Compound Words

My son Oliver is currently being tested for learning difficulties. He is smart as a whip, to use a cliche, and quite the perfectionist, but he struggles mightily with reading and spelling. No one is more surprised than I given his incredible perceptions and ability to articulate deep and mysterious feelings. But...

He told me today that a couple of people at school have been taking him out of class and administering these tests and that they're sort of fun. I haven't told him what they're for, just let him know that they're trying to see how exactly his mind works and these tests will help them to figure that out. In any case, the boys, Sophie and I were eating dinner tonight when he described a test that involved him closing his eyes while the adult said the beginning of a compound word and he had to complete it.

I said, Like what?

Oliver said, Like tree....house.

Henry said, Oh, I get it. Here's one. Sun...

Oliver said, of a gun!

We all cracked up, no one laughing harder than the Big O, himself.

Out for a stroll on our street today,

Bitching and Moaning

Ms. Moon's post today made me want to post something like it.

I have a friend in New Orleans right now who can't stop crying. She wants to help in some way with the oil disaster but can't get through the red tape to do so. She is struck by drunken fools, fat ones, slobbering through the streets with plastic cups shaped like grenades. I read a conservative blogger's rant against Obama and his "failures."  I also disagreed profoundly with her interpretation of Israel's attack on the boat last week that killed eleven people, including an American citizen. I'm tired of hearing about that endless conflict and wish that some sort of middle eastern Gandhi might appear and save us all from all of them. I also wish the Rapture might actually happen and take all the fundamentalists of the world away, too.  I read the vitriolic comments on the conservative woman's blog, and they made me feel sick, realizing that the world is so full of so many hateful people. I don't consider myself a hateful person (bitchy but not hateful). It's hard to love one's enemies. Sophie had a gazillion seizures this morning and couldn't go to school until noon. She probably shouldn't have gone at all, but I had to get some things done so I brought her anyway. I hate that I have to do that. I went to Target and they've turned it into a Target AND a grocery store. It sort of scared me, because where does it all end?

My dear friend Karen sent me a quote from the Talmud (of all places), though, and that's about the only thing that's not making me feel bitchy:

Do not be overwhelmed by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Comeuppance for the bird threat

After making violent threats against the bird that wakes me up each morning with his or her ridiculously chipper song (scroll down for that earlier entry), I opened a book of poetry by Billy Collins called The Trouble with Poetry. This is what I read:

Monday


The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.


They are at their windows 
in every section of the tangerine of earth --
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.


The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.


The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.


Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see -
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.


The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.


By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry-cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.


Just think -
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.


And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.


I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of a medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

Why I'm glad that I don't have a gun

6:00 AM and the singing never stops

Sunday Archery

right through my heart

The 700th Post

Kim's painting of a Snowy Plover, posted at art in redwagons

First it was Door Number Three, and now this is

MY 700TH POST!!!

But enough of me.

I want to use the occasion, instead, to highlight one of my favorite artist blogger's websites because she is addressing the Gulf Oil catastrophe in a unique way. Kim at art in redwagons is going to begin painting the oil-slicked animals in their natural, wondrous state to remind herself and her children of their possibility. What struck me most about her post today and the introduction to it is her call to do something productive. She states that Americans are too quick to apathy and cynicism and I have to agree. I, when faced with this sort of overwhelming disaster don't know what to think and feel paralyzed to even think about it. I scroll through the terrible images of the dead animals, of the crabs with their oily shells, of the pelicans dragging their wings, of the huge tar balls washed up on the beaches, and the slick shadows making their way through the waters, and I feel sick to my stomach. I listen to the likes of Sarah Palin and her ridiculous band of fools, blaming the environmentalists for the disaster and I feel sick to my stomach. Even typing that out makes me sick to my stomach. I listen to people who live in and around the Gulf moan that what they love is being destroyed, and I do feel for them, feel for all of us.


But I also believe that we are all part of this disaster and that it  is probably the just punishment for a country that has guzzled and eaten and wasted the vast majority of the world's energy sources with an unparalleled arrogance for as long as it has been in existence, at first unknowingly and then baldly, blatantly and lazily.

The animals, the birds, the sea life, the deep and mysterious water itself -- these are the real victims of all of this, the true, innocent victims and I'm not sure what to do, what I can do. I'm going to think about it, though, and try not to feel overwhelmed, try not to feel apathetic and cynical about it all.

Door Number Three

So, Sophie's overnight EEG shows a recurrence of ESES. That stands for electrical status epilepticus in slow wave sleep. In layman's terms it demonstrates an EEG (or brainwave) pattern of near-constant spikes and waves during slow-wave sleep. In even simpler terms, it means that Sophie's brain is seizing more than 85% of her sleep, sub-clinically. Sub-clinically, means not to the eye.

