So, I Made a Quilt

“When money’s tight and is hard to get

And your horse has also ran,

When all you have is a heap of debt –

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.
……….


“When stags appear on the mountain high,

with flanks the colour of bran,

when a badger bold can say goodbye,

A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN!”
Flann O’Brien

This first picture is the quilt sandwich being pinned together for final quilting. The solid-colored blocks in olive and red-orange are each embroidered with an art nouveau flower. This picture was about a week ago. My quilt is finally finished.

When I was in high school, our class took a trip to New York City, and we toured the UN. There was a lovely large rug hanging on display somewhere and the guide explained that the traditional weavers of what were then called “Oriental” rugs, always included an error in the intricate patterns because only god was supposed to do perfect. Of course, somebody asked where the error was, which prompted the guide to sigh with exasperation at how widely the high school students had missed the point. Clearly, he/she had no clue where the mistake was. Which is another difference between the UN rug and my quilt because I know where I went wrong.

Operating on that lesson learned long ago at the UN despite the humorless tour guide’s judgment, I intentionally included an error in my quilt. In fact, operating on the tried and true American maxim that if a little is good, more is better, I intentionally included more than one error. Many more in fact, and I hereby state for the record that all errors were intentionally made out of my extreme humility and desire not to be godlike at which I must admit I succeed admirably. I make no admission that drinking while quilting is perhaps an unwise practice, or that a couple of pints of plain while quilting is likely to introduce more errors than a humble sober quilter might make. No badgers said goodbye while I was quilting, although a cat appeared intermittently.

By the time I was done, my sewing machine said I spent over 80 hours of sewing time. I estimate I spent 2-3 times that much time in cutting, piecing, pinning, and ironing, and I’m not even including time spent in ripping out mistakes, drinking beer or saying goodbye to my kitty. The quilt is kitty-approved.

I Am a Woman and I Vote

“ Quot capita tot ingenia.”
- Erasmus Adages 1.3.7; see also Tilley M583, quoted in Gratiae Ludentes, or Jestes from the University A Renaissance Jestbook

This common Latin proverb attributed to Erasmus is generally translated, “So many men, so many opinions.”

However, those wacky English once translated this proverb: so many heads, so many wits. A problem then arose because the proverb was found to be a manifest untruth. As one guy said: “For I, though my acquaintance bee but small;
 know many heads that have no wit at all.”

Don’t we all?

Going Off the Rails

“Today I want you get up and get dressed to lace-up shoes when you first get up in the morning. This means fix your hair and face, too. In order for us to change ourselves, we need to remind ourselves of what we are doing. I did this with yellow sticky notes throughout my home to guide me through my day. This was the beginning of my home control journal. I had little notes on my bathroom mirror to remind me to get dressed to shoes. Shine your sink before you go to bed.”
Flylady.net

Shining sinks. That’s it? Why didn’t my mother teach me this? I’ve lived my miserable disorganized life sunk in the squalor of sinks stained with grime and particulates filtered from leftover dishwater; scarred with rust resembling bloodstains; slimy with grease gobs around the fixtures; fouled with the odor of an overworked garbage disposal belching undigested garlic and fried cabbage into the miasma of a decidedly unshiny sink overflowing with bowls of dried up uneaten cat food and congealing mystery meat fused to plates with egg yolks; stacked to almost toppling with the evidence of my disorder that shames me every time I shuffle into the kitchen wearing my bedroom slippers with smashed down heels, and a dingy cotton robe trailing its tattered sash behind on the unwept linoleum me to get more Doritos.

It is no wonder that I’ve had to stick notes on my bathroom mirror to remind me to do some stuff like put in my false teeth; put on shoes; and stop doing other stuff like to stop like meth; and spreading STDs; and watching HSN all day.

Shining frickin’ sinks? If I was given to profanity, I would have added some at the end of the previous sentences. Fortunately, I awoke this morning and found a note on the mirror to clean up my potty mouth, and shine some sinks sporting shoes.

What, you ask is Flylady.net? Let’s just all hope it’s satire.

After the Thing Has Happened

"When one is a child, when one is young, when one has not yet reached the age of recognition, one thinks that the world is strong, that the strength of God is endless and unchanging. But after the thing has happened--whatever that thing might be--that brings recognition, then one knows irrevocably how very fragile is the world, how very, very fragile; it is like one of those ideas that one has in dreams: so clear and so self-explaining are they that we make no special effort to remember. Then of course they vanish as we wake and there is nothing there but the awareness that something very clear has altogether vanished." 
-- Russell Hoban, Pilgermann

I too, have known the feeling that something clear has vanished. Increasingly frequently in fact. True, I make no special effort to remember these things that seem clear at the time because such moments of clarity are often accompanied by my use of prescription medications and/or alcohol. Coincidence?

