Oyster Shells Are an Antacid to the Oceans

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John Bradshaw

The feeling of righteousness is the core mood alteration among religious addicts. Religious addiction is a massive problem in our society. It may be the most pernicious of all addictions because it’s so hard for a person to break his delusion and denial. How can anything be wrong with loving God and giving your life for good works and service to mankind?
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.
― John Bradshaw

True love heals and affects spiritual growth. If we do not grow because of someone else’s love, it’s generally because it is a counterfeit form of love.
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

The capacity for love that makes dogs such rewarding companions has a flip-side: They find it difficult to cope without us. Since we humans programmed this vulnerability, it's our responsibility to ensure that our dogs do not suffer as a result.
― John Bradshaw, Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet

Our sadness is an energy we discharge in order to heal. …Sadness is painful. We try to avoid it. Actually discharging sadness releases the energy involved in our emotional pain.

To hold it in is to freeze the pain within us. The therapeutic slogan is that grieving is the ‘healing feeling.’

To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, needs and drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core.
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are.
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were.
― John Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that Binds You

Toledo Mud Hens

Best team name in the world. I must go see them at McCoy!

Narcissistic Abuse

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Alice Miller

A common denominator in Miller's writings is her explanation of why human beings prefer not to know about their own victimization during childhood: to avoid unbearable pain. She believed that the unconscious command of the individual, not to be aware how he or she was treated in childhood, led to displacement: the irresistible drive to repeat traumatogenic modes of parenting in the next generation of children.

source

My Neighbor Starts Her Car

My neighbor starts her car by gunning it. It annoys me and reminds me of my mother who was always mean to machines, gunning the brown Ford station wagon on the icy driveway that we had happily shoveled with my father. She hated the loss of control over the machines and over us, our enjoying a moment of fresh air with her husband.

My neighbor guns her engine early in the morning under my desk window, diving forward into the empty parking space that belongs to us, backing wildly, then turning out the drive. Does she really need to make such a huge curve to get out? When she returns she dives forward into our space again, and lurches backward into her space. When she sets the alarm the car honks. I've memorized all of her habits, watching her come and go over the years, clutching her over-sized iced coffee and green and white box of cigarettes.

She has jet-black dyed hair and wears baby doll clothes in the summer. She launders incessantly with perfumed soap and dryer sheets. A few years ago her brother hanged himself in a closet. She told me about the mess a hanged body makes. Her daughter is grown up, has her own red Mustang, does the same thing gunning the engine and looping into our parking space.

My neighbor fills her life to the brim, unapologetically. That annoys me, too, but really, it's me I curse. I'm the one who hides, walks rather than drives, worries about disturbing my neighbor, wonders where my next dollar is coming from. I'm terrified that I might be mistaken for my mother.

It has taken me nearly 20 years to feel that I am allowed to live here, to occupy space. It's taken decades to believe that I deserve to be loved. I still have doubts.

Martín Espada

When The Leather Is A Whip

by Martín Espada

At night,
with my wife
sitting on the bed,
I turn from her
to unbuckle my belt
so she won't see
her father
unbuckling
his belt

-Martín Espada

Painting can be Meditation

There comes a time when the bubble of ego is popped and you can’t get the ground back for an extended period of time. Those times, when you absolutely cannot get it back together, are the most rich and powerful times in our lives.
– Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön's four ways that meditation helps us deal with difficulty:

Meditation takes us just as we are, with our confusion and our sanity. This complete acceptance of ourselves as we are is a simple, direct relationship with our being. We call this maitri, loving-kindness toward ourselves and others. There are four qualities of maitri that are cultivated when we meditate:

1. Steadfastness. When we practice meditation we are strengthening our ability to be steadfast with ourselves, in body as well as mind.

2. Clear seeing. This is another way of saying that we have less self-deception. Through the process of practicing the technique day in and day out, year after year, we begin to be very honest with ourselves.

3. Experiencing our emotional distress. We practice dropping whatever story we are telling ourselves and leaning into the emotions and the fear. We stay with the emotion, experience it, and leave it as it is, without proliferating. Thus we train in opening the fearful heart to the restlessness of our own energy. We learn to abide with the experience of our emotions.

4. Attention to the present moment. We make the choice, moment by moment, to be fully here. Attending to our present-moment mind and body is a way of being tender toward self, toward others, and toward the world. This quality of attention is inherent in our ability to love. These four factors not only apply to sitting meditation, but are essential to all the bodhichitta (awakened heart) practices and for relating with difficult situations in our daily lives. By cultivating them we discover for ourselves that it is bodhichitta, not confusion, that is basic.

- Pema Chödrön

From Comfortable With Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion, by Pema Chödrön.
From the September 2009 issue of the Shambhala Sun

Pema Chödrön

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
― Pema Chödrön

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
― Pema Chödrön

…feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
― Pema Chödrön

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
― Pema Chödrön

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.
― Pema Chödrön

We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.
― Pema Chödrön

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, "May I have permission to go into battle with you?" Fear said, "Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission." Then the young warrior said, "How can I defeat you?" Fear replied, "My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power." In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

AJKNVDQ

I was pulled out of third grade, in May,
for crying so much all year.
What took my mother so long
to react?

Mrs Bowers admitted
that she hated my vulnerability.
She attacked me
in class each day.
YOU DON'T KNOW THAT? She'd shout.
I'd shout back NO, I don't even know the alphabet -
AJKNVDQ!

Compelling Conspiracy

Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.
Article

Burning your Boats

Whatever your boat is, burn it. Instead of protecting yourself so that failing won’t hurt, use that fear of failing as one more reason not to fail.
-Matt Frazier

I’ve never forgotten the story of famed explorer Hernando Cortez. He landed on the shores of Vera Cruz, Mexico in 1519 and wanted his army to conquer the land for Spain. Faced an uphill battle: an aggressive enemy, brutal disease and scarce resources. As they marched inland to do battle, Cortez ordered one of his lieutenant’s back to the beach with a single instruction: "burn our boats." My kind of guy.
-Robin Sharma

Bruce Weber and Kathleen Turner

Bruce Weber and Kathleen Turner on Becoming Mentors
source

The fashion photographer Bruce Weber and the actress Kathleen Turner both have generous spirits and take obvious pleasure in their crafts. So they were perfect candidates to become mentors to talented high school students...

Q.
Who were your mentors?

A.
TURNER: I don’t think I have any real mentors who were actors, necessarily. I think I’ve taken more from some of the extraordinary directors I’ve worked with, particularly Coppola. And Huston. And Kasdan. And people with whom we’ve done, you know, before the films, we’ve done some real rehearsing, real delving. I don’t feel like I really have ever learned from anyone telling me what to do — it’s the doing of it that I learned from, and that’s also the way I teach.

WEBER: Kathleen, you know, I went to N.Y.U. film school. I was, like, the worst actor, so I have such utmost respect for you and for your profession. When I started, I was broke. Richard Avedon used to photograph me all the time and Diane Arbus was a friend of mine, and they turned me on to Lisette Model. She was an extraordinary photographer who taught Diane. Alexey Brodovitch, who was at Bazaar then, hired her to go to Coney Island and photograph bathing beauties. She went out and there was this woman who was totally huge, not like what women are supposed to look like in fashion magazines. She did these gorgeous, sexy, beautiful pictures of this woman, smiling in a bathing suit, and he ran them huge in Bazaar, and it became, like, a sensation. She was my teacher and really freed me from a lot of things. I agree with you, Kathleen, it’s the act of doing something or having a big life or experiencing something.

