Black Holes and Superblooms

So, ya'll saw this first ever photo of a black hole, right? A grad student, Dr. Katie Bouman, "developed a crucial algorithm that helped devise imaging methods for it,"  according to CNN.

Whoa.

I'm smitten. I like how it's described, too:

"A black hole is a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing –– not even light –– can escape it, and it only grows as it consumes more and more stars, planets, and gas." New York Times

"The picture is also visual proof of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which states that dense and compact regions of space would suck everything in." CNN

Black holes have always lent themselves perfectly to obvious metaphors, so I won't pile on. The universe is still so impenetrable, isn't it? Call me weird, but knowing that I'm just a blip in the scheme of things gives me peace. It might be why during huge personal crunches -- those times when I'm fully into the who lives like this?! moments, I'm able to disengage and sometimes even eventually laugh at myself and everything else. Another thing -- why do we get all caught up in the idiot running our country? He's running it much as he runs his mouth. Like shit. 

We should just be concentrating on stuff like black holes and people like Alaa Salah, a young woman in Sudan who stood on top of a car during a mass sit-in against Bashir, the president of Sudan. She's become a symbol of the uprising and of the growing movement of female leadership. 

"The bullet doesn't kill. What kills is the silence of the people," she said, reading from a poem.

I'm smitten. Here's her picture:

photographer: Lana Haroun

I'm taken by everyone holding up their little light boxes to record her -- little light boxes that seemingly connect us, one to another, across miles and time. We've known about black holes, somehow, long before we could even take a photo of them. I don't even remotely understand the grappling of scientists and mathematicians and physicists over such things -- what understanding I have comes from the gut, I guess, the sharp intuitive thing I've got going, the threads of stuff filling up my brain, behind my eyes.

Black holes look like eyes, it seems, at least to our eyes.

Things are going on all over the world that make Americans' problem with our shitty leaders seem insignificant. There's nothing new under the sun, it says in ancient books. Women are rising up, literally everywhere and making change.


I got into an argument the other day with one of my girl students, about gun ownership, of all things. She had asked me whether I'd shoot someone who was trying to kill me. I'd told her, No. She was incredulous and upped the ante by asking whether I'd shoot someone threatening my children. I told her how much I disliked hypothetical questions like that because, really, how would we know how we'd react in such a situation? I told her that I had made a sort of pact with myself to eschew violence (yes, I used the word eschew because -- TEACHER). I told her that I hated guns and thought it was unnecessary to carry one for personal protection. I came short of telling her that the 2nd Amendment was bullshit because -- well -- it wasn't appropriate. I told her that killing anyone was kind of like a black hole to me, the ultimate black hole. This young girl's opinion bummed me out. The whole time I was talking to her, I wanted to stop. I wanted to disappear into a black hole. I had never seen a photo of a black hole because there wasn't one, though. I wanted her to disappear into a black hole. I wanted us both to come out on the other side and into the Antelope Valley where the rains have created what we call a superbloom -- so many flowers and so much color that you can see it all from space.

Peonies and Patriotism

There's a blowsiness to peonies that no one remarks upon -- something disheveled about their beauty, their response to the sun. The tightness of the closed flower belies fecundity and generosity.

Another Memorial Day weekend is here -- and the nation's sport, one in which heads are bashed into oblivion even as people insist on their entertainment, is now dictating that its players either salute the flag or stay in the tunnel. Obeisance to the massuh. O say can you see. Patriotism. The lie. Belies.

Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Everything real, with gratitude

Sophie's humming again. To distraction. This is good because it means that she's alert, not seizing, trying to figure things out, to communicate. Verbs like muscles. Verbs are muscles. You like me honest so I'll say that the humming can either be a hammer or a song. We're either our thoughts or we're not, and the living is in the vagary.

The Bird Photographer took that photo, and because it's not particularly sharp is why I love it and he probably doesn't. He brought me a bunch of roses this weekend that were honestly astounding.

Desert Jewels

I stood and looked to the east and took that picture as the sun rose on Sunday morning near the Salton Sea. I shouted hallelujah in my mind and looked to the west where the moon was going down.

The birds were truly like a chorus, and I whispered hallelujah in my mind. My troubled mind so heavy along with my heart over Sophie's struggles. The photographer of birds who holds my heavy heart with such light hands.

Day after day I think of you as soon as I wake up. Someone has put cries of birds on the air like jewels.

Ann Carson, from Short Talks

I hope you can play that video because it's sublime. I also posted it on Instagram where you can find me at elizabettaa.

I went with C to see the desert bloom, supposedly over-the-top-once-in-a-decade because of the unusual amount of rain we had this winter. The desert didn't disappoint, even though about a million people were doing the same thing. The ground was covered in a carpet of yellows and purples and whites. I took pictures with the fancy lens, but I haven't uploaded them, yet, so here are some from my iPhone.

