What I Saw When I Closed My Brain (Revisited)

What you are about to read goes over the edge of reality.

[If you've already visited to read the poem, skip to the end of it if you're curious about its animal symbolism and today's additions.]

It's a vision I had during a meditative hour on Saturday. I offer it as my Poetry Bus ticket, which this week was to be something in excess. It's excessively long and excessively full of creatures. You'll find more excessive work on the Science Girl's blog.

What I Saw When I Closed My Brain & Opened My Eyes

Beneath the oak tree a century of decomposing leaves
softer than a mattress and malleable, sweet scented
with a sheet of new grass, cradles me as I lie down
above a swift-flowing stream rich from winter rains.
A snag of sodden limbs and twigs rises in midstream
like a shattered tree regretting its dissolution.
Three bickering crows alight on the far bank,
screeching their malcontent and striking one another
in a cacophony of bitterness that belongs elsewhere.
I reach with searching fingers for a stone but hear
Watch, and here he comes, my resurrected Christ
crunching through the mat of leaves in long white robes.
I bade him come but thought he wouldn’t, yet here he is,
dressed for someone else’s dream. No white robes,
I say and look away at the terrible crows, gone
quiet now, and I see in the sunlight the shining
green among tar-black feathers as they sedately sip
at the water’s edge. In worn blue jeans he reclines
beside me, shoulders broad in a tight T-shirt,
sandaled feet in the brown leaf mulch. His hand
touches my shoulder like the tentative nose of horse.
Watch, he says. I look again at the mournful snag
and I see there where the stream parts a rainbow trout
surfing the current, and just behind it, a smaller trout,
their colors glinting in the light. Upstream bushes
rustle and a brown bear lumbers into the water,
slogs unerringly for the snag and reaches a paw
for the trout as if it knew the trout were there.
With a small undulation, the first trout meets the paw
and the paw encloses the trout, and I see the two,
the bear and trout, agree to feed and to be fed.
The crows lift off and a white owl settles
in the place they left, fixing his yellow eyes
on me. We stare at one another like old partners
suddenly met in an unexpected place. Beside me
a lynx has crouched to watch the owl. A cougar
slinks down the bank upstream and dips its head
to lap the water, resting on a rock. I don’t know
what my Christ is thinking. The owl says something
in a soundless voice and waits with me, the lynx,
my blue-jeaned Lord, for whatever happens next.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Meanings & Symbolism

I was interested in all the animals who appear in this meditative dream, and so I looked a little into Celtic and Native American animal symbolism.
Among six animals there are:
12 references to insight and intuition
2 bearers of power and courage
2 guardians
1 guide
1 messenger
and a crow times 3

The facilitator of my meditation group uses no descriptive words, only such verbs as "breathe," "observe," "listen," and "be." She's a psychoanalyst and she tells us that the process of observing will allow the unconscious to speak. I asked what this meditation might be saying to me, and she just laughed. That’s what you have to figure out, she said. So here’s what I think:

What I Saw When I Closed My Brain & Opened My Eyes

Beneath the oak tree a century of decomposing leaves
softer than a mattress and malleable, sweet scented
with a sheet of new grass, cradles me as I lie down
above a swift-flowing stream rich from winter rains.

[The surroundings are serene, but a bad attitude affects my interpretation of the view in the lines that follow:]
A snag of sodden limbs and twigs rises in midstream
like a shattered tree regretting its dissolution.
Three bickering crows alight on the far bank,
screeching their malcontent and striking one another
in a cacophony of bitterness that belongs elsewhere.

[I see brokenness and regret, dissonance and discontent, but how true is my vision? The crow, despite my annoyance, represents a mass of good things, such as metamorphosis, clarity of vision, bearer of light and understanding, keeper of mysteries and wisdom. I don’t see any of that until my spiritual guide appears, wearing the wrong clothes.]

I reach with searching fingers for a stone but hear
Watch, and here he comes, my resurrected Christ
crunching through the mat of leaves in long white robes.
I bade him come but thought he wouldn’t, yet here he is,
dressed for someone else’s dream. No white robes,
I say and look away at the terrible crows, gone
quiet now, and I see in the sunlight the shining
green among tar-black feathers as they sedately sip
at the water’s edge. In worn blue jeans he reclines
beside me, shoulders broad in a tight T-shirt,
sandaled feet in the brown leaf mulch. His hand
touches my shoulder like the tentative nose of horse.

[This is a wonderful interaction to me. Like many of us, my belief system was instilled when I was small with simple picture books and complicated nuances. The 12-Step program is emphatic that we must come to a personal understanding of God, in whom we can entrust our lives and hopes. This scene tells me that process is at work in my life and my God is perfectly happy to “change his clothes.” His appearance in the scene changes everything for me.]

Watch, he says. I look again at the mournful snag
and I see there where the stream parts a rainbow trout
surfing the current, and there behind it, a smaller trout,
their colors glinting in the light. Upstream bushes
rustle and a brown bear lumbers into the water,
slogs unerringly for the snag and reaches a paw
for the larger trout as if it knew the trout were there.
With a small undulation, the trout meets the paw
and the paw encloses the trout, and I see the two,
the bear and trout, agree to feed and to be fed.

