4.19.13 Smaller lives, smaller happenings, quiet and small.

Smaller lives, smaller happenings, 

quiet and small. 

Squash bugs being brought 

from inside to the outdoors, 

little teenagers of a different sort 

than the ones our thoughts are filled with. 

These small teenagers 

outside for the first time, 

looking around, 

smelling, 

feeling, 

then turning round 

to look at the familiar

...me. 

Happy outside life, small beings.

4.18.13 Benediction

Bless you.

Bless your coming and your going.

Bless the birds at full dusk, chirping with your passing.

Bless your intermittent insouciant malaise.

Bless your kind heart and your honest true soul.

Bless your compassion for others,

and your interminable curiosity for their vantage point.

Bless your deep despair, for its origin makes complete sense.

Bless your growing, and your healing, for nothing will ever stop you.

4.16.13 Our Grapes of Wrath

I am standing at a river older than human conflict, experiencing its succor, contemplating the shock of such sadness. Tragedy. And then all that confusing territory between 'profiling' and using common sense to consider possible individuals or groups as candidates for the violence in Boston.

The nature of the contents and intended impact of the bombs difficult to imagine. 

One question being “Who are you to actually see the world in such a way, be in such a state internally or with others, to really think out how to create a bomb that would operate in this very personal, specific fashion? “

At the moment I learned, I was sitting w. a friend whose kid goes to college next door in Boston. Whose kids and partner were all texting each other...to say the kid was fine, the school shut down, and how it was going. One of them from Israel, so how accustomed they have intermittently been to this, versus most of us, and our country, which has been conducting our business, our observation or ignoring of genocides in other countries, the impact of our economic and military choices upon others, for years and years. Our ‘military conflicts’ or choices or wars in other countries far far away, so that we have for the most part always felt both so safe, and so insulated from any impact upon us, Any retaliation. Not that we know the origin of this violence. Or wish to make useless assumption.

And now it seems we have people of all ages hunting each other, even hunting little children. We have people from other countries, such as a friend of mine in Germany, whose citizens  often ask them if 1. REALLY there are that many GUNS in the U.S., and again, 2. WHY?....(and 3. why are our medicines and medical care so much more expensive than theirs? 4. Why do we as a nation resent ensuring that our own people are provided for with necessities, versus being proud about providing, The way so many countries are? These are the questions this U.S. citizen most often faces...)

And I am thinking about The Oklahoma Bombing and 9.11 and so many ways so many venture forth to express, directly or indirectly, their rage, or boil over or impose their belief system or insist upon others seeing things as they do…I am contemplating this hobby of insisting that the only validity of our vantage point …lies in the agreement or acquiescence of others. And otherwise, why not haul off and use that gun or go hunting humans to make….a point. Or....feel better for a little bit??? My my.

I am thinking of how others get off on conflict. Get off on the impact of their ‘power’. This 'power' so reminding me of the 'power' of rape. Rape, once again, not being about sex but about power and dominance, among other things.

Our country looks at everything it feels like looking at, save the actual possible origins of the wrath of people. Not that we are making assumptions about who chose to plan this assault of carnage, but aren't  you also wondering who spent careful time looking over choices of bombs to make, and then carefully chose these bombs with nails and ball bearings…and then carefully put them together. And then carefully placed them in sites for …I don’t know, would you say ‘maximum impact”?  And then had that uber moment…..of detonation. I am trying to imagine how you get…from here…to there. I am trying to imagine what they got out of it, and what they are deriving from it right at this moment. And how very sad and twisted and old and tired this human wrath is.

And in terms of the wrath of 'our own', well, my town seems at times chock full of hard working people who are very very very very racist. Who HATE our president and our governor because they are black.  Truly. And they teach it to their children. Spoon fed. Undigested, un-thought-out, just spoon fed and taken up by the pre-adolescents and teenagers of frustrated, clue-less divorced moms describing to me their beloved kids, and the racist diatribe that is now part of their young selves, spoon fed from the angry other parent.   A class of humans hated not because they have big feet or like burgers or oldies music or are fiscal conservatives or back-to-the-landers, but because of the color of their skin. So no matter what these politicians/leaders/individuals do or say, it is meaningless, to these people, because it all hinges on the color of that skin. Ollie-ollie-in-free. 

