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

The Old Gray Mare, Part 435,679

It used to be that I pretty much did it all, and then I came on here and told it. It's all I can do these days to get a weekly post out, and even that one is hard going. I'm not sure why to keep on doing it, to tell you the truth. Not it as in all of it, because I'm still sort of doing it all, but the blog itself. I don't have anything funny to say anymore, and I feel as blowsy as those peonies dying on my dining room table. Everything of beauty seems somehow tainted these days, doesn't it? I hate saying that the political climate affects everything, but it kind of does. While I'm as committed as ever to resisting, it takes an inordinate amount of energy to maintain composure, to not feel profoundly depressed, to not want to give up and give in. When you have close relatives whose politics are directly contrary to yours -- well -- it's enervating, to say the least.

The only rant I have energy to make is something like what I posted on Facebook, and I'm perfectly aware of how ridiculous and destructive it is to curse and rant and otherwise refuse to reach across the aisle or extend a compassionate hand or seek to come together with those of differing views. There are times for that, and I just don't think this is one of them. So here's what I have to say:

Another round of FUs to those who voted for 45, didn't vote or voted for a third party.

That's my response to the most recent news that our POSPOTUS pulled out of the Paris Climate accord. I might also have posted, "Way to sever global alliances, 45." I'm thinking our return to Dickensian times of chimney sweeps and ten children families is nigh. 45 really is a POS, but the bigger PsOS are those legislators and citizens that are watching and abetting him.

The old gray mare ain't what she used to be. She curses at least 5,456 times a day now, out loud and in her tiny little mother mind.™

So, here's my rant again:

Another round of FUs to those who voted for 45, didn't vote or voted for a third party.

I doubt there are any 45-supporters out there lurking around and reading this blog, but if there are, FU, too.

Charming, right?

The old gray mare just ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be.

On a brighter note, the old gray mare is finally getting some pages together of Ye Olde Booke or what I used to call MGDB.* Sorry for cursing again. The process has been to write the thing for nearly ten years, be awarded a prestigious three-week writing residency on Whidbey Island where it is finished and then spend the next two years dismantling it into a series of fragments.

It's in the fragments that I lie.

*My Goddamn Book

Peonies and Benzos

Yeah, I know. Those peonies.

I was all Wallace Stevensy the world is ugly and the people are sad and then I walked into the dining room and saw them. There aren't even words to describe such a sight.

Thank you for your kind words and emails in response to my last post. I did a lot of digging around on the interwebs last night and read a whole lot more about benzodiazepine withdrawal. There wasn't much that I didn't already know, and what I knew was that it's all fucked up. It's insane that these drugs are used at all -- and I mean at ALL, and I know there are a lot of people out there who think a little bit of a benzo can nip anxiety right in the bud. Smoke some pot, people, find another class of prescription mind-numbers, in lieu of popping the benzos.  And when people worry about the amount of THC in marijuana, about not wanting children to get high (as opposed to the real concern that THC at certain levels can exacerbate seizures), or when physicians worry about the long-term cognitive effects of marijuana on the brain -- holy shit. Take a look at what the benzos do and the level of suffering people -- children -- experience when you take them off.

I'm assuming that Sophie is going to have really bad days, off and on, for maybe even more than a year. I'm going to have to push through my rage about this SIT U A SEE OWN, but it's going to be difficult to not constantly compare the clusterf**kery of the current mindset in epileptology to what's been going on with the approved AEDs for all these years. I'm going to keep on banging on my drum, too, until the media takes it upon itself to do some kind of story on what the alternative to medical marijuana has been like for many kids. Like mine. And yours.

Humor my rants for the time being or shut me up with peonies.

Scorn Me

but I've got nothing but peonies and one small seahorse.

