The air down here

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When the air is clear and dry, I don’t notice it, the air I mean. In September I notice instead the light, the way it falls shadowed on the drive next to the catalpa tree, or the way light inhabits leaves, along with their veins and squatters. I notice also the steady rasp that floats in currents and waves from the poplars by the pond. I stop, for that. I hear the screech of blue jays at Bishop the farm queen for being who she is, for they are who they are. I note the sun, the way it butters the meadow in its season of goldenrod and lace. I see white moths flaking the air, and countless, nameless flyers barely visible to me. I take note of the wind, the sensation of hair rising and falling on my neck and forehead as I watch sumac leaves rise and fall around swallows spiraling up. Sometimes I notice a stench, when a dead raccoon has begun decaying, and turkey buzzards circle down to commence their beautiful role, out of hunger, then preen for thirty minutes, later excreting what has been cleansed in them before delivering it back to their Earth.

But air? When it is July and humid I notice it, for then I lag under the oppression of moisture. But this substance I breathe in September, that would kill a glinty, sunny fish, what is it to me? Am I mindful that it is Life? When someone asks, If you were stranded on a desert island and could have just three things . . . do I think of air? The toupee of smog that hovers over Los Angeles where we lived when the children were born is a visible reminder that I live free and unhindered in a sheer garment that alters itself to my movements without scissors, stitches or darts. Without its molecules carrying vibrations to me, I would not hear the sounds of leaves, cicadas, birds, a stick snapping under my foot, a loved one speaking, or the strings and winds of Fauré's Sicilienne. I sleep, I breathe. I chop, cook, eat, I breathe. I read, write and speak, I breathe. I touch, smell, hear, listen, and I breathe. I walk and run, I breathe. I feel, I love, I breathe. I fall and ache and cry, I breathe. I think. I breathe.

And what do I give to this air that gives me the infinite and portable floor, walls and ceiling of my life? An exhalation: Thanks.

Post script: Today I messed around with GarageBand and recorded myself reading this piece. If you're interested in hearing me read "The air down here", go here. I prefer my voice with headphones.

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burning mad

"If you make a hard bed, you have to lay in it." - Hazel Moran, "The Burning Bed"

Last Halloween I wrote about some creepy stories in our little town. One of them was the true story of The Burning Bed, told in a non-fiction book by Faith McNultie, then a 1984 TV movie with Farrah Fawcett playing housewife Francine Hughes right here in Dansville, population 429. (We were not living here at the time of the tragedy or the movie.)

Thirteen can be an unlucky number, and it certainly was for Francine's ex-husband Mickey Hughes that night in March 1977. Francine told her kids to get their coats on and get in the car, and then with a good douse of gasoline burned down the house around her sleeping husband who had abused her for thirteen years. The movie showed that he beat her and beat her and beat her. When she left the burning house, she drove straight to the Sheriff's office and turned herself in, screaming, "I did it, I did it, I did it!" Ms. Hughes was tried here in Lansing and found not guilty by a jury of her peers by reason of insanity. Women's advocates called it self defense.

Our local newspaper has done an extensive feature called Unmasking the Violence on the story of Francine Hughes 25 years after "The Burning Bed" TV movie and how it affected legislation on domestic abuse because it got national attention. It is quite interesting to see how this case shaped definitions and policies on domestic abuse, if you go to that link. It is also interesting to read the section "Read about the Case" and then "Listen to their Stories" and see that some of the locals did not find the movie very accurate. Mickey's friends claim she let him have it too when fights broke out. There are very good video interviews with townspeople who knew the couple.

The world learned later that Farrah Fawcett, in a photo above from the movie in which she played the abused Francine Hughes, was herself beaten repeatedly by her actor husband Ryan O'Neal, who took out his anger on at least one of his sons too apparently. I was going to look for an image of her after the time he shoved her to the pavement and post it, but I decided not to. It's disturbing enough to see the image of her in make-up to look battered.

Oh it's such a painful topic. A person has a lot of anger, and it gets triggered by someone in the house, or some stress, and they take it out on someone close. I'm sorry if this stirs up painful memories or feelings for you.

So ok, anger exists. We all feel it sometimes. Why deny it? There are some things we really should be angry about. Others, not so much. When I feel the latter, I try to talk to myself. Slow down. Stop.

THIS HAS HELPED ME SINCE I READ IT RECENTLY.
See your anger as donkeys galloping along. You want so badly to hop on and take a ride. It would be delicious fun, such a good romp of anger! What if you just let the donkeys run on by? I have tried this, and it makes me smile. (I got this from Osho.)

SOMETIMES THIS HELPS.
If you're angry, just be angry, don't be angry with someone. Go be alone with it. G.I. Gurdjieff's father told him if he was insulted, don't react immediately in anger. Wait twenty-four hours, and then respond. Gurdjieff said that never did he have to respond, because by the next day the anger was gone. If you're alone with your anger, let it go to the cosmos. Osho said:

Remember, it is just like a dirty river falling into the ocean: the ocean will purify it. Whenever your anger, your hate, your sexuality, moves into the cosmos, into the ocean--it purifies it. If a dirty river falls into another river, then the other river also becomes dirty. When you are angry with someone, you are throwing your dirt at him. Then he will also throw his at you and this will become a mutual dirtying process.

I'VE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE THE KIDS WERE LITTLE. I WAS ILL EQUIPPED TO BE A MOTHER, THEN SOMEONE TAUGHT ME THIS. IT HELPED.
Change your belief about something. If you have a negative reaction, such as anger, it is in you, not someone else. First you have to ask yourself if you want to be angry. If not, maybe there is some way of thinking inside you that could change so that you won't get angry next time. If someone cuts in front of you in a line of traffic, and you become angry, ask yourself, What do I believe about this? "I have the right to this bit of space on the road, no one should take that from me." If you changed your belief to something else, such as: "Others may drive as they will, I will adjust accordingly," then would you be angry if it happened again?

