Thanks for the Memory, Elizabeth

It's been a while since I've blogged:  three ideas in the hopper but this being spring on the farm, not enough bath time to fully flesh them out. I am prompted to write something not fleshed out at all today, though, on the occasion of Elizabeth Taylor's passing, after NPR replayed of some of her remarks from the height of the AIDs epidemic. I got goose bumps remembering her words, and those times. With a voice soft as the girl who starred in "National Velvet" but the dagger-like inflection of Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," she told George H. Bush and Dan Quayle they were wrong about AIDS  --  "and you know it. "

It may seem common now, to think of celebrities stepping into a political spotlight and saying something "brave," but it wasn't then. I remember the eye-rolling and snide remarks  --  many people seemed to think Elizabeth Taylor was carried out of her diamond-studded tower on the shoulders of eunuchs, frothing at the mouth slightly, defending the "kooks" and "crazies" she kept as living performance art.

Please bear with me here, because this story may, at first, seem a conceited attempt to tout my own bravery. I assure you, it's not.

In 1993 or 94, I was working in marketing and public relations for a home health care company, and found myself a liaison of sorts, between my employer and an AIDS support group associated with the Veterans Administration. Several members of the group came in for our first meeting through the large pharmacy that was part of the sprawling complex of this company; no other entrances were available to the general public in a place that literally had a warehouse full of opiates in stock at all times, and a lock-down protocol in case of armed robbery. The AIDS group leader was very sick and in a wheelchair, pushed by another member whose disease had not progressed to that stage. They had a complaint about their treatment by our company, as I recall. All looked a little angry, ready for a fight.

I did what I always did for every business meeting that involved people I didn't know:  I shook their hands and introduced myself. The fellow in the wheelchair was at first dumbfounded, then burst into tears, pressing my hand against his face. "People don't-- " he tried to explain, but couldn't go any farther.

The pharmacy, big enough that at least six of a dozen or more pharmacists hustled like crazy behind the counter at any given time, was suddenly empty. I can't say why, in all honesty. Maybe they were very worried about the accusations that we were expecting from this group. Accusations that completely disappeared from the minds of the accusers with one handshake.

Here's the thing:  It was not brave, not even remotely. It was the beginning of a business meeting, begun robotically as any other. I wasn't even one of the courageous nurses in that organization, administering home infusion and holding the hands of dying cancer patients every single day. I wore expensive clothes and reported back to a conference room full of Suits who said things like "Show me the money!" all the time. It was 1993 or 94. By then my brother-in-law had been dead from AIDS for a few years; I'd already stood down many members of my family who thought it foolhardy that I would allow him anywhere near my babies. Even then the CDC had made it clear AIDS could not be contracted through casual contact  --  by 1986, two years before my oldest daughters were even born, Reagan-appointed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had made a statement to that effect.

Yet at least six years later, a dying man burst into tears when a woman from outside his support circle shook his hand. This is the memory that brings tears to my eyes today. How much more horrific would the whole sweeping tragedy have been, without Elizabeth's powerful voice?

Ω

The NPR story on Elizabeth Taylor:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/23/134798242/elizabeth-taylor-an-aids-activist-to-remember

An excellent AIDS timeline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/cron/

Song for Emerging

This bird in your heart how she shudders

blind in the black pumping of blood

beak folded in salty wet feathers

quadrants stretched into each of your chambers

how the smudge of vein she has grown.

Nascent lids they flutter to rumbling—

a distant rolling and pulse of the sea

the thumps from her prison are sounding

the trap in your chest is quiet then pounding.

She weakens, flaps harder again.

For her you summon the darkness

this creature living and dead

press yourselves down in the muffling of covers

natal twins smothered closer than lovers

one body spinning around, and around her pain.

When next she demands your attention

listen for words from the pitch and the din

hear me hear me hear me is not so frightening.

Lift fingers to dark, gently unthreading

tender bones, folded wings that never have flown.

Now this bird she sits on your shoulder

singing on days when it rains

at night she circles the ceiling all-seeing

smudge of stain is now an all-new being

the sins that made her were not yours to own.

Button Your Lip, Baby, Button Your Clothes

Evidence from a previous year, that it usually works out!

The landscape of this writer's inner life has been suffering epic drought. I spent several days down with the flu, too pathetic to even hold up a book. And passing from what I complained was near-death to blissed-out-but-Jello-like near-health has almost been scary, from a writing perspective:  pfft  --  no ideas to write about, and not so much as a phrase of inspiration whatsoever. Every line was like pulling my own teeth, the result, complete garbage. I've heard of lightning strikes changing the brain chemistry of their human targets altogether  --  personalities, speech patterns and accents, everything  --  and I'm a little worried a virus can do the same.

