Silenced Women, Books and Poetry

via The New York Times

I've been listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's novel The Signature of All Things on the recommendation of our dear Mary. To be honest, I was not a big fan of Eat, Pray, Love but have always admired Gilbert's writing and speaking, her take on life and her gentle demeanor (I saw her once, live, with Annie LaMott). Her new book is read by Juliet Stevenson, the great English actress, and perhaps part of the love affair I'm having with the story and the writing is due to Stevenson's exquisite interpretation. I think, though, that the book is just plain interesting and beautifully written. I generally take forever to listen to an audible version of a book -- I have a hard time staying with the story and don't think my ears are as connected to literature as my eyes, if that makes sense. In any case, though, I'm getting toward the end, unable to listen to it in my car because of some lurid details that I don't want the boys to hear, and I might even lie on my bed and finish it up -- just lie there and stare at the ceiling with earplugs in my ear. 

I'm struck, over the last few days, as I immerse myself in listening to this story of a late eighteenth, early nineteenth century woman by just how constrained women's lives were for most of written history. The constraints were so pervasive and affected every aspect of their lives, including sexuality -- maybe especially sexuality -- until very recently. And then I think about how women are shamed and silenced even today, sometimes spectacularly but more usually, silently and subtly -- even by themselves. I can honestly say that I've felt stifled over the last couple of days, perhaps over-aware of my opinions, my outspoken-ness, my sharp tongue. I wonder if men feel this way regularly, whether they feel the need to second-guess their intentions, apologize for the way they deliver their thoughts or feel "less than" because of them.

Although I can't begin to fully understand it, I think Emily Dickinson was hinting at these things -- at anger and constraint -- when she wrote this poem.

Here's the poem for your eyes:


My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -
And when at Night - Our good Day done -
I guard My Master's Head -
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow - to have shared -
To foe of His - I'm deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -
Though I than He - may longer live
He longer must - than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without--the power to die--


And here's the poem, read by Juliet Stevenson (!) for your ears:


Emily Dickinson - My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun by poetictouch

Seahorse Days of August

August 2010

I can sit in the cheap garden chair, coffee in a yellow cup on the arm and the small fountain that Oliver built gurgling beside me, reading. I hear the yips of the neighbor's dog, lift my head to wonder from where the constant hum of a chain-saw comes, notice my irritation and notice it drift away.

If we wish to live well in the world, not just amble along through life without any examination of our being, then we must engage in the effort to find meaning in our lives. In order to do this, we have to find a way to balance our own interiority with an empathic recognition of others. Without this balance, we can become invested in our needs and performance while forgetting that there are others in the animal, vegetable, and mineral world. Or we can become so outwardly directed, perhaps even to the point of interfering, as to fail to see our own shortcomings. We must ask: for whom do we practice? We see the paradox of self in the world, focusing inwardly in order to manifest outwardly. The inward look is the outward view. Ultimately we practice for others as our inward polishing manifests itself as good action in our activities.

-from Following the Way of Ryokan in the Fall 2014 issue of Tricycle Magazine


There is goodness and gratitude everywhere. Yesterday, as I made my way through the day, caring for my children and worrying about Sophie, I thought much, probably too much, about the criticism thrown at me. I tried to give it space, to open myself up not to the words, the venom in the words,  but to my own reaction to the words. That takes away the sting in the same way that breathing through physical pain lessens its impact, if not the pain itself. Does that make sense? Last night, this post, one that I wrote in response to overwhelming generosity afforded me in the midst of that person's horrific pain, appeared on my Facebook feed. I will take this as a sign of grace and am stunned, again, by the wonder of the world and this community.

Simmah Down!

My brother-in-law, a native Tennessean, used to shush his young sons up with a very loud, goodnatured, Simmah DOWN!, and that's what I think I'm going to have to say right here on the old blog.

SIMMAH DOWN!

