My Response to Everything Concerning Everything (that strange flower)

Sunset at Allison's
Twin Peaks, CA July 2019

is poetry, and it's not what I write but what I want to read, words floating up or by like fish in my mind. Wallace Stevens comes to mind complacencies of the peignoir.

In the span of let's say five minutes I scanned just scanned words strung together (scan, scroll, read?) Mitch McConnell Mitch Moscow his voice a drone the rap something about something and then a star not of the sky (the stars' wrapping) but of rap his radiance in Sweden who threw a guy across a street which I believe is assault (the Swedes say) but whom POSPOTUS wants out (of Swedish jail) encouraged by the Kardashian paper doll who put on clothes that her husband ordered up designed that covered her famous breasts and ass and fly waist and Cinderella feet so that she could pose with the men in orange, most recently, take a selfie and

S
T
A
N
D

U
P for justice reform and Ikea be boycotted (Ikea being Danish not Swedish but who cares but meatballs and lingonberries and soft-serve cones) and wait, who do we support here? 

remember: five minutes (maybe ten including the footage of the blue-eyed Eilish)

they ended with Meghan Markle editing British Vogue and insisting on freckles and then the photo of the boy standing in grass his thin-lipped sweetness smile shot dead at a garlic festival by another angry white man with a gun.

Precious child.

Another one (or two) added to the piles of dead children.


I've stood in a sunflower field with my sons in Gilroy.

















There's humor in befuddlement or is it wry or rue?





Here's the poem.


Gubbinal

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed —
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens



I think we (you) suffer from an intellectual laziness, a lack of imagination.


Like Stevens' also wrote:

People are not going

To dream of baboons and periwinkles. 

On another note, I am learning about pleasure.

(and no, I am not going mad but rather writing and wrestling with words)

Gun Rage

inside jacket of Rebecca Traister's book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger

I'm enraged this morning, waking to the news that a 28 year old ex-Marine with "possible PTSD" opened fire on a group of college kids in a popular bar and grill in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. He killed twelve people, including a sheriff and then himself. Many people are injured, and there's a been a call for blood donations. I don't know what to do with my anger this morning and will use this space to express it.

My rage is not directed toward the obvious target but rather toward those who persist in believing in their right to bear arms, in their right to use violence to protect themselves from the boogeyman lurking in their neighborhoods, in their right to be "good people" with guns, in their right to collect guns and place them in special locked boxes or cases, in their right to use them for "sport," in their clamor for their own "liberty." I believe that justifying owning and using guns like the Glock this man used in this point in time, November of 2018, is outrageous, that those who do are complicit in perpetuating the myth of safety in arms and the myth that owning a gun confers liberty. I believe that these people are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of people a year in our country. I am enraged enough to believe that these people -- men AND women --  are equally as complicit as the gun men (because, let's face it, it's MEN who do this shit) because they contribute to the myth of violence being the answer to conflict. I believe that every single person who owns guns -- for sport, for pleasure, for safety -- because they can, should acknowledge their complicity and step up and do something about it.

Me, I'm going to donate some of my blood -- boiling at this point.
















#fuckguns

Don’t Give Up

I have a feeling that things are going to change. Between the kids themselves stepping up and speaking clearly and demanding accountability, and the growing power of resistance groups organizing with renewed energy, we’re going to change things. Women’s voices, raised in anger and in force (not violence) will propel this change. We will make the opposition irrelevant.  I have a feeling. So don’t give up.