We suspected as much and the news is not a surprise. It would account for her exhaustion and her frailty. She had this very rare syndrome over six years ago and it can recur.

I'm resigned to it, actually. The last time she had it, I was convinced that she had given up and was going to die. We were given three treatment choices, which I'll call Door Number One, Door Number Two and Door Number Three. 

Door Number One: High Dosage Steroids
SLAM

Door Number Two: High Dosage Valium
CLOSE DOOR

Door Number Three: IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin)
She'll be treated with infusions of intravenous immunoglobulin over a period of time. It means at least one short hospitalization and then subsequent home treatments (if the lovely and accommodating Anthem Blue Cross does us right). It's a bit of an answer for the short term. The treatments will be terribly expensive and have some risks, but it worked before and hopefully will again. We'll do our homeopathic and osteopathic thing to support her.

It's Friday and I've done nothing today but talk to The Neurologist, my mother and cleaned out the area under the sink where all the cleaning supplies are. I've finally purged our house of toxic chemicals. Except for the two McDonald's glasses sitting on the dining room table.

The birds are singing in my backyard, and the illegal Korean daycare center operating in the house next door is finally quiet. The crows have cleared out. They were raucous earlier, driving me nuts with their macabre squawking and energetic hopping.

I'm going to pick up those boys of mine and sing all the way home.

Yellow Puss

Cadmium

I opened my New York Times reader tonight to this headline:

McDonald’s Recalls Drinking Glasses

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 4, 2010

Sigh. (See HERE for my back story)

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg"

I read this remarkable speech of the novelist Haruki Murakami on sarapirat and her adventures. Murakami made the speech a while back while visiting Jerusalem to receive the Jerusalem Prize for Literature.

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.

He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.

Reading Before Bed

Despite their rambunctiousness, both boys still like it when I read to them before bed. If Sophie is having a good day, she enjoys it, too. Even Henry, almost twelve years old, will sit in the same room, reading his own book, with one ear cocked toward me. Tonight we finished one of my childhood favorites, No Flying in the House.


Before I started, though, I looked up and saw the three of them, so radiant.

Vital Exhaustion

Women "resting" at a Norwegian sanatorium

There was a fascinating article in yesterday's New York Times about what used to be called a nervous breakdown and is now referred to as vital exhaustion. You can read the article HERE. My favorite quote from it is this:

In recent years, psychiatrists in Europe have been diagnosing what they call “burnout syndrome,” the signs of which include “vital exhaustion.” A paper published last year defined three types: “frenetic,” “underchallenged,” and “worn out” (“exasperated” and “bitter” did not make the cut).

Exasperated and bitter, two words that can be oft-used to describe yours truly did not make the cut.

Then what does that make me?

I've often fantasized about the old days of rest places and sanatoriums, the kind featured in a Fellini movie, perhaps with people dressed all in white, the ill draped on lounges in front of pretty vistas, the workers floating about with small cups of water and tiny, white pills.

I know, I know, that's not the way they were. And I'm certainly aware of the gravity of mental illness. 

I spoke with The Adult Neurologist last week and she recommended stopping the birth control that she prescribed for Sophie about three months ago. She said it sounds like it's making her worse.

Oh, good God. 

I don't feel vitally exhausted but I would like a rest from it all. 

Laugh of the Day

O.K. The first strike against me is that I took the boys through the McDonald's drive-through this afternoon after-school. They get out early on Tuesdays, and we always try to do something special. They wanted hot fudge sundaes-- something that I also always loved as a kid, and we don't do it all the time, so --

as we were driving through, we noticed that they were selling Shrek glasses for only $1.99 each.

Hey guys, do you each want a Shrek glass? I asked.

Yeah! they shouted.

Which one do you want? I added, Shrek, the Cat, the Princess or Donkey?

I'll take Shrek, Henry said.

Mom! It's not the Cat. It's Puss! Oliver shouted from the way back. I want the Puss!

We rolled up to the microphone to order the sundaes and the glasses.

I said, We'll have two hot fudge sundaes, one Shrek glass and one Cat glass.

Oliver shrieked, again, Mom! It's not Cat! It's Puss!

We rolled up to the window to pay while he continued to shake his head over my dorkiness.

It's not the Cat, Mom. It's Puss that I want. And why do they call the cat the puss? What is a puss?


Here's your sundae, I said, and handed it back to him.

The Wild

Partly due to my respect for his pre-teen privacy and partly because he's a much quieter person than his brother, Henry hasn't made an appearance on the blog in quite some time. This weekend, though, he played in his first travel baseball tournament, part of the team called The Wilshire Wild. He played three games over two days, lost two brutally and won one triumphantly. As most of you know, I'm not a sporty lady, but I admit to swooning at the sight of my handsome boy practicing and then playing baseball. I even yelled with the other parents,

Go Wild!


Way to go Wild!


Wake Up, Wild!