I'm including myself in that admonition, too. I'm going to lay to rest the posts that provoked so much personal attack, even as the anonymous commenter told us her name in "self-defense." Thank you, Elise. I don't want to disable anonymous posts because I agree with another anonymous poster that privacy can be an issue, and I want to respect that. I also don't want to discourage people who disagree with me, and there have been many such back and forths over the years that are stimulating and interesting. I believe Elise has missed those and dwells, probably, on those that discuss G.W. Bush's nasty smile. I hope the back and forth continues and don't want to discourage it by disabling the anonymous function. I think where I draw the line is when someone directs comments at me, my husband or one of my children, because let's face it -- that sort of thing is creepy.

This is, after all, a blog. 

As for Facebook, I've removed the Networked Blogs thingamajig, but I love seeing what my old friends are up to, enjoy the various interesting articles and humor stuff that is posted, and most importantly have a pretty incredible community of fellow epilepsy families that I just can't be connected to anywhere else.

So, onward.

What are ya'll doing today?

Shaken

It's deeply repellent to me to have gotten a couple of nasty anonymous comments when I tried to express my vague feelings of conflict regarding the ALS ice-bucket challenge, and I am close enough to the disease to not want to become ever more embroiled, so I'm going to delete the posts and exit from Facebook as well. It's also repellent that the posts have driven an enormous amount of traffic to my blog -- way more than usual -- and I don't want to be a part of that, either. In fact, I'm no longer going to have that weird Networked Blogs thing post my blog to Facebook -- if people want to find me, they will, and if I have a message regarding something related to disability, epilepsy or medical marijuana I can easily link it myself. I wish I could delete my entire Facebook account, but there's so much good going on there in the medical marijuana community that I hate to do it. I'm thinking that maybe I should just make it dormant or something for a while? Does anyone know how to do that?

In the meantime, have I told you how much I dislike cats?

Dear Anonymous,***

Ouch. I guess I had it coming to me. I've never been one to mince words, as you know, and I'll acknowledge that I do a fair amount of complaining. I have much for which to be grateful, though, far more than I have to complain about, and I'm sure I could do a better job of writing about the good things, the things for which I'm grateful, those things that have been afforded to me by family, by friends, by strangers, by grace. Thank you for the reminder, however harsh your words.

Character assassination and your anonymity aside, thank you, too, for reminding me that Sophie is still alive. As long as she is, and most definitely even after she is not, I will continue to complain about, fight against and try to illuminate the very real problems and suffering that those of us on the front-lines of epilepsy and other diseases face daily. There is no martyrdom in suffering silently when problems can be faced, tackled and solved, and if my voice is a tad louder and at best, more articulate, than others, I feel grateful to serve in that way. 

I'm not sure why you're so angry, and I appreciate anger except when it's used to attack people personally. I figure that's why you've chosen to remain Anonymous. If you have it in you, I urge you to read some of the comments on the previous post -- they are both in agreement and dissent with my own, from parents, writers, doctors and even the "normal" people that you claim I disdain. For the record, I don't believe that there is such a thing as a "normal" life, but I acknowledge my sharp tongue and ready condescension for certain points of view. 

All the best to you,

Elizabeth









***Anonymous' comment on my last post felt like getting smacked right on top of the head with a two-by-four. I think when things bother us, we need to look within and acknowledge why, wonder and acknowledge any truth to their comments, think about it, and then move on. I hope I can move on.

On Being a Pariah On Facebook and the Ice-Bucket Challenge

At this point, if you don't know about the ice-bucket challenge that is circulating on social media, you are either living under the proverbial rock or you're just very, very lucky. I was "challenged" quite early on and declined to dump the water over my head, not because I'm afraid to get cold or because I'm a hater or a spoiler, but because there was something about the whole thing that got on my nerves. I wondered if it was my own ego getting in the way of having fun along with millions of other people, many of them my own friends and family, including my sons. I wondered if it was jealousy, because I've been trying to raise money and awareness for epilepsy causes for the last two decades and, most recently, for medical marijuana. I figured it might have to do with my general dislike and growing mistrust of the non-profit world, its ties to pharmaceutical companies, the vast amounts of money being exchanged with ever dwindling amounts directed toward real research and cure. I wondered if it was just my own crotchety contrariness. Maybe it was all of those things or none of them, just that weird instinctual feeling that I am hard-pressed to articulate.