Take Away the Oceans and the Stars

Guadalupe Valley, Mexico
Bruma Winery

But let’s keep our sympathies where they belong — with the powerful and the armed. With those who feel threatened in the face of the most toothless efforts to hold back the bloodshed and those who believe scary monster stories about their guns being taken away. Let’s face it, it would be easier to take away the ocean or the stars.

from Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today, by Kimberly Harrington 

Yesterday, I engaged in a long and sometimes over-wrought yet reasonable discussion with a gun enthusiast that went to high school with me in the last century. He gave me the usual arguments -- the Second Amendment, his rights, his love of hunting, his responsible gun use, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Love of nature, the eradication of deer pests. He put words in my mouth (my tiny little mother mind mouth™), insisted that I didn't understand hunting because I was a coastal elite.  I thought hmmm in my coastal elite way and stayed polite with an edge of defensiveness. He ranted a bit about sanctuary cities, said he knew a family who had lost a relative to a murderous illegal immigrant. He digressed, as did I. He was sick to death of his rights being threatened. I pointed out that he was "winning," essentially -- that he had the backing of federal law, however loosely interpreted, as well as the efforts of the most powerful lobby the country has ever known. I asked him how many guns he'd need to hunt deer for food, keep deer contained (this being an example of the responsible use of guns) and to protect his family.

He answered, 11, for a family of five. Shotguns were in there, as were rifles, I think, and a couple of pistols. I questioned his fear. He said he feared very little and neither should you.

I felt sick to death the rest of the evening and deleted the conversation.






Today, when I expressed my horror at what happened in Florida, when I gave in and said, Fuck guns, melt them all down, get rid of them, I was told to go get sterilized by another person, someone whom I don't know. I clicked on his Facebook page and saw that he was an older white man, somewhat puffy, surrounded by children. God was mentioned several times on his public page, as were fostering children, and sobriety was a common theme. He frequently used the word pussy in a derogatory way.

Sigh.

Aside from the growing piles of dead children, what breaks my heart is my own children's cynicism regarding these school shootings. Perhaps it's a way to defuse their own emotions, to dissociate from their own terror and confusion that this is where we are as a country. Both of my sons state that it'll never change, that there's no point to any of it, that there will always be guns and always be shootings and death and blood and people who justify guns and shootings and death and blood as part of being free.

Today at a Florida high school

The Eradication of Hogs

This is a post about my son, Henry, with whom I am well pleased.

Actually, this is a post about my son, Henry, for whom I am bursting with pride.

Henry is a peacemaker. He is not one to get involved in conflict, nor to agitate. He is preternaturally good-natured and easy-going. He might be slightly averse to conflict. When I send him things of a political nature or ask him to take a stand, he either blows me off, says that he isn't an activist or mocks me (good-naturedly). He is absolutely right that I am annoying when I am most agitated about the issues that are important to me. Because I'm female and he's male, I consider that a win on my part. I strive to agitate and be annoying to men, to tell you the truth. I'm interested in smashing the patriarchy.

This afternoon, Henry sent me a series of texts documenting an argument he had on Facebook with one of his high school classmates. I'm no stranger to arguing with high school classmates. The ones with whom I've argued are mostly men and a few random females,  but I've long since quit engaging with them (the last time I did so and stayed respectful but asked uncomfortable questions, I was blocked, and the questions were never answered which to me is typically conservative Republican). I have other friends from high school, though, who occasionally screen shot their conversations with these folks and show me what they're talking about and oh dear Lord and bless their hearts.

Well, this post isn't about me and I don't want to spew contempt and vitriol, as is my tendency when it comes to some of the high school classmates. I was a sweet and gentle soul in high school, I swear, and I don't think those people (and it's not everyone in my high school) had any idea that a patriarchy-smasher was in their midst. How would they? Well, for one thing, none of them took honors classes.

Ouch.

This is about Henry and his initial foray into taking a stand about something and doing it so well that I could just cry.

It can't be easy coming of age during these particularly shitty times. Yesterday. My god, yesterday.

I obviously am not going to reveal what this high school classmate of Henry said, but suffice it to say that she supports the POSPOTUS and is an avid Second Amendmenter.

The following is Henry's response to her tirade about the usual blah, blah, blah that the pro-assault weapons folks always trundle out after a massacre. Henry began with: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY 100% a

Those last three sentences broke my heart.