[The bear is a powerful guardian, with great courage and strength and a deep connection to the Creator. He also represents intuition and introspection, which is interesting to me. He looks inward with understanding and thoughtfulness, but at the same time he looks outward to protect and guard with his strength and courage. He represents healing, death and rebirth. The fish, an ancient symbol of Jesus Christ, sacrifices itself in a nourishing relationship with the bear. The snag stops being a mournful broken tree and becomes a shelter for the trout.]

The crows lift off and a white owl settles
in the place they left, fixing his yellow eyes
on me. We stare at one another like old partners
suddenly met in an unexpected place.

[The white owl has lots of jobs in animal symbolism. He’s a messenger that brings enlightenment, wisdom, or spirituality. Sometimes he foretells death. In this dream, it seems like we used to work together but our relationship ended. Now he has something to tell me but I can’t hear it, and so he waits with me ~ which strikes me as a kind thing to do, but maybe not.]

Beside me
a lynx has crouched to watch the owl. A cougar
slinks down the bank upstream and dips its head
to lap stream water, resting on a rock.

[The lynx joins me, taking a protective stance. When he appeared in my meditation I asked if he was a bobcat or a lynx since I didn’t know the difference between the two. He specified that he was a lynx, which I later learned is wonderful. In animal lore the lynx is both a guide and a guardian, equipped with keen vision and foretelling, and he’s the keeper of all secrets and mysteries. The cougar brings balance between strength, leadership, wisdom, and freedom, and is a sign of coming into your own power. I could use some of that.]

I don’t know
what my Christ is thinking. The owl says something
in a soundless voice and waits with me, the lynx,
my blue-jeaned Lord, for whatever happens next.

[In this meditation an awful lot of characters know things, except for me. But I learn something important ~ my perception of “life” is transformed when I bid my Higher Power to be with me. And all the possibilities symbolized by the animals who visit seem to be available somehow when my view changes from negative to positive. I don’t know how, but maybe I’ll learn more during “whatever happens next.”]

Have a great week, my friends. I’m going to try to meditate more without the facilitator, just to see if something happens next.

Hanging Pictures in the Sewer

Well, hail. I've had an overdose of harsh words running around in my head, and it got so noisy and poisonous in there that I took to my bed, that refuge of depression.

When I wasn't seeking the oblivion of sleep, I was outside in the yard, working among living, thriving beings, or finding respite from orneriness in AA meetings. I haven't been a happy camper inside my own soul. In that quiet place where I've found contentment through the years, a few words from a few unhappy people and a few sad situations wormed their way in and started putting down roots.

When I was newly sober 21 years ago in LA, I heard an AA speaker named Joe G from Venice Beach give his pitch one morning. I don't remember a thing he said except one: If you got a resentment against me, and you're thinking about me, you're giving me free rent in your head. Thank you!

Another man named Joe spoke in that same AA meeting hall one night. He said, "I'm an alcoholic. If I fall in a cesspool, I start hanging pictures." I married that man because of what he said.

While I've been lying in my bed, sleepless or sleeping, I've been licking my wounds and hanging pictures. A loved one with wounds of her own recently told me that I am a deeply troubled person. I immediately without passing Go became a deeply troubled person. Some of us give the most amazing amount to power to others.

There comes a time when you have made all the amends you can make, done your best to bring reconciliation and clean up your side of the street, prayed all the prayers you can pray, and things still are bad. Either you start hanging pictures and giving up that free rent, or you walk away. You have come to the end of the line where your power to change things is concerned.

I went to an enormously satisfying poetry reading last night, where I heard a lot of good work by some fine poets. Everyone was at the top of their game. I was glad to be part of the night, to be one among such people. There is no price for gifts like this. There’s no price for the soul-satisfying act of being who and what you are, and proud of it.

Today is Earth Day and Good Friday, a whole bunch of redemption packed into one little day. I won't notice the goodness of heaven and earth if I stay in the cesspool hanging pictures. So I'm out and about where there is plenty of love to share.

Here is a Flash Friday 55-word poem about a different sort of thing putting down roots in your mind. Go see the G-Man, the G-force behind this Friday madness. I call this piece “Obsession.”

When it should come to this,
that I should sit like stone,
not uttering a sound,
not twitching a thumb,
as the hours pass and think
only of your dark eyes,
I will know myself
a fool, unglued,
that it is time to don
the round red nose and play
for nickels on the corner.

Delirium

I spent the day with macro lenses on my eyes. With my camera, I stood among the low branches of the dwarf Gala apple tree outside my sunroom as bees lumbered around me. Then I meandered around the yard, finding happy bees everywhere. I finished on my knees, pinching the last and smallest weeds between my fingers among the dahlia shoots, having an imaginary conversation about trust with our oldest granddaughter. With your Tata and me, I told her, you are innocent unless you prove yourself otherwise.

She’s going to be 18 next month and she’s delirious with possibilities associated with legal adulthood. Her parents are strict. She has never been on an unchaperoned date even though she’s about to graduated from high school, and she wants to leave home to be the mistress of her own fate. I love her very much and I want her to live with us if she believes she must leave the fold. She’s a beautiful young woman, smart and motivated to be a teacher, worthy of trust. Her grandfather, my beloved, tells me we can’t intervene. I told the weeds that we will.

Spring is like this girl, ripening. The topic for this week’s Poetry Bus is Spring, ordains NanU, guest driver and science writer. My fellow passengers are linked here.

