Tell Me A Story

The Greatest Show on Earth.
The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Every Picture Tells A Story.
Tell Me A Story

Tell me a story, Sarah said, looking into her mother’s eyes as her mother bent toward her to kiss her good night. Her mother smiled every time she said this, even when she was too tired to tell much of a story. Sarah began to learn that every word is in itself a story. There is life in every syllable, every sound, her mother used to say. When she spoke sometimes Sarah closed her eyes, and her mother sang to her softly. Some were songs she knew, others her mother made up. Where do you think songs come from? Her mother said, when Sarah asked about a song. Songs come from somewhere!

I want you to think of a word as a string, her mother said once. Close your eyes and see the string. Make the string a red string, one with three threads intertwined. Make it as long as a spool of thread, or the garden hose. Now let the word unwind, just like the thread, or the hose, watch the thread as it is pressed through the needle eye, then begins stitching, the hose begin to spray a fountain onto flowers ready for a drink.

Ah, Sarah sighed, her eyes closed tight. I am beginning to see what you mean, she said. There is no end to imagination, creation. That’s the way stories go. Each one begins another, each a wheel, spokes, rainbows, circuses, flowers, smiles. I know, her mother said, touching her hair and smiling that smile again. Just remember, there is no end.

The Beauty of Planet Earth

I've heard a lot about this BBC documentary, and have been watching some of Karma Tube's video clips for quite a while now. If you'd like your own "world tour," and also to connect with these people who are bringing us the powerful beauty of Life images, take a look. It's awesome.

An Emmy Award-winning BBC nature documentary, Planet Earth is the first high-definition video series to provide, in the words of its makers, a "definitive look at the diversity of our planet." The series' narrator, Sir David Attenborough, notes: "Planet Earth is more a celebration of our planet than a lament about the state of it. It shows what is still there. In some areas there is no doubt that we are doing damage to our world but at the same time, there is a vast amount of uncharted and untouched wilderness." This video excerpt unleashes the elegant beauty of that which is home to all of us.

This is a great fit with a recent post (Why I Eat Organic) Linda Bruce added to her blog site, Expanding World. Check it out.

Our Big Invitation

metmuseum

Some obvious hypnosis happens when you stand by water, just as it does by fire. What is prophecy? What is a “jeremiad”? Verses of songs leap and dive in my head like fish with grey-metal skin shining in sunlight.

On public television I listened to Bruce Springsteen tell stories and sing. He spoke of Mary and a beloved son, what parents may feel. What it must mean to lose a boy. He framed songs, told Thunder Road as his Big Invitation, to himself, his audience, to live, hopefully with someone, people you love, and find a place you feel at home. He spoke of how you internalize your craft, how feelings come, and the mechanics of storytelling become part of that craft. You pray to the gods of songwriting, and that you will remain awake, your senses about you, so that when those moments come, you will be ready. What you speak without thinking, he says.

I dreamed as he sang of the fishers of men. I dreamed of the water, the way the water moved, and how my toes dug into sand. I sang the sounds that came to me from as deep as the ocean, and the depths of the sky that were blue and grey with rough edges and soft cushions that blur and blend together into one swirl of snow. Fish swam to me, scales shimmered and shone like shields on some battlefield that drifted through my memory, empty and open and littered with broken bits of shells. My hands were open and reaching for something, and I heard horses, then, smelled blood. I was a man with armor, an insect shelled, and the strings that tied me were tight as rubber bands, rough as leather. I was a woman with a long taffeta dress, silk draped and dapper and also easily worn, bone and shells as buttons and jewels I wear, because I remember the majesty of horned animals crossing plains with wind like sails with them, and also umbrellas I twirled, playful and happy over old cobblestones as birds fluttered and flapped around me, circling fountains.

These jumbles of images sometimes require organization, train coupling and cars. Trains are beautiful machines. Remembering each tumble of syllable, word, image as they come refreshes me like water as my memory opens to all time. There is no stop clock, no hands to tie, only the beauty and precision of time passing by clock face and season. Leaves turn colors, drop from branches, and pile up at trunks. Skies are endless panoramas of change, as all is beneath the surface of earth. The surface smiles, cracks, moves, shakes, slithers. When I reach for any object now, I know something of its story.

When I lie in bed at night, and awake with morning, sometimes I remember coffins, sometimes flowers, and almost always the cry of a baby with first breath. Finding the place which is home is a thought which comes as poetry when I truly listen. Home is where the heart is. I once longed for a “you” which reached for me in the morning as sun began to shine, in a bed warm and with the smell of fresh crumpled sheets and lilacs, the wood framing the bed telling its own story, its own smells embedded in grain. Some days I remembered you, delicate details of your hands, the touch of beard that came in fast. Other days your face came completely different, framed by strawberry blonde. These are tumbling times, and there is no danger of falling off of a cliff, or being strangled by a long scarf caught in a wheel well. For me, there is no immediate and present danger of gunpowder residue, a ticking too loud, a gun barrel or bomb. My world works differently in this moment. Evolution happens.

When I touch your back nerves with my fingertips, I feel the water of life move, and every broken bit of shell wave-tumbled. The thread of your bright green sweater makes its own green map of the world. Energy knots that form clusters want to be released like rocks too long lodged. You will know, too, your own language of how you move, the way the atoms dance inside. I am no scientist, yet I feel the science of life itself making itself known to me like the language of the earth, the way building blocks form, the spangle of chemical stars and clusters, clumps and colors beating and rising and coming to rest. None of us are strangers. This is one way we know what it means to be lovers- we are made the same, as energy, density of matter, beautiful as matter in motion. As I live and breathe.

Nerves have their say, their way, as they do, so often with no thanks.

"Promoting Peace" not "Fighting Terrorism"

I've been listening to the presidential candidates, and reading small press newsletters. One of my favorite small press newsletters is Shelf-Awareness. Recently I enjoyed an article about Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, a book a friend gave me last year. Tea reminded me again of the radiant inspirational power of love compared to our so-familiar hard-hitting mind's way of "paddling the gorge," which I thought of again when I read this article. Note in particular Mortenson's push to have the book's subtitle changed. Thanks for the reminders! With all due respect to historians, I ain't gonna study war no more! That's my feeling, my thought, my fatigue of the slow if not fast death that war creates. I had to think through this again. Truly Thinking can keep us from simply jumping onto the raft of feeling good about what we are thinking and not being open to change. What is "truly thinking?" In Joy of Health, Kathy Oddenino defines "intelligence" as "thinking with feeling." Watching, listening to the Democratic debates, I feel the electric currents of the candidates flowing, and I feel my own energy flux as I am engaged. It's so easy to get caught up in the energy of debate, reaction, without really thinking with the energy of love that inspires and moves with the exciting energy of change. If these sound like just words, it's because we are not yet in touch with the energy of the Ethical values of our spirit energy that gives life to us as moving matter.

Neoneocon's blog site post on "I ain't gonna study war no more" helped me think through this further. This blog site by a former dancer, and a therapist, chronicles the education of a mind coming to know itself, pushing on. She prompts me to think again about the necessity of our "knowing where we came from." She points out what education used to mean to us, in our history.

According to a Wiki entry she quotes (our modern reference to everything), "classical education" is not only an education in the classics of Greece and Rome, it’s an education according to a system set up in ancient times by the Greeks and Romans, with an emphasis on history itself as the key to nearly everything ..."