How did you approach working with your students?

WEBER: I decided not to just take photographers. I wanted filmmakers, because I’m a filmmaker myself, but also painters or writers. It seemed like a lot of the people were also writers. And I learned so much about looking at things in the world through books, you know I grew up in a small town —

TURNER: Oh, absolutely.

WEBER: You grew up in Missouri, right? Was it a big town?

TURNER: No, I didn’t, actually. I was born there and I went to school there for three years. But up until college, my life was overseas. My father was with the Foreign Service, so I grew up mostly in Canada, Venezuela and London. But reading was a constant comfort, especially when we first moved to South America. What I do with students is they come in, they have to have two contrasting monologues prepared. Either a comedy and a classic or two very, very different characters is what I want to see. We work them, and it’s pretty exciting to see when they get it, you know, when they go, “Of course that transition has to be like this,” you know, and then they do it! And you go, “Yes!”

Goodman
WEBER: I think sometimes you almost have to be like an actor to get a photograph or a piece of film that you want. And one of the things that I really loved about my students was their openness to experiencing things. We went up to see this wonderful photographer in New York. His name’s John Dugdale, and he’s blind and he photographs with a large-format camera. And they just loved the experience. This girl who was with me said, “How do you know what you’re seeing?” And he said, “Well, I have the photos already in my head.”

TURNER: Oh, excellent. I like that. The other thing I really enjoy with the kids is it reminds me of the passion that you start out with. You know, when I first came to New York, the lack of questioning — it’s like, well, of course I was gonna have a career as an actor for heaven’s sakes! You know?

WEBER: As a photographer, you know, I think we’re always starting out, aren’t we? I, strangely enough, since I’m talking to a great actress — I took my whole class, as a lesson on New York City, to an acting class.

TURNER: Aha, good!

WEBER: I wanted them to see people their own age, of all walks of life, get up there and make a fool out of themselves.

TURNER: Well, this whole willingness to make a fool of yourself, I think, again, is common ground for all the arts.

Goodman
You both seem to emphasize movement and physicality and an awareness of your body. Is that one of the core principles of all of the arts?

TURNER: Yeah. I encounter people who seem to think that they have separate parts of their lives. In other words, O.K., I’m going to sit down and think now, so I’m going to make my head work, as opposed to getting up, breathing, stretching. Thinking you can cut up your body functions is such nonsense. You know, Bruce, one of the things I think of to help them is, I think of air like water, so that every move through it, and every gesture, it creates these waves, you know, that go out from you, and where they overlap into another person. To me, that really works in terms of what happens when a good actor has a great effect.

WEBER: I look at dancers, I look at athletes, the physicality of a person. I try to show with my assistants that feeling of, “Don’t be afraid to have that physical connection to, like, nature or to what’s around you.” Sometimes I’m photographing a girl and she’s, you know, in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden, it’s crazy, I’m, like, photographing the tree ‘cause I like the shape of it, or I like the clouds, and then I photograph my dogs. What I try to show the kids is that you do have to have that physicality.

TURNER: Yeah, I’ve always felt that dance is such a huge, huge mystery. I keep thinking that to really dance well must be one of the greatest highs because it costs so much to do it, you know?

WEBER: We’re both dealing with the idea of giving up a lot of things to do something you love. It’s one of the things that I try to show my students a little bit is that, that’s something you do need your strength and your courage to do that, like when your friends are all partying and doing things, maybe it’s better you have the safety of the camera and you’re recording it. You know?

TURNER: Another thing I want to do, and I hope I do, is to pass on a kind of ethics, you know, a professional ethics: Don’t be late. Your job is to be physically able to do this, the role that you have taken on. Don’t keep people waiting. Treat people with respect. Whatever aspect of the work they’re doing, you, you know, an actor is the last person who gets to do their job. You need everybody else before you to do theirs, you know? And I try to erase this above/below the line nonsense and just find how wonderful this kind of independence is.

Do the kids today approach creativity differently than young artists of your generation did?

TURNER: They seem almost more sophisticated. But I think that’s probably due to the different access they have to life altogether as opposed to when I was that age. They don’t come with arrogance or presumption.

WEBER: I think my students came to me in a way, where they were in my hands, and I just felt responsible for them. It was a weird thing. I don’t have any kids of my own. I’m married, and I have, like, six dogs and I have assistants who are like my sons and daughters. But there’s so much disappointment that happens once they step out into into the world, and I wanted to really give them a lot of support.

TURNER: Yeah, I think perhaps there’s more common ground in photography and acting in that as a discipline, as an art form, there isn’t any set rule. It’s not like you have to be able to pick up a violin and follow a particular passage of music or be able to execute these specific steps as you would in dance. Everything is so open to interpretation. I have always felt that it was rather wonderful not to have those kind of restrictions placed on me. On the other hand, there is a kind of validation, I suppose, by having a more specific discipline.

WEBER: And discipline is something that you learn really early on. I’m late for everything in my life socially, but never late for my work, you know? But I used to be like five or ten minutes late for my work, and one day I just woke up and I said, “Wait, I can’t do that to my crew and to everybody,” you know, and so I tried to show them a discipline of purpose, of doing something that, you know, means something to you.

It seemed like the single lesson that you had to impart to your students was about the importance of being fearless.

TURNER: I would agree. I think fearlessness is essential. You don’t get to these extraordinary places by following someone else’s path, you know?

WEBER: Right. What she said is so true. I think that’s the hardest thing to learn.

Henri Rousseau

It is the birthday of French painter Henri Rousseau, born in Laval, France (1844). Rousseau was a mediocre student, but excelled at drawing and music. He worked for a lawyer, served in the army for four years, and eventually went to work for the government as a tax collector. He married twice and had six children, only one of whom survived. He didn't start painting until he was in his early 40s, and he retired at age 49 to work on painting full time.

He often painted primitive-style jungle scenes, and his work was misunderstood and ridiculed in his lifetime, although he had an admirer in Picasso. In the fall of 1908, Picasso was strolling down the rue de Martyrs in Montmartre when he noticed a portrait of a woman among a stack of canvases for sale outside a junk shop. The proprietor told Picasso that the canvas could be painted over and reused. But Picasso knew the work was a Rousseau and purchased it. He told a friend that the portrait of a woman "took hold of me with the force of obsession. ... It is one of the most psychologically truthful of all French portraits." Picasso even held a party a few weeks later to celebrate his acquisition of the Rousseau and one of Picasso's friends wrote a song for the occasion.
- Writer's Almanac

I was lucky to visit The Sleeping Gypsy and The Dream at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, as a child.

Anger

Anger management: 10 tips to tame your temper

Keeping your temper in check can be challenging. Use simple anger management tips — from taking a timeout to using "I" statements — to stay in control.

By Mayo Clinic staff
Do you find yourself fuming when someone cuts you off in traffic? Does your blood pressure go through the roof when your child refuses to cooperate? Anger is a normal and even healthy emotion — but it's important to deal with it in a positive way. Uncontrolled anger can take a toll on both your health and your relationships.

Ready to get your anger under control? Start by considering these 10 anger management tips.

No. 1: Take a timeout

Counting to 10 isn't just for kids. Before reacting to a tense situation, take a few moments to breathe deeply and count to 10. Slowing down can help defuse your temper. If necessary, take a break from the person or situation until your frustration subsides a bit.

No. 2: Once you're calm, express your anger

As soon as you're thinking clearly, express your frustration in an assertive but nonconfrontational way. State your concerns and needs clearly and directly, without hurting others or trying to control them.

