

And, Hallowe’en? Before the last decade brought sudden and inexplicable fears of hobgoblins and witches; before Hallowe’en Parades were deemed dodgy, and forced into a box labeled Wholesome Harvest Festival; before hospitals started offering to X-Ray Hallowe’en candy (does your health insurance cover that?), Hallowe’en was labeled F-U-N, and, nothing more.

Now, the spooky festival is either a dangerous party or a reason to party dangerously. We go full out ghoulish or try to rescue another holiday for Christendom. Witches compete with angels; goddesses war with [pregnant] nuns; candy cigarettes have been replaced with bags of generic sweets that bear the guarantee: “A scripture in every snack!”

Meanwhile, no one but the neo-Pagans wants to talk about the thin skin between the worlds. Come to think of it, no one wants to talk about the thin skin between the people either. And, probably for the same reason: thin skins are truly scary. Where the skin is thin, you never know what you’re going to get. Good spirit, bad spirit, neutral indifferent spirit. Flu, STD, Hepatitis C. Lover, hater, interloper. Those who open up, those who open you up, those who walk or run away. Those who shred the tissue between, unrepentantly, stare you in your third eye, and dare you to blink.

Tcha. Such a crapshoot when the armor of the world or the armor of the person is breached. So terrifying when the defenses are down and you don’t know what’s coming over the wall.

Trick or treat.

Pink

2009-08-13T23:40:00.011-04:00

Pink Roses of August

I resist pink. Like sidling-away resist.

So frou-frou. So emotional. So indicative of some high-handed, high-maintenance, messy state of mind. All poodles and PMS and salon pedicures. All Barbies and beaches. Not to mention bitches. Oh, pink looks sweet, smells sweet, and tastes better. Think cotton candy, watermelon balls, soothing Pepto-Bismoleven. What’s to fear from such a delicately shaded sensibility?

Do not be deceived. Pink is a bully in damsel clothing. A special brand of tyranny lurking behind a perfect smile. It is the princess as likely to punch you in the mouth as to argue with you. And, you never know what hit you until it’s much too late. Sometimes you never figure it out at all. ‘Beware the pink,’ I mutter, and walk the other way.

Usually.

So I’m in the supermarket last night. See, they position the flower shop just inside the entrance where you’re still open to frivolity, not yet disgusted by the five dollar boxes of cereal and the four dollar loaves of bread. Ooohhh. Roses. Not even close to being my favorite flower, but they’re right there, and wouldn’t the white ones look nice on my counter? Or the passionate red ones – Mmm. About that time, I should be pushing these thoughts aside and heading for the bread aisle, but then these silly pink roses start seducing me with their obvious glow. And, I am sucked in so easily.

Maybe it’s too much work and too little play of late. Maybe it’s chanting crowds channeling too much fear of death panels and too little condemnation of Big Med greed. Maybe it’s long rains in a short summer. Maybe it’s the tireless romantic in me …

Tonight, the cicadas are singing, and big pink roses grace my kitchen counter. The blooms have unfurled in the heat of the day, at once delicate, exotic and vaguely dangerous. Despite their gaudiness, their scent is surprisingly subtle, and suddenly, I am not so tired or weary or whatever I have been this summer. Somehow, a bit of frou-frou has re-established balance somewhere, and I am restored. And content.

OK. Just a little pink.

R.I.P.

2009-06-26T02:38:00.011-04:00

So suddenly. So soon. SO sad.

Because whatever your opinions and thoughts of his foibles, his strangeness, his proclivities, his parental drama, his body issues, his face issues, his hair issues, his wives, his children, his siblings, his money, his decisions, his estate, his animals, his childishness, his politics, his hopes, his dreams, his re-inventions, his setbacks, his life ...

... there was always the music, the movement, the smile, the vision, the electric joy, and an unparalleled talent.

I hope you are moon-walking on the Moon.

Rest in Peace, Michael. Good peace.

Playing Tag with the Sun

2009-06-21T01:45:00.010-04:00

It’s the first day of summer, and I am still waiting for the sun to take up its rightful residence.

Sure, she arrived with the Spring. She blazed to warm the earth. She politely yielded to the rains in respect all the things that needed growing, but then she seemed to forget to return. And, now she seems loathed to do so.

Rain, rain! Go away! Come again some other day!

Didn’t work.

April showers bring May flowers.

Yes, but what do May showers bring? And, June thunderstorms that shake the very earth?

Baby, can you stop the rain?

Apparently not.

Say - Can I PAY someone for a … sun-fluffy-cloud-blue-skies dance? Really.