Sometimes, I try to write things down to recall later, but this most often leaves me with an even greater sense of frustration because all I am left with upon awakening from my dreams are fragments of sentences that make no sense without some mysterious and now missing context. Here are examples:

• Referring to self in 3rd person is pretentious. Someday, I should have invented time travel in order to refer to myself in the fourth person

• My smart wool socks have all shrunk. Slightly retarded socks?

• Désolé, la page que vous demandez est introuvable

• Compare/contrast offense being given vs offense being taken

• “In later editions of TOKOLOGY, alluding to methods of limiting offspring, the following paragraph occurs: ‘By some a theory called sedular absorption is advanced. This involves intercourse without culmination. No discharge is allowed. People practicing this method claim the highest possible enjoyment, no loss of vitality, and perfect control of the fecundating power.’" - Alice Stockham, M.D. Karezza: Ethics of Marriage (1903)

Perhaps I will institute a policy of simply listing these shards of ideas in my blog so that if I ever recapture those fleeting states of mental clarity I might remember an entire self-explaining blog-worthy concept.

Meanwhile, why should my blog be any more coherent than my mind?

What Year is This?

“Let me prophesy that different and improved methods will be devised to accomplish woman's work. The mothers of the future will be less burdened, and at the same time achieve more satisfactory results in the labor performed… Under the present system, many instances of demoralization in domestic life are in consequence of the mother's inability to fulfill all the requirements of her position. She is the tie that holds the home— mainspring of home-life. In the prophesied future, she may not wash all the dishes and bake all the bread, any more than she now does the spinning and weaving; yet the maternal love, life and instinct will build a nest far more adapted to successful rearing of offspring than is done under present conditions.” (Page 97—98)
Alice B. Stockham, M.D. Tokology, A Book for Every Woman (1893) “CHAPTER VII. HYGIENE OF PREGNANCY—DRESS. Congenial surroundings—Overtaxed mothers—An old lady's story— An every-day experience—Lucrative work—An author's interesting testimony—Prophecy for the future—Dress and fashion Commonsense shoes—Can ladies stand in street cars? —Bates waist—the divided skirt—Equestrian tights—Dress and freedom for women—Dress in pregnancy—What corsets can be worn—Fashion in deformity”

In Victorian times, some gentlemen of good breeding considered improper for ladies of good breeding to cultivate orchids because they had disturbingly shaped flowers that might suggest genitalia. Which makes sense because women might have otherwise learned that their genitalia disturbingly resembled flowers – at least those brazen whores who actually peeked.

Just yesterday, responding to a question about female soldiers in combat, Rick Santorum said, in his typically articulate and cogent way, "I think that could be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved." In fairness, he later explained that he meant that the men soldiers were the ones who might get too emotional seeing the ladies in dangerous combat situations. So, calm down girls.

Catholic institutions object to paying for prescription contraceptives, not because of the money, and not because their teachings have failed to deter the people choosing to use them, but because the practice conflicts with church doctrine. Those who propose that churches should not have to comply with civil laws when they conflict with their religious beliefs would presumably also concede that other religious groups should not have to comply with laws prohibiting female “circumcision” or marriage for 13 year old girls.

While we’re at it, let’s bring back laws that legally protect women - just like any other property owned by their menfolk. It might be best for everyone if we go back to the days when society sheltered and protected delicate little ladies from the coarse and throbbing world lest they become - as Mr. Santorum almost said - hysterical. No wonder there is such widespread "demoralization in domestic life" going around these days.

Upon consideration, that whole equal rights for women idea has probably run its course. Think what a relief it will be for us all when we can go back to having men give up their seats on street cars so ladies don’t have to stand, instead of having to compete with them for jobs.

The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
William Morris

Ok, this could be a problem. While I’m not ready to debut on the Hoarders TV program, the house I inhabit is also occupied by those whose aspirations toward that doubtful goal are thwarted only by their chronic indolence, low expectations and ultimately, by a failure of imagination.

Yesterday, while discoursing on this very topic, Tech Support Guy reminded me that we only have one junk room. He was referring to the room that is piled eight feet deep and high with the furniture of our descendents to the point where you can open the door, but only the cat can proceed further into the room - as if the entire stack of boxes and furniture was placed there for her climbing pleasure. And who’s to say?

In fairness, TSG is correct. The junk in the rest of the rooms of our home is loosely confined to stacks, dusty corners, and generally reposing languidly on indulgent furniture no longer being used for its intended purposes. In theory, an adventurous archeologist untroubled by any trace of claustrophobia might be able to carefully deconstruct these stacks layer-by-layer and read therein the history of my ultimately futile attempts to disperse the clutter. The trained expert might discern patterns there that might explain my descent into madness.