Beests

Who bee the beests upon the blossoms that bee upon the apple tree?
See thou what I mean? There, upon the leaves?
They bee everywhere, upon the tree, the bush, the lavender—
Busy little beests, with bulging thighs of pollen,
Harbingers of Spring.
Oh, sweet bee, where is thy sting,
Drunk amid the blossoms
Burgeoning on the tree?

Dirty Power

When I’m feeling blue, it’s nearly always because I’m powerless to change something. This time of year, though, there’s a great antidote out in the yard called gardening. It might more truthfully be called weeding or soiling, but whatever it is, it boils down to power. I have power in the yard that I don’t have in the rest of my life.

I’m as ineffectual as a wet noodle in a lot of ways, but out there, I’m a goddess. With my hands alone, I can transform things. Today it was a piece of crap plot of ground. An hour later, it was a rich little garden bed ready for seeds. My whole attitude was transformed with it. I hauled those blue feelings off to the green-waste bin along with three huge bucket loads of weeds.

Lest I get a fat head singing my own praises, I remember that the sun, the rain, the spinning of the spheres aren’t mine to command. The essential force in power-gardening is the Creator who transforms the seasons in the first place. I’m thankful that He lets me work in concert with Him to turn weeds and dirt into flowers.

One of the major things I’m powerless over is another person’s ill will. Along with the weeds I yanked out of the ground today, I fiddled around with the toxic byproducts of an unhealthy relationship. I had fun whacking it with my metaphorical machete until it was no more than a Flash 55 for Mr. Knowitall’s Friday bash. See what others can do in 55 words over at the G-Man’s place.

Bad Blood

When you said I hate you
I saw a dam fracturing,
all that fierce water
surging down the gorge,
your accumulated
tragedies churning
like broken houses
in the flood.
I imagined a drop
of your venom
landing on my skin,
shivering there
before my pores
opened like a rose
and sucked it in.

A Good Day for Flying

My local newspaper made me smile this morning when I opened it (not a usual occurrence) and saw its little list of historic moments. On this day in history, in 1742, Handel's "Messiah" was performed for the first time in public, and Dublin was the chosen city. I like the "Messiah" very much and I'm glad Handel channeled it from whatever angel gave it to him.

Also, on this day in 1970, Apollo 13 had nearly reached the moon when a mechanical problem erupted and threatened everyone aboard. But the disaster was averted and the men returned safely home. I like endings like that.

My newspaper's "thought for the day" proves that nothing new is ever thought of under the sun. In the 1700s, French philosopher Charles Louis de Montesquieu pondered happiness and decided:

"Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them."

That sounds like something I heard in an AA meeting last week.

And on this historic day, April 13, 2011, a flock of cedar waxwings paused for breakfast outside my sunroom, as they migrate north again with the coming of spring.


(P.S. The fine photo of a cedar waxwing is from a far better photographer than I but it didn't come with a credit.)

The Honeymoon Is Over

The bandages came off my right hand last week. Without them, the wrist had full range of motion and my palm was exposed.

My hand realized something traumatic happened in its carpal tunnel. Why does it now hurt so much? I asked my surgeon. The honeymoon is over, he said. Now the real work begins.

I’ll have to strengthen it, but my hand is beautifully, thoroughly alive! I put it to work, writing like a madwoman to meet my magazine deadlines yesterday.

Now I get to leap onto the Eejit’s Poetry Bus, on tour today under the wild command of the Bug’s Eye View. All poems, Dana ordained, will begin with the same five words. All of us miraculously have different voices. Mine addresses Alzheimer’s.

The End of Our Life
As I Knew It

I am a crooked line in your mind
I end in a pathetic dribble
near the inlet of your spine
I dangle on the tangles
that insensibly wind
in the miles of your brain
and there I pine.

The Strange Story of a Goddess’s Daughter

Meet the archerfish. This wonderful creature watches the world above the surface and shoots down insects with jets of water spit from its remarkable mouth. The archerfish (genus Toxotes) is a physics and ballistics expert, able to hit an overhead target up to six feet away.

I happen to be an archery expert myself. At the age of 33, I won a crossbow-shooting contest in the Swiss Alps while under the influence of a large amount of slivovitz. I’m not kidding you. I have some kind of animal-horn blower thing to prove it. It’s true the competition consisted of a bunch of American journalists on a European press tour, but still. I was three sheets to the wind and a dead-eye shot.

I met the archerfish because I had to write a poem about one. The famous weekly Poetry Bus, invented by an Irish poet who calls himself the Totalfeckineejit, which he isn’t, is busy touring the animal kingdom this week.

This animal thing is the brainchild of Titus the Dog, a fine poet out of Scotland who is not a dog but a human named JoAnne McKay. She’s making a poetry booklet about animals to raise funds for humans who have arthritis. My dearly beloved beagle Riley has been crippled by arthritis. Someday maybe we’ll do a poetry booklet about humans to raise funds for animals who have arthritis.

So. On to the archerfish. This fish has very sharp eyes very close together by its snout, which allows the fish to hang about right at the surface of the water and look upward, without creating any telltale disturbance of the water’s surface. There, it slyly watches the overhead vegetation for the movement of insects.

It has a tongue-and-groove kind of mouth that can form a narrow tube and spit a forceful jet of water, but first, the fish somehow calculates complex physics problems that I know nothing about, regarding the refraction of light through water and the curvature of the jet of water as it is pulled down by gravity. Then the archerfish changes its firing angle to compensate, and whammo! The insect, struck by the water jet, is knocked into the pond, where it disappears into the fish’s mouth.