In any case, I watched a few of the videos, pretended to enjoy a few more and then quit clicking. Then I read this, posted by a friend, a survivor of breast cancer and, evidently, a fellow ice-bucket challenge pariah. It's a statement by the Breast Cancer Action Group who has also admirably argued against the whole pink ribbon campaign, arguing that the vast marketing machine that these "campaigns" fuel works against research and cure.

We are approaching illness and healthcare assbackwards if we continue to determine which diseases get critical research and support dollars based on the appeal and fun factor of their fundraising campaigns! This is a mad way to confront illness and disease. In this new world of philanthropy by popularity contest, the future looks very scary. Only diseases lucky enough to be the beneficiary of a viral, “fun” campaign will capture public attention and funding. Savvy marketing, motivated self-starters, random acts of kindness will determine who gives a toss about people dying and the disease or illness they are dying from.This haphazard approach to healthcare and research funding isn’t the solution. No single life-threatening illness is more deserving than another. But all this wonderful generosity from a caring public willing to embrace the cause of the day serves as another nail in the coffin of a different kind of solution to illness, disease and ill-health—a solution that requires government funds, public money not private giving, that ensures people everywhere are able to access quality healthcare; that makes decisions about the allocation of research dollars based not on cyclical fads or randomly successful, social media campaigns but on evidence-based needs and outcomes.The #IceBucketChallenge is well-intentioned and has raised a lot of money for the ALS Association. But this disease-by-disease popularity contest approach to funding research is not a sustainable way to confront illness and disease and pushes responsibility for public health onto the private sector. This takes us in the wrong direction. We all deserve better.

Thank you, Yvonne, for turning me on to this, for helping me to figure out just why I couldn't do the "challenge" and for educating me about breast cancer and efforts to treat and cure it.

You know, some people are going to read this and think, at best, that I am a Debbie Downer and very short-sighted. At worst, they'll think I'm arrogant and just putting people down that choose to do the challenge. Even my sons gave me a hard time. But that's ok. I get it -- I get both points of view.

For the record, I made a donation to ALS, a horrific disease that has claimed the lives of several people I know and love. I sure hope they figure out how to cure it soon, and I hope we as a culture and a country can move toward more communal values -- maybe more lasting and comprehensive than filming ourselves dumping ice-water over our heads or buying pink Kitchen-Aid mixers.

Wink, #2

We shelter in ourselves an angel
whom we constantly shock.

Jean Cocteau

Those who restrain desire do so
because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained.

William Blake




At the doughnut shop, I waited in line to buy a sesame bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, bacon and tomato.

A woman in an arm brace, the kind used for carpal tunnel syndrome, sat at a small table with an autistic man. He ate a powdered donut with jelly oozing out, and she played with three figs on a napkin.

The young man in front of me had a tattoo on his arm that read I Do The Wrong Things For The Right Reasons.

I might begin a How We Do It post with these lines that I heard Lorrie Moore say that night I went to hear her read:

How can it be described? How can any of it be described?
The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things.

Narrow Borderlines

Of all people, it was seeing former President GW Bush's smug mug on Facebook this morning, getting ready to dump a bucket of ice water on his head that prompted me to want to write something on this blog that I believe has been languishing for days due to my relatively comatose consciousness. I happened to see that smug mug right after I'd read the headline (cause that's all I can handle at this point) about the journalist who was beheaded by the militants in Syria, and the grotesquerie of it all just struck me, right then and there. I might be only expressing the biased and simple thoughts of a certain tribe (because aren't we all tribal, after all?), but there's something incredibly ludicrous about that man -- our former President -- smiling his nasty smile as he sits in front of his family fortress, his head intact, across the world from a country that you could arguably say he helped to de-stabilize with his disastrous war thirteen years ago. Now I don't think the black-hooded figure looming over the American journalist dressed in an orange robe is anything but a vile human being who we can only hope will be judged in some way at some point commensurate with his crimes, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to think any other than madness, too, at that video of that man getting ready to dump ice water over his head.

Moving on.

