Horrors transcended

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Happy Halloween! I love how this day gives us a chance to play with fright and pretend we're someone else (and eat Reese's peanut butter cups).

Just before our mid-term elections here in the U.S., while politicians flood the air waves with last ditch efforts to get voters out Tuesday, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert held a Rally to Restore Sanity on Washington DC's mall, which brought out well over 200,000 people. Was the rally to support a political party or candidate? No. In his comments at the end of the comedic and musically entertaining event, Stewart asks, What exactly was this? What was the point? His point was to pull back from 24-hour media pundit craziness-inducing overreactions of the Left and Right and remind us that we are not made up of those caricature-warped portrayals of us Americans. I take great hope from the success of this rally that called out hate and reminded us not to let ourselves be driven by the media's polarizing takes on reality.

I'd like to use this moment when politics are all we're hearing on the TV and radio, on Halloween's day of pretend horrors, to talk about three of our human species who truly suffered under another kind of horror, the political kind. While I complain about the faulty systems of my country and the inefficacy of politicians to fix the mess, and while I feel myself getting more cynical and disengaged (but I will force myself to stop at City Hall on the way to work Tuesday to exercise my right to vote), there are far worse political nightmares in the history of the world. The three people I'm spotlighting lived through some of the most terrifying realities of the 20th century. Yesterday, October 30, was not only the day of the Rally to Restore Sanity, it was Miguel Hernández's centenary birthday. He is the third person in my spotlight, below. In the poem of his I share, he says something like Jon Stewart said yesterday:

You are the body of water

that I am— we, together,

are the river

which as it grows deeper

is seen to run slower, clearer.

Besides perspective-taking in today's context of political lunacy, this is also about the power of language and poetry to not only express the inexpressible, but to sustain us, even when life is at its most dire. Whether in the reading of it, or in writing it, these three show that poetry can transcend the worst that mankind offers and lift us on powerful and delicate wings into the shining sun at the core of ourselves.

For further biographical information on each of these three, please click on their names.

Nelson Mandela, Prisoner 466/64, born 1918

After spending more than twenty years working for equal rights for Blacks in apartheid-heavy South Africa, Nelson Mandela was arrested for sabotage and sentenced to life in prison. He served almost 27 years in three prisons – Robben Island, Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison, until his release in 1990. He was elected President of the African National Congress in 1991, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and was elected the first black President of South Africa in 1994. He said, “In my country we go to prison first and then become President.”

Nelson Mandela said the poem Invictus sustained him through his nearly 27 years in prison.

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Anna Akhmatova, 1889 - 1966
"Before this sorrow mountains bow . . ."

Poet Anna Akhmatova lived during the most turbulent time of Russian history, and though she was not herself imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, her first husband, after their divorce, was executed, and her son imprisoned for seventeen months. Most of those closest to her were exiled, imprisoned or executed for their political leanings. Her poetry was banned, she lived under surveillance. Her masterpiece about the horrors and sorrows of Stalin's death camps, Requiem, was written and dedicated to the women she met standing outside Leningrad's Kresty Prison while her son was imprisoned there. The poem was not published until after her death. Please do read the entire poem in the link above. Here is one stanza from Requiem, followed by a poem called Solitude that speaks to her own lack of freedom and the writing that sustained her.

from Requiem

by Anna Akhmatova

5

Seventeen months I’ve pleaded

for you to come home.

Flung myself at the hangman’s feet,

my terror, oh my son.

And I can’t understand,

now all’s eternal confusion,

who’s beast, and who’s man,

how long till execution.

And only flowers of dust,

ringing of censers, tracks just

running somewhere, nowhere, far.

And deep in my eyes gazing,

swift, fatal, threatening,

one enormous star.

(Translated by Yevgeny Bonver)

Solitude

by Anna Akhmatova

So many stones are thrown at me

that I no longer cower,

the turret’s cage is shapely,

high among high towers.

My thanks, to its builders,

may they escape pain and woe,

here, I see suns rise earlier,

here, their last splendours glow.

And often winds from northern seas

fill the windows of my sanctuary,

and a dove eats corn from my palm…

and divinely light and calm,

the Muse’s sunburnt hand’s at play,

finishing my unfinished page.

(I'm sorry, but I don't know who translated this version of "Solitude") 

Miguel Hernández, 1910 (October 30) - 1942

Yesterday was Miguel Hernández' centenary birthday. I didn't know about Hernández until my dear friend Lorenzo of The Alchemist's Pillow offered a beautiful look at him in his post called Cicada Dirge. This special birthday was hugely celebrated in Spain and around the Spanish-speaking world this weekend. Coming out of poverty and his father's adamant rejections of his literary and poetic interests, Hernández beat incredible odds to become one of the most admired Spanish poets. As a supporter and soldier of the anti-fascist Republican forces against Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil war, he was arrested and sentenced first to death, and then life in prison when Franco took power. He didn't survive long in prison, as the terrible conditions led to his death by tuberculosis at the age of 31.

