school search - part VI

There is a hair cutting school in my neighborhood where you can get walk-in five-dollar cuts. It's a good deal, if students with scissors don't make you too nervous and if you have some extra time (cuz these cats are trying to get it right...). I took Isaac there to get the hair off his ears and out of his eyes.

While waiting in the reception area, the young man who would be our hair dresser for the day approached and introduced himself. Before he could lead us to the hair chair, however, a woman stopped him to ask for his urgent help. The dryer her mother was sitting under was too hot and was beginning to scorch her scalp. The man turned down the heat dial and confirmed with the customer that the new temperature was good for her. Before leaving them, he addressed the daughter. “If it heats up too much again, just turn this dial to a lower number,” he said, pointing out the huge white markings on the chair's controls affixed in plain sight. “Oh,” replied the woman, as if this were new and strange technology she wouldn't dare have thought to tamper with. “Okay.”

Now, nothin for nothin people, and with all due respect for the 10 months these hair folks spend studying how to give perms and fool your friends with extensions, did that woman seriously not think it was within her own power to turn down the heat? Did she never investigate? Did the mother never consider removing her head from the assaulting burn? Are we so helpless as a species? Such obedient sheep to follow along until we are in physical danger or worse? Such rule followers as to be completely out of touch with our own instincts?

I have two major concerns about public schools and they have nothing to do with academics. The first is demonstrated above. We think that “discipline” issues are bad in schools, but consider this blog to weigh in on the problem of obedience, the lost art of free thinking.

So, Isaac gets his booster seat and settles in for an hour-long cut. (Don't try this at home folks!) The poor thing was having to pull out every little bit of hard-earned Montessori concentration to sit there in the chair. I wasn't any less fidgety since I was pretty certain I was going to die of bad pop music while there and kept swiveling this way and that hoping to find the radio switch to smash.

Of course, we did have plenty of time for conversation, the young man and I at least, since Isaac was refusing to speak. During that time I made sure to point out to my son his hair dresser's Barbie pink fingernails.

Isaac has been very influenced by a couple friends, who don't even live in the area anymore, but whose rigid ideas of gender they managed to pass on quite successfully on some level to my son.

(“I'm not going to have an earring when I grow up. I'm going to be a real boy!” he once said to me. Images of Pinocchio in a sterling earcuff float through my mind. WTF??)

I learned that hair dresser guy, had a Halloween party for his birthday every year, since it fell at the end of October and that this year he was going to be a pirate. I also learned that he was graduating next month. And finally, I learned that he was born and raised in Salinas, which caused me to have to stop myself from grabbing his arm, the one with the black rubber bracelet that said “Vanity,” and blurting out, “Oh my god! That must have been terrible for you!” Salinas, California, known as it is for its associations with Steinbeck, big agriculture, and gang violence, isn't quite as note-worthy in its general ideas of tolerance.

Which brings me to problem number two in the public schools: a lack of emphasis on compassionate social interaction and integration.

I mean, let's face it people. We are at war. What do we have to teach our kids about empathy or cooperation? Gee, can't imagine why bullying is a problem...

I'm planning on going as my worst nightmare for Halloween this year: a soccer mom. “Are you gonna scream a lot?” my friend asked me, “Because you need to scream a lot.” (Capri Sun, anyone? Pictures to follow.) While I went searching for a blonde bob wig in the drug store the other day to round out my costume, my gentle, loving son battled an invisible victim with a bloody plastic hatchet, behavior I find all the more disturbing since the kid's only ever watched a few hours of television in his life and most of that consisted of Dinosaur Train and the Olympics. You might find it odd that I connect fumbling foreign policies, youth sports teams, dumby weaponry and the absence of kindness, and if so, then, I still have more convincing to do. Later. Just how I like to think about where to send Isaac to school next year. Later.

pomegranates as religion

I knew it would be the perfect time. Late October. I hadn't been to the market in a few weeks – well, not to THE market, the one that has my favoritest farmer with my favoritest fruits. Tuesdays are market day (THE market day), and Tuesdays have been a challenge lately with our current family schedule. It takes more time and effort to get to downtown Monterey than I am able to sustain some weeks. The neighborhood where I live isn't so down with the organic produce, though you can run into any number of steeples within a stone's throw of my house. (If you are craning your neck skyward toward those steeples too long though, you better beware of the ragged chainlink waiting to snatch at your legs, such is the beauty of my 'hood.) Four years ago I moved to a neighborhood where it was all about a healthy soul. Too bad I'm more interested in cultivating a healthy body and somehow cling to the notion of aesthetics as integral to my happiness. But enough about fenced in evangelists.