No. 3: Get some exercise

Physical activity can provide an outlet for your emotions, especially if you're about to erupt. If you feel your anger escalating, go for a brisk walk or run, or spend some time doing other favorite physical activities. Physical activity stimulates various brain chemicals that can leave you feeling happier and more relaxed than you were before you worked out.

No. 4: Think before you speak

In the heat of the moment, it's easy to say something you'll later regret. Take a few moments to collect your thoughts before saying anything — and allow others involved in the situation to do the same.

No. 5: Identify possible solutions

Instead of focusing on what made you mad, work on resolving the issue at hand. Does your child's messy room drive you crazy? Close the door. Is your partner late for dinner every night? Schedule meals later in the evening — or agree to eat on your own a few times a week. Remind yourself that anger won't fix anything, and might only make it worse.

Anger management: 10 tips to tame your temper

No. 6: Stick with 'I' statements

To avoid criticizing or placing blame — which might only increase tension — use "I" statements to describe the problem. Be respectful and specific. For example, say, "I'm upset that you left the table without offering to help with the dishes," instead of, "You never do any housework."

No. 7: Don't hold a grudge

Forgiveness is a powerful tool. If you allow anger and other negative feelings to crowd out positive feelings, you might find yourself swallowed up by your own bitterness or sense of injustice. But if you can forgive someone who angered you, you might both learn from the situation. It's unrealistic to expect everyone to behave exactly as you want at all times.

No. 8: Use humor to release tension

Lightening up can help diffuse tension. Don't use sarcasm, though — it can hurt feelings and make things worse.

No. 9: Practice relaxation skills

When your temper flares, put relaxation skills to work. Practice deep-breathing exercises, imagine a relaxing scene, or repeat a calming word or phrase, such as, "Take it easy." You might also listen to music, write in a journal or do a few yoga poses — whatever it takes to encourage relaxation.

No. 10: Know when to seek help

Learning to control anger is a challenge for everyone at times. Consider seeking help for anger issues if your anger seems out of control, causes you to do things you regret or hurts those around you. You might explore local anger management classes or anger management counseling. With professional help, you can:

Learn what anger is
Identify what triggers your anger
Recognize signs that you're becoming angry
Learn to respond to frustration and anger in a controlled, healthy way
Explore underlying feelings, such as sadness or depression
Anger management classes and counseling can be done individually, with your partner or other family members, or in a group. Request a referral from your doctor to a counselor specializing in anger management, or ask family members, friends or other contacts for recommendations. Your health insurer, employee assistance program (EAP), clergy, or state or local agencies also might offer recommendations.

Anne Lamott

I sometimes teach classes on writing, during which I tell my students every single thing I know about the craft and habit. This takes approximately 45 minutes. I begin with my core belief—and the foundation of almost all wisdom traditions—that there is nothing you can buy, achieve, own, or rent that can fill up that hunger inside for a sense of fulfillment and wonder. But the good news is that creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

Then I bring up the bad news: You have to make time to do this.

This means you have to grasp that your manic forms of connectivity—cell phone, email, text, Twitter—steal most chances of lasting connection or amazement. That multitasking can argue a wasted life. That a close friendship is worth more than material success.

Needless to say, this is very distressing for my writing students. They start to explain that they have two kids at home, or five, a stable of horses or a hive of bees, and 40-hour workweeks. Or, on the other hand, sometimes they are climbing the walls with boredom, own nearly nothing, and are looking for work full-time, which is why they can’t make time now to pursue their hearts’ desires. They often add that as soon as they retire, or their last child moves out, or they move to the country, or to the city, or sell the horses, they will. They are absolutely sincere, and they are delusional.

I often remember the story from India of a beggar who sat outside a temple, begging for just enough every day to keep body and soul alive, until the temple elders convinced him to move across the street and sit under a tree. Years of begging and bare subsistence followed until he died. The temple elders decided to bury him beneath his cherished tree, where, after shoveling away a couple of feet of earth, they found a stash of gold coins that he had unknowingly sat on, all those hand-to-mouth years.

You already have the gold coins beneath you, of presence, creativity, intimacy, time for wonder, and nature, and life. Oh, yeah, you say? And where would those rascally coins be?

This is what I say: First of all, no one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book.

If they have to get up early for work and can’t stay up late, I ask them if they are willing NOT to do one thing every day, that otherwise they were going to try and cram into their schedule.

They may explain that they have to go to the gym four days a week or they get crazy, to which I reply that that’s fine—no one else really cares if anyone else finally starts to write or volunteers with marine mammals. But how can they not care and let life slip away? Can’t they give up the gym once a week and buy two hours’ worth of fresh, delectable moments? (Here they glance at my butt.)

Can they commit to meeting one close friend for two hours every week, in bookstores, to compare notes? Or at an Audubon sanctuary? Or a winery?

They look at me bitterly now—they don’t think I understand. But I do—I know how addictive busyness and mania are. But I ask them whether, if their children grow up to become adults who spend this one precious life in a spin of multitasking, stress, and achievement, and then work out four times a week, will they be pleased that their kids also pursued this kind of whirlwind life?

If not, if they want much more for their kids, lives well spent in hard work and savoring all that is lovely, why are they living this manic way?

I ask them, is there a eucalyptus grove at the end of their street, or a new exhibit at the art museum? An upcoming minus tide at the beach where the agates and tidepools are, or a great poet coming to the library soon? A pond where you can see so many turtles? A journal to fill?

If so, what manic or compulsive hours will they give up in trade for the equivalent time to write, or meander? Time is not free—that’s why it’s so precious and worth fighting for.

Will they give me one hour of housecleaning in exchange for the poetry reading? Or wash the car just one time a month, for the turtles? No? I understand. But at 80, will they be proud that they spent their lives keeping their houses cleaner than anyone else in the family did, except for mad Aunt Beth, who had the vapors? Or that they kept their car polished to a high sheen that made the neighbors quiver with jealousy? Or worked their fingers to the bone providing a high quality of life, but maybe accidentally forgot to be deeply and truly present for their kids, and now their grandchildren?

I think it’s going to hurt. What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.

I’ve heard it said that every day you need half an hour of quiet time for yourself, or your Self, unless you’re incredibly busy and stressed, in which case you need an hour. I promise you, it is there. Fight tooth and nail to find time, to make it. It is our true wealth, this moment, this hour, this day.

- Anne Lamott

source

David Foster Wallace

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.
It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Because if you cannot or will not exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

Capital T-truth is about life before death.
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital- T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the “rat race” — the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

Barbara Kingsolver

INTERVIEWER:Do you actually go to all the places you write about? What balance do you strike (if any) between primary and secondary sources?

Barbara Kingsolver: Hooray for you, for knowing the difference between primary and secondary sources, in a world where many seem to think watching a nature show is the same thing as being in nature. It isn’t. The nature show leaves out the smells, for one thing, and the seventeen hundred hours the camera crew sat waiting for the rhinos to mate. Another person’s account of a place – whether it’s Henry Thoreau or Youtube – is only part of the story.

I almost never set a fictional scene in a place unless I’ve been there. Fiction is an accumulation of details, and if they’re wrong, it’s an accumulation of lies. Readers are not fooled. Fiction is invention but it’s ultimately about truth. If I want to remove you from your life and whisk you into a picnic on the banks of a river in Teotihuacán, here are some things I need to know: what grows there, what trees, what flowers, in that month of the year? What does it smell like, are there bees? Birds? Is it dry or humid, how does the dust feel between your teeth? What’s in the picnic basket? What does candied prickly pear fruit actually taste like? Passing on someone else’s account of these things, from reading about them, would likely render a flat, one-dimensional scene, no matter how I injected my own additions of plot and character. The sensory palette would be limited. I can only paint with all the colors if I’ve seen them for myself.

