Saturday, February 29, 2020

By Choice

Then it happened. "You know I am not a Christian, right?"  I said this to a gentleman who embodies that word.  He smiled in reply,  That could change. Truth be told, I already had my dance with the devil and the light.

We parted with a hug and my sincere acknowledgment of his faith: "Blessings of the season."  I was not just out of practice or fallen. I was committed to a different REAL.
Originally saved as draft December 2019

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”  “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”  “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”  “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse.  “You become. It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

from  Velveteen Rabbit

I do not deny the love, that Christ calls Christians too. But as a believer, I was a poser. My faith journeyed me through different traditions with several enduring experiences including huddled under a canopy with a sculpture of Mother Mary during torrential rain in hiding from a Priest and is porn-collector. But through-out, and I do understand the argument of human-frailty, there were too many fakes, too much hypocrisy and too many who lacked the courage of identity. As someone who described an unexpected and colorful penance,  “You want to become real?” who was told to “Then go home this day, shut your door, get on your knees and read."  I found the story of the Velveteen Rabbit affirming my break from all things church.

More recently I have shared time with Muslims who identify with their profession of "Love for All, Hate for none." In this community, women are protected from the men's inclinations toward lewdness and encouraged to be open as they congregate separately. The teachings of Islam, to live with mutual love and affection and with humility seem to need this physical separation to be manifest.




I am SIlver for Sanders

When you realize your voice is the one thing that when given away collapses your I's : Integrity, Identity, Independence, Individuality, Imagination, and saves you from Isolation then maybe you will also believe in #NotMeUS

From the campaign  I am impressed with both the video and the messaging.

Saturday, February 22, 2020

New Season


All the young poets that spit words in high school poetry slams, words introduced with "I just scribbled this, this morning" sadly do not know how the crafting reveals a poem.

Daffodil Bulb

Inhale
your past into the present
Let cultivars awaken
Let resilience bloom
from cold spells

daffodils
stalwart among the earliest of buttercups
anew and conspicuous
speech flowers
blanket the horizon
near 
neglected stone walls of poetry's cottages
distilled 
nectar tickles where sap healed wounds

A gardener’s memory
Adroop
As the cliché of age
Takes root
In a new season

Poems evolve ...

Daffodil

Inhaling, the past into the present

for a horizon to inhabit

cultivating our speech flowers

daffodils & buttercups

within the stone walls of poetry's cottages

blooming in seasons, imprinted


We call them poems

Erect, on white plains

It is the gardener’s memories, wilting

As the cliché of age

takes root


15 hours later after a complex day ---

Daffodil Bulb

inhale your past into the present

resilience blooms

from cold spells

daffodils stalwart among the earliest of buttercups


cultivars awaken

anew and conspicuous

speech flowers

blanket the horizon

near neglected stone walls of poetry's cottages

distilled nectar tickles where sap healed wounds

The gardener’s memories

Adroop


As the cliché of age

takes root

in a new season


A few days later ---

Daffodil Bulb

Inhale

your past into the present

Let cultivars awaken

Let resilience bloom

from cold spells


daffodils


stalwart among the earliest of buttercups

anew and conspicuous

speech flowers

blanket the horizon

near

neglected stone walls of poetry's cottages

distilled

nectar tickles where sap healed wounds


A gardener’s memory

Adroop

As the cliché of age

Takes root

In a new season


Wednesday, February 12, 2020

A window on the world (being ten)

Living on a dead-end street was magical beyond my youthful understanding. At age ten I knew one thing about my ideal home: There would be a window above the kitchen sink. The kitchen of my youth in Windsor had a window on the world of neighbors with wings, paws, and claws. It was a daily reminder that we share the world with many creatures. I had begun noticing it was not a fixture in my friend's homes. During after meal clean-up or large family gatherings, everyone seemed drawn to the window's outdoor drama of the moment, most often Blue Jay squabbles. I did not consider the view exceptional, but it had a very visceral impact on us all. 