We met dear Yolie and Tearful in the desert where they're living the boondocking life. It's like a dream both to meet them and see what they're doing. They are a couple with whom I connected many many years ago on the world wide webs. Now we've met in person, and it was an intense collision. We already knew one another. I held onto both of them for a good long time, absorbed their goodness and strength.

These internet friendships are the real thing, people.




This morning I read about the trauma that Syrian children have suffered, have absorbed, will suffer. I read about the people of the Sudan, of Yemen and other countries -- the starving bloated face of a child, the warning that displacement, famine, warfare will bring on the greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945. I looked at the smug faces and read the words of those who rule the plutocracy that is the Disunited States of Amerikkkaa. I felt the dread of what is to come even as I heard my own daughter's sigh into seizure over the baby monitor. I rushed into her again and again and again and all the years of agains. Suffering. The world is so vast, the suffering so enormous, I texted a friend, our efforts to stem it so paltry. If I am charged to care for Sophie and suffer in doing it, I will try to do it with strength and love.

I repeated that over and over and over today.

Perspective as Higher Power, my friend Chris said. Yes. The ongoingness of it all.

It Never Rains in Southern California

Well, I guess I should say Happy President's Day!

I posted the following on my Facebook page for an Andy Warhol fifteen minutes and then decided to take it down because it's so vile. Someone I know asked me whether it was real. Yes, it's real. It's true and not alternative fact. It's a transcript of 45's comments from ten years ago, and even as I acknowledge my role as contributor to ugliness, it bears repeating because we're all responsible on some level. I still can't believe that 45 now represents all of us on the world stage.

Let's move on.

On Saturday night, I attended the first meeting of our local Indivisible group. We're called Active Empathy, and we're intent on active resistance to not just 45 but also to the extreme right Republicans in power whose agenda doesn't represent us or -- in some cases -- the majority of people in this country, in addition to its undoing progress to protect our environment and ensure equal access to our healthcare and threatening our first amendment rights. I'd have to make this a Faulknerian sentence if I kept typing everything that's under threat, but our intentions include flipping the legislature with methodical action. The group that attended the first meeting was diverse in age, race, religion, sex and sexuality, a mini-Los Angeles. We introduced ourselves and told the others what issues we were most interested or concerned. The range was wide. Some tears were shed and some expressed anger. Many attendees are originally from the "flyover" states and perfectly aware that not everyone who lives in those states condones some of the more egregious behavior of 45 or the conservative platform. Many expressed the need to be self-aware, to at least acknowledge our part in further dividing the country with our anger and sometimes condescension. Others had more of a screw that attitude, believing it is going to take the adoption of Tea Party tactics to be most effective. Here's the beautiful logo created by one of the founders of the group. Active Empathy is the name that's above the following:

We're not a moderate group, which brings me to the other thing I wanted to write about, and that's the personal war I have going on in my tiny little mother mind.™ I generally use the tiny little mother mind™ expression to describe the relationship between me and the Powers That Be in Neurologyland, how over decades I've learned just how hegemony works. The analogy has some use here, too. What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to be an elitist? When did the open derision of intellect become acceptable? What does it mean to be moderate? Why is moderation a virtue? Why is moving to the center a goal? Is that a construct or something truly admirable? Are there certain principles that should not be compromised? What convictions do I have that are immoveable? I don't have the answers. I have a tiny little mother mind™ and some gut instincts, though, that have served me well and that I have to constantly be vigilant to honoring. To help me with this, I've been reading Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, and it's startling and fairly easy to draw parallels to what's going on today. I'm reminded of my instincts and of honoring them, how difficult it is to do so when I also have to deal with emotions, with a patriarchal culture and values that are more authoritarian than inclusive. There's a good discussion of Arendt's work here, including this choice passage:

“What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part . . . Totalitarian propaganda thrives on this escape from reality into fiction . . . [and] can outrageously insult common sense only where common sense has lost its validity.”

It's exhausting, isn't it?

Let's move on.

I saw the extraordinary documentary about James Baldwin called I am not your Negro. Everyone should watch it and the documentary 13. They're both antidotes to the superficial bullshit that reigns in this country. It rained off and on all weekend here in southern California. Everything is green, so green. I've been reading Ann Patchett's novel Commonwealth and love it. I told a good friend that I haven't been able to get into a novel in a long time, that I remain half in and half out, that that was worrying me because reading novels has been really the only constant in my life (that's NOT hyperbole). I'm in Patchett's story -- totally in. The man I love brought me pink roses, and the boys I love showed me how to take pictures with my new iPhone so that the background is blurred out. How wonderful is that! Here's a picture of the roses using this clever technique and one of the cinnamon bread I baked. The boys I loved showed me the scratch and sniff technique on the phone, too. Just kidding. That IS hyperbole.

Reader, what did you do this weekend?