This quote intrigues me:

The most fascinating and perhaps most significant of all interfaces is the one that separates yet connects the ridiculous and the sublime. The surprisingly narrow borderline between things holy and things profane, between prayer and laughter, between a Leonardo chalice and Warhol soup can, between the Clear Light and the joke, provides a zone of meaning as exhilarating as it is heretical: a whisper of psychic release so acutely yet weirdly portentous it just might offer a clue to the mystery of being.

--Tom Robbins, from Now Showing: Satori 

Read the whole article -- it's short and sweet and so perfectly helps me to realize why I was so struck by the head of G.W. Bush today, engaged in innocent activity, and by the head of that innocent journalist, severed from his body. Perhaps my claiming that all is vanity, that it's all madness and insanity is defensive, a way to protect myself from the horror, the horror. Or maybe it's just another path to satori or understanding. I have no idea.

First Day of School Traditions

As evidenced by the late hour that this post is going up, I've got nothing for you today. I've got nothing for me today, either, to tell you the truth. It was Henry's first day back to school, and I was the carpool driver, so I picked up two Cookies and Cream milkshakes for him and his friend. They were a welcome sight in the 90 degree plus San Fernando Valley heat, and it's that sort of thoughtful gesture that I believe makes me a good enough mother. Sometimes, we have to pat ourselves on the back, don't we?

No need to respond. These are, after all, the dog days of August.

Nostalgia

The other day I unearthed a box that was underneath my bed -- yes, it was buried under my bed, covered in dust. My father had sent it to me some years ago, and I don't think I had ever opened it or really looked at the contents. I unfolded my white eyelet high school graduation dress from 1981, my cream-colored (perhaps it was once white) First Holy Communion dress from 1970, a white pinafore that I believe I wore as part of my Dorothy costume from my starring role in the school play in fourth grade, 1972, my Brownie uniform, my Girl Scout uniform and the above accessories. Other than a surreal horror at how tiny , truly tiny I was, not just in second and fourth grades but in my last year of high school (honestly, I swear that I could no more pull that thing over my THIGH much less pull it over my breasts and shoulders and zip it up), I was cast back into intense nostalgia for childhood. On throw-back Thursday last week, I posted a photo of myself from sometime in the late 1980s on Facebook, and more than a hundred people "liked" it. Comments included many exclamations of wonder -- Wow! -- which inevitably made me think have I changed that much? As evidenced by that tiny white dress, well, yes. But when I peer closely at the photo, looking for the me that is myself, I see her, despite the superficial changes. I've mused with girlfriends about unsnarling our identities from our children as we and they age -- how difficult it is to figure out and find, reclaim that me that was before the me that is today. Sometimes it takes peering into photos to find ourselves, not so much to remind ourselves of that youthful beauty but to remind ourselves that life, while transformative, has not irrevocably changed who we are in the most essential sense. I do this with photos of my children, too -- flipping through photo books that I lovingly made when they were babies and toddlers, scrolling through the thousands I have stored on my computer -- Sophie, Henry, Oliver are still there, in the eyes, in the smiles, in the people they've become.

But what do we do with all this stuff? Do I dry-clean the dresses and uniforms, go to The Container Store and buy that preservation tissue and boxes in which to place it lovingly for my progeny? It's hard to imagine either Henry or Oliver will take along this box, open it and feel anything, really, about it other than oh, god, more of Mom's crap. And even though it seems as if all things eventually go there, I am struck by the fact that Sophie, my only daughter, the obvious person to receive these things, will obviously have no need for them or awareness of their "value," if she even lives longer than me. After all, despite the fact that I've saved many bits and pieces of her own life -- darling baby clothes, my favorite of her many beautiful shoes and outfits that I splurged on over the years, some of her "artwork" from early years in preschool and kindergarten when I had no idea how things would turn out -- they really please and mean nothing to anybody but me. Perhaps there's a lesson in that, but I'm not sure. I won't throw any of it right now, though, heavy as it is, invested still with emotion and longing and reminders.