Meanwhile …

It’s the Summer Solstice. That longest day with shortest night. That celebration of the triumph of all that is green and warm and full-out blooming mixed with the recognition that the power of the summer god must now begin to yield to the silver god of winter. Why are all the god chronicles so very, very neurotic?

Meanwhile …

The paranormal, metaphysical ones consider THIS solstice a special solstice (link here), complete with planetary vibrations heralding a new age, complete with connections to both the Mayan calendar and the Harmonic Convergence. There is the expectation of a rising wave of energy that can remove the things that have been clogging up your mind and soul. Have something you would really like to happen? Focus. Make plans now. If not now, when? But, isn’t that always so? Umm … what are you waiting for?

Meanwhile …

I am sick of hoping for the sun. I am sick of rushing out to bask in an hour of sunbeams. I usually love rain, but enough. So this afternoon I vowed to chase it. Yes, you have a solar system, a sky and a horizon. I only have a car and a will.

Silly me.

Tag! You’re it!

Blessed Solstice.

Dogs in Paradise

2009-06-18T23:57:00.008-04:00

Once upon a time we adopted a beautiful dog, and named him Raistlin (after a thief in a fantasy novel, for crying out loud). His mother was a wire-haired terrier who conveniently went into heat while on a camping trip out west with her family. Biological imperative drove this well-behaved dog to escape into the wild woods, eluding her searchers until she found satisfaction with some wild dog. Raistlin looked like a white German Shepherd with wiry hair. He had gentle brown eyes, and flowed like wind through the grass when he ran. And, having inherited his mother's gift for escape, he ran frequently. Our neighborhood was his hunting ground, and he was king (let us not discuss the unfortunate incident with the Senator’s prize miniature rooster).

But, there came a time when Raistlin could no longer move without pain, and when my Mother saw that we could no longer ease his suffering, we had him put to sleep. Hot bitter tears, that night.

The next evening, my Mother dreamed of Raistlin running through a bright green field under a brilliant sky and shining sun. He ran as if he could fly. He ran with delight. He ran up to her to say: “All is well. I am well. Farewell.” And, then he was gone.

Yesterday, a good friend of my Mother’s wrote to say that she had to put down her beloved dog, Panda. Driving from the vet, she had a vision of Panda “… running in an open field (like the one in our neighborhood where she liked to go). She was healthy, it was green, sunny and she was running toward me, almost smiling like she could do. Ears flapping, tail twirling … I told her to go to Jesus in Heaven. She looked peacefully at me, and then she was gone.”

Two stories, two visions, so similar that somewhere there must be endlessly green, sunlit fields beneath brilliant skies were all dogs run like the wind in paradise.

Sunday Walk/Drive-Bys

2009-06-14T22:53:00.014-04:00

Geese vs. Cars in PA?

Geese always win.

May was a good month. Even the rain seemed filled with purpose.

But this June, the rain is driving and relentless. I've felt cloistered, cut off, submerged. Each time I thought the sun had returned for good, thunder rolled overhead, the lightening flashed and crashed, the skies opened, and the rained poured. Again.

But not today.

Today the clouds yielded, and the sun called. Time to be out.

All is overgrown green in Pennsylvania.

Or working hard to be.

We are as attached to our ruins as the brush and vines.

Not everything made it through the winter,

but for every naked tree, there are a thousand Goddesses of the green.

Random rabbit on the path,

competes with random corporate art,

competes with temporarily impotent clouds.

History is thick in Valley Forge,

with covered bridges

preserved log cabins

Monuments to George Washington

and his Revolutionary soldiers

And, just when I think the clouds are making a come-back,

the sun shines through with a last burst of light.

Happy Flag Day.

Crazy Wimmin

2009-05-27T20:39:00.003-04:00

I saw a tiger ...

So I’m driving home from work last night, listening to the radio, and this screeching tone interrupts the song. You know the one – that Emergency System tone that modulates from shriek to squeal to growl for 20 seconds in a bid for your attention, as if the first three seconds is not enough. In the past, you’d be treated to this cacophony, only to hear, “This is a test. This is test of the Emergency Message System.” Lately, however, there haven’t been many tests. Lately that awful sound precedes an Amber Alert. A child is missing, and giving the statistically short window for recovering kidnapped or lost children, the police are asking for all eyes now, if you please.

The Amber Alert asked for all to be on the look-out for a missing 9-year old. I simultaneously sent up a prayer that they find her in one piece, and listened for additional information. It is in another county, so I won’t see any suspicious cars driving by. The girl’s mother was also kidnapped. By two black men.