Isaac was starting his second month of swimming lessons. He's a confident swimmer for whom being submerged in chlorine is a dream come true. I can remember us taking him to the pool long enough ago that many weeks he'd conk out for a nap before we could get him in the car. Long enough ago that we've added “swim diapers” to our family's personal responsibility for landfill waste. Now, excited to be learning strokes and dives, he's a better swimmer than I will ever hope to be. In fact, he's a polar bear.

Living in Monterey and its environs means that swimming levels are not called things like 1, 2, 3, or 4. Oh no. We'll save that kind of ho-hum for the landlocked, the impoverished souls that don't have a National Marine Sanctuary off their shores. In Monterey, the swim levels are called things like “Dolphin” and “Starfish” and “Sea Turtle” and it's up to the parents to buy into this clever but bizarre culture of the appropriate sea life corresponding to your child's ability to do the breast stroke.

I recently had a conversation with the aquatic director in which the terms “Seahorse,” “Penguin,” and “Polar Bear” were tossed around to such a degree it was impossible to follow what the hell he was talking about, though he acted as if rational adults speak this way every day. It was a bit like inserting the Jabberwocky into casual conversation. “He's very good with the vorpal sword. I really think he'll be ready for the Bandersnatch next time. The jaws that bite and the claws that catch shouldn't bother him a bit. Now, if he's worried about the Jubjub bird, then I'd say he might want to stay away from the slithy toves, but otherwise, O frabjous day! Callooh Callay!”

The point here is not supposed to be how magnificent my son is in water, nor how oddly labeled his skills might be. The point here is that the sports center is a mere two blocks from the market. Doubtful I was supposed to leave the premises, I abandoned Isaac with his new instructor, his fellow Polar Bears, gave up my spot on that horrid metal bleacher filled with a crowd of parents leaning toward the poolside to see how little Xavier the Guppie was doing and dashed out and down the street toward my one true love: Pomegranates!

When I arrived, the pomegranates were even better than I'd even hoped for.(O frabjous day!...) They were monstrous, engorged beauties their crowns glistening in the sun. A day of rain over the weekend had split them and their juicy rubies showed through the cracks. (I'm pretty serious about my fruit.) Dale, my buddy, the farmer himself, was not there on this day and one of the other farm workers who doesn't know me was minding the stall. As I started to pile the poms bigger than softballs into a bag, he grew concerned. “Lady,” he said to me. “They're three dollars a pound!”

Some women shop for clothes. I spend all my money at the farmer's markets.

“Mommy! Mommy! Why is it so cold in the house?”

“Put on a sweater and eat your pomegranates, Isaac.”

“But Mommy! Why can't I go to swimming lessons anymore?”

“Wouldn't you rather float on a bed of pomegranate seeds, honey? Now pass the bowl.”

In my defense, pomegranates are high in vitamin C and potassium. The little immune boosters contain yummy antioxidants. If these pomegranates could swim, baby, they'd be Orcas. Amen.

Pomegranate Season Again

and here I am with pen

in hand. Each year I try:

tiny baubles I call them,

rubies, gems, clusters

of cranberry eggs sparkling

like Christmas – all of the metaphors

lacking or taken, though I go on

spilling blood

on my kitchen counter -

a California slasher movie

starring Persephone.

And once she comes into it,

well, it's all over, isn't it?

A girl in the dark, a mother

pacing above, her grief enough

to keep the blossoming world

at bay. Is any fruit worth this --

family fissures, death, and blood-letting?

Even Neruda with his Odes -

the tomatoes, to the onion,

didn't have to contend with the maiden

cum queen, the hungry earth

wrenching open in a muddy maw.

One must grow into one's majesty

the immature among us

fastened to the branch

by the crowns

of our heads.

To know so young one is royal,

to spoil such sweetness.

