The more of life

(My messy desk)

I have been feeling guilty about not getting a huge load of homework done this past weekend. And I've also been trying to balance that guilt with the knowledge that I was out of my routine for some really good and wonderful reasons. It was appropriate for me to take time away from homework to take advantage of these good opportunities that came my way to learn new things and bond with people I admire. And yet the guilt lingers.

Yesterday I came across a quote from Amos Bronson Alcott (famous 19th-century reformer and father of Louisa May): "The less of routine, the more of life." So I am walking around with that sentence in my head, repeating it as a mantra and trying to dispel that lingering guilt, trying to affirm that what I did this past weekend was live life! Life offered me some amazing gifts, and I said yes to them.

Here's some of what I lived (and that gave me joy):

A one-day fiber workshop with Judith Mackenzie...

(Here I am with Judith at the end of the workshop.
Do I look crammed full of good info?
Judith is the most patient teacher I know... plus she's a certified fiber goddess.)

(Before and after the workshop I finished spinning some of the Bison roving Judith sells. It is so soft and smushy!)

A one-afternoon visit with Tom Weaver...

(We took him hiking at Gallant Woods, one of the Preservation Parks near town. It was a lovely afternoon!)

(We admired the trees and sky...
and I talked to the horses...)

(there was an event going on that day, with wagon rides...)

(... and we admired the butterflies; this one is a Buckeye, Tom said.
He knows a LOT about our plant, tree, and animal relatives!)

Tom also met briefly with the student team I'm going with to the rez in March of 2011. He taught us a couple Lakota prayer songs, one of which I recognized and had been wanting to learn. It was also good to just hang out with him in our kitchen, cooking some food and talking about families and getting to know each other.

It was a good weekend. Even if I am behind on my paperwork.

Hope you have a chance to experience the more of life soon!

Cheers,
Karen

On not celebrating Columbus Day

All day today I kept remembering and then forgetting that it was Columbus Day. When I was a kid, I associated the day with parades in Baltimore and the Little Italy section of the city (and great ethnic food that wasn't the kind my Polish family made). Not that we were all that into celebrating the day--we were Polish, after all, not Italian, when we expressed our ethnic selves.

(a replica of one of Columbus's ships, docked in Columbus, Ohio)

But now the holiday means something different to me. I see Columbus's landing as the beginning of an American holocaust, and the biggest event in modern times: the meeting between the people of the Americas and the people of Europe. (Of course, shortly thereafter, the people of Africa were taken here against their will to replace the native slave laborers who'd been killed off in droves in the Caribbean islands, including Haiti/Hispaniola, Columbus's original landing place.)

Nowadays I tend to focus not on a celebration of a "discovery" (what an incredible misnomer!), but on thinking about what we lost when millions of people were killed--by disease, famine, war, and colonialism--in the Americas. I think about the knowledge we lost: what the indigenous people knew about this land, its animals and plants, its waterways, its seasons, its hundred-year rhythms. I think about the songs they sang, the stories they wrote, the art they made, the stars they mapped. I think about how they understood their place in relation to the universe--Mother Earth, Father Sky, the divine all around us, the divine within us. I think about how they had everything they needed to create a good life in this place, on this land, with the people they loved.



And I mourn. Because the people who were my ancestors didn't know how to listen, and because so much was lost.



And I remember, too, that native people are still here, still singing songs and telling stories and making art and mapping stars. (For example, listen to poet Margaret Noori read her beautiful and compelling poetry in Ojibwe here.) Native people are still teaching those who will listen how we can be in relationship with the plants and animals and waterways here, and with the land itself, and with the divine spirit that lives in this place.


I want to remember and listen. I am ready to learn.



Peace,
Karen

On not writing poetry

Every once in a while, I get what I think is a good idea for a poem. Only I don't write poetry, so I haven't a clue how to begin, and mostly I think the results would be bad. So those ideas just sit somewhere in my brain, not realized but still there. And they haunt me a little bit. They don't really evaporate, but nothing really comes of them either; it's kind of like they're in limbo.

Maybe someday I will write short essays about them. But really, they're supposed to be poems, I think.

Here are some ideas that I think would make good poems...

-- The kid across the street from us has grown into a high school senior. When we first moved here, he was a little younger than my son is now, and kind of gawky, definitely a little kid though on the tall side. He went through a rather goofy-looking young-teenager stage, and now before our very eyes, he has become an adult human, tall and poised and more graceful than he used to be, but definitely still a teenager. He drives a car and has a girlfriend and is visiting colleges. He's still a little shy. I look at him and I wonder about my son's next 8 years, wonder what he'll look like and how he'll move and what he'll spend his attention on and what will make him laugh and what will make him angry. I see this kid across the street and I wonder about my son and who he'll become as he becomes an adult.