How am I to tell you all this bizarre engineering stuff in a poem? I decided I wouldn’t. So I turned the fish into the daughter of one of history’s greatest archers. You’ll find the rest of the animals roaming at Titus’s place.

The Archerfish Tale

I saw your daughter today, Artemis,
hunting with your bow and arrow
in a mangrove swamp. You would be proud
of Toxotes, if you had seen her stalk
her prey with your own cunning,
disturbing not even a ripple of air
as she moved. Your daughter is fierce
and graceful as you once were,
Artemis, when you served this earth ~
Goddess of the hunt, of wild creatures
and forest lands, She Who Brings Light
to the night, Slayer of men, Avenger
of maidens. Your daughter Toxotes
is the huntress now, the Bringer of Death,
She Whose Aim Is True. She honors you,
daughter of Zeus, daughter of Titans,
Mistress of the Moon. Take pleasure,
Artemis, in your child, the Archer
unsurpassed in all the kingdom. Tell
your friend Orion, your brother Apollo,
that the skill of Toxotes is supreme.
Her arrows of water, shot from the strange
bow of her muscular mouth, unerringly
find their mark. I watched her, Goddess,
as she bent laws of physics and gravity
to her will, as she conquered light itself
bending at the boundary of water and air.
She has your shrewd eyes.
Smile, Artemis, in your retreat
on the moon’s dark side.
In your daughter, you live on.

**************

Don’t Insult the Doc

My dearly beloved has a birthday today. Please don’t tell him about this post.

My orthopedic surgeon flirts with women. When he fixed a tear in my hip two years ago, we saw a lot of each other beforehand, mainly because he had performed my particular surgery only once, on a cadaver. He was eager to have a live patient, and I trusted his hands, but the hospital was not eager to let him have a go at me, him not having actual experience and all. He got the go-ahead about three months after I first saw him, after he went down to L.A. to watch the surgery performed by its master craftsman and studied several of the surgeries online.

The morning of my ground-breaking hip surgery, he paid me a visit in the pre-op area. I had a visitor sitting with me, a beautiful Amazon of a woman from my AA fellowship. He flirted with her outrageously, ignoring me totally, for a very long time. They looked like Jack Sprat who could eat no fat and his wife who could eat no lean (just saying, not because I was jealous, even though I, really, was his ticket to a new lucrative specialty, and I was his FIRST, after all, but I am short and she is tall, and for Pete’s sake! she towered over him, being as he is a little guy, but he probably didn’t know that since she never actually stood up so he could see she was inappropriately tall). [gasp!]

So. Anyway, the orthopedist is a flirt. A shameless one. And usually he flirts with me, but not, apparently, when I’m accompanied by tall, good-looking women. This has happened to me all my life, or at least three times. My theory is that short women are invisible to men when accompanied by tall, good-looking women. It’s one of the crosses we little ladies must bear.

The upshot of all this is that I didn’t invite my tall friend to sit with me in pre-op last week for my hand surgery. I didn’t even tell her about it. So when Doc Do-Little visited me in pre-op, he flirted with me somewhat briskly, wrote YES on my right wrist in permanent marker, and vanished for an hour.

When next I saw him, it was in operating room #4, and I was supposed to be knocked out by an IV drug, but I wasn’t, and not only that, but he was running two HOURS late. So while he did harsh things to my carpal tunnel, which had been numbed, thank God, I yakked with him and the anesthesiologist. He, the outrageous flirt, let fly with an innuendo in answer to an innocent question of mine.

I might have been a little crabby about everything. When he said what he said, I said something back that wasn’t terribly innocent. And because the stupid drug wasn’t working on my sober alcoholic/addict brain, I remembered everything, so I wrote this poem a couple of days ago. I’m toying with the idea of giving it to him on Monday when he takes off my bandages.

Don’t Insult the Doc

Are you done yet? I asked the surgeon
who was cutting up my hand
(I was supposed to be unconscious
and adrift in lotus land).
That is not a pleasant question,
he said with some hauteur;
it could emasculate a man
if he were insecure.
I said I know of an inquiry
that is surely more adverse:
Asking a man, Is it in me yet?
must be infinitely worse.
Oh, good God! cried the orthopedist,
with a vivid reprimand ~
and thus I learned to never insult
a scalpel-wielding man.

Death by Paper

My carpal tunnel surgery is healing like gangbusters. I’ve been typing since Friday, the day it took place. My right hand is alive again. It feels like a stab wound on the base of my palm but I’m not taking even Tylenol (thank you AA!). The oddest thing about the ordeal is that the anesthesiologist couldn’t knock me out with a double dose of the usual stuff, and we will have to concoct a new cocktail next month when I have the left hand done. Recovering addict / alcoholic that I am, drugs interest me very much.

I’m limited in what I can do with my bandaged right hand. It’s 80 degrees here, following a great rain, and the weeds call me. But left-handed weeding is unsatisfactory. So I decided to participate in Theme Thursday, which today is paper. A memory came to me, and I wrote this poem about it.