In our nation, we have such a rise in Nazi/skinhead activity. We have such reactivity with regards to women and their rights and their position in society, such passionate consternation of what that consists of and how on earth to manage with differing views and convictions. 

And this week we collectively will find our brethren itching to pin the tail on anyone who seems Middle Eastern or any number of other fill-in-the-blanks qualifications for suspicion, for exclusion. This is going to be tough, either til the police determine who perpetuated this crime, or possibly, after. 

Difference. Violence. Assumption. Violation. Power.

And now, here, we, shocked, having lost once again our imagined sense of inviolate right to safety, without a clue as to whether this relates to errant passionate hatred and projection of values via violence, or our ways in other countries, or even our own towns; here we are with the grapes of someone’s wrath. With innocents maimed or killed, on an annual traditional  sunny day of excitement and questing and celebration.

Here is to our grief for the individuals who experienced this, who lost lives, who are traumatized, who are injured.

Here is, ever once again, to those who, heedless of their own safety, ran to do whatever was necessary to help others, the antithesis of the act of violence. 

Here is to the loss, now, of the sense of safety that once was and is no longer at The Boston Marathon.  And, in part, in this city.

Which many many places in the world, whether we have noticed or not, have experienced in the past, which we as a nation often are too busy to take note of, or send regards, or grieve for, and now, we here do share in this place.

Here is to the irretrievable strength and messy remarkable brilliance and efforts of humans to investigate or argue or debate or study and consider this phenomena.

Here is to those who are missing sleep and striving with every ounce of intelligence and perception to gather clues and information and leads and find who made this choice and perpetuated this act.

And , too, here is to the distressed, and I am imagining, desperate, type of perspective  that gives birth to the sense that this sort of violence is somehow a good idea. In my hopes and prayers that they can grow and change and find another way of expressing their grievance, their sense of hopeless rage, without coming to the conclusion that this....this....is their answer. All of our brethren, all over the world, whomever they be, finding themselves in this tenuous situation.

In hopes and prayers that as humans, together, we can somehow reach across and find ways to be heard, to hear, and to come up with new ways of honoring difference and forging new compromise, in crisis or within the every day.

4.14.13 A Sad Turkey Day

Sunday I woke to the sound of a gunshot. 

I am very lucky, I hope like yourself- I live in a safe neighborhood that rarely sees violence or crime. A true gift to be savored. 

But there was the gunshot. Then two more. I leaped out of bed; my only thought was an assumption concerning  my neighbor some distance away, certainly not in sight, but across a ravine and much woods, a young guy who has guns and ATVs and snowmobiles and drives them all over the conservation land and down to the outwaters of the river, which is illegal, which destroys the land and endangers living things and the ecosystem, which I try to accept and do not like at all, at all.

I don't know him. Not what he likes or believes in or thinks about in the late quiet evenings here, or how he felt when his horse-laden girlfriend left, or why he razed the fences and built up the earth so you can't really see his house except when you go by his driveway...I don't like making assumptions and would not like them made of me, preferring someone would actually ask me up front, versus guessing or hissing behind their hands.  I once walked by his home to ask about a horse that had just run through my yard, his girlfriend at the time having horses very carefully tended in his barn,carefully out on the nice days and in on the rainy days and all,  and was met at his door as if I was attacking an enemy outpost. So I don't make assumptions about him, and he stays over there, save one day a few years back, when he and said girlfriend made their way out of the woods and up the field, most sadly looking for her Chihwahwa that had been lost...and they most politely asked, though the guy seemed most uncomfortable,and then off they went again, calling and calling, and I thought of that small dog and their hearts for days.

 So, i leaped out of bed and raced , half in sleep , to the back door, my husband knowing me well, pounding down the stairs from his study to come after me, saying, "Wait, wait" while I could not wait and bammed out the back door, intent upon striding barefoot into the tick laden field to see if said neighbor for some reason had lost his marbles and was taking pot shots at our sweet neighborhood trio of turkeys, out of season, because I accept the hunting seasons as I accept our taxes and I accept our speed limits... the turkeys are hens I think, as I never see a poor hardworking puffing up Tom. 

But as I cleared the back door, his hand was gently on my shoulder, and he said, "Let me tell you". So I did stop, finally, standing on the wet back yard ground, and he said "Please come back in", paused, and then told me someone out front had driven by, hit a turkey crossing the road (they cross roads) and it was very badly injured. He had seen our neighbor/tenant run up the driveway,and he did too, while I slept, and people were gathered  kindly , no environmental police nearby, so a town police officer came to shoot the poor bird and end their suffering. 