Now on my counter they lie

huge and heavy, weighted down

by their own juices,

oversized doorknobs locked

against innocence and painted

for all the world to see

like the lips of a geisha.

I take the knife to them. The berry bodies

explode with a spray of red-black droplets,

not unlike the octopus before surrender,

a final message as the end approaches --

secrets never told,

blotchy reminders of a simpler love.

found out

Iz: Do we have any cardboard? I want to make a sign.

Me: What kind of sign?

Iz: One that says, "Please Don't Park In the Driveway" so Daddy won't drive on the beautiful chalk mural I'm going to draw.

(After obtaining cardboard and pen, we sit on the front step...)

Me: (writing) "P-L-E-A-S-E... Dddd-Oooo-Nnnn-Tttt...  Hmm. "Park." How do you think I'd spell "Park?"

Iz: Pppp P!

Me: Okay. And Aaarrr...Aaarrr...

Iz: ??

Me: A-R...

Iz: A-R!

Me: What would "Park" end with?

Iz: K!

Me: Oh, right - K. Oh, and Isaac, wait til you see -- "Drive" has one of those silent E's!

Iz: Hey! Are you trying to learn me to read??

Me: Wouldn't think of it, kid.

musical leanings

Is it my fault that Isaac is in love with the "Rent" Soundtrack? The boy has taste. Is it any worse than him running around the house singing "Ay ay ay, put your hands up high, 'cause you never know how long you're gonna live 'til you die" from Spearhead? Like I said, taste.

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's CREATION." 
- from "La Vie Boheme" (Jonathan Larson)

Going back to clean out the house – the return trip

I was in Midway airport. Why do I constantly seem to be in Midway airport?

“Shiiiiine-'em-up! Shiiiiiiiiiine-'em-up!” says the man. He calls out again through the din of summer travelers, apparently undeterred that most all of them traipsing by are in flip flops and tennis shoes. “Shiiiine-'em-up!” He is sitting under as sign that reads “Shoe Hospital.”

Before I left I retrieved a piece of mail from my mom's box – a reminder asking her to please complete the survey they'd sent already from the first hospital she went to about her feelings on the care she received there. Mama said there'd be days like this. What she said was, “Life goes on.” Nothing if not original, my mother. Life in the form of surveys. Life in the form of computers generating junk mail. Perhaps there is Yelp on the other side and mom can critique the stupid hospital. Not sure what she'd say exactly, because the only contact I had in that place myself was parading through its halls with my sisters to try to retrieve my mother's clothes that no one there had bothered to send along with her or back to us: a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that read “Lima Bean Lovers Live Longer.”

The facts are so dumbly ironic, there is no commentary to highlight them, really.

At least in this direction no one tried to get me to read a copy of the eulogy they had with them for the funeral they were going to. No one shared with me with stories of their breast cancer, while I wept, unacknowledged, trapped in my seat by another delay and a jam packed terminal gate.

Back in Philly, they told me there was an earlier connection into San Jose I might make, but when I got here I saw that that flight was actually to San Diego. A difference of 460 miles. If it were only so easy – just exchange one saint for another. Swap out your requests. San Rafael, patron saint of health. San Francisco, watching over the animals. What's the difference, really? Just merge them all in an imaginary sacred overpass between the 5 and the 101. Crazy, west coast weirdos are we. The east coasters lost in our concrete maze of prayers.

August is over. It's a full month. The anniversary of when I met my husband comes in the month of August. The anniversary of when we arrived in Monterey 13 years ago. The anniversary of the first earthquake we experienced after arriving in Monterey. Our wedding anniversary and my birthday both come in August.

I have had zero time to type up or think out the oodles of journal pages and even more thoughts and dreams that never made it that far. I'm about to go off the grid, so to speak, for a few days, for a much-needed, long-ago-planned long weekend with the fam at a farm where I can sit by the river or under the apple trees and stir only at the dinner bell. So my lack of posting will continue for a few more days, but afterwards, I hope to be back more regularly.

whales and such (Yoo Hooo! Monterey Bay Aquar-i-um...)

 Isaac this past July on a whale watching trip in the Monterey Bay

My friend Kate (geez, I have the coolest friends) has an article in the new Monterey County Weekly about whale watching in our bay this summer, which has been fantastically stellar (modify superlatives? why yes, I think I will, thank you.).

