Other writers,

When you're writing something, do you live it? I'm working on a brief and, for the first time in my career, I had an associate who works for me do the first draft. But, even so, I'm living it. I think about it, dream about it, pray about it, walk to work to its cadence.

What is it about writing something that makes it so magical? Why is writing such a powerful act?

It consumes me. I give myself all the way over to the writing in a way that's beyond the way I've ever given myself, witch that I am, over to a human lover. I just live for the sound of the words, for the selection of one set of words over another. I wake up thinking of the best way to say what I want to say and go to sleep dreaming of the way my words might affect three judges and their clerks. I know I'm driving this associate nuts explaining to her why one set of changes works but another won't.

I have some dear friends who are studying Air this year. The direction of East, thought, communication, ideas, new beginnings. Their watchword for this year is "Damn Birds." Birds keep showing up in their lives as they focus on East. I live in the East, make my living by my ability to write. And, there are times, like now, when I can't imagine a different spiritual practice.

is it like this for you, too?

This is the place/ I meet the evening face to face

OK, thanks to the kindness of strangers, I think I've got this blogroll thing figured out and will be trying, over the next few days, to add a blogroll.

Here's a weekend poem for you while I'm at work.

This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun.

This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky.

This is my rock
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.

-David McCord


Where is your rock? Have you been there lately?

Bangs Head on Watertiger's Desk; Petitions Jeffers for Keys to Bedlam

Yesterday’s WaPo Food Section contained the obligatory “food forecast” for 2006, supplemented by the obligatory opinions of Faith Popcorn, trend recognizer extraordinaire. Along with interesting information such as the fact that the use of trans fats is decreasing, while the popularity of “small plates” continues to grow in area restaurants, the article contained this disturbing nugget:

Trend expert Faith Popcorn, keynote speaker at the Future of Food conference last month in Washington, and the person who predicted the “cocooning” craze of the 1990s, sees faith-friendly food showing up in the marketplace, an outgrowth of what her company calls “clanning,” or the desire to belong to groups with common ideas.

Tyson Foods, which makes chicken, beef and pork products, already has begun offering free downloadable prayer booklets on its Web site. The booklets provide mealtime prayers in a variety of faiths. The article notes that “food forecasters are predicting some provocative trends, including such possibilities as Christian-raised chicken . . . .”

Now, I’m a person of faith and one of the things I try to do every time I eat is to offer some gratitude for my meal. I do it quietly; no one eating with me even knows I’m doing it. But I can tell you that I sure as heck don’t download my prayers from the Tyson Food website, nor can I imagine anyone doing so. But, I checked and, sure enough, Tyson’s is now apparently selling prayers along with processed chicken parts. Most of the prayers are xian or at least Abrahamic, although a few appear to be Native American and a few appear to be based on some kind of generalized religious sentiment. Strangely, given the role women play in purchasing and preparing food, none of them speak of divinity as feminine, although a number refer to a masculine god. I’m sure Tyson Foods thinks they’ve been very “inclusive,” but they’ve failed. But that’s not the real problem.

The real problem is that it’s creepy. WTF is “faith-friendly” food, Ms. Popcorn? It’s apparently not kosher food, which, based upon my very limited understanding, at least requires humane methods of slaughter. It’s apparently not organic food, which, again based upon my very limited understanding, at least evidences some respect for the Earth. No, what it apparently is, is food produced by big corporations who try to dress up their processed food and agribusinesses with advertising that appeals to wack-job fundies. Forget it. I’ll take the small plates, the dark chocolate, and the larger print on the nutrition labels. But I’m not downloading my prayers from the Tyson Food webpage and I’m not buying any xian-raised chicken, either.

Blog Roll

I'd dearly love to add a blog roll to the side of my blog. I changed the "template" to one that allows links, even though I'm not crazy about the way it looks, but it won't seem to let me add any links.

Any one who'd like to advise the newbie, please do so in comments here.

Thanks in advance!