It takes practice. Change doesn't happen overnight. Do you learn to play the piano in one day? Don't feel bad if you don't learn to conquer your anger in one day either.

I'm not promoting sainthood. And I'm not your nanny. I also recognize that some of us have ongoing conflict with people and circumstances we can't remove from our lives. I'm just saying. We are human, we have emotional responses to a tough world. But maybe putting our dirt onto someone else is not the best way to make things better. I'm talking to myself first and foremost.

Follow this link for help for abused and battered women, including state resources. If you are not in the U.S., please google domestic violence help in your area.
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we don't have to eat what they feed us

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David Gray of "Babylon" fame has an album I love called Life in Slow Motion, from 2005, with this song called "Hospital food." When I'm on the treadmill with earphones on and get to this eighth song on the album I start singing out loud with it - top of my voice loud. I just can't help myself. It's always the last song of my workout, so when it's done, I'm done (which makes me happy), but the song itself is wonderful and so the combination is thrilling. Then I bring my sweaty self out to the family room to find Don and Peter also looking happy. I do like to make them happy.

"‘Hospital Food’, says David, “is what we all eat every day. The nanny state, TV-gobbling idiocy that we call passing time is basically hospital food. You get a lot of shit thrown on your plate, and you eat it.” (This quote is at his bio site.)

Hospital Food

Just a little something for the pain
Hospital food getting you down?
Honey now I'm not one to complain
But this hangin' around
Is wearing me out

So patch me up boys take me home
Are you not hearing a word I say?
She sounds so different on the phone
I just sink like a stone
Back to the day

Tell me something
Tell me something
I don't already know
Tell me something
Tell me something I don't know

Don't seem to have that much to show
For all the hard work, the sweat and toil
You say 'well that's right,' and you should know
You've been there before
You've basked in the glow
You've stood in the roar
You've tasted the snow

Tell me something
Tell me something
I don't already know
Tell me something
Tell me something
I don't already

Seeing it all so beautiful
The way it oughta be
Seeing it all so beautiful
And turning away
Turning away
Turning away

Tell me something
Tell me something
I don't already know
Tell me something
Tell me something
I don't already know

Everything but the . . .

It is where she has filled the cool cavities of 18-pound Thanksgiving turkeys with stuffing in her fists. It is where she bathed her babies, their soapy skin so slick she was terrified they'd slip and gouge their heads on the faucet, yet they cooed at her unafraid, blinking and sputtering when she rinsed their heads with cups of clear warm water. Cabbage heads and cauliflower heads were washed here too, and fingers of carrot scrubbed with a stiff white brush. Teapots and soup pots filled. Flower stems clipped before layering them and their velvety heads in water-filled vessels. Here in soapy water she broke her favorite glass rotating her hand inside, and she watched the perfectly sliced V between her knuckles blossom and point at her heart candy apple red, then blood red, then wick into the fine rivulets of her skin. With a turn of the faucet handle, cold water instantly streamed to cleanse the cut, as it had streamed, washed, rinsed, and filled dozens of times a day, every day, for decades.

Indoor plumbing has brought water into this farmhouse kitchen for 80 years. She is one of only two thirds of the world's women who can turn a faucet and receive a rush of water right into sinks in their homes. The rest are lucky if they can gather clean water from a pump a mile away and carry it in red plastic jugs on their heads back home, spending hours a day on just this simple collection. Some only pray for adequate access to clean water. Some = over a billion.

You can read about global water issues at the Global Issues site, like how because of CocaCola's production that depleted water resources in Plachimada, India, local farmers had to dig 450 feet and still couldn't access water.

first awakening

Detroit's skyline from Windsor, Ontario (yeah, I know it isn't perfect with this post, but I don't have my own photo of Chicago or NYC at night)

When I was a young girl I was highly romantic. After watching movies I would act out the role of lead actress in front of the dresser mirror in my bedroom.

I didn't think the small Michigan town where I grew up was worthy of romance. My fantasies were in cities like Chicago or New York. In old movies I watched, everyone was rich, so city life took place in vast, glamorous apartments or penthouses, with skyline views through floor-to-ceiling walls of glass. Men wore tuxedoes and women wore evening gowns, even at home. And when they went out to clubs, the men wrapped mink coats around the women's shoulders.

Since my mom was from metro New York City, I also fantasized about her life before marrying my dad, the Baptist preacher, and wished she had played piano in a black satin dress at Carnegie instead of in a polyester dress at the Baptist church.

So when my oldest sister got married and lived in "Chicago" (it was really Skokie) in "an apartment" (I had never seen an apartment except in movies), you know what I was thinking: She had been transformed from an ordinary sister who wore simple straight skirts and cat-eye glasses, into Rita Hayworth (redhead, like my sister) in an evening gown; their apartment had a big, shiny, black grand piano, and there was a wall of easy-gliding drapes that opened with the push of a button looking out onto a fabulous Chicago skyline. And guess what, we were going to visit!

Well, after the five-hour drive, after Chicago skyscrapers and giant red neon Magikist lips, and on into the bland northern suburb of Skokie, when we walked up the short stairway and through the door to the modest, neat apartment with tweed furniture and four-foot windows with short insulating curtains looking out at a blonde brick neighborhood, as a shy nine-year-old you know I didn't give voice to my inner scream, "WHERE IS THE GRAND PIANO, WHERE ARE THE VASES OF ROSES, WHERE IS THE SEA OF TWINKLING CITY LIGHTS, AND WHERE THE HELL IS MY SISTER'S EVENING GOWN!"