The Roll of Newsprint

Seven years old and in love
with a kitten born to the anonymous
family cat, I came home from school
one day eager to see her as always
a girl is eager to see the ball of fluff
known as kitten, cuddly and somehow
near to being just like me, the me
I wished for, an extension of my psyche,
laughter and playfulness in a life
bereft of both. My stern mother said,
before I changed into the designated
play clothes, changed my awful shoes,
when I had just slipped in the door
wary as always of my mother’s
ways,she stood at the sink, working
as always, not looking at me
but responding to the noise of me,
Your kitten died, crushed by the roll
of newsprint in the garage that fell
on it. I cleaned up the mess.
I stood there in the doorway
not comprehending what I heard,
picturing the towering roll of paper
so much taller than I, leaning
on end against a corner of the garage.
My brother’s Cub Scout pack used it
once to paint banners that hung
on a truck in the town’s parade.
It was never used again, thereafter
always standing on end in the corner
and it was heavy, far more than I
could handle. How could it fall?
She was doing something
at the sink and she studied what it was,
and she never looked at me
in my school dress and Dr. Scholl’s
shoes, which I hated, she didn’t bend
down, she didn’t soften the blow.
She crushed me like a roll of newsprint
falling as a ton of death on my fragile
body, my laughter, my kitten self,
never cuddly again.



More takes on the theme here.

The Dragon Is Full

We call it The Dragon because of its shape. The lake near my town is the Nacimiento, a Spanish name meaning birth or the headwaters. In these shots, we're standing at the Dragon's neck.

Built when I was two years old, the Dragon has this year filled totally up. It's famous for its 165 miles of unspoiled shoreline, its reputation for the greatest water skiing in California, and its white bass fishing. Bald eagles nest here. Joe and I went out there Tuesday, to take pictures of its historic level, more full than at any time since it was built in 1956.

The lake is so full it's pouring over the spillway of the dam, and the water force is a mighty thing.

This is Spanish moss.

Oak branches with lichen.

This is a sample of our stickery dandelion.

Along the hillsides, sage is blooming.

The drive out to the lake is buccolic.

World class horse trainers live out here.

It's a glorious place to live, and in early spring the grass and budding oak trees turn it into paradise.

Today's thought:

You can have anything you want if you will give up the belief that you can't have it.

A Fantasy

Mata Hari

I have wanted to be five-foot-eight ever since fifth grade, when the teachers made me join the third and fourth graders in a rousing rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot” for the school’s spring musical. It was traumatizing to be forced to sing and dance with the younger kids such a terrible song:

I’m a little teapot, short and stout
This is my handle, this is my spout
When I get all steamed up, hear me shout
Then tip! me over and pour me out!

I never grew past five-foot-one. In my mind’s eye I was thereafter always short and stout, even when I went through an anorexic stage. Mrs. Gulbro, the culprit who traumatized me, was on my Fourth Step resentment list 25 years later when I joined AA. She might still be there, another 21 years later.

I’m giving you this backstory to flesh out the poem I’ve written for the Poetry Bus this week. When Muse Swings, our guest Bus driver, presented three prompt choices, the emotionally wrecked 10-year-old me automatically zeroed in on prompt #3, which was this vintage photo:

The Exotic Dancer

Look at this skin, pale as cream
and wish yourself entangled
in my long legs, wrapped in my arms.
Feel my lips murmur against
your neck as my strong fingers
trace the muscles straining
in your back. Marvel at the pearls
of my spine. Lay your head upon
the jewels of my bosom and hear
the thrumming of my heart
under the fine arc of my ribs
just before your plump wife asks
are you finished yet, dear?

~~~~

For a Busload of interesting work, visit Muse Swings’ blog.

Reborn!

I discovered something useful yesterday during hand surgery. Apparently my constitution is resistant to the so-called "powerful" sedative Versed, which is used to induce a twilight sleep and erase memory during medical procedures. Even a double dose of it, combined with fentanyl, had no effect on me. I was completely awake through the whole thing and grateful that a) my hand had been numbed and b) I wasn't undergoing a colonoscopy.

Thank you for all your good wishes. I think the surgery was successful because there's just a wee bit of tingling compared to the usual burning pain. I feel like I've been stabbed in the palm of my hand, so I know it's not numb anymore. The price I pay for sobriety is that I don't get to take opiate pain medication unless I'm in dire need and someone else administers it. On the other hand, one of the blessings I get from sobriety is that I have a surprisingly high tolerance for pain now.

My hand therapist just told me to cut this short and rest my hand. I can't believe I can type already! But I will mind and will leave you with this wonderful message from Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

"To live is to be slowly born."

Strapped Down and Cut Up

I’m going to be freed from my miserable right hand on Friday afternoon.

They’re going to strap me down, squeeze all the blood out of my right arm, and then whip out the scalpel and release me from months of anguish.

I LOVE the sound of that! No more days and nights fraught with fiery pain! Get rid of the bloody thing! I’ll have to learn how to do stuff left-handed. I considered practicing a few vital functions this week, like applying mascara or more fundamental acts of self care, but decided to savor the last few days with my dominant right hand.

I’ll let you know how it goes as soon as I can hunt and peck at the keyboard again. I look forward to the day when my computer understands speech and automatically transcribes it. All these years of interviewing people and scribbling in notebooks, transcribing tape recordings, or typing shorthand notes that leave out lots of words, I have wished for technology to catch up with my profession. It exists now, but I can’t afford it. Maybe when I get rich from suing the entire American medical industry for holding my demented mother hostage in a hospital for days….

Anyway, reeling myself back in from that fantasy, wish me luck. They'll be tunneling through my carpal at noon (and you thought they were amputating my hand ~ how grisly!).

Now for a Friday Flash 55 inspired by the weather here in California... Visit Mr. Knowitall for other examples of flash creativity.

Rain

After a long drought turned the riverbed to dust,
today the manna from heaven falls and the soil

laps it neatly as a cat. A sigh of satisfaction escapes
the mouth of the ground. Roots hum as their veins

swell. Pools rise in the riverbed, reach out fingers,
and link. The river’s muddy blood awakens.