I'm Rooting for the Cedars

I used to work for a narcissist. She was a monster. Everyone who worked for her, and I mean everyone, hated her and hated working for her. I don’t call her a narcissist lightly; she’d been diagnosed as a narcissist by one of the best Jungian analysts I know. Everything, and I mean everything, was all about her. You’d go in to talk to her about an issue in your department and spend an hour listening to stories about her ski trip; then she’d be late for her next appointment and you’d never get to discuss the issue you came in to discuss. Since working for her (I left that job and, a year or so later, she was fired, thank the Goddess), I think I can recognize a narcissist when I see one. (Insert obligatory skyatrist/tv joke.) George Bush strikes me as a world-class narcissist.

He gave us another example just this weekend:
After meeting with wounded personnel at Brooke Army Medical Center, Bush joked about what he termed his own injury in combat — from an encounter with a tree on his Crawford ranch.
"As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won," he said. "The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, [a] colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, colonel."

When you think about it, this is quite an amazing statement. Bush, who never served, goes to visit seriously wounded soldiers and comes out to make a joke about his own “injury.” Of course, many of us have noted Bush’s propensity to get injured in weird ways when he’s out of the public eye for several days, but whether he was drunk or sober when he went out to clear brush, he’s got a freaking scratch, for Goddess sakes. He’s apparently incapable of giving a statement that does not focus on him.

Narcissism is defined as: An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements). Only a narcissist would start a war because Saddam threatened his daddy and he wanted to get Saddam’s gun to wave around. Only a narcissist would insist that anyone who criticizes him must favor the terrorists who attacked America on September 11th. Only a narcissist, with a exaggerated sense of his own achievements and talents, would dress up in a flight suit and strut his codpiece across the deck of a carrier decked out with “Mission Accomplished” banners.

And only an asshole would stand in a hospital full of wounded soldiers and talk about his own stupid scratch. I'm just sorry the cedar didn't give him the cockpunch he so desperately needs.

The Battle of Manassas

They’re the “family values” crowd. But if your sister has breast cancer and needs chemo, don’t think that you can take in your niece and nephew and have them live with you while she recovers. Better to send them off to an orphanage, I guess. They’re the “family values” crowd, but don’t think that when your favorite Great Aunt gets too old to live alone, you can bring her into your home and let her impart her wisdom and values to your children. There are nursing homes out there and someone makes a profit running them. They’re the “family values” crowd, but don’t think that you and your two favorite cousins can pool your resources and buy a house together. Better if you each rent a one-bedroom apartment, live alone and isolated, and don’t invest in the American dream of owning a home.

At least in Manassas, Virginia.

As the Washington Post explained earlier this week, it’s apparently more important for Manassas, Virginia to hate on illegal immigrants than it is to promote the “family values” that the conservatives are always shoving down our throats. Actually, since the law they’ve passed in Manassas does nothing to target illegal immigrants but is clearly aimed at immigrants, maybe we could just drop the pretense and admit that, in Manassas, Virginia, it’s more important to hate on anybody who isn’t a white suburbanite than it is to promote the “family values” that apparently are only “valuable” when being used by the MSM and the Republican Party to dupe the rubes at election time.

Manassas, as the WaPo explains, adopted an ordinance on Dec. 5th that ”changed a definition of ‘family’ in the zoning code so that, essentially, households are restricted to immediate relatives, even when the total is below the occupancy limit. With a few exceptions, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and other extended relatives do not count as family in Manassas anymore. For instance, six cousins living in a six-bedroom house would be illegal, even though the number does not exceed the occupancy limit.” Although, like the school board in Dover, city officials are now denying that the ordinance was passed for the obvious reason, last month the Vice Mayor admitted that it was aimed at what he was pleased to term “the larger problem in Manassas of illegal immigration,” which he blamed for problems such as “parking and strained school budgets.”