Damnit.

I can almost feel heads nodding in this area, “Of course.” I can also almost hear others wondering if this is real or just another Crazy Wimmin hoax. I simultaneously pray for the victims and protest the jaded among us who are willing to tar an entire race as criminal because of yet another violent crime perpetrated by “black men”. And, I protest those who are quite willing to believe that this is just another woman making up an African-American bogeyman.

It’s a strange phenomenon, these women who make up attackers and color them black, as if that will male their story more believable. There was that woman who drove her car into a river with her two small children in the backseat, and blamed it on black men. There was the woman who carved a ‘B’ in her own face, and blamed it on a large, black, disgruntled Obama supporter. Surely there is a limit to the number of crazy women who do bad things and make up fictitious black assailants to blame them on. Surely a real daughter and real mother are in real danger, requiring hard-nosed investigators and dogs and door-to-door searches. Surely there are bad men in need of capture and punishment. So I prayed for the safe recovery of little girl and her mother.

I checked for news today, hoping for a happy ending. We could do without another murder – especially that of a child – for forever, frankly. Here is what I read. Seems the mother called 911 from her cell reporting that she was thrown in the trunk of a car with which she had had a traffic accident. Her daughter was in the car too. Seems the father came on the Today Show begging for the return of his daughter and ex-wife. Seems the police did indeed go door-to-door seeking leads, and later found her car in Center City. Seems there’s now some Philadelphia Airport video showing the mother and daughter boarding a plane to Orlando, Florida. Fake ID, cash payment for one-way tickets, the whole ugly shebang.

All those people looking. All those police resources spent. All that fear. The father’s tears, another daughter (left behind) writing beseeching messages on their mother’s Facebook account. All the angst and all the prayers … wasted. Well, maybe not the prayers; they are apparently not in danger.

The police are no longer looking for two black male kidnappers in Philadelphia. Instead, the FBI is now looking for a 9-year old girl and her mother in Florida.

Damnit.

Oh wait. I just checked. They found the mother and daughter, and took them into custody. The FBI must be thrilled.

My Godmother (Or Why I am the way I am)

2009-05-25T22:11:00.011-04:00

Photo: Andy Wright

So I’m driving down the road with my Mother today … I’d tell you where I we were coming from, but my girl Rebecca-san would drive down here and smack the taste outta my mouth. {smile} Maybe I’ll tackle that one tomorrow …

Anyhoo – We’re looking at all the beautiful flower along the road. My mother points out these beautiful jewel-tone blooms, asking what they are.

“Maybe they’re nasturtiums? Or is it too early?” I respond.

“Maybe. They look like some I had in my garden. Joan Agocs gave them to me, and I planted them on the hill on Maple Avenue. She told me they would grow by themselves as long as I didn't try to move them. She was right.”

“They grew well?”

“Till I moved them. Then they died.”

“Dear God! Why’d you move them?” I laughed.

“Well I … I don’t know. I just …”

“Didn’t believe her? Wanted to experiment? Geez! Who is Joan anyway – what was her name?”

“Joan Agocs She was your Godmother.”

“Well of course that’s why I don’t know who she is! Because you appointed a godmother that I never met!” (Old argument.)

“You can’t let that go, can you?”

“Never met her. She went back to England …”

“She was funny and interesting. I liked her very much. Another very good friend that just disappeared from my life. That happens to me all the time.”

“Maybe it’s because you never call them.”

“Well … We all lead such busy lives” She sighs.

“Honestly, Mom. So what was she like?”

“She was a war bride. Came over from Bristol after the war. Her city was bombed a lot. Once she returned home on the train from a date, and the whole section of town had been bombed out. Even the train station was gone. Her date abandoned her on the tracks to see about his family. Just left her there. She had to pick her way back home. There were no landmarks left to navigate by.”

“Eesh! Sounds gruesome.”

“And, stressful. They used to have dogfights over her city. Everyone would stop and watch. Joan said, ‘We would forget about the blokes who were actually flying the planes. We would watch it like it was a football game. Just look up, and there they were. When our bloke shot down the German plane, everyone would cheer.’ She had lots of bad memories of the war. That’s probably why she was an atheist.”

“An atheist? My Godmother was an atheist? You chose an atheist to be my Godmother??” I was laughing so hard that I could hardly see the road.

“Well she was spiritual.”

“See, this is why I am the way I am! My Godmother was an atheist. My Mother taught me to cast astrology charts and read Tarot cards when I was a child, and now she has the nerve to play organ and piano for Sunday church services!”