Mind-Blown

Thanks to a homeschooling mentor of mine, I have been reading and re-reading this incredible article about children and education. The title is A Thousand Rivers: What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning.  As I gear up to do what may be a complete "school year" at home with Oliver, I feel periodically panicked and instinctively confident. My friend sent the article more than a week ago, but I opened it tonight, during a less than instinctively confident moment. I took a deep breath as I read, not so much because it confirms what I feel, instinctively, but because it's written so beautifully and is particularly persuasive. It makes sense. It deals with the madness. As my friends send their children off to four-year colleges, after a frantic year of freaking out about the process, as my own son gets ready for another grueling year in a typical Catholic high school (that he very much wants to stay in, despite my own reservations,) as Sophie is so very much "left behind" in her local public high school, I am relieved to be following my instincts -- and, most importantly, Oliver's, for another year.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

We have radically altered our own evolved species behavior by segregating children artificially in same-age peer groups instead of mixed-age communities, by compelling them to be indoors and sedentary for most of the day, by asking them to learn from text-based artificial materials instead of contextualized real-world activities, by dictating arbitrary timetables for learning rather than following the unfolding of a child’s developmental readiness. Common sense should tell us that all of this will have complex and unpredictable results. In fact, it does. While some children seem able to function in this completely artificial environment, really significant numbers of them cannot. Around the world, every day, millions and millions and millions of normal bright healthy children are labelled as failures in ways that damage them for life. And increasingly, those who cannot adapt to the artificial environment of school are diagnosed as brain-disordered and drugged. 

Here's a clip from a documentary which is having screenings all over the world:

Schooling The World: The White Man's Last Burden trailer HD from lost people films on Vimeo.

White-knuckling it

Help me, Rhonda.

Colors are the wounds of light

William Blake

I must have had a difficult dream life last night as I slept, because I woke feeling bruised and worn, hot behind the eyes. I woke just before dawn when it was still dark, watched the sun come up through the blinds on the door. Yesterday, I bought myself some tiny pink roses and put them in a vase and put the vase on my bedroom dresser. Under the vase, I put a white piece of notepaper on which was written the names and numbers of the people at Sophie's school who are supposed to be helping us. So much of my energy is directed toward the hostile, toward difficulty. I thought I'd let the colors do the work.

Does that make sense?

Riding in the Car with Boys and Other Stuff

to Elizabeth L.

This morning I had an exhaustive conversation with several LAUSD worker bees because despite it being only the third day of the 2014-2015 school year, and the sixth year that Sophelia Bedelia has attended this school and therefore the sixth year that she has ridden the bus in the afternoons, there are problems. I've told you before that we refer to the Special Education Department of the LAUSD as                                        D O W N T O W N because for as long as I've known it (which is going on seventeen years!), whenever there are problems, anyone who works for the LAUSD blames it on  D O W N T O W N.

Like today. Apparently, DOWNTOWN has eliminated the position of SPED coordinator at our school because -- well -- who knows why? We had a rather nice and efficient coordinator last year, a welcome replacement for the retired Wicked Witch of the West, but I guess it was asking too much to see some continuity. I believe he has been shuffled back to another classroom and a new person is temporarily in the school office, but she obviously had never heard of Sophie nor did she know anything about her IEP, the wheelchair bus request which is in the IEP and the fact that the aide assigned to ride the bus with her was also assigned to ride with another kid who is apparently quite a handful. I'm not going to belabor this clusterf**k and tell you everything that has transpired because it's boring and very first worldish, but I kept Sophie home from school today so that the new bee could figure out the problem, and after the telephone call I felt overwhelmed and crazy again because remember: It's the small stuff that is going to kill me. I calmed myself down by imagining a trip to D O W N T O W N where I imagine I'd find some nasty little man behind a curtain, sort of like Oz.

Anywoo. Let's move on to riding in the car with boys.

Today's conversation and arguments revolved around Burpsnarts. The Brothers were actually arguing over Burpsnarts, which they explained are when you burp, sneeze and fart all at once. I repeat that they were having a conversation and actually arguing about this, and while it didn't come to blows, I fantasized a bit about slowing down and jumping out. Because I am a responsible woman, though, I refrained from it and in my mind thought about dining out with James Joyce and Nora and then getting on a private plane with my friend Elizabeth and moving to Bora Bora.