Dear Mr. Vice Mayor: Bite me. An illegal immigrant doesn’t take up any more parking spaces than a legal immigrant. (And likely less space than the fucking Escalades that the white suburbanites in Manassas appear to favor.) Children of illegal immigrants don’t take up two desks due to the fact that their parents are illegal immigrants; Manassas’ schools are strained because overpopulation, execrable public transportation, and the housing situation around Washington, D.C. have sent people way the hell out to bumfuck Manassas. Which used to be almost completely lily white, but now finds itself with a population that is -- horrors -- 15 % Latino and 13% black! You know that blue that’s been creeping south and west from Arlington over the last few elections? Hmmmm.

Anyway, the citizens of Manassas ought to be outraged over this waste of taxpayer money. Manassas will waste money defending this racist, anti-family ordinance, money that could have gone to build schools, provide public transportation (voila! less need for parking!), or build affordable housing. And then, they will lose anyway. No matter what they say, they’ve clearly violated the very line that the Supreme Court laid down almost thirty years ago in Moore v. City of East Cleveland, Ohio, 431 U.S. 494 (1977).

Morons.

Wild and Precious Life

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I do. I love new calendars full of unlived days. I love the not-completely-true suggestion that this year I’ll do all those things I always mean to do. I love the notion, as the sign I’ve had on my refrigerator for years says, that “You Can Change Your Life!”

In addition to “fear,” one of the words upon which I’ve been meditating lately is “thrive.” What does it mean to thrive? What would my life look like -- what would your life look like -- if we were thriving? What needs to change in order for us to thrive and which of those things are under our control? New Years Resolutions, for me, are all about figuring out how to thrive and doing what’s necessary in order to thrive.

Along those lines, I looked up this Mary Oliver poem for my friend Rachael this morning:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

And it got me thinking about thriving all over again. I love the final lines:

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

So along with all my busy New Years Resolutions, goals, objectives, and lists of chores, along with my Filofax, Blackberry, laptop, cell phone, and iPod, along with the articles I want to write, the classes I’m going to take, and the projects I’m going to complete, I plan to spend more time this year “paying attention,” and “falling down into the grass, being idle and blessed.” I can’t think of a better way to thrive.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life in the coming year? How are you going to do it? Pick a tarot card and see what your subconscious is trying to tell you about thriving. I'll interpret it in the comments section if you like.

Wicked

Saw Wicked last night at the Kennedy Center with -- what else -- a bunch of Wiccans. I'm not the biggest fan of musicals, but I enjoyed it. Based on the book of the same name, it tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, from her point of view. It's also, I think, an interesting story about friendship and how our friends change us. While the song I downloaded to my iPod last night after the show was "Defying Gravity," the song I woke up humming this morning was the duet that Elphaba and Glinda the Good Witch sing to each other and say, "Who knows if I've been changed for the better, but thanks to you, I have been changed for good." That's what happens when we make friends; they change us.

This ties in as well with another topic I've been thinking about lately -- fear. Shirely MacLaine said that the more she traveled, the more she realized that "fear makes strangers of people who should be friends." At first glance, Glinda -- who's lovely, and popular, and perky -- and Elphaba -- who's green, and outcast, and way too self-consciously serious -- seem like odd friends. And, yet, when they're able to get past their fears, they do become friends.

And, I think of how the fear that Bush has generated has depleted the friendship that the rest of the world felt for us just after 9/11. Clinton was, if anything, more popular outside, as opposed to inside, the U.S. But he didn't make other peoples objects of fear in an attempt to influence U.S. politics, then, did he? Irrational fear of Islam and brown people has made strangers of people who could have been and should have been our friends.

Fear also, as the Bene Gesserit noted, is the mind killer. When you're afraid of someone, you can't put yourself in their shoes and imagine why they're acting the way they are. You make up stupid excuses such as, "They hate us for our freedom," and then you act based upon your false premise. Bush and his rubes and dupes are so busy telling themselves scary bedtime stories about "Islamofascists" that they can't begin to figure out why people are willing to strap bombs to themselves and blow up a building in the green zone. Until you can understand what's really motivating people, you can't respond appropriately and you can't understand anything when fear pumps chemicals into your brain and activates the fight or flight response.