Oh, and

There's not much more beautiful than a peony

There's not much cuter than this boy:

There's not many more mothers who are more AND less ready for the End of School and the Beginning of Summer than this one:

Can we just look at some peonies today? (UPDATE)

***Update: Peonies are NOT readily grown here in La La Land. I believe they need a deep freeze, something that I myself have gladly not experienced in over fourteen years. These beauties were bought for $6.99 at the Trader Joe's down the road. I exclaimed over them like I do every year they turn up and every day that I see them opening ever outward. They're feminine, blowzy, sexy -- I love them. I wish I was one.

If I told you/UPDATE - please see asterisk

If I told you that I woke up yesterday and baked off croissants for my children's breakfast and then sent the boys off to school and belatedly fed Sophie who had a huge seizure while eating and I had to hold her in a weird horizontal position, my legs dangling, painfully from the stool, shielding my face from her flailing arms and arched back and the drool dripped down my arm and I shouted STOP but it didn't stop at least not for a couple of minutes and I cried a little, like I always do, alone and said the usual god have mercy christ have mercy lord have mercy but no mercy comes and I took her to school anyway and dropped her off with the Angel Renita, and drove back home to finish the strawberry shortcake and the two dozen mini-muffins picked up at noon, and then fed lunch to Moye, my dear friend, Moye, the only bit of peace for the day, her dark eyes warm and so civilized, the comfort of a shared childhood, a bit of personal history, the thirty five years we've known one another, the salad from our garden with bread and tomatoes that summered up the June gloom --

If I told you that I opened my door next to a financial advisor debt counseling retirement planning education planning who suggested that I perhaps go into training to do such advising myself and I contemplated it for the next six hours while I baked four more dozen cupcakes, each one a different flavor with a different frosting, picked up the boys from school and the carpool boy and drove them home to catch Sophie's bus and shuffled her right into my car with Oliver and took him to a tennis lesson for one hour and walked Sophie round and round the park and then back in the car and over to Verizon where I picked up the Blackberry phone that I left there yesterday when I got my new phone and marveled, again, like yesterday at the astounding obtuseness of the service "workers" there who drew cartoons, bad ones, while they talked to me and debated the merits of Fruity Pebbles versus Cocoa Pebbles, really were these servants of the free market any better than those much-aligned government workers (my point, and I digress, being that all this bashing of the government employee is just so much politics) and then back in the car where Oliver waited with Sophie not so patiently to pick up Henry hanging out at a friend's house and it was all on the way, all so organized but dinner was not --

If I told you that I drove through the drive-in of Burger King much to the surprise of my sons, Oliver who said I haven't been here in a year, Mom, can I have a soda and a double cheeseburger and fries? And I said Yes and I picked up the food and drove around the corner and back into the parking lot and changed places with Oliver who found this as exciting as the meal so that I could sit in the back seat and feed Sophie her disgusting cheeseburger and if I told you that I always, always feel guilty when I feed my children, especially Sophie, fast food, even though I know in the scheme of things it's no big deal --

If I told you I then headed home and brought Sophie inside while the boys cleaned out the car I don't want to see a speck of garbage in there from this meal, I told them and they did it, happily stuffed with the crap and then running inside an early dark from the June gloom while I busied myself baking four more dozen cupcakes each one a different flavor with a different frosting but I'm not complaining not at all because I can do this, I can make money doing this and it's relaxing in its way but difficult so difficult especially when I'm called on by the middle school principal and I have to figure out a way to help with the arranging of the end of school community gathering in a park? in the school? at all? --

If I told you that The Husband came home from The Mistress** for a few minutes to hear Oliver's presentation on Lance, the cyclist, presented in a silly voice that drove me nutty enough to say I'm not going to sit in here and listen to this unless you do it seriously, like you'd do it in school and it didn't happen so I stormed out of the room and back into the kitchen to make another batch of cupcakes saying from gritted teeth that you're wasting my time and I just can't do it and then felt bad when Oliver went to bed so knelt by his bedside and told him how much I loved him and that tempers were short because school needed to be over and we were all getting on each other's nerves and he said you mean I don't have to go to school tomorrow? And I said yes you have to go to school tomorrow but soon it'll be done and we'll all relax and I went back to the kitchen and pulled another batch of cupcakes out of the oven --

If I told you that Sophie didn't go to sleep, her brain a scrambled mess bumbling through her room in the dark, knocking her head on the wall and standing, staring, until I put her back in the bed, over and over --

If I told you that when I pulled out the last tray of cupcakes from the oven after 11:00 pm and placed them on the rack and looked, again, at the peonies sitting on my dining room table and felt pleasure, a surge of wonder --

would you believe me?