In one paragraph, Kate states, "Connecting with nature is the best way to inspire children to grow up committed to conservation, according to educator David Sobel, author of Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. It’s crucial to give children a chance to build a lasting, nourishing love of the wild before they are burdened with worries about overwhelming environmental problems. Observing nature can also help lengthen attention spans and combat digital addiction." (emphasis mine)

Back in April of this year I wrote a couple pieces about my feelings on the new exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and how I thought they missed the mark for kids, making much the same point Kate does. Jenny Sayre Ramberg of the Aquarium picked up the blog piece right away, and we proceeded to have an interesting discussion within the comments. I also wrote a follow-up blog on the subject. That is as far as I got at the time. Until now.

Besides Kate's article which gave me renewed interest and vigor in the subject, I am rather concerned about what might be happening as the MBA takes down the beloved Outer Bay tank for the next 10 months to revamp it into the "Open Sea" exhibit coming in July 2011. First, let me say that the Outer Bay is/was a classic. In place since 1996, it is an enormous wall of glass where you can watch from ground level or sit upstairs in the dark and take in hammerheads, tuna, rays, and an amazing array of amazing creatures go on by. The balcony seats are the best in the house, in my opinion. I've been taking Isaac there since he was 3 months old. The beauty is unmatched, but more, the serenity is untouchable.

With the new and "improved" exhibit, they promise to address climate change and plastics pollution, as "as always" point to positive solutions. So my question again is HOW will that happen? In what FORM and in what ORDER at EYE LEVEL will these things come at us? I am also not comforted by the dangling carrot of more "multi-media experiences." Again, in my past discussion of this topic, I stated that I thought the screens were being a little too heavily relied on and upstaging the animals themselves. I don't want to play a game about a sea turtle, I want to watch one swim by. I don't want to be sucked in (and have my child sucked in) to a video of the sunfish, when -- if the tourists would quick flashing their bloody cameras for a second -- one might swim by in the flesh.

My aquarium renewal notice just arrived in the mail...I'm no Julie Packard when it comes to my ability to financially support this resource, but still. I need to know how my money will be spent.

Jenny, I think I will have to belatedly take up your offer to give you a ring at the aquarium. Hope to talk to you soon.

Save the Words!

You must go to the coolest site I have seen in a long time.

I am the proud new mama to the word "starrify." "I hereby promise to use this word in conversation and correspondence as frequently as possible, to the very best of my ability."

For the sake of our youth, the future leaders of our planet, you must make it a habit to gravitate toward any education professionals willing to use their little gold stickers to starrify rather than reward. (consider it an entry under "school search part 5.")

With many thanks to my pal Eve for this one.

going back to clean out the house, part 2

I stop at the bank to give my brother one less thing to do. “I need to leave some information about my mother's estate...” I tell the woman. “And when I say 'estate,'” I mumble to myself minutes later as I head back out the door, “I mean the 650 square-foot rental full of dust and expired toothpaste coupons.”

Most of the sorting, of course, is paper. The things I found in my mother's house. I really can't decide what is more precious:

The envelope addressed to the White House, stamped and ready for battle, or maybe the DVD titled “Life or Debt: Simple Steps for a Lifetime of Financial Freedom”...still unopened.

The business card of a “Middle Eastern dance artist,” or mom's current membership card to the NAACP.

Mom's passport, renewed and up-to-date, without a single stamp in it other than the invisible seal of optimism, or –and this could be the topper— the lyrics to “Born to be Wild” handwritten on looseleaf.

Magazines about living with Diabetes, wrist braces, neck braces, canes, walkers, prosthetic breasts, I toss each in turn into the donation pile, with the same mantra: “Well, mom, you don't need these, or these, or these. You're free now.” It should make me feel better, but it doesn't.

The phone rings and I see from the caller ID it's the consolidation company that paid out on her bills. They aren't collectors, no harm in talking to them, and so, I do. When I inform the woman that my mother is unfortunately deceased, she stops short and sounds genuinely sorry. I leave her with my brother's phone number. When we're ready to hang up, she expresses her sympathy once again, but then just can't help herself, “Have a great day!” she effuses.

