"also, that you have enough"

I went to an extraordinary exhibit at LACMA this afternoon with a few close friends.

Did you know that Chagall designed costumes for operas and ballets?

Honestly, this was one of the most extraordinary art exhibits I've ever seen -- just a few rooms of drawings, paintings and sketches and probably around twenty costumes, but each one practically gave me a case of Stendhal Syndrome. Do you know about Stendhal Syndrome? I saw someone fall down as if dead right by Michelangelo's David in the Accademia in Florence back in the last century. It's a thing, really. Look it up or click on the link I just gave you. Granted, I was feeling strung out when I decided to run over to the museum and join my friends. It's just everything lately -- and I'm doing weird stuff since I turned 54, like losing things and leaving my debit card at the post office. Like my mother always said, "I'm glad my head is connected to my neck, because otherwise it would have spun off." Chagall's joy and wonder in music and color and fabric and beauty and whimsy leaped out of every piece and just filled me with joy again.

And then there's the natural world. I'm reading an extraordinary book about landscape and words. The first chapter is called The Word-Hoard. Don't you love that? The book is called Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane. It, like Chagall's costumes and drawings, is joyous. Here are the first two sentences:

This is a book about the power of language - strong style, single words - to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to literature I love, and it is a word-hoard of the astonishing lexis for landscape that exists in the comprision of islands, rivers, strands, fells, lochs, cities, towns, corries, hedgerows, fields and edgelands uneasily known as Britain and Ireland.

I don't know how many of ya'll out there are lovers of word-hoards, but get thee to this book if you are at all simpatico.

Check out that bamboo that lines the pathways to part of LACMA! That's natural!

Here's a close-up:

Is that not wild?

Why am I asking rhetorical questions?

The universe is abundant.

Here's a poem:


What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade


Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

Brad Aaron Modlin
(lifted from an OnBeing newsletter)













P.S. If I disappear from these parts, it's because I stole the dress that The Queen of the Night wore in The Magic Flute that's in that first photo. I'm going to get married in it and retire somewhere south of the Disunited States. Don't tell anyone.

During my absence here on the old blog,

my parents were present for four days. We had a lovely time, catching up, visiting LACMA, the beach and just hanging out.  I had probably one of my top five star sightings at LACMA where we visited the Robert Mapplethorpe and Reigning Men exhibits. Look who was walking out of the Mapplethorpe:

I locked eyes with her and then proceeded to get all fluttery and goofy. She walked away, and I begged Oliver to give chase and take a photo. He came back with the proof. I then had to sit on a bench and explain to my parents who she was, what she did, why I was acting so goofy. It's Patti Smith, ya'll, looking exactly like Patti Smith.

I don't know where to start as far as catching up. At risk of too much shameless self-promotion, here's an interview I did with Amy Silverman on her wonderful blog Girl in a Party Hat. Amy is the writer who I am meeting with (or with whom I am meeting) to "engage in conversation" this Friday night at our local independent bookstore. She's written a wonderful memoir titled My Heart Can't Even Believe It. She's so generous to have promoted me on her blog by asking me some questions about blogging and my own writing.

Speaking of. My own writing. Lordy lord. I have got to get going doing it. I'm in a distracted slump. I've got short story ideas piling up and the manuscript that I worked on over the summer on my Hedgebrook residency is languishing, to say the least. The thing is I am distracted. Some of the distraction is heavenly and some is just plain laziness. My job at Marijuana.com has come to a grinding halt, too, so I really, really need to drum up some bizness. If you can think of anything, let me know.

Here are some photos that I took over the weekend. I'll be back with more words soon.

Finding the Places of Hope

The more we lose, the more we come close to the reality of what it is to be human. Which is to accept our weaknesses, to discover that they’re beautiful. So many people are running around doing lots of things, but they’re controlled by anguish.

Jean Vanier 

Henry, Oliver and I went to LACMA last night and visited The Rain Room. It's a very cool installation -- a sqaure room with constant rain fall, except around yourself. You can walk very slowly through rain yet not under rain, if that makes sense.

I always struggle a bit with the pretension inherent in museums. Then I walked through the room along with my sons and other Angelenos. I was charmed.

If you rush or run, you get wet. If you stand still or walk ever so slowly, you're cocooned and able to hear the rain and see it, but it doesn't touch you. There's all kind of metaphor in that, no?