“Well, she came to your christening.”

“And, where was that? Stonehenge?”

“Since your brother was christened at my church, your father insisted that you be christened at his.”

She of Zoar Methodist and he of Wesley AME. Tsk. Such rich African American history! And yet, still I’m half pagan baby …

“So how’d she like it.” I asked.

“Hmmm. Well, once I told her how church enlightened and inspired me. How it filled me with warmth and community. Later she came up to my desk and said, ‘Don’t show me light! I don’t want you to show me no light!’ And, she walked away.

“Geez.”

“Must have been the war. She was just such a terrific person.”

I have full faith and confidence that she was.

Thresholds

2009-05-18T23:03:00.005-04:00

People are graduating all over.

Graduation. That rite of passage, that level-increase that indicates you have progressed, increased, learned, altered, improved, arrived. It’s that transitory warmth that lets you bask in the light of your accomplishments, or at least breathe a sigh of relief that something heavy has passed.

Yea! Lift a glass!

Now onto the next.

Commencement means something new has begun. Your journey has ended, only to dump you out on another road. All those beginnings and endings never really end; they just cycle around.

So you’re standing on a threshold, and what do you see? The bright sunshine of a new day? A long, dark, scary tunnel of the unknown? Maybe you’re too damned drunk to look yet, but the future is right now. Best be prying your eyes open to greet the dawn, girl. Might as well embrace her, because she’ll just keep rolling in day after day after day.

This brings to mind a young woman I met a few years ago. She had graduated from a very impressive university. She had travelled overseas to teach English to Chinese business folk. She had paddled down a big river to bring the Internet to native villages. She had worked for a prestigious arts organization. Lovely internships providing valuable life experience. And, she was looking for an entry-level job, a foot in the door for a good company where she could work and prosper and pay off her student loans.

She made me nauseous.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the value of corporations. Many are upstanding organizations that provide a good product. Scads of people have built careers, fell in love, married, raised families, and retired with a sense of accomplishment and a trunk filled with wonderful memories. What’s not to like?

But, rushing to the safe choice is not always the thing. I wonder if it is ever the thing. I am sure there are tens of thousands of responsible, fresh-faced graduates out there who have landed the corporate job, banked their graduation bucks, and now look forward to a decade of working in a cubicle, paying off student loans, and scraping to establish a nest egg for tomorrow. Hoping that nest egg can someday be combined with the one the cutie in Accounting is building – seed money for the Plan 529 that will send the next generation off to college.

So, in this graduation season, I just want to ask all you graduates for one favor. Not to mess with your karma … Okay, I’m messing with your karma. Find me, and sue me.

But, before you lock into that blue-dress-shirt-on-Tuesday job that you never heard of before, before you stuff your feet in three-inch heels and spruce up your cubicle with an African Violet, before you relegate that thing you love to do to weekends, and then to the basement, please pause. Please think. Please remember what you started off wanting to do. Please remember the dreams you had or discovered or considered. Please contemplate what made you spend those years pursuing that degree, and at least look around for a slice of your dream.

Exercise just a bit of patience while you do so. Tamp down the panic screaming for you to take any any any job. Look at door number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (I know time’s a-wasting, but at 22, is it really moving that fast?).

I don’t want you to crash in your parent’s basement. I don’t want you to miss an opportunity. I don’t want you to regret your choices, but I don’t want you to regret your choices. I want you to take just one extra moment to look for your true dream job. Who knows – you might find that door with the sun spilling over the threshold, and embark on that path that’s been calling you. And, wouldn’t that be worth the extra stretch?

Okay. Time to bask again: Congratulations on your most recent success!

The Age of O/Let the Sunshine

2009-05-13T20:57:00.003-04:00

Okay, O.
I get practicality.
I get compromise.
I get priorities, and planning, and baby-steps.
I even get “the lesser of two evils”.
I don’t particularly like any of these for one reason or another, or at one time or the other, but I get them.

What I don’t get is this rumored desire to hold back the torture photos (story here). The Pentagon was going to release them. Everyone was on board. Get it all out in the open. Begin the healing. Then the commanders warned that such material might incite retribution, and now you and yours are flying the banner of “National Security” of all things, as if that dog of a song hadn’t stunk up the charts when the last Administration sang it off-key. What are you doing? More importantly, what are you thinking?