(Here's my boy, by a lake in Minneapolis, his totem animal just over his shoulder.)

-- There's an art installation in back of the NMAI called "Always Becoming," by Nora Naranjo-Morse.

It features structures--smaller scale--that represent traditional native buildings; they're all made from materials that are designed to disintegrate. The art is supposed to dissolve, be impermanent.

And it's in sight of the Capitol. (Here's a photo that shows you the juxtaposition.)


The contrast is there, sure, but it's almost too easy, and repeats some comparisons that people have been making for centuries. (In my classes we talk about the rhetorics of "civilized" and "savage" that has facilitated the processes of colonization for the past, oh, 500+ years...)

What strikes me as more interesting, and probably a more provocative idea, is that the piece also tells us about endurance, survival, perseverance. Those native living structures mean, for me, that native people are still here, in the place that seems to have nothing to do with them, and in fact was the site of various violent plans to wipe them out or benevolent plans help them to leave behind their "benighted" ways, and all of those plans disastrous. The poem would have to include some play on the word "house"...

-- The sky on the prairie. It makes me feel small, and yet it makes me feel a part of the earth, a part of the sky, connected and observing. It's wondrous, and I'm a witness. Here are some photos...


... though of course my camera couldn't capture what it feels like when you've got sky in 360 degrees.

-- And the prairie grass. Someone needs to write a poem about the prairie grass...

... how it's like the sea, how it whispers on a windy day, how it shows you where the wind is going, how it smells...

Once upon a time, when I lived in San Francisco, my friend Jane told me about her attempts to write a poem about what it sounded like when she heard a whale surface and breathe. Yes, it's like that: trying to say something that you know is important and deserves the best, most beautiful language possible.

I hope you find all the words you need today.

Cheers,
Karen

A couple things...

... because I can't stand to go another day without posting to the blog!

1. I just handed in a report (late) that took hours and hours of my time, and on top of that exacted an emotional toll--in part because I needed it to be well written despite the fact that it won't have its intended effect. (Sorry to be cryptic here, but I don't feel comfortable saying more!) Suffice it to say it was a drain on my time and effort, and felt like a waste of time, but I couldn't get out of doing it. I let myself be angry and frustrated about it for a while, and now I'm looking for the silver lining, looking for a reason to feel at least a fraction of the experience was a useful exercise. This photo I took recently seems to capture the feeling it left me with--a piece of a wing, but clearly one that has been chewed on (!)... (I spotted it on my walk to work last week.)


(Vanity moment: that same day the sparkles on my skirt caught the light as I walked by a shop window, so I snapped a pic... Can you see them? That was a warm day, probably one of the last this year I'll wear non-covered-up legs!)



2. We have been having adventures of the small-town variety this month--the Horse Parade, the county fair. I haven't uploaded the fair pics yet, but here are some of the parade:

(Miniature horses are always a big hit with the crowd...)

(John Wayne made an appearance!)

(Aren't they beautiful? Look at the curve of that neck!)

The horse parade and the county fair, with its emphasis on harness racing (including the world-famous Little Brown Jug), mean that the whole town gets a horsey theme for the month of September--something my little-girl self gets really happy about. Here's a window at the local teacher-supply-and-kid-lit store:


It would have made the 11-year-old me quite happy!

3. We had what I think is summer's last gasp last week--record-breaking warm temp.s--and all of a sudden a million of these guys were showing up outside, in the house--everywhere, it seemed. They are called stink bugs, which means I respect their space, but I think they are beautiful and fascinating and I do try to look at them close up:

As long as they don't eat my fiber, I'm okay with them being around.

We usually have a LOT of praying mantises in our front yard, but this summer there were fewer. There's a particular shrub they like to hang out in and lay eggs in; I hope more come around next year. They've become kind of our family totem insect over the past few years!

(This one was waiting for us on the porch
when we arrived home one evening.
There were plenty of moths to choose from that night,
so I hope she/he ate well!)

By the way,


Have a good one!
Karen

Migraine tales

Sadly, I lost a good two to three days this weekend to a migraine. This one was a baddie--I felt the usual pain (like three nails being driven into specific places on the right side of my head) but also had a good bit of nausea. And I still haven't gotten rid of the muscle tension--it feels like the right side of my back, from the middle to my neck, needs the world's most intense massage. Or maybe shock therapy.