"History is the unifying conceptual framework, because history is the study of everything that has occurred before the present. A skillful teacher also uses the historical context to show how each stage of development naturally poses questions and then how advances answer them, helping to understand human motives and activity in each field.

The entire issue of classical history and military history dovetails—strangely enough—with one of the major concerns of therapists as well, and that is the understanding of human nature and its lessons for future action. It’s a topic that can hardly be studied in a vacuum, moral or otherwise. You might say that one of the main goals of therapy is to help the client understand the patterns of his/her own personal history and how this knowledge can inform his/her future. The same is true for learning any history; in focusing on the past we are trying to learn the best way to affect the future. "

She continues quoting Victor Davis Hanson. "We must abandon the naive faith that with enough money, education, or good intentions we can change the nature of mankind so that conflict, as if by fiat, becomes a thing of the past. In the end, the study of war reminds us that we will never be gods. We will always just be men, it tells us. Some men will always prefer war to peace; and other men, we who have learned from the past, have a moral obligation to stop them."

This brings me back to Greg Mortenson and Tea. And to what it means to me to understand my own history. What has grown repetitive to me, in a way that feels war-weary, is my thinking, when I just jump on that raft and paddle, falsely thrilled by the thrust of old, familiar ways. I'm not sure who I'm voting for in our endless prep to upcoming elections. I am paying attention to how I've lived my own "economy on steroids," for example (building up debts, before learning this power and freedom of Choice, creating as I go, skip, jump, dance, do!) The next step to me is to begin to know that we are our own ancestors! Our history as energy and matter (consciousness) is reflected into the physical behavior we've described and inscribe in every expanding-media way we can: chip, processor, satellite, speed.

We have lived plenty of war to study. Now, the true motives of life and change as energy beings. Human nature? I love to keep thinking.


By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

A surprise best seller this season is a non-fiction book, set in Pakistan and Afghanistan, that was published 21 months ago to limited notice. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin has climbed the lists, thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations and a tireless author with an inspiring story.

Tea describes how Mortenson, an American mountaineer, found a new cause: building schools, mostly elementary and especially for girls, in 1993 during a failed attempt to climb the K2 peak on Pakistan's border.

In a Pakistani village, the former U.S. Army medic met children without paper or pencils. He promised to build them a school.

His book, written with Relin, a journalist, describes how he did that and more in the belief that "education can overcome the despot leaders, dictators and clergy who use illiteracy to control impoverished society."

The non-profit foundation (ikat.org) he started in his hometown of Bozeman, Mont., has contributed to the construction of 58 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Via e-mail on his way to Pakistan, Mortenson, 49, says he pushed to have the book's subtitle changed. In hardcover, it was One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism … One School at a Time. In paperback, it was revised to One Man's Mission to Promote Peace.

"The public is interested in peace, just as much as fighting terrorism," he says. "So far, no politician seems to have their finger on that pulse."
In hardcover, the book rose no higher than No. 164 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, then quickly fell off. In paperback, it hit No. 73 in March and is now No. 24. Publisher Penguin reports 1.1 million copies in paperback.

His publisher credits the author's personal appeal: He has visited 123 cities to promote the book and his foundation.

"What championed the book were women's groups, book clubs and independent stores," Mortenson says.

After he visited Bodine High School in Philadelphia, teacher Cecilia Ramirez said, "I have honestly never received so much positive feedback from students."

The mission of the Central Asia Institute, which he heads, is to promote and provide community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Central Asia. And the girls, as well as the boys, are determined to learn. In a village west of Kabul called Mydanshar, teachers held class for the younger boys in rusty shipping containers. The school's older boys studied on the back of a scorched armored personnel carrier. The girls had to study outside, where the wind whipped sand in their eyes and tipped over their blackboard. They all had to contend with U.S. Army attack helicopters buzzing the school at high speed. Other schools taught three shifts every day, while the teachers rarely got paid. Mortenson asks, if we can't do something as simple as seeing that teachers get paid, "How could we ever hope to do the hard work it takes to win the war on terror?"

"It's impossible to capsulize what Greg Mortenson went through to build that first school, and the discouraging days when all he felt was failure. It's impossible to convey the richness of this story, the incredible kindnesses he encounters, the dangers he has survived (two fatwas and a kidnapping by Wazir warriors near Peshawar, to name only a few--and the roads!), the passion he has for building schools and for the people of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. I urge you to read this book, and you will find yourself telling others about it with an earnestness that may surprise you. It's heartening that one person can make such a difference, especially during times when the world seems overwhelming in its need for just such people. Jon Krakauer has said, "If the world had fifty Greg Mortensons, there wouldn't need to be any war on terror."--Marilyn Dahl

Three Girls and Their Buddy

What a show! Here's the bit from the Carolina Performing Arts web site, with links to each of the performer's sites. I hope you'll visit. The Hall is a beautiful space, newly renovated, and these performers are always a pleasure to experience. Their genuine laughter while acknowledging the reality of sadness inherent in loss, the true joy of sound and song, deep rhythm and wide-open hearts, is well, a gift of life in itself. And what voices ... Thank you. They're also very funny. Nice light show, and I love Emmylou H's reference to the days when men pumped your gas and tuned your guitars. I'm hanging on by a thread, Patty G. said. The blue light came on. And what does Miss Liberty have in her left hand? I'll have to look that up.

The winner of 10 Grammy Awards during her 40-year career, Emmylou Harris was one of the first female performers to bridge the gap between traditional and contemporary country music. Harris remains one of the genre's best songwriters and interpreters.

Three-time Grammy Award-winner Shawn Colvin achieved mass popularity in 1996 when "Sunny Came Home" became a Top 10 pop single. Since then, she has fully transcended into the folk-pop world with albums such as 2006's These Four Walls.

A country music luminary since 1992, Patty Griffin has penned songs performed by the Dixie Chicks, Harris, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, Bette Midler and others. Twice-nominated for Grammys, Griffin has become one of the genre's most gifted songwriters.

Considered one of the best guitarists in Nashville, Buddy Miller has become known as a skilled producer and songwriter. Miller has toured extensively with some of country music's biggest stars, including Steve Earle, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.

I Had A Dream

photo by Jefra Linn

One night I had a dream of trying to tether something to the ground. The feel of it, my determination to dig in the dirt and fix the peg deep, was intense and real, just as the flap of cloth on my cheek, then other bits, more material, cool air, wet silk, confetti, wind. When I awoke I was speaking to a friend on the phone, pleasantries, and suddenly the sense came to me – I was attached to this feeling of being “shot down,” literally and figuratively. Certain feelings of bitterness, like leftover coffee grounds, connect with symbols, clear images complete with scenes, just as others of sweet fragrance, laughter, wings, earthquakes, skin do.

Not to know the energies within us as they introduce themselves is to miss the manners that come with evolution. When I sat with my coffee in the quiet of rare morning moments, I followed this thread of thought and came to the shore where my parachute tore. Silk shreds, sheets, some long like kite tails, and luminescent in the night sky, like sea creatures I’d seen over water. Every loss was related to this feeling, just as every thrill was related to the elation of climbing, the white water, clouds simply forming and changing.

