Runes and Ruin

Sunset, Pacific Ocean
December 2019

Vikings had only an oral culture. Eventually they used runes, which were a sort of alphabet.
Here are some common ones that I lifted off the World Wide Web:

 Name:Hagalaz, “hail.” Phoneme: H. Meaning: destruction, chaos.

 Name: Naudhiz, “need.” Phoneme: N. Meaning: need, unfulfilled desire.

 Name: Uruz, “aurochs.” Phoneme: U (long and/or short). Meaning: strength of will.

 Name: Thurisaz, “Giant.” Phoneme: Th (both soft and hard). Meaning: danger, suffering.

 Name: Ansuz, “an Aesir god.” Phoneme: A (long and/or short). Meaning: prosperity, vitality.

All the free men in Viking World would gather together to make laws and settle disputes without resorting to blood and violence. They called this meeting The Thing. Ever since I read Sigrid Undset's books in my early twenties, I've been fascinated by that name. The Thing.

I'm going to call what's happening between my ex and me The Thing from now on. So when I disappear from this space you'll know it's The Thing, and that there's been no blood and violence.

Anyway.

I went out on the wine dark sea yesterday with Carl. We saw one gray whale, about fifty dolphins and some sea birds. It was really cold and really beautiful. The sunset was incredible. The photo I put up there is blurry, but there's no filter on it, and don't you think that oil tanker could be a Viking ship? You see where I'm going, right?

I didn't walk around the boat much because earlier I had wrenched my foot while cleaning up my porch. I was wearing clogs and stepped on an uneven spot and stepped off the clog. The clog, rather, bruised the side of my foot. I have a bum knee as well on my left leg, so now I have a bum knee and a bum foot, and I'm walking weird. I feel heavy but not rooted. On the boat, though, I sat and swayed and rode the waves like a whale myself.


Reader, what are you doing?

Merry Christmas Eve

Oliver got a tattoo.

It's Sophie's birthdate in Roman numerals. As he said, "Now we each have a tattoo for Sophie."

I have a mermaid, Henry has a bit of Sophie's brainwaves from an EEG and now Oliver has her birthday.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Notes from the Underground

to Leslie

There's an underground passageway where certain mothers or those like them go. It winds down and down and then along and perhaps up and up because the metaphor isn't always about ground and earth and dark but sky and cloud and light. (But that's later). So maybe not underground except as it is in sleep, deep. The women wear thick loose gowns, silk, thick cotton, stiff from another time, an eternal time, their arms bare their hair long and they leave their glasses on bedside tables because they see in the dark. They lie beside children and grown children who moan (from) the dark for no reason at all and they wipe the hair from their foreheads and press up back along the knobs of the spine, steps from the base to the base of the neck. They straighten an arm and roll the palm flat the body a series of reflexes the moan becomes just breath. They lie down always an outside spoon. Later. A poem appears in a lighted box. Another woman in an underground passageway in Seattle is making jam and cleaning up her husband's dying shit the fluids. The passageway is toward the present, the woman (me) sees (dark). Lying in (to) (by) the present.

Here's the poem:

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich

Reflections

Moon and cactus, reflected

So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold a shaking, and the bones came together, bone to his bone.

--from the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 37

There's a man walking La Brea Blvd. who might as well be an Old Testament prophet. His skin is rough and dirty, his hair is crusted over, his pants tied with a rough rope. His toes poke through what look like leather slippers, and he's looking upward, his mouth agape. Also, there's a purple-haired black woman with a Christmas lit halo walking behind him, her eyes on his back. She might as well be an angel. I'm gripping the steering wheel with my hands, tipped with jagged nails and sprinkled with age spots, an old scar from a fifty year old dog bite a divot on the top of the right one. I might as well keep going, Driving, that is.

so saith the Lord

When Giving is All We Have

I've been in a self-absorbed rut.

Today is Giving Tuesday.

I'm no philanthropist and have difficulty with the philanthropy model, so much so that I've long given up fund-raising for medical charities, etc.  But today, on Giving Tuesday, I'm pulling my head out of my navel and raising money for a non-profit foundation that is particularly dear to my heart. It's the place where Sophie goes each day that she is able, a community of disabled young people and their aides or "coaches," who help them to access the community, to work, to be a part of something bigger than themselves and their diagnoses. The staff of Creative Steps/Aurelia Foundation expands these young people's lives and sees beyond their limitations, and it's a beautiful thing. They run on a shoestring budget, partially reimbursed by the State of California, but I learned yesterday that they also run on a consistent $350 a month per client deficit. I'm reaching out to you today to donate whatever you can to The Aurelia Foundation -- even a tiny amount is a good thing!

Here's Sophie's and my page:

Aurelia Foundation/Creative Steps





Here's a poem:

When Giving Is All We Have

       One river gives
       Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it —

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give — together, we made

Something greater from the difference. 

From “A Small Story about the Sky,” by Alberto Ríos (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). Reprinted with permission from Copper Canyon Press.