She responded with some more blah, blah, blah that included the necessity of making hotel windows bullet-proof and the necessity of using assault weapons for hunting. Then Henry continued:

Then there's this:

Hence, the title of this piece.

Oh, dear Reader, how we laughed.



Henry, are you reading this?

You make me proud.

You are respectful, strong in your convictions and persuasive in your delivery. You wrote passionately and beautifully.  Thanks for kicking ass without being rude or disrespectful. People will say, why bother? and there will be days when you wonder why you do. You might even lose your temper and your mind, feel hopeless and useless and guilty of stirring the pot. You'll certainly wonder whether there's any use to any of it at all. You will never be sorry, though, to do the right thing, to stand by your convictions and for those who are vulnerable. You're woke as they say and on your way.

We old folks need you and your friends to step up and help us. We are grateful for your energy.

You are beautiful inside and out, and I love you more than you'll ever know.

Erasure

Where is the outrage? It’s limited, at best (see “No hashtag”). Why? The messages that society sends and accepts again and again form a drumbeat of “better dead than disabled” and “disabled = less than fully human.” Hard to get outraged when you can’t see someone as fully human in the first place.

via Forbes Magazine, Emily Willingham's article This is What Disability Erasure Looks Like 

I know some of you took notice when you read about the guy who slaughtered 19 people and left 26 injured in one of the worst attacks on the disabled in history. The worst, of course, would be the Nazis' extermination of them. That the latest massacre happened on the same day that we here in the United States were "celebrating" the anniversary and progress of the Americans with Disabilities Act (passed in 1990) and collectively freaking out over the circus that is our election season is ironic, at best. At worst, the relative lack of attention to this horror is -- well -- entirely predictable.

Do we know the names of these disabled people who died at the hand of a person who worked there, whose intent was evidently known by police authorities. I don't know who they are. I haven't seen a single photo of any of them, either. According to international newspapers, no names or photos or descriptions of lives were published.

These disabled people were, basically, erased.

I got a lot of reading done during the week I spent in Hilton Head.  I finished Claudia Rankine's remarkable book Citizen: An American Lyric, a collection of essays and prose poetry that is unlike anything that I've ever read and that quite literally blew my brain up in a million bits only to settle down in what is, perhaps, an entirely different formation. It's a book about race and erasure, about resignation and what happens to the body, the body of color, specifically, when it is continually thrown against -- literally and figuratively -- a white culture. The essay about tennis player Serena Williams should be required reading for every literate citizen of this country.

You begin to think, maybe erroneously, that this other kind of anger is really a type of knowledge: the type that both clarifies and disappoints. It responds to insult and attempted erasure simply by asserting presence, and the energy required to present, to react, to assert is accompanied by visceral disappointment: a disappointment in the sense that no amount of visibility will alter the ways in which one is perceived.

I also finished a new novel titled Pond, by Claire-Louise Bennett. It's a strange and haunting piece of fiction that is wildly eccentric, intensely interior and difficult to describe, but I loved it. Here's a passage that I marked immediately, not realizing until later why it resonated so much with me:

I feel quite at a loss for about ten minutes and it's a sensation, I realize, that is not entirely dissimilar to indifference. So, naturally, I handle it rather well.

I thought of both passages immediately when I read Emily Willingham's brutal article This Is What Disability Erasure Looks Like that appeared in Forbes on July 27th.  Read it and come back.

A man prays at a makeshift altar in front of the Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre for the disabled in Sagamihara, Japan.Photo: The Asahi Shimbun

I thought of Rankine and Bennett's passages immediately after reading the Willingham article because of my own experience raising Sophie. If you've been reading this blog for a long time, you know what I'm talking about. Here's what I'm talking about. Every casual gesture of a physician, every failed treatment, every fight with an insurance company, every IEP meeting, every I could never do what you do, or would you have had an abortion if you knew? The what a waste her curls are, aren't they? and she'll never be a model so we won't reset her broken leg, Is this medically necessary and Would you consider putting her in a home? Erasure.