It is amazing to let such memories come. My shot-down self said hello, silently, and the smile that came with it was both amused and relieved. My goodness, we talked this way for hours, until what felt like afternoon came again. We talked of how each sand crystal was created and glittered, how the water felt so cold, how the memory of Gulf Stream warmth came like every other memory of warmth, flooding. The sun and clouds and stars rolled into one, too, and scattered, and the memory of twinkling eyes glittered like diamonds on water. There were no leaves at first in this opening, only eyes blinking, salt water slipping down one cheek, then dancing in bursts over rocks, against hard sand.

Slowly what came was the memory of creation itself, a seed swollen with the urge of life as a thought wanting to express itself every way beautifully, the power in this, the quiet joy. Each seed of thought within me has had its life, is living. When we swirled that latest Port with warm chocolate, for instance, my friend and me, in the warm brown room that held the laughter and flavors of friends enjoying themselves, the flavor of centuries lingered and leapt in our syllables.

As I watched the face of the man who served us, those who passed him, his eyebrows alone told a story of restraint, some sorrow. The gleaming bar told a story of hands resting, wiping, wishing. As we read the story of beans, seeds, flavors, years, on the slick paper presented to us, I opened myself to their stories. Just as each object we accept easily has its own movement and change, each thought dances or dives, glides or struts, smoothly lets itself be known. The Story of Stuff is out now, Annie Leonard’s and more, making us think of the journey each object, each creation, each thought takes. And a local man wrote a great article of his own application to know this journey intimately, reforming one use into another. While thinking on this, I had news of a distant relative’s death, news made known through an apologetic email, the litany of names connecting the name, the person, the people, to me, to us – Buford, Desaix, Elizabeth, Minnie Maude, Donna. I am thinking of this now, these energies distant to me, South, Deltaland. Connecting chemical dots, to know the force of love, and all the ways we make love live. Thank you for each way we make ourselves known, in love.

What A View

dance-to-the-piper

“Well, pray for a 12-car pile-up because we’re not exactly swimming in livers over here!” Dr. Cuddy on House



Sarah had always collected things. Greg was a brilliant broken-down doctor with a bad leg – as he said – and she had nothing to say to it. They were between bridges, he in his way of cajoling but not being willing to love truly, and she in her hope growing inside her like her own harvest. A drought had accumulated for months, and most rain that came ran right over the ground. When she sat at the kitchen window and watched the birds at the feeder, she sipped her coffee and tasted the story of the beans, or so she imagined. How many hands had they passed through – planting, harvesting, separating, roasting – not so much literal hands, too, as then mechanical ones? What soil had fed these seeds? She imagined the dark beans sliding down a shiny grey tray, a conveyer, some bouncing a little, then calming down into a heap. She tasted different notes, like music, or maybe she imagined this as tasting was described by coffee connoisseurs. Certain sounds she felt in her mouth when the first sip passed her lips and pooled, then the deepening of the heat like roots without strength. The bitterness came after, a slight bounce or reflection almost, and she saw the sun baking the plants, nurturing them to a high harvest.

She had all the time in the world, somehow. She had been a journalist for a long time. There was plenty of work, which still excited her, and somehow she felt she still had all the time in the world. A dream? Now, this broken-down doctor with a bad leg. How did she love him? Some friends discouraged her. Were they, her friends, happy? A few were actively engaged in Living, and some laughed and cried and danced as they tied their shoes, combed their childrens’ hair, filed reports, and gave presentations. She admired them in some ways, their commitment to life itself as days and nights unfolded in their worlds. Always there was truth in this "how do you feel" question. What was the work? What was the dream? One friend told her, Careful what you say, I believe in the power of words. Yes! She thought, so do I or I wouldn’t be writing stories about reasons for war, the heartbreak of martyrdom, the jousting of egos in a room. There is no “all the time in the world.” Act now!

Then it came to her, again - the way the rain sounded as it poured through the rain barrel spouts last night, after so much dry air, dry land, reaching roots. Come back to the way souls seek peace after war. Her doctor friend was hard as nails in how he reflected the care and love he wanted. She listened and took it in, as late water permeated dry land at last. She saw it in him, and, as his friend told him, Being miserable doesn’t make you different, it just makes you miserable. Was she open to satisfaction, to changing, to love?

A friend gave her a gingerbread heart her son made, an ornament for the season. Then her friend strung a green and red ribbon through it. Ah, then she thought of the dramatic simplicity of the birds at the feeder. They peck and peep and move fast to nudge another. They preen and strut, then, gradually, nuzzle. What a word. What a wonderful world. What a view.

The Kennedy Center Honors

"Diana Ross makes it sound so simple.'I really, deeply believe that dreams do come true,' the international entertainment icon has said, while also believing that 'you can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream-you've got to get out there and make it happen for yourself.'"

Tonight I watched a Kennedy Center program honoring Martin Scorsese, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Leon Fleisher, and Brian Wilson. Each tribute was beautifully done, full of the appreciation and joy of expressing artistically, the passions of life as art, emphasized by those who were influenced by these artists. Each person has his or her passion, their perseverance for using or finding the medium through which their passions could live, could be expressed joyfully, happily. Fleisher still says, after having lost the use of his right hand for piano and regaining it decades later, to play music is wonderful, is to be in a state of ecstasy. After the despair of losing his gift, he came to realize that the music came from him, not just his hands. He began to teach, beloved students, to conduct, and finally, again, to play, first with his left hand. Each of these artists was honored by contemporaries and those who have come behind.

Some of the Beach Boys hits persisted through the years I was growing up in boarding school far away in Africa. The older girls danced and sang while we listened and danced with them, energized by their fun and the music. Girls from around the world sang those lyrics together, loudly, and clapping. Diana Ross is a diva who personifies the word. To watch her even now is to appreciate that spirit she personifies – reach out and touch somebody’s hand, make this world a better place, she sang, and I feel it as she took Brian Wilson’s hand, Martin Scorsese’s hand on either side of her as they took their final bow of the program. Familiar faces from our public arena, and entertainment history,appeared everywhere in the audience. As the camera showed Condoleezza Rice as she listened to one of Fleisher’s students play a beautiful grand with the Peabody Conservatory orchestra and a grand choir behind him, I wondered if she ever longed for more of that pure ecstasy of playing music, without the tangle of politics which so often has no harmony. She moved with the music. Steve Martin always sought to invent new ways to express himself, to laugh at the absurdity of so much of life. His college study of philosophy gave him the prompt to go beyond the physical sleight of hand to overt absurd props which he used in new ways, and to use his own physical humor with absolute freedom. Just to be physical is funny! He was hilariously silly. Recently I saw his memoir in the bookstore (Born To Stand Up). I picked it up but didn’t buy it then. I’m adding it to my list, again. For me it is a tribute, too, to read the ways such personalities express their lives on paper. Martin Scorsese – to capture his vision on film, full of the sounds and sharpness of the streets, the personalities with the raw energy which keeps the streets humming. As he listened to the tributes, he smiled, and his face was full of emotion– as he listened to the aria, to the music, listened, no doubt remembered. I cried with joy as I watched. These tributes remind all of us, and especially the creators, how much their presence means in the world, how the ripples expand.

What a tribute, what a place, what passion. Thank you.