Have I ever told you how much I love Los Angeles?

We also wandered into the Diana Thater exhibit which was some kind of multi-media show about the imagination.

Cool stuff. We were there less than an hour and home 45 minutes later. Gratitude.




I know I've written quite a bit about Jean Vanier and L'Arche here on the old blog. He's my hero. Ian Brown, the terrific Canadian journalist whose book A Boy in the Moon I wrote about years ago when it came out, wrote this terrific profile about Vanier. Read it if you feel hopeless. Read it if your life is filled with riches, both material and spiritual or delirious and spine-tingling sex.

Jean Vanier's comfort and joy: 'What we have to do is find the places of hope'

Back in the Saddle and Some Junk Dada

Oliver, Sophie and I went to LACMA today to see the Noah Purifoy exhibit, Junk Dada. Purifoy is a little known African American artist who was one of the founding directors of the Watts Towers Art Center in Los Angeles. After the 1965 Watts rebellion, he helped to create a body of sculpture with charred debris from the fires. His strategy was to use materials at hand and art as a tool for social change. He worked for 20 years after the rebellion, after which he relocated to the Mojave Desert and spent his final 15 years creating large-scale installations out there. I've never been to Joshua Tree to see them, but the three of us found this exhibit of some of his work engrossing and wild.

Here are a few more pictures:

After the museum we ate some Thai food from one of the many food trucks that lie along Wilshire Blvd. It was hot out, and Sophie hasn't been doing too well the last couple of days. She is on the third week of the latest withdrawal of her benzo, so between the heat and that, I think I know why she had so many big seizures. I told a friend that today was the first day since Hedgebrook that I felt back in the saddle. It was inevitable. When we finished eating, Oliver pushed Sophie's wheelchair while I held her arm, and we all crossed Wilshire Blvd to get back to our car. Right in the middle of the intersection, Sophie began to seize, and I literally had to drag her out of the street and up onto the sidewalk. While seizing. A couple of people asked if they could help, but I said, That's ok, we've got it. And we did have it. Oliver balanced his leftover spicy ramen in a container and maneuvered the wheelchair behind Sophie so that I could position her in it, even as I balanced my Thai coffee and felt my sunglasses slipping off my sweaty nose. I had to hold her jerking legs and keep her from slipping out of the chair and into the dank water along the curb, and I'll admit that the three weeks away from It All didn't do anything to assuage my normal back in the saddle feelings of tempered despair. I never get used to it. At some point, as we made our way back across the street, Oliver said, Well that was fun, and he didn't mean it.

Later, I laughed with some of my comrades over a headline and article that appeared on US News and World Report's health page. Epilepsy Is No Longer a Mystery, it said, so at first I thought it was something from The Onion. It wasn't. Good Lord. I left a few words on each of the sites that had posted the article on Facebook, and let's just say I disagreed. I noted that despite the fact that we all get to see photos of Pluto's surface on our laptops, we are still drugging people with epilepsy up the wazoo or removing large chunks of their brains and filling them up with spinal fluid, and my daughter is seizing for the millionth time for no apparent reason in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. 

Epilepsy is still a mystery, and from my position in this damn saddle, I still see a hell of a lot of desolation.

My NBC Dateline Notes and the Ode to Santos Dumont

Sophie at the late Chris Burden's Ode to Santos Dumont

First, and above all, how rocking cool are those Stanley Brothers? I know it's heretical, especially given their evangelical roots, but honestly, I'd be tempted to follow Jesus and the Apostles again if he were Joel Stanley and his band of brothers. That awesome female biochemist could be Mary to my Magdalene, too.

Secondly, how strong and rocking cool is that Paige Figi? And those women who lobbied the Virginia legislature? And their beautiful kids, the brave soldier with PTSD, the man with multiple sclerosis who threw his bag o'pharms on the floor?

You watched it, didn't you? If you missed the Dateline special, Growing Hope, you can still help out by supporting the Coalition for Access Now. Click on that link, and you'll be able to access your own legislators' emails and telephone numbers to express your support. I myself have just returned to the lobbying efforts. I had a hiatus, mainly because I despise lobbying and fundraising. It's very difficult for me to plead legislators to do the obvious. Unlike Paige and the women profiled on the show, I get stuck and fixate on -- well, for instance,  -- what appeared to be an entire Virginia legislature of white men in suits. Those guys did the right thing, but it's so hard that we have to literally beg for this stuff.