Post script: Lorenzo at The Alchemist's Pillow has posted a new commemorative essay called Milking a goat and a dream, tenderly showing more intimate details of Miguel Hernández's story. He plans to continue his series on Hernández in future posts as well.

The world is as it appears

by Miguel Hernández

The world is as it appears

before my five senses,

and before yours, which are

the borders of my own.

The others' world

is not ours: not the same.

You are the body of water

that I am— we, together,

are the river

which as it grows deeper

is seen to run slower, clearer.

Images of life—

as soon as we receive them,

they receive us, delivered

jointly, in one rhythm.

But things form themselves

in our own delirium.

The air has the hugeness

of the heart I breathe,

and the sun is like the light

with which I challenge it.

Blind to the others,

dark, always remiss,

we always look inside,

we see from the most intimate places.

It takes work and love

to see these things with you;

to appear, like water

with sand, always one.

No one will see me completely.

Nor is anyone the way I see him.

We are something more than we see,

something less than we look into.

Some parts of the whole

pass unnoticed.

No one has seen us. We have seen

no one, blind as we are from seeing.

(translated by Don Share)

lost-and-found trick-or-treater

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With the help of friends, owners of a house in our current town carve 100 jack-o-lanterns every Halloween

I don't know how the olfactory organ manages it - the blessed nose - the way it skips decades like a stone on the surface of water and brings back October thirty-firsts from forty years ago in a nanosecond. I just know it works.

On the drive home from the university this week in the early evening dusk, if I smell burning leaves from someone's yard, instantly I am walking fast in that I-will-not-be-overly-excited-and-run walk that trick-or-treaters commence from their own porch into a dark but streetlit Halloween night (unless you're my husband as a boy and you just full out run door to door, pillow case slung over your shoulder to be stuffed with as much candy as you can carry, go home, dump it out on the living room floor, and go back out again, running).

For blocks and blocks my small town neighborhood angled off in rows of sidewalks covered in crispy brown leaves, lined with beacons: porch lights inviting me and hundreds of other kids to walk up to a friend's or a stranger's door, reach a hand into a big Melmac bowl and help ourselves to candy - politely take one, or impolitely grab a handful - to what I hoped would be Snickers, Reese's peanut butter cups or sour apple bubble gum, but please no Tootsie Rolls or apples.

We were little fishermen docking for a few seconds at ports of call, lit like lighthouses, where we filled our nets with what the neighborhood sea had stocked.

One Halloween, I was lost at sea.

Little Ruthie got invited to go trick-or-treating with a grown up friend of an older sister. Was it the year Nancy sewed me an 18th century Martha Washington costume complete with black lace mask, shawl and fingerless gloves, white wig dotted with blue satin rosebuds, and lovely draped blue satin garniture hanging from the waist? Impossibly, I managed to go off with Charlene and have a blast without either of us informing my parents. Have you ever seen a police car parked in front of your house, complete with spinning red and white lights? Whatever fun you were just having disappears like a wave seeping into sand.

But no doubt, the catch I emptied onto the carpet, sorted into piles of keepers and undesirables, then eaten a few a day, mollified my guilt into mid-November.
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8 random facts/habits

I was tagged by Vicki at Faint Heart Art to post eight random facts or habits about myself. Thanks for tagging me, this was fun to think about! It contains more memories than current habits.

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1. I'm 52, and I have never ridden a horse, which is probably a good thing, if you consider #2.

2. I was run over by a school bus when I was 4. It's not as bad as it sounds, but it's a bit shocking, right? My brother Bennett was driving it around the dirt lot by our church. He was learning to drive, so he practiced in the school bus our church used to pick kids up for Sunday School, and I was playing train conductor, jumping up and down off the steps. Nothing broke. But there were tread marks on my rump. (This is why we have rumps. Why is there no good word for "rump"? Buttocks. Butt. Arse. Back end. Backside. Behind. Bottom. Bum. Derriere. Seat. Hiney. A**. Rear. Fanny. Cheeks. Posterior. Gluteus maximus. Haunches. Hindquarters. I don't like any of 'em. Well, maybe arse is ok. Oh and my sister's word was "buckets.") Bennett and I always loved each other, but after that we were bonded for life, which ended for him in 1996 at age 47.