Everywhere I Look

Julie Newmar

Recently I was reading the January issue of Esquire magazine. (I like to peruse all kinds of magazines that get my attention.) Johnny Depp is on the cover (which always gets my attention), and the headline is "What I've Learned." All kinds of people were asked this question, some comparing their answers from years ago. It's an interesting view of public personalities, our culture, ourselves. It made me think about the question, which I often do, in new ways. It also invited me to think about Julie Newmar again. On p. 16 is Julie Newmar's (Catwoman)response to "What I've Learned." It's beautiful. She finishes with, "More is not necessarily better. Better is better. You can't fail. The further you fall, the greater the opportunity for growth and change. Shape up, folks. There is no death. Think of it as evolution."

I went to her web site, then, just to acknowledge, and found her "The Very Last How To Book" (The Conscious Catwoman Explains Life on Earth), along with her bio, which I read. Thank you, Julie. Check it out if you're surfing and want to pay a visit.

Oh Baby

“The nicest mammary glands I ever saw belonged to an American Alpine goat at a county fair in upstate New York.” Sandra Steingraber


Human labor does not follow a one-way chain of command. “Determining what ultimately sets childbirth in motion is less like tracing a path up to the top of an avalanche-prone mountain than like searching for the headwaters of a swiftly flowing river. What one finds at the source is a nexus of interconnecting creeks and springs, each feeding the other.” (Having Faith, 180)


I’ve been reading a lot about childbirth lately. Not because I am having a baby but because I wanted to read Sandra Steingraber’s book, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey into Motherhood. My nine-month-old niece and her irrepressible energy also prompt me to think, to want to know more. (See how that works - thanks, Banner :) Wanting more, learning more is to appreciate more. Steingraber is a good writer, and an honest, diligent appreciator of the value of knowledge in its many forms. She is also a lover of nature’s intricate and infinite expressions. She knows what she wants to know, asking questions that lead to others. Whatever happened to natural childbirth? What is her emerging desire for it all about? Interwoven with her research journey, and interesting historical facts that are sometimes incredible, are details of the baby herself, and the emergence of that new, charming life. The pictures she paints of the history of obstetrics, for example, shows how we create our “facts” and support them by our beliefs, which then influence our interpretations of other “facts.” Steingraber exults in finding a piece of her puzzle: “Trained to treat trauma and disease, physicians tend to see pain as a problem to be fixed and the refusal to accept analgesics as an exercise in masochism.” (165) There are many kinds of pain that are not pathological, she writes, pointing out that no one rushes to a marathon runner finishing a race with a needle full of narcotics. The focus is on the thrill of “victory,” not the relief of pain. Our focus must change to supporting life rather than disease.

I’m learning a lot reading this book – physical details in the history of childbirth, medical histories, most popular contaminants and where and why they show up as they do, and more personal details about one woman and her family. The history reminds me how our collective attitudes about “medicine” and “health” have been created and fostered. Individually, we are part of a collective, and it is individuals that initiate change in a collective. At the risk of seeming to choose the most glaring examples of the misguided "male-mind" control of life (whether in males or females), I’ll point to one Steingraber mentions. In 1920, Dr. Joseph DeLee, a noted gynecologist particularly disliked by “natural childbirth” advocates and midwives, printed a paper which led to the use of episiotomies as routine procedures rather than emergency measures. He wrote, “Labor is a decidedly pathological process.” Episiotomies could restore the vagina to its “virginal condition,” he argued, and medical students were once taught to call the final suture the “husband’s stitch.” I see in full measure how our collective minds have been mainly passive as women, aggressive as men, in creating and keeping this mindset of “male convenience” or male-mind preference in all things. Even childbirth! Labor is pathological! What??? There were male heroes along the way, who tirelessly campaigned for change, along with female heroes, but the examples are clear to me: until we acknowledge our internal equality as human beings, with the compassion of ethical values as our guide, we will still cater to this male mind focus in how we treat our bodies, how we live our lives.

To say there was life before medicine is not to dismiss its critical importance. I’m simply educating myself about the ways we have become dependent upon drugs and accepted their use and their advocacy as “normal” and necessary. In my own life, I can see how challenging it can be for a mind to change, and how ingrained our minds are in the habits of “what is.” While in the emergency room with my mother just after Thanksgiving, we were very dependent upon what help they could give her as she struggled for breath, and grateful for any relief. As I looked at monitors, listened to machines humming, watched fresh-faced nurses intent on their duties, I was alert to the energy of the hospital itself, and each nuance of change as people passed, as the clock ticked. Some nurses were completely engaged, lovingly attentive. Waiting for the nurse to solicit help, at one moment I knew all I could do was “love my mother” – we were doing the physical things we knew to do. I sent energy to her with my mind, and focused on her heart and lungs. I put my fingers on her chest. She opened her eyes, with a look both foreign and full of love. I felt the warmth of love between us, and this sense overcame all others - physical distractions of the monitors, bright lights, other sounds. Because I have studied Neural Depolarization, and work with the woman who created the technique and has used it all her life, I thought about the power of our nerves to create and sustain life, and all the communication that happens. I felt the power of the energy in the room, the flux of energy within my mother as she struggled to breathe, the inanimate presence of machinery. Yet I did not automatically think of helping ease the pressure my mother felt by removing the energy of the fluid buildup in her lungs and around her heart. My mind was influenced by the still-present belief in “we are in a hospital emergency room,” what do they do next.” These are normal thoughts, I know – this helps me to understand how we created and reinforce this pattern of submission and aggression, in this case in relationship to our health. Think! Our body as one whole organism, an Intelligent Design of energy and matter, is made to be efficient, to support itself, to celebrate life. Do our interventions and considerations always have this aim? We must learn to know how to choose them, to know them for what they are.

Steingraber’s study of the history of obstetrics in particular, as it relates to her own journey of the moment, prompts me to relate my own recent research about early physicians and scientists’ interest in the nervous system. Kathy Oddenino created NDP as her own technique of working directly with the nervous system, and her particular hero is John Newport Langley, British physiologist at the turn of the century who spent years studying the intricacies of the nerves and their function. He coined the term “autonomic.” His work was groundbreaking, and yet has he for all practical purposes languished in obscurity? Do medical students hear of Langley? I assume that students of neurology encounter Langley and his work along the way. Yet what importance is his work given? Without nerves, we have no life! And without nerves we would not know what pain is. At different forks in the road, opportunities to expand our collective knowledge in one area or another, why do we choose one over another? For centuries, Steingraber writes, medicine considered childbirth was more than happy to cede the whole business of childbirth to midwives and their sympathizers. Birth was controlled by women at home, and then came the Inquisition. As time passed, knowledge as science developed and it became more and more relegated to men only, and the patterns and divisions continued to expand. There are statues to man’s discovery of ether (1846) and the anesthesizing of pain. We are, it seems, more concerned with regulation, security, and profit than we are with health and education. We love education, but our education mostly supports the tradition, regulation, profit, and market rather than expanding our minds to more, the possibility of change and the validation of history beyond our most influential minds and textbooks of the moment. We must learn to love knowledge. To believe that “labor is pathological” is to believe that life and death themselves are pathological. What would Hippocrates say?

What sets disease and trauma in motion is much like what sets childbirth in motion - i.e., "what one finds at the source is a nexus of interconnecting creeks and springs, each feeding the other." And, I realize, what sets life and death in motion. The energy of growth and change, as energy and matter, is a constantly flowing river with the power of life and the beauty and force of nature. And we don’t just hold on for the ride. We Are the ride! With each thought, each choice, a seed is made and the complex of connections which create the life of that thought begins its motions and change. Yet within these causes and effects are specific actions and reactions that we can work with beginning with Nature (good food, air, and water). We are not simply people who “create” energy from coal, nuclear reactors, or even biodiesel – we are people because we are energy in matter. That changes everything.