What, exactly, do you not understand about love of your child? No matter.

Anger and the necessary energy to make presence known morphs, eventually, at least for me, into resignation, a seeming indifference, a handling well. I handle well. I handle well. In dreams I am a dragon on the edge of a dark cave, my tail a trail behind me, its scales hard green, an accumulation of years.

Swish.

 

2 + 2 Does Not Equal Five

Privileged bed

Still flat on my back.

I'm sort of tired of mincing my words, and as some of you know, I'm not a woman who generally minces my words, except when I do. I'm not going to mince my words. I've trudged like many of you, the past couple of days, months, years, lifetimes, mulling not musing about the latest murders of innocent black men. I've watched the videos and wept. I'm ineffectual. I've posted the requisite articles, including a particularly fetching black and yellow BLACK LIVES MATTER poster, under which someone posted ALL LIVES MATTER (no shit, Sherlock, as they say, but all dolphins matter, too). I'm not going to mince my words. My sons, my daughter and I have deep and committed personal relationships with black people that demand I not mince my words.

I'm a white citizen in a country with a dark stain that has nothing to do with skin. America is an apple with a rotten core. We're a violent people with a heritage of slavery and genocide. We live in a country where a police officer, sworn to protect and serve, fires a gun into a car with a child sitting in the back seat and people make excuses for that police officer. I'm not going to mince words. If you come up with some kind of argument for that policeman's actions -- his job is difficult, he operates under extreme stress, he thought his life was in danger -- you are wrong. If you say that All Lives Matter and deride the exclusive Black Lives Matter, you are wrong and you are complicit. This is not opinion. This is fact.



Disarm.



We live in a country where a white man gets a bunch of his mother's guns and goes into an elementary school and shoots a classroom full of first graders dead. We live in a country whose response to that is more guns sold. We live in a country where generally law-abiding people feel justified owning firearms as a personal right, who believe that they are protecting themselves and their families because they can kill someone in turn. We live in a country where snipers can mow down police officers, protecting and serving, in seconds, believing it's their right to do so.

At least one sniper is killed by a programmed robot.


Flags are flown at half-mast for these officers.


I receive a telephone call. A robot asks me to donate to the Police Officers' Association.


It's difficult not to make metaphor, symbol, words, mince.









So hope for a sea change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.*

The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney said that, and he was writing about ancient Greek tragedy. There is nothing new under the sun. That's Ecclesiastes.





I'm no stranger to bias as a mother of a severely disabled young woman. I have spent much of the last twenty-one years making a case for her dignity as a human being and deflecting the subtle arguments that reduce her to a commodity or me to a dependent leech on the system. Last night, Sophie had a giant seizure in her room whose sound brought me running to her door. She lay on the floor against the door, thrashing and groaning. The door is padded. Her head made only soft thuds, absorbed. I couldn't open the door. I called for Henry, her seventeen year old brother. He peered over the door, stepped back twice and then made a flying leap over it and over her. He pulled her, thrashing, away from the door so that I could open it. I opened it, knelt down and put my arms around her knees. Henry put his arms around her shoulders. We lifted her together and lay her on the bed. He bent over her and wiped her hair from her face, the drool from her cheek. What does this have to do with anything?

It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.*















*from The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney

When the Locomotive of the Lord Runs Us Down

No Lifeguard On Duty

Two more black men shot in cold blood by police, children watching. What more is there to say? Our awareness might be nothing but illusion. "Awareness" Awareness, emphasized, italicized. We watch the grainy footage with nothing but cliche hearts rising to throats and sinking to pits of stomach. We are disconnected from one another by technology yet connected down to the infinitesimal by the same. What more is there to say? Does an open heart allow more sadness to be held or does more sadness make the heart open?