I find an old Polaroid of mom from some Halloween past, dressed as a devil and hamming it up for the camera. I tape it at eye level to the door jam so devil-mom can watch over us as we sort through her books. In my delirium, I find this somehow hilarious, though my siblings don't get the joke. “What is that? Why is that there?” one or the other of my sisters keeps asking. “Is that Rita?” Better it were a photo of her with the same impish grin holding a whiskey sour instead of a pitch fork and toasting us while we sweat in the hell of her tiny house, the ceiling fans all dangerous blades, the monopoly game up for grabs.

going back to clean out the house

Mike and Isaac drive me downtown to pick up the shuttle. And, as my ride departs, it first takes me through the same territory I just traveled to get to my starting point. I see this somehow as significant. But I am weary of metaphor, worn out by searching for signs within signs, really just glad at the moment not to be listening to anyone's cell phone conversation.

Here we are. Flying to get to the people we love and left. Or to where they used to be. The man across the aisle gets on his phone and my reprieve is broken. “Ron's plane is delayed,” he says into his cell. “I'm on my way. I'm on the bus.” And then, “How'd the night go?” I sense something right away. He continues: “How's the breathing? (pause) Vitals?” Ridiculous and apropo. Really, can't we just take a break from signs and synchronicity for a while? What to make of it all?

Here we all are, at the final moments, at the big transitions, relying on the same technology and futuristic inventions that allowed us to get this far apart to begin with to rush us back to see the people it separated us from. It either makes perfect sense or none at all.

Take a look at Sharon Old's poem called “The Race.”

In Marina, a girl gets one the shuttle – 20? 22? Her mother is there seeing her off, three big curls of hair just out of their forms sit on her head for bangs. Her daughter wears a pink baseball hat. She climbs aboard the bus and takes the free front seat, greeting her seatmate in the quick, jovial way of her age – heavy with optimism and expectation, vulnerable, not yet touched by too much grief. The girl promptly buckles her seatbelt and turns her head to catch the gaze of the mother, who is staring back. The two keep eye contact with each other for 30 seconds or more while I watch. Finally, a tiny, audible gasp trains my eyes away from the mom and back to the girl. She wipes her eyes and straightens her pink cap. She is late to take in the reality of the leaving, and I envy her. For my part, I have been long awash in tears.

crazy stuff at the library

I have just arrived at my library – or, one of them in the general vicinity of my residence – to new hours posted on the door. More hours they are closed. And I groan and slump and continue through the automatic door. Where will the crazy people go, I wonder? And believe me when I tell you I count myself among them.

As I type this there is a homeless man, one I see often in the area, at the table to my left cutting up periodicals and what appears, at least, to be book covers. One would think this might be a problem at the library, but the reference desk guy just came over and hauled off the 20-year-old with the laptop next to him instead. It sounded serious. Porno printouts? Too many downloads of American Idol finals ripping through the system? Makes one wonder. In the process, Homeless Man called a loud, boisterous greeting to Reference Guy and Reference Guy answered him politely and solemnly.

Homeless Man is a familiar face around here, we exchange greetings frequently, and sometimes change or apples, plus starved as we are for community, between him and the two former Brooklynites who've just reunited like loud, long-lost lovers to my right, talking about the days when baseball was “a gentleman's sport,” I'm feeling pretty much cozy in a “gang's-all-here” kind of way. It's like when you see a woman on the shuttle bus to the airport who also shows up in front of you at security. If you weren't fast buds by then, then when she sits down in the same gate area as you, you are considering inviting her to your family reunion. We are a social set. Like it or not.

It is really disconcerting – that tearing sound – Homeless Man again. Though he doesn't bother me nearly as much as he could. The last time I was in the library there was a woman crying hysterically while she perused the shelves, alternately reciting the rosary and commenting on magazine covers. It went something like,”Boo-hoo-hoo. Snort!! Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is...Oh, look! Oprah and Ellen!...with thee-hee-hee-hee...SOB!” The time before that, it was the sleeping man next to me awakened by his drunk friend to much commotion; and we can't forget the man in the Russian accent pacing on the grass just outside the window when I tried to escape to a private corner, shrieking tirades and curses into a cell phone that would have given Mel Gibson a run for his money. The Russians have whole dictionaries of vulgarities, though he was choosing to use ours.