Thanksgiving - Family Moments -

Most snaps taken by Bill Wiles, brother-in-law for whom songs have been written.

Nature Knows Better

I’ve just come back from Memphis, for the holiday and an extra surge of support as my Mother went into the hospital. The week was a powerful tunnel of energy complemented by the novel I was reading en route, The Theory of Clouds by Stephane Audeguy. As my mother strained for breath, bending over, laboring over each step, I felt the energy of her life within her - that beautiful spirit of life she lives, and the forms of clouds came with it. Memories of my mother’s week stay with me along with images from the novel. Audeguy writes about why Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was “meteorology’s revenge.” Years earlier an aristocratic scientist came to Napoleon to explain cloud classifications. Napoleon didn’t understand the importance of it (the relationship of this scientist’s knowledge to his own reality of the moment!), and even made fun of the man and his nuanced descriptions of cloud formations and movement. Napoleon mistrusted this new science. What the chevalier learned was that the new order was not open to serious thought. He never came back to court, the story reports. An indifference to weather is the crowning ego’s aggression in thinking it knows best. Waterloo remains in our collective minds a monumental symbol of defeat, death, sorrow, triumph for some, and humanity helping humanity for others. Then think of this: military genius created orphans and widows across Europe.

One sentence is a kernel for my relationship with Audeguy’s words: “Napoleon had not understood the point of it (cloud classification) - or understood that greatness of spirit sometimes involves accepting things with no immediate practical utility.” (84) This, to me, means vision, an open mind and heart. True Form knows function, and this is one way to define practicality, efficiency. Earlier A. writes, “Humanity could only be obliterated by self-destruction.” Nature knows better. When inventions eclipse the inventor, we have accepted the utility of the invention? When creations know the energy of life as their own, their function and utility is meaningful. Children learn this as they grow; parents know this as their children are born and grow. The cycle continues. The book brings in more examples of how memories are created, hidden, brought back to life.

This week my parents helped remind me of the power of the energy of life (as energy and matter in motion and change) and the love of life. I love to feel the kindred spirits of knowledge-seekers that lead to our knowing the patterns of life as human nature learns to be with Nature as we share the energy of evolution and change. Earlier this week as I listened and took in the energy of those whose focus is taking care of patients, I felt the boundaries of that world, especially the gate which is made of our belief in drugs as our way of addressing the body’s needs. Our intention is to “take care of,” to be sure all signs are stable and following the pattern of “back to normal,” yet our idea and understanding of “normal” is relative to that world as we have known it. We trust what we can control. We mistrust what our senses help us to know – because we have relegated (separated) our “sense of science” into what we call Fact. The chevalier knew what Napoleon didn’t – the relationship of weather to all else. Some doctors acknowledge the basic foundation of Nutrition as something we too often ignore. But what does “nutrition” mean? It seems to them to mean that we must have the nutrients of food to keep us strong, to help our body heal – and that medicine will not work as well without the absorption of food. An equation of “healing” without medicine doesn’t seem to exist. I only mean to think “aloud” about this world we have created and why.

As I write this I have tissue beside me to blow my nose, since I have the remains of a cold. These levels of symptoms remind me, too: pay attention to the weather – internal and external. I remember my mother’s hands, black and blue with needles and memories of needles, fingers laced across her stomach. Her tiny blue veins were like little branches against a mottled sky. I felt the intensity of her vision, of her determination and appreciation of life. With hers, she enhanced mine – we shared the energy of these moments because they were real as energy. These are all permeable fields: We are energy and matter. As my internal temperature fluctuated with the air vent flow, as Mom tried to be comfortable beneath her coat and thin warmed blankets, monitors hummed and machines outside made more noises. I felt sad yet strong, determined to be present, not half-there. It was easy. I felt fully formed in that moment. I had visions of others’ dying, a friends’ mother whom I loved, sirens waxing and waning, and this time I felt the terrible music of instruments set up to play in such a world. Food, air, and water, I remember, are the elixirs of life, and love is the true chemical basis of creation and change. This may sound fanciful and simplistic, but within this energy is the way to finding the Facts of Life that support health and healing. The science of life supports life in all forms. From this basis the work of research, learning, and application that lasts can begin.

Some of the personalities written about in Audegy’s novel are disappointed by a lack of enthusiasm for their expanding insights – and the point is made: inventing something before it is technically feasible is deemed failure in the sciences. The utility of Nature’s knowing itself and our own utility of function in relationship to Nature we still miss. Cyclones, floods, drought, fire – all are front-page news these days, as is disease. We continue to hammer away with the same tools, variations of the same theme, feeling strong in our determination to prevail despite it all. I admire the courage and strength used in rebuilding, regrouping, keeping families together, creating families. My week’s experience – Thanksgiving with my family, then the hospital environment – brought visible more clearly to me what Presence means as physical support in times of need, how all energy is real and always making itself known, the beauty and strength of love through times of challenge and change. We ease transitions for ourselves through our experiences in ways far greater than our conscious minds are aware of, and I am grateful for this. We must trust the new science of the old philosophers-physicians-scientists who knew that we must first “do no harm,” and that we are part of Nature. We must re-think support, and "harm," life and death. Thank you, those of you who tend the sick and comfort those who are suffering. Compassion is truly an art which shows science the way.

At Last

Sensing Infinity: Finding the Love of My Life

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How Many Would Tell You

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

On Nov. 1st, the New York Times ran a theater review by Charles Isherwood His review, titled “Her Life Coach Comes From Another Lifetime,” starts this way: “Barbara, the heroine of ‘Spain,” a new play by Jim Knable at the Lucille Lortel Theater, has an unusual pest problem. She’s got a conquistador infestation in her living room. A real, live Spanish adventurer from the 16th century has plopped himself down on her couch – battered armor, blood-spattered sword and all – and he won’t take his grimy boots off the coffee table.”

I haven’t seen the play, but I know it really is hilarious to think about the costuming we do as we show ourselves the hidden memories we constantly live with in our internal worlds. We don’t know any other way to live with them, or explain them, except to display them theatrically. And what fun it can be. Isherwood goes on – “Barbara is played by Annabella Sciorra, a likeable actress who spends too much of the first act shouting. This is to some degree understandable since Barbara has recently been dumped and now finds herself playing unwilling host to that messy houseguest in a quaint helmet.” Well, I have played unwilling host to a messy houseguest in a helmet, dour sisters cloistered too long, raucous pirates with a lust for more than gold, a painter with a mind addled by colorful fumes, a giggling schoolgirl playing with her schoolmate hours on end, a soldier weary of battle and entombed in the sense of hopelessness that battles will never end. The list goes on.

Those who know me are often surprised when I say such things. Those who know me well, beyond the trappings and customs or borders of certain times and frames, are not surprised but amused or intrigued, curious. We each live our own memories, more and more easily unfolding our own personalities as we know ourselves. We are learning what it means to be infinitely energy beings, habitats of our own making, universes within, all for one and one for all. Life as the ultimate “finishing school,” and beginning school. I am walked to the door by my mother or father the first day of school, that intrepid walk down the sidewalk (or, in our case, my brothers and sister and I, to the converted carport) to the entrance. From that day forward, the feeling changes. Nothing is ever the same, although more is familiar.

