Things I've Noticed About Medical Marijuana, Sophie and The World in General

When I put on Sophie's socks in the morning, she doesn't startle when I touch her foot and then go into a seizure.

When I put on Sophie's pants in the morning, she doesn't flex her foot so rigidly that I can't get her pants leg over it.

The Los Angeles Times newspaper reports that the case against the archdiocese of Los Angeles regarding pedophile priests and Cardinal Mahoney's specific participation in shielding these men, shuffling them around the church and then hiring legions of fancy lawyers to defend him is now settled. Many of the abused will receive monetary damages, the Catholic church had to borrow from cemetary funds to pay the damages and Cardinal Mahoney never went to jail.

When she wakes up in the morning, Sophie doesn't spend forty-five minutes having myoclonic seizures.

Sophie has no body odor or clammy hands and feet.

Not a day goes by that some article or another appears about medical marijuana and its effects on epilepsy. I'm noticing that The Powers That Be are rattling their sabers, bemoaning the lack of evidence, rattling on about double-blind placebo studies blah blah blah and never once mentioning that our children have been subjected to dozens of drugs in what surely must be an experimental fashion as the combinations are near endless and no one seems to know apparently what these drugs do and have done to our children's precious bodies.

The boys and I have eaten dinner with her for weeks and weeks, and we haven't had to go into rescue mode when Sophie has a seizure at the table.

Red plants produce green conical blossoms that break into yellow flowers all on their own.

My favorite medical expression on the inserts of anti-epileptic drugs: Mechanism of action unknown.

I haven't had to drag Sophie down the hallway to her room after a seizure in weeks and weeks.

You should read these two beautiful posts before the month of February is out:

American Promise
I Just Looked Around and He's Gone


Reader, what have you noticed today?

Art is as fugitive as fraud

the thoughts that came willy-nilly after reading this

Sometimes I read stuff online or I hear stuff on the radio or I listen to someone I know talking, and I'm overwhelmed by the suchness of it all and I just can't think about it, any of it, anymore. Someone over here is wondering whether or not global warming exists and someone over there is wondering why Cardinal Mahoney gets to go over to Rome and help pick out a pope when his decision-making abilities have surely been questioned as being less than ethical and then that someone over there thinks hero worship of the disabled is something to be denigrated and while I might know on some level what they're saying -- I know what you're saying, but -- sometimes it's too much suchness and I want to say calmly and matter of factly I don't care. I actually got a thrill when I watched Pretorius' silver blades running down the track and never once entertained the thought that he was less than or even more than despite, despite being the operative word. It was just a beautiful thing. So, I'm in the mood to call a spade a spade, a blade a leg, a blade a blade, a gun a gun and when a person has a gun something bad might happen. I personally don't want to defend myself or my kin with a gun and I have no idea what I'd do if threatened but when that person says they'd have no problem shooting the guy dead, it's too much such and I just can't think about it, any of it, anymore.

If you love, love the moon

William Blake

I'm not sure how to absorb all the news these days or even attempt to. As I scrolled through it this morning, I couldn't help but lightly press my finger on the touch screen to read more of Pope Benedict's resignation plans. There's something so glamorous about something happening only once in 800 years. The first pope to resign was Marcellinus in 304. He was deposed after complying with a Roman emperor's order to offer sacrifice to pagan gods. Benedict IX sold his papacy in 1045 and resigned. Celestine V was evidently overwhelmed by the job and resigned after five months in 1294, and Gregory XII stepped down in 1415 to help end a church schism. My finger traced the tiny screen of my phone, scrolling down and I wondered idly (with irony) whether yesterday's news of Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney's diverted cemetery funds was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back for the spiritual leader of a billion of the planet's people. I imagined a courier running on the cobblestones of the Vatican, down the ornate hallways, through the room where man's finger touches God's and into the Pope's private quarters with the news. Maybe he just couldn't take it anymore.

Why are there so many phrases that use camels to impart wisdom? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, is a Biblical phrase. Trust in God but tie your camel tight is a Persian proverb, and my favorite might be the Egyptian If you love, love the moon. If you steal, steal a camel. 