The difference between amateur and professional research is a willingness to back away from other people’s accounts of what is, and find your own. There is no “googlesmell.”

Barbara Kingslover

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams


I find it takes discipline to stop writing and go do other things, such as cleaning the house.

I tend to wake up extremely early with words flooding into my brain. If I don’t get up, they’ll continue to accumulate in puddles, so it’s a relief to get to the keyboard and dump them out.

I’ll take a break to have breakfast with my daughter and walk her to the school bus.

In the afternoon I’ll break again to meet with my assistant, Judy, to review the day’s mail pile and decide how to respond to requests.

But if I’ve really gone into novel-never-land, the time disappears. I sometimes look at the clock and am stunned to see that six or eight hours have passed while I sat motionless in my chair.

I’ve learned the hard way, from my body, that when I get in this zone it’s wise to set an alarm to go off every hour or so, to remind me to get up, unclench, do some yoga.

And I always try to follow my day at the desk with some form of physical exercise.

Summer evenings offer hours of daylight for weeding and planting, checking the lambs, whatever needs to be done.

I enjoy the physical engagement of farm work, because it balances the work I do inside my head.

I also appreciate my family for keeping me anchored in the real world.

- Barbara Kingsolver

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Edward Albee

"You have to write about certain areas of discontent and misalignment in people's lives," Mr. Albee added. "Name me a good serious play where all the characters are good, happy people getting along."

Mr. Albee walked out of his adoptive parents' house when he was 18 -- "I had to get out of that stultifying, suffocating environment" -- and didn't see his mother for 20 years. A major rift developed between Mr. Albee and his adoptive mother. . .

"I don't think anybody growing up in a white, upper-middle-class, rich, deeply fascistically Republican family could be said to grow up until he has left," Mr. Albee said in his soft, slightly raspy voice. "That's not only in Larchmont, that's anywhere."

"I consider myself lucky to be an adopted kid. I was given all the education I could possibly want, creature comforts. But I spent most of my time with my nannies or away at summer camp and at school. I didn't see those damn people -- my parents -- more than six weeks of the year."

Source

Denise Duhamel

Sex with a Famous Poet

by Denise Duhamel

I had sex with a famous poet last night
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered
because I was married to someone else,
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in fancy hotel room
I didn't recognize. I would have told you
right off this was a dream, but recently
a friend told me, write about a dream,
lose a reader and I didn't want to lose you
right away. I wanted you to hear
that I didn't even like the poet in the dream, that he has
four kids, the youngest one my age, and I find him
rather unattractive, that I only met him once,
that is, in real life, and that was in a large group
in which I barely spoke up. He disgusted me
with his disparaging remarks about women.
He even used the word "Jap"
which I took as a direct insult to my husband who's Asian.
When we were first dating, I told him
"You were talking in your sleep last night
and I listened, just to make sure you didn't
call out anyone else's name." My future-husband said
that he couldn't be held responsible for his subconscious,
which worried me, which made me think his dreams
were full of blond vixens in rabbit-fur bikinis.
but he said no, he dreamt mostly about boulders
and the ocean and volcanoes, dangerous weather
he witnessed but could do nothing to stop.
And I said, "I dream only of you,"
which was romantic and silly and untrue.
But I never thought I'd dream of another man--
my husband and I hadn't even had a fight,
my head tucked sweetly in his armpit, my arm
around his belly, which lifted up and down
all night, gently like water in a lake.
If I passed that famous poet on the street,
he would walk by, famous in his sunglasses
and blazer with the suede patches at the elbows,
without so much as a glance in my direction.
I know you're probably curious about who the poet is,
so I should tell you the clues I've left aren't
accurate, that I've disguised his identity,
that you shouldn't guess I bet it's him...
because you'll never guess correctly
and even if you do, I won't tell you that you have.
I wouldn't want to embarrass a stranger
who is, after all, probably a nice person,
who was probably just having a bad day when I met him,
who is probably growing a little tired of his fame--
which my husband and I perceive as enormous,
but how much fame can an American poet
really have, let's say, compared to a rock star
or film director of equal talent? Not that much,
and the famous poet knows it, knows that he's not
truly given his due. Knows that many
of these young poets tugging on his sleeve
are only pretending to have read all his books.
But he smiles anyway, tries to be helpful.
I mean, this poet has to have some redeeming qualities, right?
For instance, he writes a mean iambic.
Otherwise, what was I doing in his arms.

Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton

Poetry and Collaboration: Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
by Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

read
read DD Rumpus interview here.

Nin Andrews

Superstition Review Guest Blog
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Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome

Munchausen by proxy syndrome (MBPS) is a relatively rare form of child abuse that involves the exaggeration or fabrication of illnesses or symptoms by a primary caretaker.

Also known as "medical child abuse," MBPS was named after Baron von Munchausen, an 18th-century German dignitary known for making up stories about his travels and experiences in order to get attention. "By proxy" indicates that a parent or other adult is fabricating or exaggerating symptoms in a child, not in himself or herself.

Munchausen by proxy syndrome is a mental illness and requires treatment.

About MBPS

In MBPS, an individual — usually a parent or caregiver— causes or fabricates symptoms in a child. The adult deliberately misleads others (particularly medical professionals), and may go as far as to actually cause symptoms in the child through poisoning, medication, or even suffocation. In most cases (85%), the mother is responsible for causing the illness or symptoms.

Typically, the cause is a need for attention and sympathy from doctors, nurses, and other professionals. Some experts believe that it isn't just the attention that's gained from the "illness" of the child that drives this behavior, but also the satisfaction in deceiving individuals who they consider to be more important and powerful than themselves.

Because the parent or caregiver appears to be so caring and attentive, often no one suspects any wrongdoing. Diagnosis is made extremely difficult due to the the ability of the parent or caregiver to manipulate doctors and induce symptoms in their child.

Often, the perpetrator is familiar with the medical profession and knowledgeable about how to induce illness or impairment in the child. Medical personnel often overlook the possibility of MBPS because it goes against the belief that parents and caregivers would never deliberately hurt their child.

Most victims of MBPS are preschoolers (although there have been cases in kids up to 16 years old), and there are equal numbers of boys and girls.

Diagnosing MBPS

Diagnosis is very difficult, but could involve some of the following:

a child who has multiple medical problems that don't respond to treatment or that follow a persistent and puzzling course
physical or laboratory findings that are highly unusual, don't correspond with the child's medical history, or are physically or clinically impossible
short-term symptoms that tend to stop or improve when the victim is not with the perpetrator (for example, when hospitalized)
a parent or caregiver who isn't reassured by "good news" when test results find no medical problems, but continues to believe that the child is ill and may "doctor shop" to find a professional who believes them
a parent or caregiver who appears to be medically knowledgeable or fascinated with medical details or seems to enjoy the hospital environment and attention the sick child receives
a parent or caregiver who's overly supportive and encouraging of the doctor, or one who is angry and demands further intervention, more procedures, second opinions, or transfers to more sophisticated facilities
If you have any concerns about a child you know, it is important to speak to someone at your local child protective services agency — even if you prefer to call in anonymously.

Causes of MBPS

MBPS is a psychiatric condition. In some cases, the perpetrators were themselves abused, physically and/or and sexually, as children. They may have come from families in which being sick was a way to get love.