Now what comes to me more often are the images of men and women in long robes, with endless conversation into the night, wine flowing, tears sometimes falling both from laughter and sorrow that passes on into the night air. Glimpses of little children running, fully free in their glee. Characters stroll through my internal and external plays, too, and I am learning to enter and exit on cue. The structure of the day’s plays, the nighttime flights, are becoming more familiar and free-flowing, and the vistas are opening up to me in ways that arborists have described biographies of trees, and one ecologist has explained her motherhood. Pilots describe flying, acrobats have no words for their flight. I feel their words anyway as I swim through my life, remembering, diving.

I think of Nabokov writing about his Blues, that widespread group of small butterflies known today as the Tribe Polyommatini, called Blues even though many of them are other colors. His passion for these creatures, his joy in pursuing, collecting, categorizing, studying them is exquisite, obsessive, joyful. He never learned to drive, and he estimated that between 1949 and 59 his wife Vera drove him more than 150,000 miles all over North America, mostly on butterfly-hunting trips. Nabokov obviously relished his pleasure in this study, which he was committed to as a boy, and his personality also appreciated the humor in this character of a man strolling through towns and fields with a small net. He trained himself as a scientist and wrote specialty articles for a few appreciators. The rest of his literature does not show this aspect of the man, but the seriousness, the winks, are still there, along with his precision of language, his seriousness of tone. This is an example to me of a man who gave full rein and focus to that memory stream that was so strong in him, and he created this in the stream of his “other” life, though with great nudging and support from his wife, Vera.

Examples abound. And what fun it can be.

CATS

pic by C Buffington

I thought of a fairy tale with the three little pigs. The wolf threatens to blow their house down. This story came to my mind when we talked about the ego and the power we give our ego as our negatively controlled mind. When we are not solid in our own truth, knowing ourself, we are swayed by the wind, and not just the strongest winds, hurricanes that come with roaring and warnings. I have lived this swaying, and compared to dancing, the dancing of leaves in the breeze, even the sexy swaying of hips in the hot mambo chemistry on a dance floor, this swaying has the quality of giving in, crumbling, unequal.

Fairy tales are simply more images we’ve made of ourselves to help us see the stories we live. Beasts that speak, trees that reach their limbs to us, water that climbs and shrinks – these are fantastic, we say, the eyes of children bright as the moon, expectant, surprised, and full of wonder. This is mine for the day. My friend Max had a cat he loved. He knew I didn’t love cats, in fact I sneeze around them, so he never asked me to pet or take care of his cat when he was away, or needed time without his cat. Max is 10 years old, and very busy. Sometimes I call him just to ask how he is. When this is during a weekday, sometimes he will say, Aren’t you at work? I’ll say, yes, and he’ll say, Well, me too, can we talk about this later? He sounds preoccupied yet attentive. When I hang up, I am smiling, and I always hear his care, his concern that I hear him. It is wonderful to know such a child. One day Max called me and said his cat Perkins was going away. Where? I asked. Why? He spoke very calmly, yet with the same attentive air, the same concern. Well, he said, I decided he wanted to live with someone else. How did you know? I asked. A friend of my mother’s came over, he said, and she loved Perkins, I could tell. I could tell that Perkins wanted to live with her, and that I was ready to spend time on other things. Wow, I said. Yeah, he said. He was very matter-of-fact. There was no love lost. She brings Perkins over to see me sometimes, he said. I could feel his smile when he said this.

I will never have a cat living with me, but I surely remember every image of them – stalking, sleek, lazy, fast, large, small, meowing, growling. (Did you ever see the film, Cat People?) Cougars, cheetahs, Siamese, tortoise shells. One morning before fully awake I lean across the bed to reach for my water glass and a big paw complete with claws rises toward my hand, its soft pads suddenly there. Believe me, my eyes opened then. I rolled over and up before I got the whiskers and coat.

Closing the door behind me as I throw my animal print scarf around my neck, I think of Max and I smile. Max knows how to listen and learn. He knows how to feel a breeze. What a night, what a day, what a life.

Hidden Agendas

First, what does it mean to be "conscious" and "aware"?

What does it mean to have a "hidden agenda"?

What are "ulterior motives"?

Until we recognize ourselves as energy beings creating matter, creating our physical world and physical lives, we have "hidden agendas" too that are solely physical and therefore manipulative of our own energy fields as "our world."

I think of this as I am learning to know myself as an energy being with an intelligent design of creation, an evolving consciousness. Recently I was in a restaurant for dinner with a few friends. We waited for a table and consulted with the hostess about the choice of tables and our preference. We were seated in a section with a waitress we have interacted with many times in the restaurant, but not for a few months. When she began working there we were among her first customers, and she was charmingly young and engaged as she opened our wine bottle for the first time as customers. It’s a good memory for us. This recent night she came to our table and we were all smiles to see her again and she was happy to be waiting on us again too. We asked how she has been, she gave us a brief update of her activities, and opened a bottle of wine for us, remembering that first time. As our dinner went on, the band began to set up and then play, and the number of people in the place increased. It was a Friday night, and the loosely reckless air of weekend freedom began to build too.

As the noise increased and we had to lean over our round table and talk loudly to be heard, I paid attention to the many different energies I felt. The physical tension of energies building – the music, the voices, the sound of chairs scraping the floor, the energies of the many people getting together and communing, those gliding in and through carrying food, the kitchen staff in their focus of preparation and momentum – was itself orchestral in the crescendos and changes. I felt the verses and chorus of the song my friends and I played as we were together, even as the physical energy in our space increased, with the activity of the larger space, the crowd gathering, music playing. I looked around and saw some familiar faces, people talking, eating, some drinking. As I made eye contact with a few familiar people, those nodes in my mind felt different than when I passed through other fields physically unfamiliar.

The joy I felt in the familiar energy of our waitress was delightful, and we hugged as our party left. I remember this lilt of energy inside like buttercups appearing in a field, blips on my screen, my archival history of moments that have lit me up. As I contemplate this energy, the energy of this physical person with the charming smile and innocence of youth which still holds the wonder of actively creating life, I smile at this feeling and remember – as a child, my brothers and sister and I running in circles, or down the dirt road of the compound, arms out, just making sounds in the wind, sometimes barefoot, sometimes with soles kicking up dirt. I understand more now why these giddy streams of memory, energy, are what they are, and why we make them into other images in our urge to feel that way again. When we open our minds to our infinite memory as energy, the streams are there to wade into spontaneously and also to be consciously explored "as they are," no manipulation required. What joy this is.

Seduction and manipulation are physical energies that are the "totems," the stock exchanges, of what we come to believe are the tools of our trade as human beings that need and want to be loved. The "hidden agenda" within us is our intelligent design as long as our minds are not open to the reality of us as energy beings creating our physical world in every aspect. The inspiration and motivation of the soul and spirit is to create, to evolve. I see now how a belief that "I am responsible only for myself" can be a manipulated and distorted image of the belief that "I live only one life."