In Wicked, the wizard seemed awfully Bushian. As a young man, he's a gigolo and he just sort of stumbles into being the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But if people want to call him wonderful, well, he's happy to let them. He uses Elphaba to create flying monkeys (and they were really great flying monkeys!) that he plans to use as spies and he tells her that you have to give people a group to fear if you hope to unite them.

When Glinda finally throws him out of Oz she quips, "Think of it as regime change." From her lips to the Goddess' ears.

Garden Porn

It's here, right on schedule. Burpee's catalog. This year, the cover shows a pile of lucsious, ripe tomatoes, a new hybrid called Burpee's Red Lightning. They do this on purpose -- send the catalog out in the depts of winter when we're all longing for a little taste of Spring.

And, like Pavlov's bitch, I respond the same way every year. I want everything I see. I want the new purple and red coleus called Fantasy for my front garden. I want parsely and sage and rosemary and thyme and basil and sweet woodruff and wormwood and nasturtiums and marigolds and morning glories and ornamental millet and the black and white mixed scabiosia and the yellow violas and . . . . I do this every winter. And, every April, I curse myself and wonder what on earth made me think I could get all those plants in all by myself, an old lady like me with a full-time job. And, I promise myself that, next year, I'll be more reasonable, frugal, self-controlled. And, I mean it. I do. Until the moment when my secretary brings me the mail and I see the Red Lightning tomatoes, perfect, amazing, shot through a Vaseline-covered lens and simply, well, simply pornographic.

Of course, deep in my garden porn-induced lust, I also forget about all the perinnials I already have -- the rubideckia, the peonies, the iris, the lillies, the woad, the daffodils, and the lilacs. I can't spare a minute's thought for the seeds I harvested myself this fall, the deep black hollyhocks and the rose hips and the pineapple sage. But honestly, that's the planting I love best of all -- plants from plants that I grew last year.

One of, IMHO, the most terrible things the U.S. did to Iraq was to make it against the law for farmers to collect and use their own seed. Agribusiness has been after this for a long time all over the world. And, it's wrong. It's just wrong. Ask any gardener, anyone who spends time with their hands in the dirt and makes a daily ritual of walking around and checking in with each of their plants. I hope the farmers in Iraq just ignore the rule. I hope the Iraqi government undoes it. It's pornographic in the true sense of the word -- an attempt to substitute what's fake for what's real. Bremmer had his dirty little hand in this. And he didn't use a condom.

Now, I wonder if I can put some of the new eupatorium in between the purple millet . . .

Understaning Jebuz Land

I think that chidyke is absolutely right.. As usual.

One thing her post doesn't mention is that all humans, including those living in the Meth States of America, need ecstacy and transcendence. Poor people in today's America get that from meth, football, and religion. Until we find a way to offer people alternative ways to access ecstatic states, we shouldn't be surprised when they use what they know. As chidyke notes, the Conservative Movement has taken away things like access to education or the chance to run a business and spend time with your family that could have provided an alternative. I'll also add the constant encroachment on wilderness and privacy. People can't get out alone with nature to have transcendent experiences anymore, so they do what they can. They turn on the tv or head off to hear a fire-and-brimstone xian preacher. If the cost for a few hours of transcendent experience is voting against your own interest, or getting meth mouth, or killing off all your cattle, well, as chidyke's post shows, people are usually willing to pay that price.

Consort

Lately, I've been at several gatherings where one of the women wanted to introduce her significant other and the gentleman involved offered up, "I'm her consort." The first time, I think the guy was making an affectionate joke:" She's such a princess; I guess I must be her consort. "

On December 24th, my friend Renee, an incredibly gifted cook, had a bunch of folks over for a traditional Polish Yule dinner. One of the women there, Angela, is a minister and the priestess of a fairly large circle. She has a new (and delightful) significant other. They're too old to be "boyfriend and girlfriend." "Lover" sounds a bit, I don't know, like too much information, somehow. So one of the other guests who knows both of them suggested "Consort of the Reverened One." The gentleman involved was delighted with the phrase and kept repeating it with a smile.