You say dark forces will see the photos of our soldiers behaving badly, inhumanly, in direct contradiction of all the national values we profess to hold dear. Yes. You say that terrorists will be inflamed by our brutal treatment of their brothers-in-arms and seek to retaliate. Maybe. You say the safety of our servicemen and women around the globe will be compromised by the release of such blatant evidence of our misguided attempts to protect ourselves. Really?

I say you have stepped off the path, and are tumbling head-first into the briar patch.

Do you really think that those who are willing to blow themselves to oblivion in pursuit of their agenda are sitting on any fence making up their minds about these United States of America? Do you think that the previously released material, the unrelenting chest-thumping, the condescending speeches, and shocking arrogance of the past Administration has gone unnoticed? Do you truly think that this evidence will be the stuff that finally and thoroughly unhinges our enemies, drawing them to every overseas base and every American shore with rabid intent?

But perhaps it is not the wrath of our enemies you fear, but the wrath of our friends. Perhaps you believe that the former Coalition-of-the-Willing would be disabused of the notion of our moral superiority were these photos to hit the street. I must ask: Just what crazy horror shows are captured in these photos? Because, the world - friend and foe – have never been as blind to our sins as we have been. But, even we see that the light of our beacon has dimmed, and we have sworn our commitment to the restoration of our reputation.

So, I ask again: What are you doing? You must know that reputations are never, ever built in the dark. Trust is not nourished on secrets. Hiding our sins will not hold back the storm. Doing so will only strip away the one key ingredient needed to heal a reputation: the truth.

President Obama, we need to raise the shades, open the windows, and let in the sunshine. We need to stand up and admit our sins. We need to apologize and make amends. No one respects the man who locks the truth in a drawer, hoping that the folder will be lost or forgotten. If we want to regain global respect, to de-fang the black of heart, and to block similar crimes in the future, we need to say, “Yes. See right here? Yes, we did it. This is where, who, how, and why. And, this is how we are going to make sure it never happens again.”

That is how we will begin to regain the respect of friend and foe. That is how we will begin to regain our self-respect.

Let the sunshine in.

My Mother’s Garden

2009-05-10T22:41:00.015-04:00

Random bits of my Mother's Garden

My Mother’s garden has always been wild and unpredictable. Being a Sagittarian with a significant Virgo influence, she is constantly stretched between twin goddess-muses: Free-wheeling Abandon and Obligatory Order. And, the balance of power changes without notice. Except in her gardens. And in her children.

In my Mother’s garden, things go in, are given fertilizer, sun and water, and are left to take root. There is no plan. There is no grand design. Nature will out, and it does.

And, the same conditions apply for her children. Oh, once there were plans and visions of who we would become. My Mother dreamt of upright individuals embracing success, God, and functional families.

We were provided food, clothing, the best education, and music lessons (piano, cello, violin, and guitar). We read shelves and shelves of books. We lived in a safe place near woods and fields and streams.

We always had a bike and a sled and a closet full of board games. We went to church and sang on the choir. We drove to Canada, Florida and cross-country to California. We flew to Jamaica, and also through the skies of New England in a Piper Cub. We were well cared for, and then we were reluctantly let go to bloom.

When I was 21, I worked for a nursery, and decided to take our garden in hand. I brought home bulbs by the bagful, shrubs and perennials by the trunkful, and balled trees tied to the roof of my car. I dug walkways and carved out flower beds. I thought I brought colors that coordinated. I thought I brought species that grew to the proper size. But, my efforts only made my Mother’s garden a more substantial riot. The trees towered over the roof, the flowerbeds were a psychedelic tapestry, and the bulbs naturalized simply because that is what they do.

And, my Mother was pleased, because by day the riot energized the viewer; and by night the colors faded to a murmur, leaving the white dogwood and the white tulips to glow in the moonlight like the gardens in the best fairy tales. And, that is the way her children grow. We have not followed a plan or design; we grow out of our borders; and we clash much, much more than we harmonize.

But, my Mother knows that in the odd moment, when the full moon shines and the spring breezes blow, we glow with the inner light of who we were always meant to be.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

Rescinding an Invitation to Hatred

2009-04-25T23:48:00.005-04:00

Today I read a brief account of how authorities in the Czech Republic are kicking David Duke out of their country. You know – that hateful little former KKK leader who keeps running for political office, and was actually elected once by crazy people in Louisiana. Seems he was invited by neo-Nazis to hawk his new books. Seems he was suspected of running around telling the converted that the Holocaust never happened. Seems he thought Prague had speech protections like those enforced by the American South of the 1950s.

It doesn’t.