As I sit in silence by the open window on this beautifully brisk Fall morning and think about this carnival of energies, I think of a book I’ve read called Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood (2001), by Sandra Steingraber. Sentences she has written came to mind as she describes the narrowness of focus in amniocentesis, for example – the whole enterprise implying that the future life of a child can be read by counting its chromosomes and scrutinizing their architecture. She writes about having her amniocentesis and the process as science interprets it. Only about 10 percent of the captured cells are alive, but these can be coaxed to grow and divide if carefully nurtured in an incubator at human body temperature. Then they can be harvested for genetic analysis. She explains that chromosomes can only be studied if the fetal cell’s growth cycle is interrupted just at the point where the cells are about to divide. Only when the cells are about to divide are the chromosomes changed from the loopy threads that are impossible to study to the pictures we see in science books of fat, distinct bodies. Chromosomes have to be compressed and contracted and then stained to be examined for their individual characteristics. Steingraber shares a great image: "A geneticist friend of mine claims that a properly stained human chromosome that has been captured in the moments preceding cell division should look like a headless man in a striped prison suit." Given my fascination with mannequins and manufactured body parts, I now understand my relationship to these internal images more clearly. Steingraber’s epiphany was this: Whatever is in hummingbird eggs is also inside my womb. Whatever is inside the world’s water is also here in my hands.

In his new novel, Tomorrow, Graham Swift's character (Paula Hook) describes her twins imagining what it was like before they were born. She found them one morning trying to form a positive single ball of flesh, giggling, saying they were practicing not being born yet. A stage beyond the stage of not being born yet was still beyond physical imagining – but that sense of "being there," one, of having been one and divided remained, and remained a delightfully giddy sense that prompted giggles and never-ending smiles.

Having been born a triplet, I now easily image beyond what our physical division as growing children, then adults was and all it portends – over and over. This is a pattern of cell division and capture made real, with a special signal to me as an image of my own creation in this life and an invitation to feel the exuberance of this process of creation that continues endlessly, simply captured in moments, stained and otherwise.

My heart pumps away, tireless, part of my intelligent design of life, and I feel both the giddy and quiet shades of joy with it. Whatever is within the seed of my thought, is what I share with the world. I am the maker of my world as caretaker, caregiver. My epiphany is this: staining an image I’ve captured to study simply shows me creation is eternal and constant. Not to know this is to remain cold-hearted and huddling by the hearth without a sense of the world. A blind man was one of the greatest known explorers in history. Imagine walking a mountain range the width, to scale, of a human vertebrae high in the air, without physical sight. Imagine stumbling into furniture in the dark when you open a door or get up in the night to go to the bathroom. Indivisible. Images come to us in the same way we capture them before cells divide, to study their characteristics and what they tell us of life and its development. Now, we go beyond that narrow way of rods and cones alone defining our world for us. Our chemical environment is constantly in motion, interactive, not just in one image, or at one level we have learned how to capture and predictably interpret. Life goes on.

A Good Arch Goes a Long Way

I worked for a short time in the LOC’s Madison Building, that sleeker more modern relative of the grand Jefferson. I remember insecurity stories as the security at entrances was increased, and the adventures of watching and catching the stealers among us. I thought about this a lot then – what prompts us to steal, to take from another something we want or feel we need? What creates this urgency of “security” within us, and why do our faces change when we speak of it? What motivates us to declare something of value and covet it, cherish it? Walking in those stacks of things – the tall thin metal shelving, nothing majestic about those, but fully functional – with the light glancing this way and that, whispers from lives long gone grew louder, and the noise of today rose too. When I stopped to really listen, the clamor quieted but the crowd did not disappear. Wisdom does indeed linger. Knowledge helps us know it so we can use it. The beauty of a good arch, the colors of light as it plays, the quiet that soars, the eye and equipment that capture it. All are priceless. (Energy is real.)

picture by Ferrell McCollough

Scents & Sensibilities

He became a paragon of diligence and docility.

As resilient as a bacteria.

At last he was in his element.

The goal was to possess everything the world had to offer in the way of odors. His only condition was to be that they were new ones.

as many new odors as he could

He would learn how to preserve scent so that he would never again lose such sublime beauty.
Even the moments of buttoning those buttons, as that last moment begins- show us the way each moment portends. The perfume never ends.

Find a place on earth where scent was almost absent. Tranquil all around, the scent of almost dead stone. He was finally able to bask in his own existence and found it splendid.
His own smell was not there.
A thousand others.
For the first time in his life, he realized he had no smell of his own – he had been a nobody. For the first time he was afraid of his own oblivion.

He wanted to teach the world that he existed, that he was someone.

This is where I see the shift.

His look changes, there is some innocence returning.
He hurries after.

A perfume contains four chords.

Each perfume contains 3 cores – heart, head, the base.

What’s a legend?

The scent of purity.

How to capture scent and possess it forever.
Don’t you mean, preserve, asks the master perfumer?

Is there scent in the soul of being?

How to capture the scent of all things.

The scent of roses – let them go to their deaths with their scent intact.

The very soul of the rose.

You can no more distill the scent of a cat than you can a human being!!

The arches hung over the water in dimming grey stone and solid weight that seemed less relevant than when the bridge was created. Why? Its presence still as heavy as ever, bridges are always relevant. What determines their weight, their style, their bearing, besides their material, their engineering?

At last he was able to breathe freely. Walking through town, following the men on horseback, tanned leather rolled and tied on his thin back, he was not selective about his odors. Oysters, oil, grime, stone, sweat, horses, the heavenly scent of tight coiffed curls, make-up, heavy colored fabric that folds and rolls, wood, legs, eggs, apricots, lemons, all manner of fruit.

The magnetic pole of the greatest possible solitude found in sensations. In Perfume, J-B is desperate, hungry for that scent. In once scene, the music itself is sublime. He watches secretly as she simply plucks the rose to bring into her bedroom, or compelled with it outside (to this gravestone, in this courtyard story, where he hides). I am a romantic at heart. What does this mean?

My friend so long ago, after “knowing” me for years, upon reading a story I wrote, told me, You are a real romantic. I wondered what that meant to him, and why he was surprised.

Allow the flowers to die slowly, in their sleep, as it were. Capturing the scent of life, of purity, of innocence, of love? It’s impossible, without understanding the true energy essence of love. J-B‘s acts are gruesome because he doesn’t understand the essence of life. He doesn’t want their virginity, he wants their beauty itself. Whatever it is, the noble father says, fearing for his daughter, I fear he won’t stop until his collection is complete.

As I watched this movie, I saw so many images of why we feel depraved, deprived, vulnerable to the powers of seduction, and why the airy lifting of veils of fear, even for a moment, is monumental, majestic, and absolutely compelling.

When I saw the previews for this film, I was drawn to it, as when I had found this book years ago. I waited for a while to watch it. I was both drawn to and disgusted by what I read. I think I was drawn to it because I was so drawn to its sensory heights, the obsession and misunderstanding of what senses mean, and a desperation to follow them to their end – or an end as the death as we know it. Memories compel us on, and we are driven to know what purity our senses remember. As human beings, we are teaching transcendence to the earth, and first we must learn it ourselves, energy beings living in a physical world. A phantom cannot be fought by human means, without the human mind beginning to know the truth of love and the eternity of senses. There is nothing light about this vision of single-minded possession of purity, except this vision that comes with crowds who want, ache for more - a vision of paradise made physical because it is internal, universal.

This is why we must understand energy to know ourselves. This is the pattern of how we destroy ourselves without understanding. We are infinitely sensory creations, designed for life and its exquisite celebrations.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

I read most of this book fast first, and I’ve been picking it up again and again since I bought it while on a July vacation in Georgia. What a powerhouse it is. Since this one, I’ve discovered two others Janisse Ray has written, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Change on Home, and Pinhook. One reviewer wrote this about:“The most effective scenes in Wild Card Quilt are moody, impressionistic pieces that evoke the old South of Faulkner, but with an important difference: With Ray at the helm, you pretty much understand what the hell is going on the first time through.” She indulges her passion for a life lived close to the land, and doesn't mind the blinding sun sometimes.