Or maybe it's just due to the change in the weather, and the biorhythm shifts that come with it. In any case, in the last week or so, Doug and I began our annual ritual of getting ready for the garden in earnest, and nearly murdering each other over it. Straight rows, or curved? Tried-and-true traditional methods, or strike out with some new idea that hasn't been thought up in the last 10,000 years of agriculture? Plant winter squash even if "one" of us hates them mightily? (Perhaps you can see which sides I am on.)

We're not the only couple for whom the first step toward fall harvest is spring hand-to-hand combat. About now, asking in bewilderment "What is it with the garden?" is as much a rite among vegetable-gardening wives as falling on our knees and weeping with gratitude in front of the first daffodil. Best I can figure, the garden is marital territory much like planning to have children, with the added fuel of actually getting to choose which genetics go into the living being that will be created. Not to mention planning in advance for the care of this "perfect" genetic specimen. That's a topic for a different blog, and a different blogger  --  one with some actual expertise in psychology.

The hardest fought battles end up being the most dearly beloved partnerships. This will be good to bear in mind later, when fights over the garden will be in the actual garden, and we're likely to be holding sharp, long-handled tools. For now, we're back on track. In sexist roles, and I am A-OK with that. Doug set up the big seed-starting contraption (full-spectrum lights rigged by ropes to be lowered and raised as necessary, warming pads, a tangle of extension cords I would enjoy working with about as much as changing a tire). And I've laid the first babies  --  I mean, seeds  --  into their flats. With not much else to do but wait for germination, we are headed out for a hike on this glorious day, with our little filly on a lead in tow. Maybe there will be daffodils. Or inspiration for the next blog out there somewhere, along the way.

Turn Home

A middle-aged friend was sexy as the 50s movie star whose name she bore. More the raspy-voiced type, though:  no mascara on blond lashes, weathered freckles to the wind. She both hated and loved the cigarettes we sucked down with gusto. Her eyes were cold blue fire ringed by the deep lines of the fair-skinned. Hair like a hot pepper, threaded with white. Curls ran riot over her forehead, demanding that short, fair freckled fingers swipe them aside. A wild band of eight half-grown, red-headed children encircled her endlessly. And orbiting them  --  errant soccer balls, exploding windows. Falling things. On the slopes, the mother with the paprika-colored hair rocked a pair of spandex ski pants  --  by keeping up with so many children aflame in sibling rivalry, most of them as big or bigger than she. To them, broken bones were simple facts of youth. Casts were tolerable nuisances. Crutches, for wimps.

Best of all, one of her eyes tended to wander. It was fantastic, enchanted  --  it betrayed her inner thoughts. Pitiable was the child who foolishly garnered its attention, but children were rarely the target of her ire. She was unflappable and ceaselessly kind, with children. Far more often, she’d be focused on a conversation with me, when one blue-jeweled orb would move on to an absurdity. And the truly absurd required an adult. A gross display of over-parenting at our children's school, or a lurid conversation across the room. Ugly gossip. Our talk would grind to a halt. On a hard-blown stream of smoke, she’d expel, “Some people don’t have enough to do.”

From elsewhere, Crash! Bang! Owwww Mommmmmmm!

The objects of all her red-headed passion called, and she had eyes only for them.

* * *

As will happen with busy mothers, circumstance eked us apart, and it's been many years since I've seen Marilyn. But she rises up in memory at the oddest times. As in, when I see the butt-ugliest elements of my country.

You there, spewing hate to those gentle women and their daughters wearing burkas. Some people don't have enough to do.

And you over there, with your mind so focused on another's sex life, that the vision of it pervades your every waking thought, misdirects your every wish for change into a fight against this "abomination" that so captures and enthralls you. Some people don't have enough to do.

And you, all of you with the guns in your hands. Aching so hard to be heroes, to fight and to perish as your forefathers, that you make up fantasies and believe them like boys in a tent. Playing pretend, with the firepower to leave real grieving mothers. Some people don't have enough to do.

Too much hate in some people, for them to know they’ve been eviscerated by such seemingly mild words. Blind, ignorant rage, in the name of “patriotism,” can’t really know what it is to love home and hearth. Or there wouldn’t be such time and energy, to joust with windmills.

As for me, when the absurdity starts to hurt too much, I turn inward, toward my own home, the place where the objects of my passion always return. Nowhere, and no one, is more deserving of my time and energy. I have enough to do.

Please see http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/scarce/hate-comes-orange-county.

Run For Your Lives

In a great cosmic twist, God decided She was in the mood for a divine comedy. Thus it came to pass that the fictional premise of the Left Behind series of novels was, in fact, carried out on Earth.