The parent's or caregiver's own personal needs overcome his or her ability to see the child as a person with feelings and rights, possibly because the parent or caregiver may have grown up being treated like he or she wasn't a person with rights or feelings.

In rare cases, MBPS is not caused by a parent or family member, but by a medical professional (such as a nurse or doctor), who induces illness in a child who is hospitalized for other reasons.

What Happens to the Child?

In the most severe instances, parents or caregivers with MBPS may go to great lengths to make their children sick. When cameras were placed in some children's hospital rooms, some perpetrators were filmed switching medications, injecting kids with urine to cause an infection, or placing drops of blood in urine specimens.

In most cases, hospitalization is required. And because they may be deemed a "medical mystery," hospital stays tend to be longer than usual. Whatever the cause, the child's symptoms — whether created or fabricated — ease or completely disappear when the perpetrator isn't present.

According to experts, common conditions and symptoms that are created or fabricated by parents or caregivers with MBPS can include: failure to thrive, allergies, asthma, vomiting, diarrhea, seizures, and infections.

The long-term prognosis for these children depends on the degree of damage created by the illness or impairment and the amount of time it takes to recognize and diagnose MBPS. Some extreme cases have been reported in which children developed destructive skeletal changes, limps, mental retardation, brain damage, and blindness from symptoms caused by the parent or caregiver. Often, these children require multiple surgeries, each with the risk for future medical problems.

If the child lives to be old enough to comprehend what's happening, the psychological damage can be significant. The child may come to feel that he or she will only be loved when ill and may, therefore, help the parent try to deceive doctors, using self-abuse to avoid being abandoned. And so, some victims of MBPS are at risk of repeating the cycle of abuse.

Getting Help for the Child

If MBPS is suspected, health care providers are required by law to report their concerns. However, after a parent or caregiver is charged, the child's symptoms may increase as the person who is accused attempts to prove the presence of the illness. If the parent or caregiver repeatedly denies the charges, the child would likely be removed from the home and legal action would be taken on the child's behalf.

In some cases, the parent or caregiver may deny the charges and move to another location, only to continue the behavior. Even if the child is returned to the perpetrator's custody while protective services are involved, the child may continue to be a victim of abuse while the perpetrator avoids treatment and interventions.

Getting Help for the Parent or Caregiver

To get help, the parent or caregiver must admit to the abuse and seek psychological treatment.

But if the perpetrator doesn't admit to the wrongdoing, psychological treatment has little chance of helping the situation. Recognizing MBPS as an illness that has the potential for treatment is one way to give hope to the family in these rare situations.

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My Mother and Mussolini

In Fascist Italy under the regime of Benito Mussolini, castor oil was one of the tools of the Blackshirts. Political dissidents were force-fed large quantities of castor oil by Fascist squads. This technique was said to have been originated by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Victims of this treatment did sometimes die, as the dehydrating effects of the oil-induced diarrhea often complicated the recovery from the nightstick beating they also received along with the castor oil; however, even those victims who survived had to bear the humiliation of the laxative effects resulting from excessive consumption of the oil.

It is said Mussolini's power was backed by "the bludgeon and castor oil". In lesser quantities, castor oil was also used as an instrument of intimidation, for example, to discourage civilians or soldiers who would call in sick either in the factory or in the military. Since its healing properties were widely exaggerated, abuse could be easily masked under pretense of a doctor's prescription. It took decades after Mussolini's death before the myth of castor oil as a panacea for a wide range of diseases and medical conditions was totally demystified, as it was also widely administered to pregnant women, elderly or mentally-ill patients in hospitals in the false belief it had no negative side effects.

It was also often used as both a punishment and torture by the Spanish Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco, as they purged Spain of those who supported the democratic, left-wing Republic during the Spanish Civil War.

-Wikipedia

Children and Trauma

Traumatic events may be repressed but are not fully forgotten. The child may re-experience the trauma through any of her senses. She may experience vivid and unwelcome flashbacks, often during quiet, unfocused times, such as when bored in class, falling asleep, listening to the radio, or watching television.

In the child’s play or behavior, she will recall and attempt to rework the event. Her drawings and stories may incorporate and reflect the traumatic event(s). Although referred to as “play,” repetitive post-traumatic play is more often grim work. Reliving the event represents an attempt to master fears that continue to haunt or overwhelm the child.

Tragically, trauma shatters the natural sense of invincibility and trust basic to normal childhood. This shakes the child’s confidence about the future and can lead to limited expectations. Traumatized children often have a pessimistic view of career, marriage, having children, and even life expectancy.

Other signs common to children who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder include sleep problems; nightmares; exaggerated startle response; panic; deliberate avoidance of reminders of the trauma; irritability; immature or regressed behavior; and hypervigilance.

source

Watching and Listening

As a child in the 70's I loved watching my fishtank in the dark. I would make collages and drawings and backdrops for it. I also loved listening to Radio Mystery Theater. It aired at 7pm in NYC and I would lie down every night in the dark and imagine. E.G. Marshall would bid me welcome, give me the teaser for the upcoming episode, introduce the first set of commercials, and then Act I would begin. After the third act, Marshall would give an epilogue, announce the voice talent for the episode, give a quick audio preview of the next episode, then close the creaking door, wishing me “pleasant … dreams.” Door slam. Wow. Like the fishtank, this was far better than television!

Farinelli

We borrowed this film from the library. It was interesting.

Farinelli is a 1994 biographical film about the life and career of the Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time. It stars Stefano Dionisi as Farinelli and was directed by the Belgian director Gérard Corbiau.

Setting the Stage

I loathe the suburbs, having grown up in one. To me it was a stage set, and a prison. It was racially and economically filtered, biased, and paranoid. I prefer the city, made up of all ages, all economic levels, multiple ethnicities. I appreciate the real people and eccentrics, and require the daily, direct reminder of life outside the self, outside the castle.

Dogs, God and Cheesecake!

What more do you need?
Read

Judy Dench

Anything that we can do to improve the lives of elderly people is welcome so far as I am concerned.
-Judi Dench

I don't really want to retire. I intend to go on working as long as I can because I still have a huge amount of energy.
-Judi Dench

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.
-Judi Dench

I'm very conscious that I'm in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it - how incredibly lucky.
-Judi Dench

I've always loved painting, although I never show anyone what I've done. Mainly because I don't do it well. But it's like a form of visual diary for me. A way of fixing things in my mind.
-Judi Dench

. . . The control you have in a theatre is very attractive to me.
-Judi Dench

The theater is the thing I love doing most.
-Judi Dench

The Lord Chamberlin was censoring scripts when I first came into the theater.
-Judi Dench

Work certainly does help fill a void.
-Judi Dench

Olympia Dukakis

. . . There aren't roles about women who are spiritually evolving. That anyone would even write something like that, something that's worth doing, would be a miracle!
- Olympia Dukakis

Meryl Streep

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.
― Meryl Streep

Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
― Meryl Streep

I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself.
― Meryl Streep

No one has ever asked an actor, 'You're playing a strong-minded man…' We assume that men are strong-minded, or have opinions. But a strong-minded woman is a different animal.
― Meryl Streep

I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.
― Meryl Streep

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.
― Meryl Streep

You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.
― Meryl Streep

I like who I am now. Other people may not. I'm comfortable. I feel freer now. I don't want growing older to matter to me.
― Meryl Streep

This is your time and it feels normal to you, but really, there is no normal. There's only change and resistance to it and then more change.
― Meryl Streep

I wonder which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?
― Meryl Streep

It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.
― Meryl Streep

You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.
― Meryl Streep

Rennie Sparks

Last September, in one of those early red-gold days of autumn, I was awakened by a tap-tap-tapping out in the backyard. A woodpecker was hammering at the old Box Elder out past the prickly pears near the back alley. I lay in bed awhile letting my thoughts circle:

How does a woodpecker know which trees are full of bugs? What do those bugs know when a woodpecker’s beak hammers close? What does the tree know when a woodpecker hammers into its bark?