Actually, the Czech Republic is still smarting from the atrocities of World War II. They are so sensitive to this issue that they nurture an active dislike for people who deny the holocaust (against all evidence to the contrary) and “promote the suppression of human rights.” And, this dislike for people who claim that the wholesale slaughter never occurred manifests in an actual law against such denial. A law that they actually enforce.

They arrest you, and then they kick you out. Or jail you for three years. I guess three years of David Duke was not at all appealing, because they gave him until midnight to leave. I’d imagine he is high-tailing it back to the good ol’ USA right now, where we tolerate his views, because our laws protect nearly everything that spills out of the mouths of the crazy, the cruel and the hateful.

Good for us.

Don’t get me wrong. I am completely committed to our First Amendment, and quite partial to its protection of free speech. Say what you want. Say what you want to my face and I will respond in kind. Unless you really piss me off, and then I will either scream or ignore you, depending on how much you annoy me. That’s our mutually enjoyed right, right? To speak and not to speak. Yea!

But, I have to respect a country that remembers the extermination of their Jewish and Romany populations with horror, and will not tolerate anyone who seeks to bury the evidence of evil through denial, or who who sign on as producer for Holocaust, Part II.

Good for them.

Reality Bites

2009-04-14T22:56:00.003-04:00

Is Reality TV Hell on Earth, or is it just Purgatory?

How else to explain why every lost, forsaken, misbehaving, and desperate celebrity (and I use the word celebrity in its most sweeping form) seeking to crawl back from the Ninth Circle sends their agent, publicist, lawyer, campaign manager or brother-in-law to get them a spot on the first available reality show?

And, we gleefully watch the eager hopefuls compete in the most entertaining and potentially degrading manner. We very rarely care about these celebrity attempts at revival, and forget about them when the season is over. There is a noticeable measure of cruelty in this voyeurism, and we are all - spectator and contestant alike - diminished. But they keep coming and hoping we will watch.

As if it will be redemptive. As if it is the first step back to the privileged life. As if it will salvage a reputation sullied by scandal - or worse - boredom. As if reality TV will cause John and Brenda on Oak Hill Circle to say, "Look at that former-rock-star-turned-soft-porn-queen bungee jump for sushi! She's got spunk! I don't care what OK! Magazine says about her! Let's buy her conveniently release retrospective CD, and watch next week!"

I guess now the producers are hoping John and Brenda will watch Rod Blagojevich competing for charity (sans kickbacks?) in Costa Rica on "I'm A Celebrity .... Get Me Out of Here!", and say, "Look at that former-and-soon-to-be-up-the-river-Governor Blagojevich racing toucans for charity! He's got cajones! I don't care what the courts say! Let's send money for his defense fund and watch next week!"

That is if the courts approve his trip to Costa Rica.

Hypocritical Oath

2009-04-07T23:38:00.005-04:00

There is no one more dangerous than the disillusioned.

Yes, we all break rules. Every day we cross some line, ignore some agreement, flaunt our freedom at the expense of something. But, we each have made a decision to do so, and probably decided to do so long ago, and probably announced it with pride, because those rules were not important to us.

But some things are different. Each of us has a list of truths and rules that we hold in our heads and close to our hearts, and those life-laws are sacrosanct. They spring from the place where our version of humanity rests. They are the lines that must not be crossed. They are the acts that send Mama Bear into a tizzy. They are the encroachments that launch revolutions. They are the trespasses that make us cry then shout then march then revolt. Because those are the acts that revolt us.

Mark Danner has “leaked” the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report detailing the participation of medical personnel in the torture of CIA detainees. Good for him. Good for truth. And, too bad for the people crying because the report was leaked against Red Cross policy. See: Rules Needing Breaking. Too bad for the doctors who claimed to be doctors and used their talents to measure misery. Too bad for the doctors who convinced themselves that helping monsters to extract confessions under duress served mankind.

God must have become rather sick of our antics, subterfuge, and secret brutalities, so she created the internet. Good for her.

Maybe these “health professionals" can use it to brush up on morals.

Freakin’ Friday

2009-04-03T21:49:00.007-04:00

So my parents.

My parents adopted this kitten named Friday, but my Mother quickly renamed her PITA. I love cats; I love Friday too. But she is the most aggressive cat I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of cats. Sure, she’ll cozy up to you when she is tired and wants to be stroked to sleep. But then she always wakes up, rested and predatory.

Friday stalks people. She must be placed in the basement when company calls, or she will harass them with her sharp little talons. Yes, I know cats don’t have talons, but that seems so much more accurate than the more domesticated-sounding ‘claws.’ Claws sounds like you won’t spend the next week dabbing Neosporin® on your legs. No, really. Cue: hawkscream.wav.