I like "consort" better than "boyfriend," "lover," or "significant other." And I love living in a world where a guy would be delighted to be called "Consort of the Reverened One." I love seeing Angela happy. And, Goddess knows, I love Renee's cooking!

Are there other ways of describing men's roles in ways that empower both the women and the men involved?

Fearlessness

This weekend, I've been pondering a flyer I got from Omega Institutue, where I've taken some nice, and some stupid, seminars. They're running a weekend conference in March on "Being Fearless." They've got quotes sprinkled throughout the flyer and some of them are making me think about the things I fear and about the ways in which I've relied upon fear throughout my life.

The first quote, from Tagore, says: "Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless when facing them." My reaction is that this is something Bush and his rubes could profit from hearing. It seems that quite a few Americans are so fearful of an event that will quite likely never happen to them that they're willing to give up any freedom Bush cares to name. Of course, it's foolish to pray to be sheltered from dangers. It's a dangerous world. We can't control that. We can control how much of our lives we surrender to fear.

Of course, I always thought that the Bene Gesserit had the best thing to say about fear: It's the mind-killer. When you're afraid, you're not thinking clearly. You're not reacting from a postion of strength nor are you able to perceive the situation from any point of view other than your fear. Fear is, as the Bene Gesserit continued, the little death. Cowards, we all know, die a thousand deaths, heroes and heroines, only once.

Another quote is from Byron Katie: "Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it." In my experience, generally true. I was raised by a father who "catastrophized" everything. If you got a C in Math, you were going to grow up impoverished and miserable. I've gotten better, but I can still convince myself that a hangnail will turn into cancer or that one bad ruling from a judge means I'm going to lose the whole case, get fired, lose my house, be a bag lady . . . But reality is generally not that bad. And, the Saudis who flew into the Pentagon and WTC were monsters, but it didn't mean that the whole world hated us or that we had to go to war with Iraq. The reality wasn't as bad as the story Bush told about it.

A third quote from that great witch Erica Jong: "Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." Well, yes and no. I can take my life in my own hands all I want, and it won't change the bad air I breathe or the economy that is designed to screw women. The illusion that we can control everything is dangerous. It leads to self-blame. Last night, I had dinner with some wonderful folks. It was one of "those" dinners -- amazing food, sparkling conversation, friendship. Two women there were African American and one was decrying affirmative action. She wanted, she said, to earn what she got. The other one pointed out to her that she'd have to work twice as hard as George Bush ever worked in order to have half as much. At some point, blaming yourself is counter productive. But, we like it because it gives us a sense of control, the illsuion that, this year, if we just work harder, we can control everything. We can't. Any more than Bush can prevent terrorism if he just takes away enough of our freedoms.

So, way too long a post. I'll close with one of my great loves, the poet Jelaluddin Rumi: "Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking." May it be so for me. May it be so for you. May it be so for my beloved country.

The Sevens

Seven Things to Do Before I Die

1. Learn to fence
2. Learn to play the harp
3. Publish some poetry
4. Still the monkey mind
5. Be Here Now
6. See a woman elected president
7. Pee on George Bush's grave

Seven Things I Can't Do

1. Sing
2. Draw
3. Fix mechanical things
4. Almost anything on a computer beyond type
5. Stop reading all the time
6. Stop myself from editing what I read
7. Keep my mouth shut

Seven Books I Love

1. The Collected Works of Dorothy Parker
2. The Essential Rumi
3. The Collected Works of Mary Oliver
4. The Politics of Women's Spirituality
5. Walking to Mercury
6. The Sparrow
7. The Secret Garden

Seven Things I Say All the Time

1. Shit
2. Fuck
3. Damn
4. Shit, fuck, damn.
5. Hey, Brighteyes!
6. Stoli martini, straight up, two olives and an onion
7. Quand meme

Seven Movies I Watch Over and Over Again

1. Metropolis
2. Flash Gordon
3. The Thomas Crown Affair (both versions)
4. Dark Victory
5. Nosfratu
6. My Dinner With Andre
7. The Lion in Winter