The officer said he hated this, and had to do it often- and shot once, and then I guess twice more, and it was done. Too bad. Not a coyote or mountain lion but car. And then everybody who had stopped their cars on the curved hill stopped their distressed protection of the fatally injured creature, who now was peacefully in death, and the officer had the task of taking the huge beautiful body away, the others possibly standing in the forest nearby, listening, afraid, heads cocked, missing the sibling or mate or friend who had been wandering with them forever , who was hit and left behind and would be no longer in their lives.

I have watched rabbits and birds return to a dead family member or mate or offspring, looking time and again, possibly slowly digesting the reality of death...the changes of smell and the lack of motion, no responsiveness, that learning each of us who remains alive, when another does not, must learn. I have watched a skunk try to 'wake' another smaller skunk for 5 hours. 5 hours.  Almost deciding to return to the woods, as daybreak and then bright morning lit the yard , and then  being pulled back to once again tug upon the deceased, with one more, one more try, until finally, certain, the skunk left for the woods. I have had a butterfly grabbed by my own cat, rescued from the cat, placed by my self in a cool shade, away from opportunistic ants, with honey water near enough to reach, their mate flying about frantically, coming to rest by them, and a few days later the butterfly was gone. Dead? Revived? Soon thereafter, their babies exploded...maybe 20 small new innocent butterflies, and somehow, they all knew me. Never before. I would come out of the house and they would flock to me, cluster, landing on my clothing, flutter about. I would walk across the yard and they would catch sight of me, flying over, round and round my head, I would have to caution them concerned as I was that they would be injured inadvertently. The whole season was like this, arriving home from work, stepping out of my car, and the entire butterfly family rejoicing and rejoining me. Was it because I tried and succeeded or tried and failed to help their parent? For in the beginning, there were just the two mature butterflies. All I know is the ways that animals watch and learn and grieve death. Illness. The ways the butterfly family chose to be close to me and greet me all that summer long.

So I am hearing this story from my husband, of why there were the three gunshots, and I settle on the fact that the neighbor with the lost Chihuahua and departed girlfriend and horses and ATVS and guns and snowmobiles racing about the woods and tearing up the land who is so different than I am, I am guessing, is not out in the field on some early Sunday errantly shooting at the turkeys that come through so peacefully each day. Ok. I guess mayhaps there were assumptions blossomed there.

We have another road that stretches between my office and the university, where I drive my husband to and from to work. There is a huge family of Turkeys that inhabits the neighborhood, which crosses the street, en masse, over to an enormous field in the morning, and then back again at dusk. Last year so many were hit by stupid self centered drivers who would not think to stop for a huge line of enormous birds....neighbors...crossing the street..that girl scout and boy scout and neighbors all made a million signs fore and aft to remind people to STOP for the turkeys, as if its something you would need to be reminded of. And to drive the speed limit. Really. It is a curly road, sharp turns, comes up over a rise and peers down onto a large extensive field of so many colors, with the malls behind it, then the farmers fields, then the range. Beautiful.

 I had a flat tire one winter day. Right there. I knocked on one door, and the woman would not let me in to use the phone. Was my age. I had no cell phone yet. I stopped at another home. There are many observant Jews on one side of the street with beautiful huge menorahs outside in season and large vans with bunches of sweet kids going and coming, women with hats and men with hats, walking quietly along together.  :)  From this side of the street, a woman with a sleeping baby was very kind and let me use the phone and try to reach family, until a guy at a third house had the muscle to loosen the lug nuts I had been struggling with, and changed my tire to boot. All these  neighbors  said they loved their Turkeys, and felt so lucky to live with them wandering and roosting. 

This past week, there was a pair that was always up about 50 feet in a tree, side by side, such a sight as you rounded the corner of the small winding road cuddled into the hillside. Behind the opposite side from the fields are woods extending far back, so you can see why it is such a good neighborhood for who knows how many years for the turkey lineage, and at night you often see them roosting behind those houses upon fallen over trees, that neighbors actually leave in place for the Turkeys, fond as they are of them all, with their spring appearing babies and the multitude of puffing Toms working so hard, and then the long polite line carefully taking turns crossing the street in hopes that humans will not be so stupid and self centered today and realize they are not the only ones...on the planet. 