I've been having migraines for about 20 years now, and I would like to be done with them.

For the first 15-ish years, I just focused on getting rid of them. I was astounded how much doctors and scientists don't know about headaches. (They know a bit more now than they did 20 years ago, but still, it's amazing to think that headache is still so rampant...) I signed up for whatever medication seemed like it would do the job.

That worked fine for a while, and when it stopped working there was a new medication to try. When that one stopped working--around the time that I got my tenure-track job--and my headaches got more frequent, the only thing that was appropriate for me was a pain-killer: one on board, with a nap in a dark room, and the headache would leave, sometimes. It felt like the medication would break the pain-fear-tension cycle long enough for my body to stop hurting. I could always feel when the stuff would start to work: it felt like all the joints in my body were un-coupling, loosening and floating, and soon my head would follow.


After a couple years, the day finally arrived when I had a bad headache, took a pain pill, experienced no change, took a second pain pill, and still nothing happened, no relief. I looked down that road and didn't like what I saw. A couple weeks later, a woman I had met at the UU fellowship in my town gave me the business card of a local acupuncturist. I figured it was a sign.

I was a bit skeptical, but I also thought that the practice wouldn't have been around for thousands of years if it didn't work at least part of the time, and I was excited that it didn't have the chemical side effects of taking medication (and especially of being addicted to pain-killers), so I tried it.

Acupuncture has worked wonders for me. I am not cured--obviously. But the frequency of my debilitating migraines has gone way down. (Because I live in Ohio and not someplace on the west coast, I've had to pay for all of this out of pocket--yet another aspect of our health care and health insurance systems that makes no sense to me...)

I'm still pursuing treatment; I'd still like a cure. But in the meantime, I try to think about the lessons available to me as a person who can be laid flat by signals in her own body. I try to think about pain the way mystics did centuries ago: as a teacher, or a test, or even a gift. (I have to admit, that last one is too much of a stretch for me just yet.)



I am trying to learn to surrender, to know that doing nothing for the better part of three days is the task I have been given to do and not worry about the things that aren't getting done during that time. I am trying to learn that asking for help and being waited on aren't things to be ashamed of. (It was so much easier for me to learn and practice that concept when I broke my arm a few years ago--a traumatic injury excused it more convincingly, somehow. Trying that with a chronic illness seems harder.)

Sometimes, when I've survived a bad one and the weather is gorgeous after a storm (like it is today, the storm having arrived with the pain), I feel like maybe this is what it's about: notice this. Notice that the sky is blue and crickets are singing; notice that the wind in your face feels like motion; notice that the air smells dry and your legs feel strong on the walk home. This is the gift: the mundane things I might take for granted all seem new, and precious.

(This tree, on my way to campus, stopped me in my tracks today...)

I think I'm on the other side of this one now; I've woken up two mornings with pressure, but not pain, in my head, and have been back at work for a day. I'm catching up on whatever I can get to without sending myself back into that dark territory of hurt. And in the meantime, I'm listening for what else I'm supposed to learn...

May you feel good today,
Karen

Assorted bits

Once again I've got a bunch of short stuff I wanted to share here. At some point I need to write an entry or two about My Cowichan Adventure (!), but that will come later...

We survived the first week!

We all (in my household) survived the first week of school. For a minute there on Wednesday morning, it looked like Pirate was not going to let Dexter leave...

But then he did.

According to Dexter, another way to think of SSR, which is supposed to stand for "sustained, silent reading," is "sit down, shut up, and read." We laughed about that one, but you know, I think he's right. Reading without distraction is a practice everyone needs to develop. I hope my students are good at this. Maybe at the university we should come up with another acronym that includes "turn off your cell phone and/or internet and/or FB" as part of the reading process... ("SSTOYCPIFBR"?)

Dinner was a bit sketchy last week, but I'm learning to accept that the goal was eating food, not necessarily eating well balanced meals made from local, fresh ingredients. *sigh* We did fine, thanks to Patrick coming to the rescue with spaghetti, but I sure hope I have more energy for meal prep in the next 14 weeks than I did last week.

Signs and wonders, part eleventy billion

On my way in to campus one morning last week, crossing the bridge where I enter my workplace, I saw this in the creek:

It was hard to make out at first, even in person, so I'll tell you what you're looking at: That is a SNAKE eating (swallowing) a FISH!!! The fish was about as big as two decks of cards laid end to end, so pretty big. The snake was huge.