Welcome, sister, to my world. Or I am glad to have discovered yours. Pull up a chair, a pillow, a plank. I do love to meet strident sisters of the heart, whose voices ring so clearly with such raw power and beauty. It is, to me, like finding family members in the woodwork – literally.

Another reviewer, a tree farmer,self-described conservationist who lives an hour from Janisse Ray's home, adds that Franklin Ray's family history was brutal, and that a history of mental illness was present. "A clue to Georgia's mental illness history is given through the words of a doctor. The doctor credits poor diets and eating an excess of corn during the Civil War as a leadin cause of southern mental illness." The family was fundamentalist in their religion, followers of radio evangelist Bishop Johnson, whose believers were called Apostolics. Flannery O'Connor meets Rachel Carson? What we have to learn about our need for self-preservation and survival, our healing ways, why brutality is of an old order without logic or love in an evolving world.

I love the descriptions of growing up by a junkyard, a highway, and the constant presence of her father and brothers, mother, all part of that make-use-of world. The solitude of certain trees she shared, the shining of broken down cars and pieces of other things, the foraging, hunting and gathering. This book is full of love for nature, its fragility and grandeur, and its interactive energy with the air, with water, people, times and change. Deeper and deeper she goes, into the turmoil of causes and effects, in her own microcosm of life in the yard, into the life of long leaf pines and their forests, then beyond her own small borders of life to a broader geography of moving, and life of the earth everywhere.

Now I understand the jacket cover sentence about the long-leaf pines finding their Rachel Carson. Thank you, Janisse, for writing this book. I’m learning from it, and what a pleasure it is.
Ecology review

Bread & Butter

Patience, Understanding, & Support as Ethical Values

“I landed a quarter of a mile from the jump school. The closer I got to earth, the faster it rose, and I plummeted straight toward a pine. With some frantic tugging of the guides, I managed not to land in its crown. Nonetheless the tree reached out its arms and caught me: the parachute swept across its slower limbs and snagged enough to soften my fall, but still I landed hard against the ground – feet, knees, hips, shoulders. I was home.” Janisse Ray, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Because I was born the third of triplets to loving parents, I have always had some conscious sense of “support” and understanding. Throughout my life family and friends (teachers all) have shown me how they support me as a human being – my family in our creation itself, a nurturing environment – food on the table, shelter, comforts of “home,” however far from our birthplace, encouragement every which way, to grow. We heard lullabies to sleep, laughed, ate, did homework together, played in sand, mud, and water, smelling fruit, wood smoke, dust, rain in the air. Just the other day I looked through old pictures and remembered our older brother pulling the three of us in our red wagon, all of us busy building in our sandbox, Dad on a sunny day filling tin tubs with water for us to play in.

I think about how fleeting sensory impressions can be – billions of moments lived, like stars, or leaves, or lights flickering, to be forgotten if noticed at all. A friend reminded me the other week that nothing is “lost and gone forever.” Knowledge gained supports me as I use it.

My appreciation grows for the reality of creative energy and what it means to be “energy creating matter.” My nieces and nephews, others’ children, my own memory as a child and beyond into other swirling worlds of images, are all infinitely real to me, and valuable. As I think of my child-self, and I remember the whirls and twirls, the hard earth beneath my feet, the dust rising, the way the rain felt as it fell hard and soft on my skin, soaking my hair and making it heavy, much more – I realize how lasting impressions of life can be, and how beautiful. A rain shower is not only dirt or skin deep.

What better way for me to know the true value of patience, understanding, and support than to begin to remember why it takes the patience of a mother to love her child utterly, without condition, and why “Eve is the mother of all living.” Creation itself, as energy constantly in motion, lives the patience inherent in change. It also takes the patience of a father, guided by a mother spirit within, and by the love that comes with creating, to make physical life what it is – my view of “bring home the bacon.” Roles intertwine and change – love is cooperation, compassion, communication, strength, courage, unity, faith, trust – all of the ethical values creating together as designed.

I am the intelligent design of us all, as male, female, and spirit. I am a woman, today. My family supports me in every way to be a responsible human being, which includes keeping in touch, acknowledging our mutual love and the physical ways we show it - communication, food, knowledge, learning, guidance of the “Golden Rule,” money, compassion, an interest in our life, our health, individual goals, passions, even when we have not held the same beliefs. I remember a slide from a Spiritual Philosophy seminar years ago which read – The spirit supports the soul supports the physical. What does support mean to me? Acceptance of love, of life, encouragement, interest, the relationships that make life, learning, faith, trust, love, the nurturing of growth. True friends support me, too. While learning that “no one is a stranger,” true friends are also easier than ever for me to identify, when I honor my senses and think with love that reveals the truth without sentimentality, or doubt born of old fear. Energy is real, and my memory and “new” knowledge of us as energy and matter reinforces the fundamental laws of nature, including human nature, which strengthens the bonds of change and makes the courage of life and growth more real to me than death and loss.

These gifts of love have all shown me the path to learning to love, beginning by loving the self I am. I was born a perfectionist – according to my Dad, who has always been patient and supportive with me. I have spent a lot of time scratching and shaking my head, feeling the palpable nature of the world and people as I experienced them, wondering where I began and they “ended.” Learning Spiritual Philosophy has given me the tools to recognize patience and know why patience is an essential quality of love, and life – if we don’t have patience, we will, some day! But what memory recall will this take and what form? What we might have lost will require even more patience, and more creative force and support than I can imagine at this moment. We must learn to recognize what patience it has taken for us to be created (beginning as chemicals forming, interacting), to create, to evolve through history - to rise and fall as Romans, to stroll and speak to crowds as Greek senators, to share feasts and toasts and dialogue as philosophers, to wonder at the sense and sight of the moon and stars, feeling their rush and force, as astronomers, to stroke our growing bellies as mothers with breasts full with the milk of life, to endure a star-spangled death with the heartache of another moment gone, the joy of tears and laughter. Everywhere is the structure and discipline of support, the inherent creative love there to be acknowledged once we change our thinking to know we create together, internally and externally.

Awakening brings the satisfaction of understanding, and an appreciation of the scope of our entire human history, our Universal mission.

My own spirit energy is patience personified, literally, as my mind feels its way along the path of learning, gambling and squandering its thoughts as well as gaining polished pearls. When I have been sad, mad, sick, scared – always hope has appeared, in some form that I could recognize. When I have laughed and celebrated, I’ve felt it so deep I know there is no end to joy. No one is kidding when they say it isn’t easy to change a mind! Each way I think of all I have felt and experienced in my life, and with whom, I come back to the sense of never being alone, and how even depression itself was a gift to my mind to show me I was ready for a new beginning. Each moment in memory shows me the pattern I followed to find the thread, the umbilical cord which connect my heart and my mind to the spirit’s infinitely creative support of life in all forms. We are after all a complete nervous system that knows itself! We are all creators together. As I support myself, I love – food, air, water, the currency of life - and I support the life of all I love. Be responsible. What better way to learn, what better gift? It’s perfect, and I’m grateful.