Two springs ago we had a Turkey pair, the female besotted with our lawn, the male gradually and completely exhausted with puffing up every time he caught sight of movement in our house, be it feline or human, and they do catch sight with remarkable vision. He became accustomed to coming up to our windows, which on one side of our Pippi Longstocking house are flush with the ground, and he would peer in with his one eye, into the kitchen, as if bored with this day after day responsibility of accompanying his mate while she wolfed down all around the house, oblivious to any danger, her eggs growing within and her appetite insistent. He would come to one window, then another, and investigate, while we carefully and with great wonder and glee would try to hide round corners and watch him, only to be detected, of course, immediately  and with such ease, his puffing up happening with such frequency that soon enough he could only go half mast, some feathers so tired of the puffing activity that only a few here and there could still respond to his ordained puffing, but still there, he would be, trying his best, while she , oblivious, chomped down.

 Last year we had one small hen, who would come through once a day , through the lawn and up to the compost and then on to the vacated next door house, on a route she had established. I thought she was a single female, off on her own, til a friend said, well, look out for her babies because she may be Tom-less, and sure enough, one day she brought the small ones. A grave mistake they all survived, but I saw some small creature huddled in the conservation field next door, where she walked and ate, daily, and as I watched, she stood and at her feet was a small flock of beautiful perfect small turkeys, all pulled up close and obedient. And then a motorcycle would rumble by and she could not fly or race down the field, as turkeys do, so fleet of foot, as she had brought her brood. She was stuck, and her only recourse was to hunker down and hide them all best she could. Eventually she got the courage to slowly move them down field and back into the forest, in between frightening human noises, and I did not see her try that again. 

Anyway, the turkeys this Spring have been coming through daily, combing the field for rich foods, three of them, and often you see them sometimes shoot across the road. And there are berms of hills with trees hiding what lies behind, so possibly this poor person in their car, yesterday morning, was surprised by a particularly rushed and hapless turkey. It is a fear many of us share, to somehow injure or come upon a fatally injured but not yet dead animal. I am grateful that this police officer can come and end the life of a suffering, not rehabilitatable creature caught and injured on a day such as this, while concerned humans stand waiting and hoping that someone can end the life of this poor one. I am not even opposed to someone then consuming them. Respect seems to be all that is essential, and grace in action.  And here both were in evidence.

Every day  I am  grateful that somehow I do not live in a neighborhood replete with violence and gunshots. I think of this every day. Every day I am grateful at 60 that I am not a single grandmother caring for grandchildren, affording only foods that coat my blood vessels and encroach heart disease  that I don't struggle to walk miles to a subway and take it for an hour to some wealthy person's home  who dismisses me or pretends not to, while I toil and scrub round the back of their many toilets and say "Yes Ma'am" and struggle to smile as if I could do it all day long. And then walk far, knees aching, back sore, body tired, back to a subway, in the darkness, then back to my home in a neighborhood that is not safe, with no jobs, no grocery stores, no streetlights, no safety, no parks, no money for the schools or neighborhood centers or clean needles at least, or rehab supports, or vocational training, back up the many stairs to my home, where my grandbabies are there, all alone, after school, with my pleading to stay inside, stupid thing that is for a child, as the neighborhood has no good choices and only dangers hard to understand, and there I am, cooking something I can barely afford with oils that do us no good, so far far from the diets and farm fresh foods the papers talk about, the organics and the IPM foods they go on and on and on about on tv, while here we barely have the food to eat enough and have heat and warm clothing, nothing nothing for the kids to do all summer long but sneak out and get into trouble, unprotected, while off I go, aching, to work, while I struggle just to put the food on the table and look at their homework and have heartbreak for their lost parents, and get them all to bed, praying for them to somehow stay out of the swamp. 

There you go. That is one of the lives I Imagine, that some people have and that somehow, not due to my own acts but simply circumstance, I do not have.

 So here, I am grateful. For a kind partner, grown and fine now kids, challenging health, remarkable vocation, clean air and water, a peaceful safe life, and a remarkable mountain range where, sometimes, there is a sad turkey day.

And the next day, on my way home from work, I stopped by the fire hydrant, by the side of the range, where my husband said the body had been left for pick up. Put on my blinkers, down the narrow hill of a road, grabbed napkins from the glove compartment, and made my way up the road. 