~~~~
Postscript:

All went well although my hand is numb still from the anesthetic. I can't wait for it to wear off so I can feel the glorious lack of pain. Toddling off to rest now after typing this with both hands!

Just for Today, I’m Sober

To an alcoholic, sobriety is as miraculous as water changing into wine. Because it isn’t one’s natural state, something supernatural has to happen to transform the nature of the beast.

If I forget to honor that supernatural fact, I’ll revert to my natural state. My own life was transformed 21 years ago. Years later, I did forget, and I became water again. That wasn’t fun. I spent three years vacillating ~ water / wine, water / wine, very confusing ~ before I experienced the miracle again.

Today I celebrate a new sobriety anniversary. It’s bittersweet because longevity is a badge of honor among recovering alcoholics. My husband has been sober almost 24 years. I celebrate three years today, and my heart is thankful for that. My competitive spirit isn’t: I coulda been an old-timer!

I’ve had to relearn the method of living in gratitude one day at a time. Yesterday’s gratitude doesn’t keep me sober today, just like yesterday’s food doesn’t feed me today. Yesterday’s food is already shit.

I’m in a state of flux again. It’s not the water / wine thing; it’s happy / sad, content / frightened. I was told last August that the death of my mother would be a life-shifting event. Well. So it is. The future has become uncertain. (Ha! she said, as if it were ever otherwise!)

I read this message this morning in “Twenty-Four Hours a Day,” a daily meditation book:

“We can forget about the future. We know from experience that as time goes on, the future takes care of itself. All we need to think about is today. When we get up in the morning and see the sun shining through the window, we thank God that he has given us another day to enjoy, a day in which we may have a chance to help somebody.

"All is fundamentally well. That does not mean that all is well on the surface of things. But it does mean that God is in his Heaven and that he has a purpose for us. Don’t be upset by the surface wrongness of things, but feel deeply secure in the fundamental goodness of God’s world.”

Astrophysics and Romance

It’s over. Thank the good Lord, the sun, the earth, and astrophysics. Good riddance to winter. Welcome to the vernal equinox.

I am finished mourning and protesting. You don’t want to know what happened last week to shut me up. But three women ~ young, middle-aged, and elder ~ snapped me out of it.

On this first day of spring, we have no sun in the sky here, in the woodlands and green hills of pastoral California, just lovely rain. We get our water from an aquifer beneath us. It takes good rains to replenish what people and vineyards use, but we have dry years. We’re gluttons for rain.

Every spring when I was growing up, my father, who was raised by these people:

would tell me, “Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonder where the flowers is.” I looked up the verse this week and learned my dad had created his own version of a poem by the poet Anonymous that was popular in the 1950s.

Out of respect for our blog friend Monkey Man, who invented the Sunday 160 (a profound message in 160 characters), I present here a version that fits his pentameters.

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonder where the birdies is.
The poets say in Spring
The bird is on the wing,
But ain’t that absurd?
The wing is on the bird.

I’ll kill a bird with two stones today and include a poem ticket for the Totalfeckineejit’s Poetry Bus. Our guest driver, Uiscebot (how do you pronounce that?), instructs us to abide by his pentameters: write in some new place, no rhyming, and less than 40 lines. The strange travelogue is here: http://theblogsthejob.blogspot.com/

Thanks to an early-morning weather report in the newspaper, I went all the way up to the jet stream for a visit. It was either that or tell you about my new experience with guided meditation. Be glad I chose the weather.

The Weather Man

He said the jet stream is a tubular ribbon
of wind blowing 100 miles per hour
maybe five or six miles over my head,
and I wondered, is that why I hear
that buzzing in my ear when I think
of the black mustache under your nose?

He said a cold front is a wave of energy
sweeping away from the core of the storm,
and I felt a white-hot wave of energy
sweep away from my core as your
black mustache smiled there,
and this I remembered as he said cold
and core and sweep and storm.

He said the jet stream flows like a giant
wave undulating from west to east
for thousands of miles, and I marveled
that my head could contain it all,
the knowledge of your mustache
and your nose like an eagle’s beak,
his speech a buzzing in my ear
and the jet stream of life circling
over my head and under my toes.

Painting by my friend Denise Schryver

I Protest!

I’m tired of trying to be good. Living respectfully and peacefully in the midst of turmoil is WORK.

For many days now I’ve snatched only two or three hours of sleep each night. Story deadlines, income tax paperwork, and stupid physical pain make sleep elusive. Lack of it makes me irritable, and I sneer at my previous post: Peace on earth, pah! Give me peace in my own bed, and then we’ll talk.

These days I find myself cynically hysterical. Ever heard of “restless leg syndrome,” in which some mysterious force compels your legs to move constantly at night? You can’t sleep because your lower body attempts to propel you around the equator when you lie down in bed.