Yeah, Friday.

So I’m doing god-knows-what online the other night, and my mother IMs me:

Did I tell you about the feathers in the bathtub?

I think, “Friday,” but I am practicing not interrupting: No.

Friday is not allowed in my parents’ room at night. Something about not wanting to be murdered in their sleep. So, each night she has the house to herself, and one never knows what one will find in the morning. This particular morning, my Mother rises to go to the bathroom, and finds feathers in the bathtub.

“Friday, where’s the bird?” she yells.

Friday doesn’t answer. Who’d make her?

At this point, I’m wondering how a bird got into the locked house, but I know the standard answer will apply: “Who knows?” As in: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio … (My, but I seem to be on a Hamlet jag this week.)

My mother looks everywhere, following the trail of feathers. Then, she spies the little bird corpse lying neatly on the hall chest with the rest of Friday’s toys.

Mom, are you telling me that Friday brought a bird in the house, chased it around, killed it, tired of it, and then put it away with the rest of her toys?

No.

???

Your father found the poor little thing. He thinks it tacky when her toys are left to lie around.

???

So, he put her toy away.

Pieces of Man

2009-04-01T23:10:00.017-04:00

Peeps just love to spout all intellectual about the state of man. How do they (sigh – OK Shakespeare’s Hamlet, damnit) put it?

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

And, Rosencrantz responds, “My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.”

Yeah, man.

What is man? Or, more to the point, what is the highest expression of man? What do we most admire? What do we most readily emulate? What is the virtue of man?

Is it his heart? His capacity for love, compassion, empathy?
Is it his creativity? Music, letters, art, innovation?
Is it vision? Science, art, mathematics, philosophy?
Is it intellect? Logic, judgment, something as uncommon as sense?
Or, character, humor, nurturing, community organization, pride, sanity, salesmanship?

What single characteristic best defines man? What is preeminent? How do we choose? Must we choose? How do you pick the favorite child without looking like an idiot or a lunatic? How do you say that the artist is more important than the scientist? That the thinker is more vital than the chef? That the mother is greater than the philosopher? The lawyer more eminent than the salesman?

Perhaps it is my environment, that egalitarian American perspective. But, I judge all these attributes, or vocations, or paths – whatever you wish to call them – so very important, in concert. None of us is homogeneous. We are all pieces of the dream, a brew swirling with all our particles, potentials and possibilities, congealing into who we are as individuals, what we care about, what is important. And, as goes the individual, goes the planet (yeah, we’re an egotistical species, no doubt).

So, when someone elevates one slice of the human soul as all ga-ga, I have to wonder why, and I have to complain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go on with your intellectual self. Or your funky artistic self. Or your religious dogma self. Or your skeptical scientific self. Shake hands with your hillbilly self, or your snobby micro-brewery self. Or your literary contentious self. Or your disease ridden self married to your spousal political, emerging musically therapeutic self.

Separate yourself. Hone yourself into a brilliant diamondm sharp with that one great thing. Distinguish Yourself. Embrace your chosen bit, that lonely manifestation of man you champion, if you will. But when you finally realize that you are missing a piece – or a whole cardboard puzzle box o’ bits – of yourself …

Well, then.

One's Good Name

2009-03-27T23:56:00.005-04:00

One of the things I find fascinating about the human mind is its ability to respond to thoughts, issues and circumstances with such immediacy. By “immediacy” I mean what is going on in our heads right now. Sure, we can train ourselves - or be trained - to respond in a certain manner, according to pre-conceived and cemented notions. We are the Kings and Queens of Because-We- Have-Always-Done-it-that-Way. But, we are also infinitely capable of changing our minds, perceptions, and attitudes about any random thought that skitters across our minds. And, we do it just because we feel the vibe. We switch tracks with abandon and enthusiasm, with a sense of entitlement, and without warning.

And, as our minds go, so do our mores. To be sure, there are always legions of manner mavens, style sisters, political pundits, and intellectual icons willing to trot out in defense of the kingdom against all pretenders. We have an abundance of societal defenders, both earnest and passionate, acolytes who sing our praises and sweep away our garbage. Yet, we rise only to slip down. Time and again, we reach what we think is a pinnacle on the way to another pinnacle, only to realize too late, that what we call progress is only progression.