Jed Faidley had been zoning out at the monthly Town of Weston Corners Rotary Club luncheon, thinking about a recent bounce in his 401K, when he was taken. Left behind in a crumple was the navy, polished cotton suit that his dear wife had only the day before helped him pick out. His professionally pressed, white shirt lay flat inside the jacket, the red tie flopped over like a mangled corpse at an accident scene. Diamond cufflinks rolled from the sleeves to the carpet like fallen teeth.

Jed did not find himself naked in The Rapture, however. He was plucked from his earthly life and deposited into darkest Africa, clad in the last Boy Scout uniform he had worn in his youth. His ankles were thick bones covered in mottled skin, pale and white below the too-short pants. His buttery gut spilled over the moss green belt, the woven fabric unforgiving against his fat. The collar pressed his soft jowls outward, but a habit from youth remained, and he did not unbutton it.

At first, believing this was a dream, he swaggered around in the firelight with a hand in one strained, gaping pocket, whistling. He wiggled his sausage-encased butt at the fire, surveyed the scene to see whether a treasure of jewels might be in this dream, waited for some exotic beauties to stride purposefully out of the darkness.

Slowly, he became aware of eyes staring at him from beyond the light. Bared teeth, salivation, in every direction. Reality  --  foreign smells, sights, sounds  --  dawned into the core of his being. He knew he wasn't dreaming when urine seeped down the length of his short pants and cooled so uncomfortably that he would hardly be able to run. He began to jump and yelp, scamper like a terrified little girl from a snake. But everywhere, he met a wall of black-skinned nakedness.

Yet it came to pass, the assault was only on his dignity. For those had not been teeth bared in hunger at him. What he thought was drool, were tears  --  great watery streams of gut-wracking amusement.

The Natives, and God, were laughing.

* * *

Inspiration: Mike Huckabee

"I have said many times, publicly, that I do think [Obama] has a different worldview, and I think it's in part molded out of a very different experience ... Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs, not madrassas." 

* For anyone who may not know, Barack Obama was not born in Kenya.

Our Religion

A few years back, I was perplexed by the broiling anger a lot of women had at even the mention of the name "Martha Stewart." Her phenomenon hadn't touched me much. I've always been fairly disconnected from popular culture and didn't even have a television that worked then, but that is not to say I was unaffected. Human behaviors can be positively contagious. The Martha Stewart Way was all very refined, for a rabid frenzy. When I bumped into my best girlfriend in line at Wal-Mart  --  at 4 a.m. on a work / school night, both of us with craft objects in our hands  --  a veil was yanked from my eyes and that was the end of that for me. My excursion with over-homemaking was short-lived enough that I didn't develop a grudge, but I've grown to understand others' anger better now. With no small amount of corporate backing and marketing savvy, Martha Stewart took advantage of women's desires to want the very best for the ones they love. She lied; her way wasn't easy, women would fail and exhaust themselves in the process, to the point of pitchfork-wielding fury. We are growing tired of failing expectations, publicly, and paying for the privilege.

*

If I think of how to explain the description "Half Homesteader" from my Blogger profile, you'll be the first to know. So far, all efforts have yielded no complete theory. What does it mean to be a "homesteader" in this day and age, with blended families, the near absolute requirement of motorized vehicles to get to full-time jobs and lots of other essential places, so much information from everywhere that a person could suffer a breakdown from overload? Most of all, what does it mean when we have so much wealth  --  in the form of both dollars relative to most of the rest of the world, and a disproportionate share of the world's finite oil supply? (I don't mean we personally are rich. I mean in this country  --  yes, with notable exceptions  --  money problems usually mean stress, even grave stress, but not starvation.)

A partial explanation for the "half" in Half Homesteader is that there are no dire consequences for half-finished projects around here; we need not remember that some Native American cultures know the February full moon as the "Hunger Moon." Regarding my too numerous homemaking "works in progress," I blame Martha Stewart for a degree of burnout, and myself for a childish tendency to become distracted by just about any beautiful, pleasure-inducing thing. My eccentric, wildly painted dining room will be gorgeous  --  just you wait  --  sometime around Spring, 2021. See, because, my very existence does not depend on the dining room’s completion.

But there's another, less carefree side to what we are doing, too. An exception that proves the rule of half-finished projects would be canning the harvest. The job always gets finished because the vegetables won’t wait until 2021. The visceral satisfaction of knowing the fruits of our labor could save us during the time of the Hunger Moon is probably evolutionary, and immediate enough to carry me through the work.