I lifted my finger from the screen and closed my eyes. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

There are three things on my mind this morning. One is the Super Bowl. I hate football and have no interest in beast-like men who earn millions of dollars smashing into each other so hard that a good percentage of them get dementia before their time, although I did enjoy the Volkswagon commercial that Angella posted on her blog.

The second thing is the headlines in The Los Angeles Times and probably a gazillion other papers, recounting the misdeeds (that everyone knew about) of Cardinal Mahoney, the blood-curdling details of his craven cover-up of pedophile priests under his watch. I went on the site bishop-accountibility-org which documents the abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church and scrolled through the 260 priests that were either accused, convicted or otherwise investigated in Los Angeles alone over the last thirty or so years and just sat there, my mouth open. Evidently, the current archbishop of Los Angeles made the unprecedented move yesterday of publicly shaming the Cardinal, although Mahoney was not stripped of his duties as a priest. The whole thing boggles the mind and shrinks the soul, and I sound righteous but every single person who sits in a Catholic church pew this beautiful sunny morning in Los Angeles is complicit if they don't demand that Mahoney be censured and stripped of performing his sacred duties. Someone on my Facebook page wrote a literal treatise comparing today's football game and why he's watching it despite neither team being his with his love of and proud membership in the Catholic Church. He wrote about Mahoney and he wrote about forgiveness and right about then, I deleted him from my page.

The third thing I'm thinking about is the Japanese action of hara-kiri, a kind of ritualized suicide practiced by defeated samurai and meant as atonement. My memories of  hara-kiri are from my childhood and sort of cartoon-like -- the grossly shamed Japanese guy takes a knife and plunges it into his stomach and then pushes it upward toward the heart and then pulls it out as he dies. That business executives did it as late as 1999, carrying on a tradition that hearkens back to the 12th century, just makes the head spin. Evidently, killing oneself in such a brutal manner also demonstrated enormous psychological courage and was a way of winning back some honor even in defeat. Cardinal Mahoney and the countless other heads of church, including Pope Benedict and the supposedly saint-like John Paul, have not an ounce of psychological courage or integrity. I imagine forgiveness comes, first, inside one's heart where divine Love resides. Those men who protected their own and continue to do so at the expense of children whose lives have been irrevocably damaged, haven't even the decency to divest themselves of their power as priests and live quiet lives of atonement. Cardinal Mahoney will sit in his red, red robes and pointy hat in Rome with the other Cardinals, good Catholics will shake their heads and continue to drop donations into the basket passed by earnest parishioners, perhaps a little shakier in their beliefs but telling themselves that the traditions of the glorious Church to which they belong trump the most heinous acts of their leaders.

Poetry, Absolution and the Disgraced Cardinal Mahoney

The Chinese word for poetry is made up of two characters: word and temple. That's what I'm thinking about as I sift through my poetry books, looking for something to memorize, to think about, to ring a bell, because before this, before the sifting, I had read of Cardinal Mahoney, the repugnant former archbishop of the Roman Catholic diocese in Los Angeles, the powerful Cardinal who shuffled the priests around, the priests who had preyed on the flock. The Cardinal, whose morality is less than the bird's, whose scarlet plumage (those robes! those ridiculous hats!) served as a cloak for hubris and his flock (those that weren't raped or sodomized, those that didn't retreat from his Church) bowing and apologizing, his and their words weak, as ineffectual as the index cards he professed to carry around with him (index cards!), the names of those he'd wronged on the faint blue lines, at his craven lips as he fingered his rosary beads in prayer.

I have no idea what the Chinese characters mean that symbolize absolution (above), but should there be absolution for this man and for those who defend him, still (both literally and figuratively?). He lives comfortably, somewhere, here in Los Angeles, for all we know cloaked in scarlet, fingering those index cards of names, surrounded by sycophants who live and work and breathe to protect him.

Cardinal Mahoney, Olvera Street April, 2007**

His Prayer for Absolution

For those my unbaptized rhymes,

Writ in my wild unhallowed times,

For every sentence, clause, and word,

That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord,

Forgive me, God, and blot each line

Out of my book, that is not Thine.

But if, 'mongst all, Thou find'st here one

Worthy thy benediction,

That one of all the rest shall be

The glory of my work, and me.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

**I took that photo many years ago when I brought my children downtown to see the Blessing of the Animals. It nearly makes me sick right now, to have been so close to such a terrible, terrible man.