Just exactly when my overwrought mind suffers from a severe case of “restless brain syndrome,” my trusty legs decided to join the game. They chose to dance along with my carpal-tunnel hands, puny lungs, and disintegrating spine, all new companions since my mother died last August.

Screw Pollyanna today. Coupled with another death, a dire medical diagnosis and a fractured family, this added crap irritates the hell out of me. Enough already! I feel like my Lordly Professor has handed me way too much homework.

I write poetry now only on weekends so I can enjoy the world tour on TFE’s Poetry Bus, always a source of pleasure. This week, the Irish Watercats demand a short protest poem in a strict rhythmic form. (Rebel link) I am thrilled to comply! This is how I chose to vent:

Corporations draft our laws,
Line their pockets in the cause
Of greater wealth, richer men.
Gluttons rule the planet, then.

I’m a political cynic who wishes America would remember democracy for the common people and the theories of the men who designed a government dedicated to equality. I don’t often espouse my beliefs, but this week I got fired up about a revolutionary idea: Strip corporate America of its political power. Lobbyists paid by wealthy special interest groups draft much of our legislation, which of course benefits those interests, while The People sweat to make ends meet. Don’t get me started. I’ll return to my usual optimistic self another day.

(Update on the following morning, a quiet kick-back Sunday)

Got hours of beautiful sleep. Still irritable and cynical, but not hysterical. Note to self: Temporary grumbling allowed ... but never forget how blessed thou art.

A Revolutionary Idea

"Let there be peace on earth,

and let it begin with me."

How often I think that if only he/she/they/it would stop troubling me, life would be peaceful! How often I entertain that thought without even questioning it!

But at its core, that thought is a blame-based, victim-based habit. I'm pointing mental fingers at someone or something as the cause of my dis-ease. Three fingers, when one points, are usually pointing back at oneself.

Let there be peace on earth today, and let it begin with me.

More Craziness Than You’ve Dreamed Of

Insanity takes many forms, and I've seen some of them in my life, but the type of insanity that most affects me these days is this kind: doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

More about this later. Right now, I have to offer you a poem. I’m taking a break from insanity to ride the World’s Greatest Poetry Bus. In honor of what Bus Driver Poet Peter Goulding claims is “one of the most important dates in the Roman Catholic calendar ~ Pancake Tuesday, named after the venerable St. Pancake,” I have done as Peter commanded and composed a ditty to the pancake. Peter also demanded that we write in the persona of a poet of our choice. I chose Joyce Kilmer and to satirize his famous poem “Trees.” If you’re inclined to read somewhat ridiculous poetry, we Bus riders will be linked here.

First, Kilmer's version. He was a brave soldier who lost his life in WWI.