What was exceptional was how my dad, father of six, in a one-income family living on a dead-end street made certain we would never see a neighboring house from that window. When developers discovered the potential of our neighbor's farmland, my dad became preoccupied with purchasing a portion of an adjacent parcel, a strip of wetlands. At a Windsor Planning & Zoning Meeting, my dad was asked, "Why do you want 15 feet of frontage land on which nothing can happen?" His response was, "That is why; nothing can happen." This parcel cost him what sounded like humongous money to a 10-year-old. It was more than had been spent on EVERY Christmas since my birth, I imagined, but unlike any other gift, this one was everlasting. 

Another neighbor of the farmland, Mr. Shea, attended these special meetings too. I do not recall him being a friend of my father. He was older but they were both earnest about something they each called open space. My favorite picture of my dad is him sitting pond-side among the reeds. I had often encountered Mr. Shea fishing in that same place. One day after seeing him at a meeting, I decided to talk to him about the swamp, the pond, the trucks in his yard set way off the road, and this thing called 'open space' that I especially liked for its wild strawberries and pussy willows and winter skating parties.

Another day I asked him, "When you got to be ten, what did you want to be when you grew up?" I had tested this question on my dad. My dad answered with what he knew he would be, "I knew I would be a dad." And, what he did not want was to live in a city with chickens. He did not mention wanting to be a soldier when in fact just the year before, he prepared to defend our country during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Every day he wore military greens and worked on airplanes, but he did not say he loved planes. 

I knew it was a hard question. I was wrestling with Someday I would be a mom. But was wondering if it were possible to be more. I was reading books about women, mostly historical biographies: John Adam's wife, Betsy Ross, the potential of the novel Little Women was still too out of reach, but The Family Nobody Wanted, a memoir by Helen Doss, presented being a mom in a whole new light. Being a mom could be a 'calling.' That sounded so Catholic, but she was Methodist. I was attending the First Congregational Church. (The Poem Down By the River should follow this essay.)

Mr. Shea looked at me saying, "That is a big question," he chuckled, continuing, "I am very old. Maybe that is too far back for me to remember." Then, as if captured by my big question and with profound seriousness, he replied, "I did not live in America when I was ten. I lived in County Kerry Ireland until 1928. Back then I wanted to live up to my stately name. Names hold power over us you know. I believed anything could be possible in America where some of my family had gone to escape the famine years before I was born. I wanted to be able to make a difference." 

As it became my habit of urgency to know, I immediately asked him about the results. "How did that turn out?" He chuckled again, "Just fine. I am a Sanitation Engineer. Back then the voices in my head mostly happened at church so I blurted, wide-eyed with "That sounds IMPORTANT," and followed with, "Is that why you have so much stuff in your yard?" I was invited to come by his yard on another day. There I saw many things discarded by others. He showed me where he welded and things he repurposed for his wife or to sell. It was all dazzling and I thought I now know why Mr. Shea's house is so far from the road because it was safer for his treasures. I felt as if I were sprinkled with pixie-dust in this place.

I never told anyone about how many afternoons my walks had become regular visits and animated conversations with Mr. Shea – a man, proud of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whom he described as a famine descendant like himself. I scratched the surface of understanding the many things he spoke of. Mr. Shea, who called me Susan, agreeing that Susie could be forbidden, often mentioned Kennedy and other things I heard from Walter Cronkite's voice. Years later, I learned he had early-onset dementia. His sons disassembled the welding station. They hauled much of the back yard away in his waste removal company trucks, a company they eventually owned. 

After Kennedy's assassination, I understood less what he was saying, "They would not let him finish what Al Smith wanted to do." He said, "Al Smith knew the importance of sanitation. Trash collection was a public health matter. Being Catholic just means you also want God to be pleased. Prejudice. Prosperity. Foolishness. KKK. One man's garbage is..." After a while the visits stopped, his family making the request of my family concerned about impropriety, but my curiosity remained.  

My dead-end street held the magic of huge forts the snow plowman took care to help architect, a bob-sled hill, fires in oil cans, fishing, skating, hiking on impulse, seasons of capturing Japanese Beatles for 10 cents a jar, or fireflies for delight. The dead-end street gave way to a few housing developments that benefited by the advocates of open space and the whimsey of a laborer that seeded in me a love for conversations with strangers and awareness that anyone can make a difference, especially if you see them as neighbors.