A Brief For The Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert

Principles of Non-Violence

Militarism – war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime…

 “A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

from  Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1967

I had a post planned about my wonderful weekend. I took a boat from Ventura to one of the Channel Islands. I took some amazing photos of wildlife -- whales and dolphins, birds and sea lions. I walked uphill for miles and looked down on the Pacific. I had a magical encounter with a friend and an Island Fox. Honestly, it was one of the most beautiful days I've ever had. I promise to post some of those photos and do some writing about it soon.

But then there's Orlando. I posted a provocative thing on Facebook in an inane attempt to weed out my "friends" -- namely anyone who espouses the use of guns as protection or a "right." I'm sick of the fuckery of gun violence and the same old gobbledy-gook about liberty and one's "right" to protect oneself and one's children from harm. I am not afraid and refuse to believe that owning a gun -- any kind of gun -- in order to protect myself or my children is my right. I have absolutely no desire or feel any fear or need to do so. I took the post down mainly because one of my relatives let loose and spewed a whole lot of hatred and racism, and it just about made me sick that I might have provoked it.

In any case, I'm hunkering down and re-familiarizing myself with the principles of non-violence because I believe the contemplation and practice of them might be the only way to live. I'm not talking about breath here, but life. Living. Loving. I do understand that MLK had quite backward views of homosexuality, and those backward views do disturb me. I can only hope that he might have come to a more enlightened and educated view had he lived longer. His principles for dealing with conflict are sound, though, and they are dynamic and ongoing.

I've copied and pasted the following from The King Center website.  I send all my love to those affected by the violence in Orlando, particularly to those in the LGBTQ community who suffer at the hands of violent people in thought and deed every single day.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE

Fundamental tenets of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence described in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. The six principles include:

1. PRINCIPLE ONE: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
   It is active nonviolent resistance to evil. 
   It is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally.  
2. PRINCIPLE TWO: Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
   The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation. 
   The purpose of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.                                                                                                        
3. PRINCIPLE THREE: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice not people.
   Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people. 
   The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil not people.
4. PRINCIPLE FOUR: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.
   Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. 
   Unearned suffering is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.    
5. PRINCIPLE FIVE: Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
   Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as the body.           
   Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative.  
6. PRINCIPLE SIX: Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.
   The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. 
   Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.    

___________________ 

We've got a hell of a lot to do.  Here is some guidance:

SIX STEPS OF NONVIOLENT SOCIAL CHANGE

The Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change are based on Dr. King's nonviolent campaigns and teachings that emphasize love in action. Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolence, as reviewed in the Six Principles of Nonviolence, guide these steps for social and interpersonal change.

1. INFORMATION GATHERING:To understand and articulate an issue, problem or injustice facing a person, community, or institution you must do research. You must investigate and gather all vital information from all sides of the argument or issue so as to increase your understanding of the problem. You must become an expert on your opponent's position. 
2. EDUCATION:It is essential to inform others, including your opposition, about your issue. This minimizes misunderstandings and gains you support and sympathy. 
3. PERSONAL COMMITMENT:Daily check and affirm your faith in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. Eliminate hidden motives and prepare yourself to accept suffering, if necessary, in your work for justice.
4. DISCUSSION/NEGOTIATION:Using grace, humor and intelligence, confront the other party with a list of injustices and a plan for addressing and resolving these injustices. Look for what is positive in every action and statement the opposition makes. Do not seek to humiliate the opponent but to call forth the good in the opponent. 
5. DIRECT ACTION: These are actions taken when the opponent is unwilling to enter into, or remain in, discussion/negotiation. These actions impose a "creative tension" into the conflict, supplying moral pressure on your opponent to work with you in resolving the injustice. 
6. RECONCILIATION:Nonviolence seeks friendship and understanding with the opponent. Nonviolence does not seek to defeat the opponent. Nonviolence is directed against evil systems, forces, oppressive policies, unjust acts, but not against persons. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step close to the 'Beloved Community.' 

Based on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in Why We Can't Wait, Penguin Books, 1963.