Trees
By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
~~~~~
Now my version:

I Think That I Shall Never See

A poem lovely as a pancake
Giving me a hearty handshake.
Against my hungry mouth is prest,
With butter flowing from its breast,
An angel’s golden halo round,
A saucer of the sweetest brown.
It makes me lift my hands to pray
But no, my fork is in the way.
I shall in homage always wear
A nest of pancakes in my hair.
Upon their bosom I have lain
While maple syrup falls like rain.
Poems are made by fools like me
But pancakes come from pancake trees.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now back to the topic of insanity. In the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, you’ll frequently hear, “If you like what you’re getting, keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t like what you’re getting, change what you’re doing.”

My injustice meter has been shrilling its alarm for quite a while. A heartbreaking development in my family since my mother died last summer has finally exploded like an alien in a scene from “Men in Black.” Purple alien blood goo drips from the walls.

Twisted events have twisted me and interfered with my serenity. I wiped some of the purple alien blood goo off my glasses today and found these lines in a book I love: “I can find no serenity until I accept that [disturbing] person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.”

Today’s realization is that I need to withdraw from the battlefield. I had wanted to right a wrong, but I was wrong. It’s time to recognize that I’ve become insane as I defined it in that paragraph up there.

It takes a lot of swallowing to give up. My faith that good will come of this is weak. My husband, who has gobs of faith that God will accomplish his plan for the situation we face, has asked me to stop trying. So I’ve decided I’ll lean on my faithful husband and let God do whatever he wants to do. I guess that shows the degree of my pride, because it implies that God needed my help. From now on, it’s hands off. Excuse me while I go wash off the rest of the purple alien blood goo.

I Lived On Fat

After a Winter Storm

The white china sky broke this morning
so the Diner brought out the blue-plate special.
Customers fell into a frenzy for it.
You over there: Can you hear them
pounding the tables with their forks?
Can you hear the slap of waitress feet
and the hiss of fat on the stove?

(This is a Friday Flash 55, a challenge hosted by the G-Man. Go visit his blog for more strange recipes in exactly 55 words.)

When I was growing up, child of Depression-era parents, we saved bacon fat, pouring it into a crock that sat on the back of the stove. Anything to be fried we fried in a heaping spoonful of that softly solidified bacon fat heated in the old cast-iron frying pans. How old was the fat at the bottom of the crock? Was it safe to cook with? Nobody asked. A mess of green beans fried in bacon fat was delicious. A pan of chopped potatoes and onions was scrumptious. That’s what you cared about. There was lard for pie crusts, shortening for Betty Crocker baking recipes, margarine for bread, and bacon fat for frying. I never heard of olive oil until I was married. I learned the word “sauté” then, too. Somewhere along the line, I disposed of the bacon-fat crock.

We lived on beans, beans and biscuits, beans and cornbread, black-eyed beans and ham hocks, chili beans. We had Spam, hamburger patties, beef stew, corned beef hash, chicken-fried steak, and pot roasts on special occasions. There was always gravy. We ate beets and green beans, potatoes, buttered carrots, fresh corn on the cob and canned peas. We had homemade cole slaw or shredded carrots with raisins, or iceberg lettuce with thousand island dressing made with catsup, pickle relish and mayonnaise, or Jell-O salad with fruit cocktail, or sliced fresh tomatoes picked that morning.

When we were really lucky, we had fresh abalone steaks dredged in smashed saltine crackers and fried in fat. I have two memories of abalone. In one, my older brother and I went with my dad and uncle to a friend’s ranch on the coast, and we rode in a Jeep over a mountain down to the rocky shoreline. There the men pried abalone off the rocks while my brother and I entertained ourselves. I had to go number two, and there was nothing to use but ice plant, which grew everywhere, and it was not an unpleasant, albeit strange, substitute for toilet tissue.

In the other memory, the men brought gunny sacks full of abalone into my grandfather’s sawdust-filled garage, where they gouged the shellfish from the shell and pounded the abalone with hammers. The women were cooking in the kitchen until the men came in with platters heaped high with abalone steaks. Then the men took over the kitchen. Cousins were running around everywhere. Women in aprons bustled back and forth. That abalone feast was the best thing I had ever eaten.

We eat healthier now. We use fresh-pressed extra virgin olive oil grown locally, or real butter. No more margarine or bacon fat. I buy a bit of Crisco in packaged blocks at Christmas time, and a block of lard only if I’m going to make a pie. I make a fine gravy at Thanksgiving or the occasional family breakfast. Abalone hunting is banned around here. We don’t eat canned vegetables or Spam or corned beef hash. My husband doesn’t like beans much. I never eat Jell-O salad except on Christmas Eve when my aunt makes my grandmother’s recipe.

I learned how to cook in Home Economics when I was 13, and from then on I was the cook in the family, coming home from school and making dinner for my working parents. I branched out from Betty Crocker. In college I cut out recipes from magazines and bought other cookbooks. I cooked dinners for friends. Friends taught me about other foods. I began eating in fine restaurants. I invented recipes. I cooked for more than 45 years, as a teenager, college student, young wife, single parent, and older, wiser wife. When my husband was injured out of his career, he went to culinary school. Now he’s the cook except for Thanksgiving, and this past year, I started teaching him how to roast a turkey. Sometimes I miss the bacon fat. There are few more wonderful breakfasts than bacon-fat gravy with sausage bits and biscuits made from scratch.

Living with Sorrow

One thing you can depend on is that nothing will stay the same. Life will throw you a curve ball, a slider, a fastball you never saw coming. And everything will be different all over again.

My family got hit with a triple whammy this month. To respect the privacy of others in my clan, I can’t talk about details except to my trusted advisors. I haven’t known what to say in my blog. So I’ve said nearly nothing. But the itty-bitty-shitty committee in my head has been blabbing nonstop. I was told by oldtimers early in my recovery from alcoholism that my head is a bad neighborhood and not to go there alone. But at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m., it’s just me and the darkness and the chatter in my head. It’s a form of torture.

I’ve tried: counting sheep; counting steps on a green path in a forest; guided imagery; breathing; prayer; telling myself imaginary stories; herbals like melatonin, valerian root; tryptophan; wrestling with God; making gratitude lists; reading; even watching late night science programs about recycling. Nothing shuts off the committee.

A nasty bug has been making the rounds here in my town, and many people are falling ill for two weeks, a month, at a time. It settles in the chest and results in pneumonia in some people. I caught it and have stayed home for nearly three weeks trying to fend off another bout of pneumonia.

I’ve resorted to watching television, catching up on films I missed in their theater releases. So far I’ve seen “Revolutionary Road” (what a wrenching movie!), “Julie and Julia” (Meryl Streep’s tour de force), “In the Electric Mist” (James Lee Burke paired with Tommy Lee Jones!), “Nell” (give Jodie Foster an Oscar!), “The Duchess” (wow!), “Secondhand Lions” (loved it!), “Flawless” (another wow!), and “Masterpiece Classics” on PBS. I haven’t watched TV in years, being an avid reader instead. But reading has become difficult. I have, however, worked my way through one-third of award-winning David Brin’s “Sundiver” sci-fi classic.

Being ill, I’ve hit maybe four or five AA meetings in three weeks, and I’m accustomed to six a week. At least for an hour in a meeting, the itty-bitty-shitty committee falls silent. So I browse through what we call the “Big Book,” AA’s textbook, and the “Good Book,” my other “textbook for living.” I’m trying to concentrate on a few passages they contain:

First, on the subject of the “magic magnifying mind” that enlarges whatever it dwells on, there is this:
“When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases. … I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance [of things as they are] and off my expectations [of what things should be], for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance.” [Pages 419-420]

And this from the Good Book, as it has been quaintly called:
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. … And the God of peace will be with you. [Philippians 4]

I’ve heard it said (by Robert Louis Stevenson) that any man can carry a burden until nightfall which would overwhelm him if he tried to carry it forever. Therefore, focus only on this one day, doing the next right thing a moment at a time, and leave the future in God’s hands, where it rightfully belongs. In my life at this moment, all my needs are cared for. For that, I am grateful.