Libraries are tricky places. Not as innocent as they seem. I've written about them before this way.

I need to confess that I have also been the crazy person in the library. In our last family visit with my mom in April of this year, we set her up with Skype. She had been suspicious of the service from the start, although ultimately we managed two very successful video calls before she passed.

I had been taken back by how much I had felt like I'd “visited” afterward, as opposed to calls or emails, which admittedly, I hadn't kept up nearly well enough. I had been looking forward to establishing the Skype dates as a regular thing, but we'd only be granted the two.

So I was in the library one day, working on an audio piece I have yet to finish, when a Skype call came in from my mom. I hit answer and tried to keep my voice low. “I can't hear you!” my mother kept shouting from my computer screen. I scooped up my things hurriedly and headed for the door.

“I'm in the library, ma.”

“WHAT??”

“The library!” I shuffle quickly past the homework helpers, a crowd at the online catalogue, cord dangling, bag and limbs akimbo.

“I still can't hear you, dear.”

“That's because I'm trying to be quiet. I'm at the LIBRARY!”

“WHAT?” says the little lady in my arms again, as I zoom by the check out counter, finally the foyer, and out onto the front steps.

“MOM. I. AM. AT. THE. LIBARY.”

“Oh,” she says, finally satisfied and wholly unconcerned. “That's nice.”

I attempt to hold a relatively normal and brief conversation with my mom while on the library steps, sun shining onto screen, battery dwindling, public passing by, as she regales me with the details on the height of her cosmos, the fate of her day lilies. At last, I ask her to please call me on Skype only when we've arranged it beforehand or when she knows I'm at home.

“Call YOU? I didn't call you,” she tells me.

“Of course you did.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Well, I didn't call YOU.”

“You didn't?”

“No.”

She insisted that Skype did it on its own. Can I count a third Skype call, then? Another connection before she left? Can I count us among the crazy people?

War, Letters, Love

Pictured: Heath Proskin, Bill Minor, Richard Mayer.
Photo Credit: David Hall., Monterey Herald.

There is a project I've been a part of for a while called "Love Letters of Lynchburg" that is truly unique and interesting on many levels. Yesterday, we did a performance - a CD release party - that was a reading of love letters between two people from during the Civil War, backed by a live trio on an original score. All of it orchestrated by the charming and extraordinary Bill Minor, who happens to be distantly related to the two wartime lovers. Here is a link to an article about the performance that gives a little more background. I'm tempted just to copy and paste the article, since I'm not sure how long the link will be good for, but anyhoo...

It was one of those times when you realize late on the significance of what you're doing. Bill asked me to read the letters of Susan Leigh Blackford, essentially to be Susan, and I wouldn't think of saying no to Bill. Along the journey, I learned how fascinating she was, the time was, the relationship she had was, and yesterday, how much our merry little band could touch people with the story. As one person noted in thanking us, the exchange was plain and simple an anti-war statement, nevermind from a war none of us can remember or even imagine.

I want to refer back to two poems, of mine and of Ruth Fainlight - from which mine takes its architecture - that I posted on this blog two years ago. Fainlight's poem in fact speaks specifically of wartime letters again.

How much do you use pen and paper anymore? Do you? What can it change to see personal communication become electronic? What does each do to shape the time we're in? How do we participate in that shaping?

Another Shadow Shot Sunday

Another Shadow Shot Sunday? Hmm. I'm not much for routine, but here I seem to be again. Two for two so far.

Recently, a group of grad school friends were in Monterey for a 10-year mini-reunion. I played tourist in my own town for the first time in a long time. We went whale watching one day and on the way to the dock, got to hang out around one of the smelliest animals on the planet: the sea lions. I'm a sucker, though, and individually, from a distance, they are pretty sweet. This one seemed to be gazing into his reflection, uh, shadow.

Behold the stinky sea lion:

And then we saw a bit of this:

I missed the shot of the giant mouths open and pink dining on krill and other gourmet humpback snacks.