Whenever I find myself trying to empathize with a tree or with insect larvae or with a bird, I know there’s a good chance an idea for a song is brewing. Of course this doesn’t mean a song will get finished, but it does mean I’m going to spend a few hours sitting on the couch Googling words like “woodpecker” and “box elder beetle” and that I will then spend even more time staring off into space and scribbling in a notebook.

I have a lot of notebooks full of scribbles. They often don’t lead to anything, but sometimes, on lucky days, the scribbles begin to connect into a mystery that I can not look away from until it is laid bare. What was once a jumble of words and ideas begins to feel magnetized and full of import. Oh, those are lucky days!

Mostly I just sit on the couch and follow the sparks here and there until they disperse.

That morning that began with a tap-tap-tapping led to an afternoon in which I learned a lot about woodpeckers. I found out that woodpeckers have very long tongues with barbs on the end. I found out that woodpeckers have specially designed skulls that protect them from impact, like a built-in crash helmet. I also found out that woodpecker hearing is amazingly acute. These birds can actually hear larvae slithering inside a tree trunk as they are flying past overhead.

source

Rennie Sparks is the lyricist and banjo player for the folk duo The Handsome Family, and the author of “Wilderness,” a collection of essays and art to accompany the group’s latest album, also titled “Wilderness.”

Speak the Truth

Tortured by her imposed regimen of three glasses of heavy mineral oil per day, I would run to the toilet with my mother and younger half-brother trailing after me. She would examine the bowl and say ew gross! The shame and humiliation was beyond belief, but now she fears me! For 35 years I have been unraveling the agonies to find my real self. I am dangerous because I see and speak the truth.

Courage

Courage is the most important of all virtues because without it we can't practice any other virtue with consistency.
- Winston Churchill

Fantasy Ride

I would love to get a pedicab and pedal around Woonsocket with Lily in the back to promote tourism, sustainability, wind mills, promoting wood-fired community bread ovens, community gardens, DIY tipis, igloos, and yurts through neighborhood preachery. And I'd suggest that we bring back the tarring and feathering of the slum landlords.

Edna O'Brien

Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
― Edna O'Brien, Saints and Sinners: Stories

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
― Edna O'Brien, Country Girl

Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.
― Edna O'Brien, Country Girl

The words ran away with me.
― Edna O'Brien, Country Girl

Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
― Edna O'Brien, Country Girl

It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
― Edna O'Brien, Country Girl

We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable...
― Edna O'Brien, Girl With Green Eyes

In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
― Edna O'Brien, A Fanatic Heart

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
― Edna O'Brien

Writing Salvation

writing is the salvation.
always.

all you need is paper and pencil--
so easy, so cheap, so fast, so portable.

Italo Calvino

New York swallowed me up like a carnivorous plant.
- Italo Calvino

Typhoid Mary

Got her start in my home town. Typhoid Mary's Mamaroneck

Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). She immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1884. From 1900 to 1907 she worked as a cook in the New York City area.

In 1900, Mary worked in Mamaroneck, New York, where, within two weeks of her employment, the residents developed typhoid fever. She moved to Manhattan in 1901, and members of the family for whom she worked developed fevers and diarrhea and the laundress died. Mallon then went to work for a lawyer until seven of the eight household members developed typhoid.

In 1906, she took a position in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where, within two weeks, ten of eleven family members were hospitalized with typhoid. She changed employment again, and similar occurrences happened in three more households.

In Oyster Bay, she worked as a cook for a wealthy New York banker, Charles Henry Warren, and his family. When the Warrens rented a house in Oyster Bay for the summer of 1906, Mallon came along. From August 27 to September 3, six of the eleven people in the house came down with typhoid fever. Typhoid fever in Oyster Bay at that time was "unusual", according to three doctors who practiced medicine there.

Mary was subsequently hired by other families, and outbreaks followed her.

source

Barney Frank

I love Barney Frank.
He reminds me of my favorite history teacher at S.W.A.S. (School Within a School) at Mamaroneck High.
read.

I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.
-Barney Frank

Mercer Meyer

There are only six original stories in the universe, everything else is take-off. I even take off my own stuff. That's how these stories come about. Thoughts of my childhood. The stories come alive when I doodle. I'll doodle for a week and then, all of a sudden, the story is there. I've always been a vintage guy. As a kid my favorites artists were Rembrandt and Arthur Rackham. Those were my influences.
-Mercer Mayer

Ram Dass

When we're identified with Awareness, we're no longer living in a world of polarities. Everything is present at the same time.
—Ram Dass

Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.
—Ram Dass

The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.
—Ram Dass

All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.
—Ram Dass

It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.
—Ram Dass

Ram Dass

When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn't.
-Ram Dass

Canoodling

eating noodles in a canoe

What Would I Miss?

Would I use two
of my three wishes
to abolishing all motors,
and perfumes?
Certainly!
Perhaps I should move
to Amish Country.
What would I miss
the most?
The city.

William Styron

A truly fine writer will deal with seemingly unimportant matters and make them transcendentally important.
— William Styron

Some of My Best Friends are Germs

Some of these compounds may play a role in regulating our stress levels and even temperament: when gut microbes from easygoing, adventurous mice are transplanted into the guts of anxious and timid mice, they become more adventurous. The expression “thinking with your gut” may contain a larger kernel of truth than we thought.

“Fiber is not a single nutrient,” Sonnenburg said, which is why fiber supplements are no magic bullet. “There are hundreds of different polysaccharides” — complex carbohydrates, including fiber — “in plants, and different microbes like to chomp on different ones.” To boost fiber, the food industry added lots of a polysaccharide called inulin to hundreds of products, but that’s just one kind (often derived from the chicory-plant root) and so may only favor a limited number of microbes. I was hearing instead an argument for a variety of whole grains and a diverse diet of plants and vegetables as well as fruits. “The safest way to increase your microbial biodiversity is to eat a variety of polysaccharides,” he said.

His comment chimed with something a gastroenterologist at the University of Pittsburgh told me. “The big problem with the Western diet,” Stephen O’Keefe said, “is that it doesn’t feed the gut, only the upper G I. All the food has been processed to be readily absorbed, leaving nothing for the lower G I. But it turns out that one of the keys to health is fermentation in the large intestine.” And the key to feeding the fermentation in the large intestine is giving it lots of plants with their various types of fiber, including resistant starch (found in bananas, oats, beans); soluble fiber (in onions and other root vegetables, nuts); and insoluble fiber (in whole grains, especially bran, and avocados).
With our diet of swiftly absorbed sugars and fats, we’re eating for one and depriving the trillion of the food they like best: complex carbohydrates and fermentable plant fibers. The byproduct of fermentation is the short-chain fatty acids that nourish the gut barrier and help prevent inflammation. And there are studies suggesting that simply adding plants to a fast-food diet will mitigate its inflammatory effect.