**The Mistress is my husband's job, his business and not a real woman. I love, though, that some of you thought I was tolerant of that along with the all the other shit I put up with!

After reading that article, you need cheering up,

so here are some more photos of peonies.

You're not sick of seeing these, are you?

If you're sick of peonies -- and I don't understand you if you are -- then here's a peek at my bakery cart corner.

And if you're sick of seeing that, I'd advise to you to go back and reread that article.

Peonies - 10:00 AM, Day Six - Faded

Peonies at Dusk


White peonies blooming along the porch

send out light

while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human

heads! They’re staggered

by their own luxuriance: I had

to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,

and the moon moves around the barn

to find out what it’s coming from.
In the darkening June evening

I draw a blossom near, and bending close

search it as a woman searches

a loved one’s face.


-- Jane Kenyon

Peonies 10:00 AM - Day 5 - Overblown

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

-- Mary Oliver

Peonies - Day 4 - Memorial Day

After the bloodiest and most divisive war in American history, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic instituted the holiday at Arlington Cemetery in 1868 "For the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land."

Though many states in the south refused to observe Memorial Day fully and continued to honor their Confederate dead on a separate day, the entire country adopted the day after World War I as a day to honor soldiers fallen in any war. Since a Congressional act in 1971 the last Monday in May has been observed as a national holiday in nearly every state, ensuring a three day weekend.

via Apartment Therapy

In lieu of my own memorializing of the war dead, I offer my peonies and my past two posts for this day:

Monday, May 31, 2010

Singing the Warriors Back

Last week I got the usual slew of chain emails with all the pithy reminders to honor our fallen soldiers on Memorial Day. I also saw many Facebook status updates with the admonitions that our liberties have all been gained with blood. On Saturday morning, I had the honor of attending a three-hour benefit for Insight LA, an organization that promotes and teaches mindfulness classes. I sat with one very good friend and six hundred other people inside of a beautiful church and listened to Jack Kornfield, a clinical psychologist who trained as a Buddhist monk and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He regaled us with hysterically funny stories, led us through some profound sitting meditations and kept us all rapt for the entire three hours. But it was his story of an ancient Irish warrior that struck me, especially as it pertained to Memorial Day. The warrior returned from successful battle still filled with warrior rage, with the wild and burning success of rampage, so heightened that his fellow villagers knew that he couldn't stop, couldn't begin to be normal, again, without help. First, all the women of the village lined up in one great long line and bared their breasts. That slowed him down. Second, they caught the warrior and dunked him into several vats of freezing cold water. Third, they tied him up and sang him back to the present.

Jack then closed this story (which got some rippling laughs) by asking Who will sing to the warriors of Iraq and Afghanistan? Who will sing the hundreds of thousands of them back?

And now, either I'm lazy or I'm on a roll with re-posting. This is from the same day, last year, and remains true on this day, this year, for me.

MONDAY, MAY 25, 2009

Memorial Day

I always feel conflicted on these holidays -- the national ones where we're supposed to feel patriotic, full of honor, all those things. I have made no sacrifice for my country and have, actually, often despaired of my country. I struggle to feel the "right" way about soldiers and those who have died "for our country."

I do remember this poem, though, by Wilfred Owen. I remember reading it in high school from my white Norton Anthology. I remember feeling horrified. I remember wondering what sort of man Wilfred Owen might have been had he not died in a World War I battle when he was only 25.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud 

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Peonies - 10:00 AM, Day Three

Peonies - 10:00 AM Day Two

scroll down for Day One, if you're so inclined

Peonies, 10:00 AM