French Poetry As Antidote

In my other life, I was a French literature major and read stacks and stacks of novels and essays over those four years, most of which I disliked intensely probably because it was so very difficile.  Don't ask me to say anything in French except perhaps for La Marseillaise (the French National Anthem) which I strangely committed to memory back in the seventh grade.  Le jour de gloire est arrivée. Obviously, the later laboring over tenses and conjugations and idiomatic expressions and the history of French linguistics for four years prepared me for a life of great financial success and acclaim, and even though I can't carry on a conversation in French, I can read the poetry with relative ease and even remember some of my favorites.  It's been an odd day today, so why not think about my skill and love of French poetry? With the possible exception of Jack Gilbert and William Carlos Williams (Asphodel, That Greeny Flower), there are few English-speaking poets who can rival the French in expressions of love as far as I'm concerned. Here's what I mean:

Les roses de Saadi

J'ai voulu ce matin te rapporter des roses;
Mais j'en avais tant pris dans mes ceintures closes
Que les noeuds trop serrés n'ont pu les contenir.

Les noeuds ont éclaté. Les roses envolées
Dans le vent, à la mer s'en sont toutes allées.
Elles ont suivi l'eau pour ne plus revenir;

La vague en a paru rouge et comme enflammée.
Ce soir, ma robe encoure en est toute embaumée...
Respires-en sur moi l'odorant souvenir.


The Roses of Saadi

I wanted to bring you roses this morning.
There were so many I wanted to bring,
The knots at my waist could not hold so many.

The knots burst. All the roses took wing.
The air was filled with roses flying,
Carried by the wind, into the sea.

The waves are red, as though they are burning.
My dress still has the scent of the morning.
Remembering roses. Smell them on me.

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
1786-1859

In twenty delicious minutes,

this magnolia bloom opened from a tight, baby's-head-sized bud.

I had gone back to sleep for twenty minutes having said good-bye to my son who left for school.

What other miracles will appear today?

Poppiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssss

Oliver, Sophie, my friend D and I drove out to the Antelope Valley today to see the California poppy fields. I had read that since the heavy rainfall days in March, the wild poppies had bloomed like crazy, so we decided to take a drive and see --

Good Lord, ya'll.

 That's Oliver, above, wrapped in my red scarf -- it was incredibly windy and he had forgotten to bring a sweatshirt. Oh, sorry. I cleaned out the car yesterday afternoon and brought three dirty sweatshirts in the house to be washed. When we got to the poppy fields, which are in the high desert, and Oliver realized that I'd removed them, he blamed me. That's why I leave them in there, Mom! went the recrimination. You had to go and clean out the car. That's just great.

Anyhoo.

Back to the poppies:

Do you feel as if you're in an opium haze?

Rest your eyes on this beautiful high desert site and then those snow-capped mountains beyond.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California --

The Garden of Benign Neglect

I literally do nothing but water occasionally. The roses are a riot, the lemons are abundant, the lavender is bee buzzing, the kumquats are budding, and even the weeds are beautiful. The universe is abundant, even when we pay it no attention.

This is real

(taken with my trusty Samsung Galaxy Android)

On a morning walk, without a camera

Picture what looks to be an enormous honeysuckle plant, the bloom as big as the palm of your hand, the pistil as long as your middle finger. Imagine the fragrance as you walk past it and look up to see what that smell is, look up and see it hanging over a wall. You pull one off the vine, apologetically looking up toward the window of the house behind the wall, in case someone is watching, but no one is, so you pull out the pistil (or is it the stamen?), slowly, anticipating the tiny drop of nectar that will appear at the end of the tube. It's dry. Hear, too, the sound of too many crows squawking as they dart and fly and hop over green lawns, the hiss of sprinklers on and off. Picture their black disfavored bodies, wings outspread, the one loud one just overhead. Jump at the crack beside you in the middle of the street, bits of a nut shell, scattered, the sound a tinny gun shot and the crow swoops down to peck at what is freed. Imagine your own head exploding like that, bits of bone, whatever is extraneous, littering the street and only the good stuff left to pick over.

Just a rose

(That's Oliver's wrist, holding it up. Ridiculous, right?)

Crazy Beautiful

 I told Mary Moon that it was so beautiful today in Los Angeles that it was almost creepy. The winds are still blowing, and the air seems like sparkling glass, not fit for breathing. It's dry.

I took a photo of a rose in Beverly Hills and wondered whether it had had plastic surgery.

It's the kind of weather that doesn't make one feel grateful, but like something's up or something's going down.

Prepositional Phrases in Sentences

Roses from my garden in a vase on my dresser in my room under a photo of my children look pink.

Onanistic

Reader, I'm going to let you look that word up in the dictionary. I'm not going to tell you why I know it and why it sprang to my English major mind when I walked down the street today and noticed that this -- uh -- flower had appeared seemingly overnight, released in some sort of ecstasy from a spiny plant below.

Holy moley.