We start something new – continental foothold, nation, neighborhood, family. We have a vision, and we claw and cajole to realize the next logical bright new thing. We feel it when it is working, when the government begins to gel, when the crops take root, when our loved ones grow smarter, when we have change in our pockets, when life just feels so damned right. We want to leverage that feeling into the bigger and better: bigger schools, better libraries, bigger cars, greener lawn, and sports teams capable of championships. Scholarships progress to legacy slots at the Ivies. The swim club becomes the country club, and the ocean is no longer so far away.

And, we have been working on being right, of being just and true, morally solid, crystal clear about what is needed, what we should do, how we should behave. There is nothing better than a nice road map, eh? But, now we have started using MapQuest, and the directions are not so clear. See, the construction marches on like everything else, and those familiar roads have changed. Then, around some strange bend we find we're going wrong. Well, we find it when we are ready to admit that we are lost.

One day, we realize we have strayed from the blue and red snakes on our road map. What was right is now left. What was up comes crashing down. That beautiful field next door now contains five new houses, because someone needs a bigger place to hold all their accomplishments. What is good is what protects all the crap we have bought since – well, yesterday.

And, look: Now there are all these other people coming up who have their own dreams, desires and sense of being. They are not impressed by our history, our experience, or our beliefs. We appear jaded and tired. Color us cynical, greedy and obtuse. Why would they follow our map? We’ve been driving around in circles, looking for the entrance ramp. Or was it the exit?

We have lost the ability to present ourselves in simple terms, without qualifiers and apologies. Our bravado no longer serves us, and we grasp at promises for a better day in the hope that they will lead us back to where we diverged. Even when we know we are lost, and it's all our fault.

What we have lost is our good name in the eyes of everyone, ourselves included. We have frittered away. We have wasted. We have taken for granted. Under the weight of all that indifferent, misdirected ambition we know the only way to re-discover it is to retrace our path: down the superhighway, onto the surface streets, back through the neighborhoods, and into that small parking space in front of Mama’s house. Maybe the kin and family heirlooms will remind us who we are.

Disposables

2009-03-26T22:22:00.009-04:00

KenMac creates this cool Greenwich Village Daily Photo blog with – umm, daily photos of Greenwich Village. And, beyond! He clicks what he sees, what moves him, what he provides for your own movement. Check him out.

Frequently, he decries the loss of the old architecture, the buildings with character fallen before the encroachment of what he calls soulless “condo-strocities". Not to mention the chic-shoppes and Club-O-Matics. Why maintain something grown from a life when the corporations cradle us. They are the new landed estates, sworn to support us mind and soul (Lords and Ladies, Dance your Boards!)

Today, Ken posted photos of ‘ruins’ (his descriptive): building with crackling, crumbling paint; with graffiti that says everything without appearing to say anything; with such beautiful workmanship of plaster, glass and metal that I wonder when we stopped thinking it worthwhile to do something beautifully when we had to do something at all.

Those photos naturally made me think of all the worthwhile things we toss in pursuit of the new, the better, the young, the more. The More. That’s it, isn’t it? In our souls, we are children, and, like Oliver, we want more. Saturday morning TV was created by geniuses familiar with the human mind. What better gig than to give the new to the ones starved for it? What better purse than the bottomless one constantly filled by the coin of insatiable consumers perpetually driven to chase about for the next thing?

It does not even have to be the next great thing. We disengaged ourselves from the pursuit of things like quality years ago. Good and long-lasting are no longer characteristics we have been trained to expect. New! Fresh! Unexpected! Whatever your neighbor hasn’t yet discovered is a treasure.

So, what have we given up in the pursuit of the fresh? What is disposable?

People? Certainly. We trade-in our friends, our spouses, our children at the first opportunity to upgrade. We now live so long that we don’t know what to do with our parents. We turn over employees like playing cards, while sneering at those sensitive souls who don’t get that it’s just business. We step over the homeless, pity the unemployed, and can’t seem to empathize with anyone who doesn’t look, talk, act, dream like us.

Animals? They have been disposable – well, forever. Don’t be fooled by those willing to drop $15K on a kidney transplant for their Shiba Inu. The shelters are unrelentingly full, and my vet’s assistant cares for 46 cats. Our plains are full of wild mustangs and buffalo, but they are in pens awaiting slaughter. Animals are commodities, no matter how smart, cute, fast, strong, brilliant, or endangered. Is it cynical to view it all as critter marketing now?

Plastic, metal, paper, energy, land, whatever? It’s a bit difficult to take recycling, conservation, sustainable energy drives/policies/pleas seriously when only the most earnest or the most paid can muster up a semblance of enthusiasm or fury.

You have to know, because even children know: When you throw away everything, sooner or later you end up with nothing.