3. I dressed up as Martha Washington (George's wifee) for Halloween in 4th grade. My sister Nancy (10 years older than I - same sister as per "buckets" in #2) made the entire costume, including white wig with ribbons and black lace gloves, shawl and lace trimmed eye-mask. It was an extraordinary costume, so was I stunned when my teacher Mrs. Woodworth recognized and greeted me "Good morning, Ruthie"!

4. When I am afraid of flying I do a meditation that includes picturing the plane inside me, and I stop feeling afraid.

5. Around the same time as the bus incident in #2, I learned to read on my siblings' laps during daily evening devotions when everyone took turns reading the Bible.

6. When I was 12 Nancy cut my hair like Twiggy's. Wow, I just realized I had my own personal stylist in my sister.

7. When Don and I were first married, and I was a waitress, I waited on John Houseman in little Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, when he was on a book tour. I was the only waitress who knew who he was, which was what the manager guessed and seated him in my section. Was I shocked when I tonged ice cubes into his glass while recognizing that face I loved from the movie "The Paper Chase"! Of course the British actor asked for prime rib, which we had run out of. So I recommended filet mignon. "Fine," he said drolly. "Do you have any English mustuhd?" "But of course!" said I. Only we didn't, and someone had to run to the grocery store for Grey Poupon (there weren't any Rolls Royces around as in the TV ad). Mr. Houseman never smiled once. I would have been disappointed if he had, very disappointed.

8. I dream about babies, a lot.

Happy Halloween Oct. 31: spooky Dansville

When we moved to the farm in 2003 we didn't know about a certain local spooky story.



We had heard the true story of the Burning Bed, revealed to the world in a non-fiction book by Faith McNulty, and then made into a 1984 TV movie with Farrah Fawcett about Francine Hughes, the abused wife who set fire to her house in 1977, killing her husband, and getting away with it by "reason of insanity." I don't think she was insane, and I guess I'm glad she got away with it. I had seen the movie back in '84, but when we bought the farm I had to be reminded we were going to be living in the same town where the Burning Bed happened.

Well, one day after moving to the farm, I was browsing books at Schuler's, and there was a book of haunted stories from Michigan. Intrigued, I picked it up and leafed through, finding one from Dansville! The story goes like this (found here):

The Witch of Seven Gables Lane

"The adventurers who tread the back lane called Seven Gables near Dansville in Ingham County still sniff the air to see if they can smell the acrid, burning flesh of the witch who supposedly lived there in years past. . . .

. . . As the legend goes, local marauders locked the woman into her house, which was then set on fire. She perished in the flames, but the stories say she remains to wreak vengeance on those who still dare to venture near her property. . . .

. . . The place became such a teen mecca that a fence was erected to keep snoopers out of the area. The effort proved fruitless as thrill seekers still found their way back to the deceased woman's old place. But they didn't get away scot-free. It was said that the ghost would scream at trespassers and that the scream meant instant doom to its hearers if the premises weren't cleared immediately."

Every day on my country ride to town where I work, I used to drive by Seven Gables Road. It gave me the creeps, let me tell you, just seeing that name "Seven Gables" and remembering the story of that poor woman wreaking vengeance on anyone who goes near her property. But one day I worked up the courage to drive down Seven Gables Road and see if anything would happen. It is a very lonely, quiet dirt road with a few houses near the main road, but soon becomes abandoned and then a dead end. I parked my little Aveo and got out slowly with my camera. I looked across the fence where the house had been, toward the dead tree and cloud in the photo I took, above. Suddenly through the whispering wind someone yelled in the distance! It was a man's voice, not a woman's, but what did that matter! Heart thumping, I jumped in the car, turned it around and made dust fly as I tore back to the main road. I take a different route to work most of the time now, not that I'm afraid or anything. I just like driving through town.

One last eerie thing: Yesterday when I bravely changed my route to work again so I could stop and snap a photo of the Seven Gables Road sign, below, I was angling for a shot and suddenly there in the frame was "my tree" - the tree in my profile picture. I never noticed that it sits right at the foot of Seven Gables Road. You know I quickly scrambled back into my car this time too, my heart thumping again. Oh, and you know about The House of the Seven Gables too, right? Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel about a house haunted by witches and spirits? I mean, how much more spookiness do you want?

(I carved the two jack-o-lanterns in the photos, above, a couple years ago. I used to love carving different things every year when the kids were growing up. I remember doing Carebears one year. Unfortunately, my wrists are too weak to carve through that thick, hard pumpkin flesh now. Plus, we don't have kids at home any more, boohoo - BOO! hoo.)