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Nothing to be Proud of

I must be transitioning into Jeckyl or Hyde--my rage is like Tourette's. UNEXPLAINED OVERFLOWING RAGE usually means I am moving out of one mood house into the other or that I am exhausted. I went outside with scissors to cut the grass. I kid you not. But I got into it--
I was pissed that neighbors daughter was in my yard and left all the gates wide open. Just like her annoying father -- who uses any excuse to come into my yard.
Then I am cutting the grass with these scissors and a lady 3 buildings away started yelling for her kid and yelling, and yelling, and yelling, and yelling, and yelling.
So I started yelling back shut up, I'll be right there! I'm coming! She comes over to tell me it's none of my business. It is my business. I said under my breath But I am in the bushes buried in weeds, pumped up with adrenalin, cutting the foliage with scissors.
Where did this come from? Noise sets me off. Perhaps I need to borrow the Dalai Lama's hedge clippers.
Then a few minutes later I wanted to apologize but she had already gone inside.

Invisible

When I was in high school my sister lived in Spain.
My mother decided to take a "family vacation" to go see her.
She told me. You're staying home, You're no fun to be around.
I sat on my bedroom radiator and watched the skaters on the pond,
and drew pictures.
The family traveled and drank wine, visiting Dolores, my dads former secretary who was a judo expert.
The following December Dolores and her husband came to celebrate Christmas with us.
They brought gifts - pink sweatshirts for everyone
but me.

Farm Equipment that Runs on Oats

As a muesli-making woman with 98 pound bag of oats in my chest freezer--I love this story!

Stephen Leslie plows a field at his farm in Vermont with Cassima, and Tristan, a pair of Norwegian Fjord draft horses. Story by Anne Raver
I think people are hungering for a kind of unplugged reality that leads to a deeper self-understanding.
It has a spiritual component too -- what this is all about, what gives meaning to human life.
-Stephen Leslie
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Woonsocket Benches

I just walked to the library and I passed five spots where benches have been torn out. The only one left had someone napping on it. Is that why they have all been taken away? If the city is hostile to pedestrians, bringing suburban phobias into play, why live here?

Ted Kooser

But if you're going to get better at writing, you have to write a lot. You have to press on. Isak Dinesen said, "Write a little every day, without hope, without despair."

Don't worry that the process of revision seems slow. The writer's tools were developed early -- paper, pen, and ink; a watchful eye; an open heart -- and good writing is still the patient handiwork of those simple tools.
-Ted Kooser


A Happy Birthday

This evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride this day down into night,
to sit alone and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand.

-Ted Kooser, Delights & Shadows


Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser, Flying at Night

Flying

I had a dream when I was in junior high that my social studies book was on the interstate 95 highway near my house. I flew from the Weaver Street highway overpass bridge and swooped down and got it. When I came home I told my mother. She didn't believe me. I said I can prove it and I flew around the room.

Interesting Boredom Quotes

Death: Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom.
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.
― Edward Gorey

There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.
― G.K. Chesterton

Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
― Friedrich Nietzsche

The Beatles saved the world from boredom.
― George Harrison

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.
― Susan Cain

Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island.
― Christopher Moore, Island of the Sequined Love Nun

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
― Albert Camus, The Plague

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

'I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless, it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.'
― Louis C.K.

Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

Only boring people get bored.
― Ruth Burke

Boredom is the fear of self.
― Marie Joséphine de Suin

Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
― David Foster Wallace

I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking.
― Dorothy Parker

Jeffrey Moss, Workhorse

View here.

Posture Guru

A few weeks ago I was returning books at the front desk and I noticed one of the librarians had perfect posture. I asked her if she was a ballet dancer. She said no, but she had a job looking into microscope for 7 years--and she couldn't quite reach.

I work standing up and I have to be careful what shoes I wear.

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Phyllis Korkki

Some Older Adults Are Adopting Children by Phyllis Korkki, NYT
Some older parents never got their fill of child-rearing; others never had children and finally have the time and means to try raising some.
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Bye Bye Birdie

I wanted to be a singing and dancing actress! But I never sang. We weren't allowed to make noise at home but I got parts in all of the school plays -- one liners! Once I memorized the Cowardly Lions speech from the Wizard of Oz for an oratorical contest. I remember improvising half of it as my mind went googly. I looked down and saw pink in my hand. My red lipsticked triangle painted on my nose had been accidentally wiped off. I won anyway. A bunch of us did. That's how it should be. 42 years later I still remember the Murray Avenue school auditorium with wooden folding chairs and pale blue walls, my costume made of yellow yarn with yellow body suit that snapped at the crotch, my braided tail pinned on my butt, my teacher, my parents who were very preoccupied with medical things that day, annoyed by my excitement.

This Above All . . .

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

William Shakespeare

To sleep perchance to dream I woke with this line in my head! We performed Hamlet in 5th grade, and it's still in me! Kenny Mok was King, Darryl was Queen and James Dufficy was Hamlet. I was Francisco, a castle guard, a minor part. I wore armor made of an old screen door--and black tights. My bio-dad was going to come from Yonkers see us perform at the Emelin Theater but never made it. His wife got false eyelash glue in her eye. The lights didn't go on in the first scene, my big moment. So I said my lines in the dark. . . Halt who goes there? Nay, answer me, Stand and unfold yourself.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Katie Lipsitt, Artist

Katie Lipsitt is an artist, illustrator and writer born and bred in Brooklyn, New York. Katie has been making art for as long as she can remember. She started working in collage while at Barnard College getting her BA in Art History and Fine Art. She was inspired to pursue her own art while working as a rep for illustrators at the highly esteemed Pushpin Studios the year after college. She fell in love, learned to drive and moved out to Los Angeles to study fine art at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. While at school, she began working in film, television and video as a production designer and set decorator. During that time she sold her handmade cards and had her cards published in two books: 100 Ideas for Stationery, Cards and Invitations, Quarry Press and 1000 Handmade Greeting Cards, Quarry Press. After seven years in the film and television industry, Katie began teaching fine art to 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Presently, Katie is working with CCAR Press to illustrate a K-2 Prayerbook for Reformed Jewish temples/day schools.

In between and always Katie was and is making cards, books and art for all of her acquaintances, friends and family. Her children, Ben and Lucy are her real inspiration. Their stories have become the stories that Katie must tell in both words and images. Katie is a member of SCBWI.
View Katie's web site here.

Joseph Campbell

The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.

― Joseph Campbell

Poet Steve Sanfield

my black dog
a lantern
in the snow

each bunch of wildflowers
gives a hint of
where she walked today

here you are
living this perfect life
why bother with poetry?

-Steve Sanfield

Nin Andrews: Superstitions and Honeybees

Re-posted from writer Nin Andrews' blog

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Superstitions

Last night I dreamt that my father was alive, and when I woke I was thinking of all the superstitions he practiced and taught me. He believed in premonitions and ghosts, too. He and my southern cousin, Hadie, loved superstitions and loved to tell them to me. Some they laughed about, but others they practiced. My father, for example, never passed the salt hand-to-hand. He said it was bad manners to do so. Here are a few of their superstitions. I know there are more, but I can't remember them now . . .

1. Never pass the salt hand-to-hand. If you do, you might spill it. Spilled salt, everyone knows, is a bad omen.

2. If you spill salt, toss a pinch of it right hand over left shoulder. If you don't, bad luck will happen to you or someone you love.

3. If you wake up before 7AM on the first day of the month, you have to say bunny, bunny. Say this before saying another word. If you don't, you will never escape the mean kids on the playground or the bad luck that is already blowing your way.

4. If you are at a party, and suddenly everyone is quiet, start your watch. Take note. Because this happens every twenty minutes. Yep, every twenty minutes, the world goes silent, but just for a second. That's when the dead trade places with the living.