I could have as likely unscrambled an egg, but there was a time when I tried to organize my home, because I become more agitated in a cluttered environment than a canary in a coal mine.

I now realize that canaries in coal mines don’t struggle - they simply fall peacefully unconscious. Which is totally better than being crushed to death by a toppling pile of old shoes; or being speared through the heart by a broken umbrella knocked off a pile of cardboard boxes filled with broken strings of Xmas lights. Or dying of an anxiety attack brought on by inhaling hazardous waste dislodged in a misguided attempt to dust.

These days, I prefer instead to drink cheap wine and fashion my own creation myth from the clutter slowly burying me. I like to imagine that Chaos might one day arise from deep within the vast unreachable spaces filled with three lifetimes of crap, possibly exploding with a big banging noise from which gods, men and all the other stuff of a new universe might burst into existence from a dispersing cloud old papers, manuals for obsolete software, discarded articles of clothing, paper clips, ancient AOL trial offer CDs, and broken teacups waiting to be glued back together.

For all I know, the precise composition of crap needed to create this new universe might be forming at this very moment deep within the clutter in my junk room, a sort of cosmic spontaneous generation stirring unseen beneath the surface layers. Perhaps the formula lacks only a fragment of a handwritten musical score, a torn antimacassar, or some chipped cowrie shells. I’m sure they must be here somewhere…

To My Husband of 25 Years

"Most like an arch-two weaknesses that lean
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.
Two joined abeyances become a term
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean...

" It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another's sake,
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight."

- John Ciardi, Most Like and Arch This Marriage

This isn't how we planned it. How could we not have realized that we'd grow old? But here we stand, holding on to each other's arms for support; two weaknesses leaning blissfully into each other to make a strong marriage. It's been quite an adventure so far. So, what's next? I'm signing on for another 25. Another quote, this time from Dag Hammarskjold:

For all that has been, thanks
For all that will be, yes.

Stir Fried Rice and Advance Directives

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"
Chuck Palahniuk

If I were nominated to serve on the Supreme Court, Congress probably wouldn’t approve me. I hasten to add that it’s not what you’re thinking: i.e. because my dues to the California Bar Association are almost ten years overdue. It’s the other criminal activity I have engaged in during the course of my lightly checkered past. Let’s face it, who hasn’t at one time or another committed an illegal act like, say, failing to return library books on time.

I was reminded that today when I went to make pork fried rice to use up the leftover pork shoulder roast. My favorite Chinese food cookbook is “Victor Sen Yung’s Great Wok Cookbook”. You might know this author as “Hop Sing, the Chinese cook on the ‘Bonanza’ TV series”. My copy of this 1974 edition was due at the Department of Public Libraries, Montgomery County, Maryland, Silver Spring a while back. Specifically: 2/14/75.

In my defense, I was moving to San Diego then, and plus the book is really good, notwithstanding that I didn’t particularly care for Bonanza and the homoerotic overtones of all those guys riding horses; or that I envied Little Joe’s perfect frosted hair. Perhaps not so strangely, he’s (Victor, not Little Joe) never steered me wrong, or should I say, “stirred” me wrong, particularly when making fried rice.

Which isn’t a terribly smooth segue to the topic of today’s post: posting about stuff besides gardening. In fact, it’s no segue at all: from stir fried rice to blogging -- unless you want to consider the existential similarity that when either are good, they are very very good, and when they are bad they are inedible, or illiterate, or both.

Truman Capote famously distinguished between what he called writing and what he called typing. I am not so discriminating, I carelessly type my outrage du jour or whatever I’m inspired to write by what I happen to be reading. I submit that sometimes typing is the best way to vent, particularly when you have, over the years, had your own personal spell-check learn all manner of profanities, thus preventing it from whinging about their prolific use.

But back to posting. I make no apologies. My garden blog has, much like my life, overflowed the tidy stack of garden-oid topics like a stack of 2011 financial stuff being assembled for the tax lady that I just knocked over this afternoon. Like this once tidy stack, like my blog, now spills all over the floor with posts about train rides, fried rice, lethally incompetent bureaucrats, and the therapeutic benefits of posting the accumulating evidence that there must be some conspiracy that is making me feel old, sore, tired and in need of updating my advance directive.