A state cop pulled up beside me, asking if I needed help. My tax dollars, helping me out, there. I said, no, I lived right here, and was just going to pick up the turkey that was hit and had to be shot yesterday, and bring them into the woods. He said, "Oh, how nice. To be with their family. " I thought, hmm, but I got what he meant...not to be in some trash at the town dump, but rather to be laid carefully in the deep blanket of leaves by the side of the field where they came up every day, before they went and crossed the road yesterday, and their time here ended. So I said "Yeah, I just thought it was a good idea." He said "Thank you. " And drove off. 

I approached the sweet dead turkey, lifted them and a lovely puff of neck feathers too, and began making my way back down the road, cars slowing and watching me as my clogs clomped along, down down, til I got to my car and a bit past, where the edge of the ravine is and the ground is not plowed by the farmer down the street, and I took that magnificent turkey and laid them there in the shade, in the soft dead oak leaves, with the wind blowing by and the stream rippling noisily far below, their feathers so resplendent, so that they, too , could lie here, at an end, and be picked clean.  Which they will. And someday, so will I.

Tonight I was working at the computer, and my husband called me to look out, as his study has a better view than mine, and there they were...the other two, rather close to the house, picking their way along, elegant and long, able to fly far up into the sky or run like the wind. Really. Have you seen wild turkeys run? Eagle vision. Just lovely. Yeah, despite my sneaking, they caught sight of me hiding at the upstairs window, and moved a bit faster down the lawn to the field, but not much, as I stood, stock still, glad that they continue in their ways.

4.14.13 Later Came The Duststorms

We were young then, emboldened

All innocent of what lay

within us, before us, those later exigies

hidden, for a time, from

our  newly hungry lips our

endless freedom

swaggering hearts

every moment freed

resolute, we did venture far

So on along the highway, New

York to Albuquerque

L.A. to Boulder, the

Mexico stopover, the

Arizona times as the

states flew by, all windows open

Santana drenched us

like some long sought religion

Joplin, Hendrix, the 

brilliance of Mahavishnu the

crooning of Mitchell

while roadside gas stops

still gave  paper water cups

which, once sipped, we

poured over our heads

laughing, defiant

that irreverent heat

drying us, crisp, down the road

One winter the car

let loose its U Joint

out on the freeway

St. Louis evening rush hour

Abandoned it til later,we

hitched a ride with this

grizzled, worn guy

all sheets to any wind

Later we drove while he

snored in the back seat the

windows irretrievably  locked we

whispered at the handgun

found under the seat the guy’s

Lincoln racing on through the night

We were young then, simply veering

from one philosophy to the next we

talked over carefully  the

world as we knew it,

the enduring templates of

Buber, Nietzsche,

Kierkegaard until wisdom

exploded, alive, in Central Park

one sweltering summer night 

1972, it was all happening then
the air eclectic t hose

around us riled with the

changes that would

TWIST this culture

And there she was, standing far before us the

crowds of thousands

I pushed my young hands onto his

delicious shoulders to be

lifted up, up, and

see her speak she was

determinant, sharp, and true

Gloria Steinem described 

how the world lied
how history conspired, how the

culture blinded us with

male pronouns

strewn everywhere like

prescient landmines

ascertaining its incipient

pretense of power

And yes, we became certain

this was a realm that would

guide us, somehow,

if we ventured thoughtfully enough

Yes, we would

stay awake

where others had slept

we would

question everything

rebuild the truth

examined, ground up

holding fast, each to each close

Insistent clarity in life

Later, came the duststorms those

southwest  bedsheets the

sheer delight of his

face , sweat soaked in

late morning awakenings

weighted, oppressive

heat the simplicity of

options our certainty that

such effort would ensure

stolid life, ah we

were so young then and we

tried so  terribly hard

And then Christmas Eve, struggling back

done with the southwest

the itch scratched

our 4 wheel drive  bucking

along breakdown lanes my

mother iridescent with

rage at our detainment

while I sighed with the familiar

relief of near miss

excommunicated for a year maybe

he looking over to me, knowing….

I peered back into his blue eyes then

back at sweet cats and dogs

ensnared in the van we

towed behind

filled with belongings, our

truck so high you had to

leap to get up into it, I mean it

made me laugh

every time, all

blazing yellow, with a

handmade ten ton cab

wrought with his effervescent

young strong arms;

in our own 70’s way we

struggled cross the

land