After a crazy, packed weekend, we all felt a bit like this:

Enjoy more international Shadow Shots at host Tracy's site Hey Harriet.

stasis and movement in the summer of 2010

The following might be an odd pairing of topics. Welcome to my world. These days I am jolted between everyday stuff and tragic memories, between the joy of a five-year-old who just won't stop learning and the enveloping worry that tugs at me when I think he might not remember his grandmom. So let's just get started.

How do you define peace?

There are people in my life that think of peace as a state of stillness – not necessarily equilibrium, just mostly quiet. A place where no one is rocking the boat. I see peace differently, as something that must be worked toward, as something in motion and sometimes thorny. I see authenticity as essential to it, and I believe that when authenticity or fairness is violated, one must speak out, and, contrary to what some would believe, I never do this lightly.

Peace is not a static place. Peace is a collaboration, an exploration.

In March of 2003, when the world showed up to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq by the United States, Mike and I went to San Francisco to join in. We did not stand, flatly in one place, we walked, all of us, washing down the streets of the city.

Now, if what you are interested in is a static place, you are in luck, there is such a place. A place where nothing changes, ever. I'm talking, of course, about the boardwalk. Any boardwalk, take your pick, as long as it has funnel cake and men trying to swish a basketball through a hoop to win a giant stuffed smiling banana for some chick in short shorts and MC Hammer blaring from the speakers and people screaming as they dive however many stories in a rickety car down a track and people displaying tattoos on all kinds of body parts and skeeball, there must be skeeball.

And the truth is that I'd give a lot if more of life were like the boardwalk - unchangeable. Peace? Sure! Peace need only show up and it would take its place next to Love and Friendship and all the other immutables in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl. It's just that that kind of Peace sometimes makes you throw up.

 

last note on poetry shows for a while

I've added an "Upcoming Events" piece to the sidebar over there, in lieu of the poetry website I haven't started finished putting together yet.

Here's what Isaac thinks about all this poetry fuss.

Taken after he crashed on one of the cafe sofas while we were trying to get the current show you saw in the entries below hung. Handy that we had his blankets with us - originally protecting the artwork in the car.

poetry exhibit continued

Here is the audio link to the interview Rick Kleffel did with me about my poetry exhibit that aired July 18, 2010. It will soon show up on Rick's podcast site too and I can provide a more direct link.

Here's a little more lowdown on the show:

“Stumbling into Ourselves” is a dozen+ poems framed, printed on stretch canvas, coupled with photographs, or otherwise graphically displayed and hung for viewing. Two poems will be represented in three dimensions, while another will be accessible in audio as well as text. 

The connecting theme of the show is the idea of identity – creating or recreating it – and the transitions that get one there. The people living their lives in these poem stories are all at a moment of transition. Some have discovered that the people they thought they were they are no more. Some have found that they are being moved toward change, willingly or not. Some find humor and hope in their quests; others simply survive.

poetry on the walls

I was just interviewed on KUSP radio 88.9 FM, Santa Cruz about my new visual poetry show that's up at a cafe in Monterey. What fun! Link to the audio coming soon. The show is called "Stumbling Into Ourselves." An article about it is currently at this link. And here is an idea of what things look like on the walls.

Two of my (orange-y) poems at the cafe entrance and "Abandoned Car," handmade paper over canvas with blockprints (so fun!) and under it, "Birthday Present" (poem under lid of box, detail below)

"The Slide," photo poster on canvas and "The Truth About Princesses" detail. Notice the pink duct tape.

 

"Lightning." Floating frame with velum paper bolt and cafe reflections.

One of three panels of "The Simplicity of Travel" that hangs from a "lamp post" Mike made for me.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Never say never.

My mom, Bobbie, who always followed this meme, constantly told me I should do one of these, but I always just sent her pictures now and again to put up herself. Well, in her honor, here I am. My first Shadow Shot Sunday. Hosted by Tracy at Hey Harriet with Sunday a wee fluid as some of us are in different time zones/hemispheres. Check out all the new shadow shots there. Thanks, Tracy!

Over 4^th of July weekend, my family and I escaped the insanity/inanity of fireworks and the like and went camping in Big Sur, California – about an hour south of where we live. It was super windy when we first arrived and so I was uncharacteristically in the tent before Mike got the tarp on. Planted as we were under two huge sycamores, this is what I saw:

t

that would be Mike in there in this third one

and hey!...

how'd he get in there??