Another exception would be our compost pile, an altar to all that we believe. Visiting is a form of prayer. I mean it. We pour sacrificial gifts onto it  --  you may say kitchen trash but I say carefully sorted nutrients, virginally perfect if "free of chemicals and metals" is the test. That altar holds life and the essence of life. We imbue it with all the hope and faith we’ve got in next year's garden, thanks for the lifetime supply of sustenance that we are about to receive. Years ago, taking the compost to the pile was a punishment I gave naughty children, a replacement for barbaric practices of past generations like hitting. We didn't have many material things to take away from our daughters, and they weren't quite old enough for social lives so "grounding" was useless. They hated the compost pile, though, or learned to. In hindsight I realize that was a mistake. Religion, if it's to stand its best chance of sticking with your children beyond the years you can strong-arm them to an altar, should not be used as punishment.

Despite the “Get Out of Jail Free” card that we use too often with our homesteading efforts, we are deadly serious. We are learning. I'll not go into the details of the seething, stinking mess we humans as a species have made of our planet and our climate, and the fact we're in deep shit. (I'll not mince words, either.) Plenty of others have done a bang-up job of trying to get the message out, and I commend them for their tenacity when so many people hold their fingers in their ears singing la la la la la and refusing to accept the veracity of the science. Multiple disciplines in science, I might add  --  biology, chemistry, meteorology, archaeology, geography, paleo-botany, etc. etc. etc.  --  all of whose results are in accord and dovetailing into one whoppingly terrifying conclusion. Those who believe it’s all a hoax are working awfully hard to ignore the evidence.

All I feel I can contribute is to tromp around the confines of my life, peeping quietly on occasion: "Please. Learn how to grow your own food. Learn how to preserve it. It takes more than you may think." I hope our family's efforts amount to at least that  --  a bank of stored knowledge for the future. Somehow or another we dodged a bullet with "the compost punishment" mistake. My grown daughters looked around on their own, said OM-EFFing-Gawd and commenced to devoting their lives to sustainability and, unspoken but equally important, adaptability. Making plans in sync with the mess they've inherited. They are the amazing examples to me. I'm still trying to work out what it is to be sustainable, after a lifetime of making choices from so much societal wealth, and the contagion of my human group's behaviors.

Ω

Suggested reading: 

First, Bill McKibben’s Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, for the solid science of it, and a beautifully written, thoughtful consideration for what to do next. (Or check out his website at http://billmckibben.com/index.html.)

Second, Dimitri Orlov’s Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects. In this case I would caution that the man, who incidentally is an engineer, is extremist for my taste. I don’t particularly like his politics. But for those who can look past that, he has a sparkling intellect very worth reading, and a truly fascinating hypothesis comparing the current U.S. corporate-government monolith to pre- and post-collapse Russia. I don’t recommend his website, however, mostly because it’s too disjointed.

To Be Without Words

A guarded chamber of my heart is a temple that holds my earliest memories, so fine and diaphanous that the breeze of time could easily carry them away:  a feather, a wisp of smoke, the curl of a tiny lock of hair.

There are four memories there. Two are from inside my crib, one of these purely visual  --  white walls, wooden slats, a 1950s pastel painting of a bunny and other forest friends on my side of the headboard. The other of these first two is a single glorious singing moment in which language rushed into my mind like a waterfall. A Mexican woman my parents hired to care for me walked into the room, chattering sweetly at the end of my nap, and in that very split second the final synapse that gave me the capacity for verbal understanding made contact. I sat up in the thrill of new waking, steeped in the sweet perfume of a clean and happy baby’s sheets  --  wide-eyed I’m sure, adrenaline coursing through my veins. It was like being born. Spanish, not the English that would ultimately become my “first” language, opened the floodgates. The next and longer work of my childhood development had to have been the unyoking of my infant tongue so that I, too, could participate in expressing a conscious universe.

The next two earliest memories amalgamate into one convulsing-red blur of violent temper, another's temper, my first experiences of agony and terror. I only break this into two memories because I remember the infractions that precipitated the whippings so well. I was about three; I can give an approximate age because of where we were at the time. Once I had rocked a rocking chair so forcefully that it broke the window behind it, and the other time I had slipped away from my caretakers with powerful intent to feed pigeons  --  slipped a half-mile away, alone, toddling myself to the edge of an interstate.

Language factors into this second set of first memories, too, though differently. Because the most stunning part of them to me now is not the flurry of fists or pain  --  these have been carefully sifted out of my first-memories chamber. They are just facts, without feeling or lingering hurt. What I remember most acutely is that I could not find the language for a new concept that entered my three-year-old mind in that flash of time, with all the shock and force of a snuffing mudslide bearing down on everything I ever knew. I was thunderstruck in the moment by an absence, a void  --  no word! no word!  --  for the sudden understanding of what it was to cease to exist. That my little capsule of consciousness could vanish. That I could die. I had no word for die.

Obviously it wasn't the end of me. Forty-three years later, I can tell the story, washed clean of anguish many, many years ago. But I wonder.

How, exactly, would it have helped, to have the word?