Dogged and Dogged

found on the internets

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

I am in a dream these days, some part a deep and abiding sense of being loved and another a nightmare. I walked down the dingy halls of the courthouse earlier this week, dread and bewilderment masked by cheer and a dull gratitude for beloveds flanking me. What does it mean to be unreasonable? The word contempt. Marriage. Divorce. Years. Papers filed by lawyers and a whole system constructed by. By. The halls of justice are really halls. The metaphors of justice do justice.  There must be a system. I stare at the back of a head whose folds I know. Metta. The Virgin Mary. Those old tricks. I age ten years. I dig for humor some days later, dogged and dogged and find it in the 55+ menu at IHOP where I am not questioned and order a full plate breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast and hash browns. The coffee was good.

When You Can't Stop Crying

I've been hearing all kinds of wise talk these days as I seek the counsel of people who love me. Yesterday, after twisting needles into parts of me that were clearly storing an inordinate amount of anguish, Dr. Jin spoke about Chinese armies who fight one another.  The side that doesn't want to fight or who is fighting out of integrity and truth against evil wins, she said in so many heavily accented words. Regardless of outcome. This felt strangely reassuring.

Today I was told by one of Sophie's caregivers that when you can't stop crying, you haven't cried enough.

Pictures, You Need Pictures: Part 3: Florence

Enough! you say? Well, Henry and I left Rome on a train after two glorious days and headed to Florence where he's been living and studying at the Gonzaga University campus. After Los Angeles and New York, Florence is my very favorite city. I can't adequately explain the impact on me when I first visited in 1985, but it hit me all over again fifteen years ago and yes, all over again in 2019.

I did my pilgrimage to the monastery where Fra Angelico painted the frescoes, where strangely amongst the din that is Europe and its tourists, the place remains supremely quiet and near-empty.

And then, of course, around the corner and up the stairs...

The Annunciation.

Exhale.

Eat.

I might be smiling in the above photo, but I am also slowly dying as we walked through the city over the river and up the steepest hill I've ever climbed in stupid shoes to the Piazza Michelangelo. It overlooks the entire city, and the view was entirely worth the effort. In fact, if I'd died up there, it would have been just fine.

On our last night we ate at this famous restaurant called 13 Gobbi. We had anchovies first, followed by pasta with mozzarella, and then I had eggplant parmesan and Henry had Milanese. It was easily one of the best meals I've ever had, but to tell you the truth, all the food in Italy is crazily sublime. How is that even possible? (It feels ridiculous posting these poorly lit photos, but I'm going to, anyway):

This is just a crazily lit photo of a gorgeous building near the restaurant. We walked the long way home. Henry dropped me off at my pensione, hugged me good-bye and left for his own. I left the next morning for the west coast of Los Angeles, filled with gratitude for this time spent away.

P.S. For all those who've asked after us, we are safe and far enough away from the fires to only be affected by smoke and bad air quality. We have many friends who were affected, though, who had to flee in the middle of the night. My heart goes out to all those who lost their homes, their possessions, their livelihoods. California is a fiercely beautiful state, and I am grateful to have lived here for over twenty years.

Pictures, You Need Pictures: Part 2: Rome

I'm sorry, ya'll. I'm sorry that I haven't kept up here. I haven't kept up really anywhere, and that's because I'm involved in a very ugly, very upsetting and very stressful post post divorce thing. That's all I can say about it, and I would appreciate all your good thoughts and wishes and metta for all those involved. I am bewildered and upset and disbelieving and depleted and very, very sad.

Onward to Rome.

Henry and I had an amazing time in Rome and Florence. We stayed in a friend's apartment near the Vatican. The building was about five stories and had one of those incredible cage elevators and the winding marble floored staircases.

Please take my picture in this elevator, I asked Henry.

Every room in the apartment looked out on the great dome of St. Peter's. I'm not kidding. As the kids say, "Ridic."

Those are my legs, profoundly weary from tromping about 20,000 steps a day in boots and sneakers that somehow didn't cushion the 56 year old caregiver body like they did 35 years ago.

Everything is so damn beautiful and big and ancient and filled with centuries of longing and strife and reaching toward beauty and the divine. And suffering.

Our own struggles aren't lessened by witnessing ruins of the past, but they are integrated into something much larger than ourselves.

Henry and I made some remarks in poor taste about St. Peter's Square and the Vatican. Mea Culpa.

We walked about a million miles a day, and I was usually trailing Henry, as evidenced by the photo below.

I bought a pink ring, and it perfectly matched the pillows on the purple sofa at our friend's apartment.

We ate pizza, pasta and gelato every day.

Shortly after the above photo, after we'd thrown our coins in the Trevi Fountain, we both had nervous breakdowns because of the crowds. Honestly, Reader, Rome is insanely crowded.

If you look closely, you get an idea of the hordes of people streaming down that central street toward the Spanish Steps. We are standing at the top of them, here, marveling at the view.

We got the heck out of Dodge, bypassing the crowds and roaming past the above door.

The skies were Felliniesque, big white clouds and blue.

Sigh.

I was there two weeks ago.

There WILL be a Part 3, I promise.