The next shot is from the Headlands Trail at Andrew Molera State Park, a short and beautiful loop that overlooks the beach where the Big Sur River empties into the Pacific.

the imposing shadow of the cliff I was standing on

Shadows on the hills of the Ventana Wilderness – view from the campground, late afternoon.

texting makes the world go round

Mike and I are happily behind when it comes to the new all-the-rage gadgets. We do not own a TV, much less an ipod or an iphone. The phones we do have are lame models with limited plans. The fact that Mike's can take pictures is purely accidental. Mine is so basic I'm lucky it has keys. With no cover there is always a danger something will ring up by accident. Just the other day I heard a little voice I thought I recognized coming from my purse. “Hello? Hello?” I dug around for the phone to discover that it had called my friend Angela all on its own. Apparently when it crank calls, it starts with the beginning of the alphabet.

“I've been thinking about you,” she says when I get on the line. “What do you need right now?” This is a far cry from most of what I hear – questions into my well-being that are really about the speaker, prying questions I don't want to answer, or promises to “be there for me any time” -- right after they get back from some extended vacation. It is from a woman versed in crisis herself. Late this spring, Angela's house burned down. With her dog in it. It's been a hell of a year for both of us.

Anyway, Mike and I just don't use our phones that much or for very much. So when Mike's phone rings two and three times in a night, we know something is up. Usually it's Lakota man. Mike started getting the texts from the Lakota medicine man from L.A. a few months ago. A wrong number he kindly wrote back to and informed of same. But Lakota man has yet to figure out the details of the similarity in the numbers and the messages keep coming. Mike ends up with all kinds of interesting information.


We saw awesome UFO @ drum practice Fri. We were practicing Yuwipi songs and saw these 2 amazing see-thru silent UFOs. Nice!

Mike writes back and tells him, he's got the wrong person again.


Youch! LOL! I apologize.

But a couple days later he gets another.


Come to this peyote ceremony with me tonight.

Mike writes back: I'd like to, but you've dialed the wrong # again.

And gets: Maybe it's no mistake. LOL. Call me and let's see if it's fate. Maybe Creator is trying to tell us something.

I hear Creator has the new iphone 4.

on waiting and camping

My mother waited for me. She waited while I wrapped up loose ends of a poetry show, rode an early morning shuttle, a plane. She waited through a storm delay, another plane, a rental car. She waited in the hospital bed she never wanted to die in, so I could say hello, then goodbye. Some afternoons hold too much.

In my hello I showed pictures, and poems, told her everything I could think to tell her, told it quickly, words falling over each other in a cresting wave, while she calmly took from my hands what I offered, nodded. We are always those children. Eager. Hungry. Caught in what love is and was and is supposed to be.

The boy is packing up to trek to the beach with his dad where they'll have to cross the river at high tide. It is not all that unusual. The mother left behind. Even before this mother lost her mother, even before this uneven grieving, there was the need, time to read, space to write. The boy is used to it and so his routine is not so upturned. Yet he clings just a touch more now. Each time she believes him gone, begins on a new paragraph, he bounds back through the vinyl flap. He is all a flutter, has pirate stories to tell, plans to fend off the squirrels; he has last kisses, special rocks to show, cloud shapes she must come out and see, one more game of pretend, questions about tree roots. She takes from him what is offered, nods. She reassures him that she will be along soon. And he makes her promise to wait for him when she gets there before crossing the river to the other side.

saving him from himself

We interrupt this grieving process to bring you our regularly scheduled program, already in progress. A geek and a poet sit at home gearing up to finally enjoy a quiet hour or two together, their son asleep, no obligations pressing.

Mike: (excitedly) “I think I'm going to be immortalized on Route 1! The Google Maps car passed me.”

Kitty: (displaying limited interest) “Really?”

Mike: “Yeah, I'm almost sure my car got in one of the shots.” (reaches for the laptop)

Kitty: “I am not sitting here while you search for a little blue Honda on Google Earth.” (makes to get up)

Mike: (shutting lap top) “Right. Thanks.”

Kitty: “Any time.”

(I'm a dork when it comes to embedding. So strip credits = www.dilbert.com. Thank you, Scott Adams.)