When I was able to ask Denny, a retired science professor friend, what it might have been, he said he would bet, just from my description and the situation, that it was a Northern Water Snake, who are fish-eaters and have that kind of pattern on them. I was a-feared it was some sort of exotic pet set loose in the sewer, but he said no, it's local, and quite belligerent. You can't handle one of these, Denny said, without getting bitten; he said they have a sort of "Make my day" attitude. So I'm glad this one was busy with the fish. I thought also that maybe it had died because it was so still, but it was gone the next day, and Denny assured me it was just working on the fish.

Being a literature person, a story person, OF COURSE I have been thinking about the symbolic richness of this image. What message is available to me, having witnessed this event? Is it: Don't let the semester swallow you up? or perhaps: Don't bite off more than you can chew? Hmmm...

Writing Friday

For the first time since I was hired eight years ago, I am not teaching five days a week. I finagled having class-free Fridays, or what I'm referring to as Writing Fridays, in my schedule this semester.

I will keep my practice of having meditation/prayer/quiet time for a couple hours. (I've been leaving Friday mornings blank on my calendar for a few years now for this reflection time. It was really hard to do at first, and even hard to imagine--a couple hours in my schedule not available for work or appointments?? Thank goodness my friend and teacher Sage convinced me to try it. I think it's had a really good effect on my sense of well being, and certainly on my health. I still work about 60 hours a week, but for a couple hours every week, with the house to myself and plenty of quiet, I get peaceful, go inward, and breathe...)

I have set aside the rest of the day for writing--and not just any writing, but working on pieces I could eventually send out to be published or that I could present at a conference. I'm working up the courage to take those sorts of risks again, and excited about what I'm writing, so that's at least a good step. And on my first Writing Friday, I churned out five pages. Which I'm ecstatic about. They may be five rough pages, and very spotty in places where I need to look up or reread or investigate something, but they're five more pages than I had the day before. Huzzah!

I took an unusual route to school on Thursday, and saw this on the way, which I'm definitely taking as the best possible sign ever:


The neglected garden surprises me

I've been wondering lately if I should just give up on the whole veggie garden idea. (I made a raised-bed box for the veggie garden last year, which I chronicled here in a post about UnFinished Objects--some of which, I'm sorry to say, are still UnFinished!)

I usually don't get my plants in until late in the season because I can't manage to do anything with it until school is really done (usually around Mother's Day, which happens also to be commencement day. Every year. Happy Mother's Day to me.). We go away for as much as three weeks at a time in the summer, and our house-sitters are fine with watering the garden, but not really into weeding it and whatnot.

And while we're at it, I'm not that great at keeping up with the weeding. I hate weeding. Yes, it's one of those jobs where you can really see you've made a difference (I like that in a household task), but my goodness, by the next week you have to start all over again. And sometimes it's nasty work--especially when the ill-mannered dog next door has decided your raised bed makes a good pooping place. (Don't get me started...)

This year one of my tomato plants had a blight, so the yield has not been great--more discouragement. So just when I was thinking about not having a veggie garden next year, I went out there just before lunch and gathered these:


Beautiful. Maybe I'll do this again next year after all...

You'll notice that I did NOT provide a photo of the garden itself; until this afternoon, it was overrun with weeds, and the basil is so big it flopped over onto one of the pepper plants, and the tomatoes really overwhelmed the bamboo sticks that I tried in place of cages this year (good info. for next year). So it looks like hell, definitely not worthy of a photo. But it's still bringing me happiness--especially when I eat the teeny "sweet 100" tomatoes, which are really quite good.

I hope you make a pleasant discovery today!

Cheers,
Karen

A prayer of sorts (I think)...

O, day filled with meetings,
thou rearest thine ugly head before me.
I can see thine eyes, looking at me as a target,
and thy lips, curled so I can see all of those sharp, sharp teeth.

And behind that head lies a long body,
made up of fellow meetings,
stretching out beyond what I can see,
into December's cold,
unimaginable in the heat of August.

And alongside that body lies another
filled with classes to teach--some delightful, some frustrating,
some that will leave me questioning,
"Just who do I think I am?"
It has scented me, and will turn toward me in a moment.

I may not feel ready,
but I am strong and brave,
and I stand straight before thee,
and stare right back.

(I kind of wrote this in my head last night when I couldn't sleep. I was thinking of a pair of dragons, and myself as the little person in front of them, impossibly outgunned but standing my ground anyway. Fall 2010 semester, here I come!)

May you feel strong today,
Karen