5. Hold your breath while passing a graveyard, or the dead will listen in on your secrets and dreams.

6. If you leave flowers on a bus or a train, your future love will find them and know you are thinking of him.

7. If a bird flies in the house, death will soon follow.

8. If you see a ghost walking by the sea, a hurricane is brewing. Leave immediately, or you will be washed out to sea.

9. If you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, you must remember your dreams. Otherwise your dreams will stalk you, ruining your life for days, weeks, months . . .

10. If you are eating a piece of pie, always eat the point last. You can wish on it, and the wish will come true, but only if you don't eat another bite until dinner time.

11. If you listen to your heartbeat for a long time, the distance between one beat and the next will lengthen. In this way you can slow down your life.


The Plight of the Honeybee

One of my earliest memories of my father was seeing him covered with bees. He was moving the nests. I was terrified.

Back then, he raised bees. He loved to talk about them. Honeybees, he said, will travel to the same kind of flowers, harvesting the nectar. They will go back again and again to the same field of clover. They tell each other where the flowers are by dancing. Next to humans, he believed, bees have the most sophisticated language.

I used to ask if the bees slept, and if they slept, did they dream. I liked orange blossom honey best. There were bees in our house, climbing the screens. Wasps too. My father caught them in his handkerchief and shook them loose outside. Whenever I tried, I squeezed too tightly and broke off wings and legs. He always said I was too full of fear and grab.

Now the honey bees are dying off. No one knows why for sure. There's a great article in The August 6th issue of The New Yorker on the plight of the honeybees.

Some of the possible reasons for the die-offs:

1. The practice of moving the bees all over the country (and even the globe) spreads disease.
2. Pesticides. Especially a new class of them, neonecotinoids, which are preferred by farmers because even though they are neurotoxins, they are considered dangerous only to insects.
3. The bees are infected not with one pathogen but with so many, they are like people with AIDS. Their entire immune system has been compromised.
4. A new pathogen, yet to be diagnosed, is causing an epidemic.

Rosie the Riveter

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Steel Yard

Posters

Ephemera + Endless Dust

My studio is full of drawings books paper, paintings, and boxes of postcards and letters. It might be time to make way for ducklings and throw things out. At the very least, my allergies would calm down.

Slumlord Cycle

Tenants in Woonsocket keep their numerous dogs on their porches, serving as their "yard." The dogs pee and poop since they have no place else to go, and permanently infuse the wood of the porch with a wretched smell. I know this from walking by. I see it and I smell it. The slumlord cycle is the root of Woonsocket's problems, beyond the poverty of its residents. If the slumlords were held accountable our beloved city would have a better self-image.

Courageous Woman

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Corporate Smothering

Large transnational corporations are clearly the dominant institution of our time. They're preeminent throughout the world but especially in the Global North and its epicenter in the US. They control or greatly influence what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care and even what we're taught in schools up to the highest levels. They create and control our sources of information and greatly influence how we think and our view of the world and them. They even now own patents on our genetic code, the most basic elements of human life, and are likely planning to manipulate and control them as just another commodity to exploit for profit in their brave new world that should concern everyone. They also carefully craft their image and use catchy slogans to convince us of their benefit to society and the world, like: "better things for better living through chemistry" (if you don't mind toxic air, water and soil), "we bring good things to life" (for them, not us). . . The slogans are clever, but the truth is ugly.
- Stephen Lendman

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Cardboard Bernini

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Yurts, Igloos and Tipis

I can't get enough of them!

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Shoes Made from Denim

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Surreal moments in the public bathroom stall.

Sur la Table

When I was a child the table was a scary place.
I had stomach aches every day.
I was terrified of eating, pleasing my mother,
and having to finish my food.
Bloody cuts of meat scared me.
I hated the harshness of the overhead kitchen light.
I hid my food in bite-sized bits
spit into an unending supply of white paper napkins
stashed under my plate.
My mother would wear lipstick and sunglasses to breakfast.
scrambled eggs
were they too bright?
She wore sunglasses so we couldn't see
that she had crying
after a fight with my stepfather.
Often we were fed by the maid.
Sundays my Grandparents came over from Brighton Beach
Grandma brought honey-cake from the avenue
and potato knishes bagels whitefish and lox!
We stayed at the table all day.
My Stepfather was happy and he'd tell stories.
That was when I loved the table

Brecht Vandenbroucke

Check this out!
http://brechtvandenbroucke.blogspot.com/

Ashkoan Farewell

Catskill Cultural Center Saved, and Renewed, Thanks to a Fiddler’s Tune.
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Many still assume that Mr. Ungar wrote “Ashokan Farewell” with the Civil War in mind. But he wrote it on a September morning in 1982, after the end of his third Ashokan summer music and dance camp on this property, which the State University of New York at New Paltz owned and had used since 1967 as a field campus for environmental education.

“I left on a cloud of utopian euphoria,” Mr. Ungar said of that summer. “You try to keep it alive, but it evaporates.”

The song rose from his melancholy. “With the first three notes I would start crying,” he said. “I was afraid to play it for people because I didn’t know what was going on.”

Mr. Ungar has come to believe that his song, like a traditional hymn, evokes much more than loss. In the mid-1990s, he got an e-mail from a man in Africa who said he was driving in his car when he heard “Ashokan Farewell” on the radio. “He started crying uncontrollably and he had to pull off the road,” Mr. Ungar recalled. “He said that in his culture, after the age of 10, men don’t cry, but he needed to cry.” It is a common reaction. “I’ve gotten hundreds of letters and e-mails from people saying the song figured in a transitional moment in their lives,” he says. “It’s a healing experience.”

That is also what Mr. Ungar hopes the new center will provide. “If you have a great experience here, you take that out with you,” he told the crowd shortly before he offered up his song. “It’s kind of a Ponzi scheme for good.”

Risk It!

When we risk writing about our demons and deepest fears and loves, we put some 'skin in the game' and it shows. We write as if our life depended on it--which it does.

Anne Lamott is my inspiration-- writing about her rage and alcoholism--also Carolyn Knapp writing about her anorexia and alcoholism and Marya Hornbacher writing about all of it plus her bipolar- these women paved the way for me to write it all down-- rather than commit suicide. Oh, and Mary Karr and May Sarton are also favorites.

Jeannette Walls

I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

Puppy Love

Last night we met an adorable 4 month old black and white border collie on Diamond Hill Road. The puppy was with a young woman. She said the dog had been living in Maine with her dad but he had died in March.
Oh, I am sorry, I said.
Puppies are hard, she said.
Yes, it takes about year to get past the pee, poop, and chew stage, I explained. I was thinking . . . If you ever need a dog sitter . . .

The puppy's face is half black and half white, with one blue eye and one brown eye. When she put her face on my neck and snuggled me I fell in love with her.

Thomas Haemmerli

My brother and I had suspected the apartment would be in disorder. But what we found exceeded our worst expectations. Like most "Messies" my mother would do anything to make sure no one ever saw the inside of her home. It took us an entire month to clean out the apartment, and we had to work our way through mountains of things. We unearthed a lot of documents about our family history, including photos going back to the 1880s, film footage from the 30s and 40s, and all the home movies my mother shot from the 1960s onward. This precious material – roughly seventy years of an unusual family history – became the first impulse for making a film. And the possibility of filming in the apartment, without interference from relatives.

- Thomas Haemmerli, Director Seven Dumpsters and a Corpse

I detest films conceived as therapy for their maker. I believe films should be made to tell a story, not as self-help for the filmmaker.

- Thomas Haemmerli