Sigh.

I'm girding my loins and calling the very estimable Senator Feinstein on Monday morning. She's decidedly not a white man in a suit, but she's said some worrisome things, and we need to tell her what we know. We need to share our stories. We need to plead with her. We want her to co-sponsor the Therapeutic Hemp Medical Access Act of 2015 (S.1333). Anybody out there who has an in to her office in Los Angeles or San Francisco? Please email me if you do.

Now let's talk about the proverbial thorns in the sides.

Thorn Number One in the Dateline special might be Dr. Amy Brooks Kayal. She's an epileptologist and the present head of the influential American Epilepsy Society. I recently read a letter she wrote to the governor of Pennsylvania, expressing her displeasure over any legislation favoring the legalization of CBD. At some point in the special tonight, she pointed out that parents are subject to the placebo effect and might be over-stating their children's response to Charlotte's Web. You might remember the doc at the Epilepsy Brain Summit that I sparred with said the exact same thing.

It's the Party Line.

I did the same thing that Mrs. Braddock did when Benjamin announced his marriage to Elaine.

The placebo effect argument drives me insane. I understand the power of the placebo effect, and I also find it interesting that the families who uproot themselves and move to states where cannabis is legal reportedly claim more success, but I question that research itself. Has anyone at the University of Southern California Neurology Department, other than my own wonderful neurologist, ever expressed any curiosity about the awesome success Sophie's had with CBD? Have they at UCLA where Sophie was treated for many years? Do they want to know? Has anyone done a study on revolutionary treatments and doctors' stubborn refusal to acknowledge change? When these doctors bring up the placebo effect, it stinks of patronization. I think of deer caught in headlights or steady blinking in the face of light. 

They're not used to light. Bless their hearts.

Later, I engaged a bit with some other thorns -- those whoo I guess are called "haters" in the medical marijuana community. These people are, ironically, in the community in that they have loved ones who benefit from marijuana, but they consistently put down the Stanley Brothers, Realm of Caring and Paige Figi. Their concern is that CBD-only legislation will hurt the larger cause of making whole plant marijuana legal. They have some valid points, but they're often strident and make wild accusations. I know they're wrong. Just two years ago, I was wandering around Los Angeles looking for a product to give Sophie here in Los Angeles. We're now about to push through, hopefully, a bill in the federal government that will deschedule hemp, making it accessible to every citizen in every state, regardless of that state's marijuana laws. It's a small step, and it doesn't solve the larger problem of making sure that accessible natural plant medicine, including THC, is available to everyone who needs it. Cannabidiol alone is not a cure for everyone. There is much tweaking, and some people only see success when they add in THC and/or THCa. Some people are on so many antiepileptic drugs that success is elusive. It doesn't work for everyone, but there are thousands of children who need to try the product right now, who literally can't wait for what I believe will be the eventual legalization of marijuana on the federal level.

Enough thorns.

Today, I took Sophie over to LACMA to see the late Chris Burden's installation titled Ode to Santos Dumont. The museum states that the installation pays homage to ingenuity, optimism, and the persistence of experimentation, failure, and innovation. Inspired by Brazilian-born pioneer aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, widely considered the father of aviation in France, the kinetic airship sculpture was recently completed after a decade of research and work by Burden.

It's a strange and wonderful installation -- a sort of translucent dirigible that is put into motion in some complicated way and then floats around the room for a bit in a constant sixty-foot circle. Sophie and I stood with a crowd of people and watched the beautiful thing float around and around. We were all mesmerized. The explanation on the wall states that if the airship were to deviate from its sity-foot circle, the geometry of the tethers would force the balloon to turn in a smaller, tighter circle, which would cause the motor to work harder. The thing always seeks the sixty-foot circle, the path of least resistance or the sweet spot. 

How beautiful and resonant the Ode to Santos Dumont with Sophie, to this work we have ahead. 

May we all find the sweet spot.

Coalition for Access Now.

#DontStarePaparazzi, Number 456

Sophie and I walked up to LACMA today to wander around the Southeast Asian galleries. Rather, I walked and Sophie was pushed in her wheelchair. We love the Southeast Asian galleries because they're dim and quiet and peaceful, and barely anyone is there. I feel immediately restored when I'm there, and Sophie seems to be lulled by them as well. She's having some withdrawal symptoms the last week or so and is unsteady on her feet as well as easily tired. Lord knows I need the exercise, so I was pushing her along at a good clip when a tall young man pushing two little ones in a stroller came around a corner and passed me. The little girl, facing us, was fascinated by Sophie and literally didn't stop poking her head around her father's legs to gawk. Granted, Sophie was chewing agitatedly on some muti-colored chew beads, her face was probably wet from drool and I'm -- well -- if not a raving beauty to stare at, then certainly a witch. I smiled in the grim way of witches and kept up my pace. Reader, I just have never gotten used to the staring.

Oh, and while the photo is blurry, the tattoos on the backs of the guy's legs are EYES. So there was that, too.

Japanese Samurai Armor Exhibit for Homeschooling Field Trip

Oliver and I had a Friday field trip this week to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where we visited an exhibit called Samurai: Japanese Armor. We had studied the samurai last spring in our world history book, so it was a nice complement to what we'd learned. Whether you're into Japanese warriors or not, and I'm actually not, the whole thing was spectacular. Those guys knew how to dress, and the artistry was fantastic. The fact that these elaborate costumes on both man and horse are from as early as the 14th century made the whole thing thrilling.

Reader, what did you do today?

ACM***

It's barely two o'clock, and I've just collapsed on my bed after helping Sophie to her room, peeling off my sweaty clothes and guzzling cold water. I walked Sophie to LACMA this morning, loathe to sit around the house and wait for the teenagers to arise. As you know, Sophie can walk, but not for great distances, so I pushed her along and periodically stopped, helped her up and out to stretch and walk for a bit. What a good idea! I thought to myself many times as I made my way to the museum. No, this isn't build-up to some catastrophe. Look on it, rather, as the proverbial drop of water on the forehead, tortuously slow but torture all the same. What's going to happen? A caregiver and her daughter -- more and more, as Sophie ages, I morph into Caregiver and less Mother. We took the elevator up to the third floor and walked around big empty galleries lined with Greek sculpture.

I thought the dim lights and empty echoing rooms would somehow calm Sophie as she was moaning and groaning, shifting and fidgeting in her chair. She wanted to get up, she wanted to sit down. She wanted something. I don't know if she wanted anything.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I might have hissed a few times for her to be quiet. Stop moaning. (Caregiver/Mother knew she wasn't in pain or uncomfortable. Don't ask me why. I just knew.)

Sophalofa Sophamona.Sophamoaner.

I was acutely aware of the random people walking through. Sophie's groans and moans echoed, and people stared. I looked straight ahead. I set my jaw. I pretended not to notice. The imaginary conversation that runs in my head nearly non-stop included Relax! No one notices! It's like when a baby that's not yours cries -- it's really only irritating to the mother! Except for on airplanes! Maybe Sophie is just vocalizing now that her brain isn't so occupied with seizing! That's a good thing! You're dreaming! It's fucking obnoxious, and I don't think I can stand it anymore! My life is ruined! But isn't that statue amazing? Those implacable faces, sightless. Should I take a photo of the headless woman? She's more ruined than I. 

Drip Drip.

I got on an elevator and made my way to the Southeast Asian art rooms. They were totally empty and even more dim than the Greeks. I thought that surely here Sophie would be quiet. I imagined myself as Tibetan, calm and tranquil, also implacable, yet with a smile that hinted at humor. I let my shoulders relax and let Sophie moan. I didn't hiss.

The ideal woman in Tibet had large breasts, was curvy and earthy. I wished I were Tibetan, knew that I'd be a better Tibetan woman than American, pushing my disabled groaning daughter around a fancy museum, stifling my own hisses.

You can't strive for implacability, much less equanimity.

The walk home was excruciatingly hot. Sophie moaned the whole time, kicked off her shoes and kept dragging her bare toes on the sidewalk. I kept having to stop and put them back up on the footrest. I felt sweat dribbling down my back and my face in flames. I even stopped hissing and just did it. Pushed and walked, told Sophie that we'd be home soon and she could walk around her room and I'd leave her alone. At some point I stopped to rest, took a selfie and sent it to one of my fellow extreme parents with the caption Angry Caregiver Mother. She texted back We should start a calendar! I won't include it here but rather let you think of me more like this:

Drip Drip.

Maybe this:

***Angry Caregiver Mother