Which brings me back to the other part of the title of this post: Advance Directives, updating. After due consideration, I’d like mine to depart from the state-approved form into a more creative writing exercise. I’m still polishing my customized AD but here’s what I’ve got so far:

In the event that one – no make that two – or more of the following conditions are manifested in my behavior:
a) Drooling even when sober;
b) Wearing diapers someone else has to change;
c) Letting my once excellent personal hygiene practices slide like congealing gravy down a volcano of mashed potatoes on a chipped dinner plate;
d) Become just another tedious old lady whose spittle-punctuated rants involve rage at inanimate objects that piss me off;
e) I happen to wake up one morning as a different person and cease to be the devoted, compassionate and generous friend/relative/sister/favorite aunt who you all know and love:

I hereby authorize my authorized representative to respectfully hold a pillow against my face so I can “Say goodnight to Mr. Pillow”, subject however, to the following:

In the event that said authorized representative determines that greater comedic value can be realized thereby, authorized representative is hereby authorized instead to dress me like a Franciscan nun and write with a magic marker on my pristine white over starched bib: This is what happens if you don’t make the Nine First Fridays, or you have sex before marriage; and prop me in a folding chair along the path to the parking lot after Mass. (For the record, I must have made 8/9 of dozens of First Fridays and effort should count here).

Notwithstanding the foregoing however, and subject to all the other provisions of this advance directive without regard to the degree said provisions may be found inconsistent or simply contradictory, please change my diaper sometimes.

(Finally, imagine you were trying to set a record for keywords or labels for a post that were extremely unlikely to be seen in each others' company. If you were, I just did.)

Sleeping on a Train

"In the morning I came awake as I always do, like a man trapped in a car going over a cliff."
-- Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency

It sounded like a good idea – taking the train from the bottom of California to the top of Oregon. I have the time and the scenery alternates between lovely and imaginative in a surrealistic kind of way. Between Richmond and Oakland, there are miles and miles of trackside graffiti, some of it displaying a sophisticated use of color and line, and some of it clearly violating the Sponge Bob franchise copyright.

Only it takes a long time. The first leg, from San Diego to LA is just over 2.5 hours. The trip from LA to Portland is a nice round 30 hours. Together, the trip is, let’s see now, wait for it: too damn long. And that’s not counting a layover of several hours in the gorgeous art deco station at LA. The experience is spoiled a bit when armed police demand to be shown tickets in order to prevent beggars and homeless people from living in the nice comfortable chairs in the nice heated station. Only the police don’t prevent it, managing instead only to keep the desperately poor people moving and sleep-deprived and a bit cranky.

The accommodations in what is disingenuously not called steerage are tantalizingly almost comfy. Although the seats provide more foot room than first class airline seats, and although they not only recline to about 45 degrees they also include an occasionally functional shelf under the seat designed to lift up your lower leg at a 30-degree angle, they don't promote an optimal sleeping experience. The idea that with the seat reclined and the footrest thingie raised is that you get to attempt to sleep stretched out in a zig and then a zag, a bit like sleeping on three steps of a narrow padded staircase.

The seats take away in width what they give in length. They also lack a center arm, acquainting you with your seatmate perhaps a bit more than would be desired. When you try to sleep, you find yourself snuggled up against a stranger close enough to smell the beer he/she had in the billiard room or whatever they call the car with the bar.

Then there’s the other passengers sleeping in the same room: the smokers making a stampede to the doors when station stops are longer than 30 seconds, the lurching drunks, the fussing babies, the kicking toddlers, and the sprawling sleeping teenage girls whose untidy luggage in matching plastic grocery bags migrates to the center aisle while they fling the stray arm or leg out to snag the wary traveler.

And don’t get me started on the restrooms. In fact, competent Amtrack staff manage to keep the restrooms mostly tidy, if a bit under-ventilated. Too bad passengers seem intent on bathing (or perhaps doing their laundry) in the miniature sinks while managing to spray water throughout the tiny compartments and not bothering to wipe it up. Perhaps such careless behavior is prompted by the signs on the mirrors saying Clean Up After Yourself without using the word “Please”. How rude, am I right?

In the end, apart from discovering that I am too old to enjoy the adventure of spending two days and a night on trains with strangers, I found my faith in my fellow travelers renewed. People are generally kind, tolerant, and quick to aid one another. An older man saw me taking pictures out the window and stopped by to advise me of an approaching photo op. A younger man saw me struggling to place my suitcase in an overhead bin and quickly did the job for me without even being asked.

A guy in the café car told me the small bottles of red wine were chilled adjacent to the white (!) but would be warmed up just right by the time we made it to through the five intervening cars to the last car we both occupied. I had the perfect lunch. A grandma with a small child shared a sympathetic smile as she saw me cringe away from my zaftig seatmate during the dark of an almost endless night.

And best of all, the gentle swaying of the train, accompanied by the squeaks and rattles and bumps is one of the most soothing experiences in the world.

Out of the Dark

After a million years of shining
The sun doesn’t say to the earth –
‘You owe me.’
Imagine a love like this.
-- Hafiz

A day outside like spring, mild in the low 70s and sunny. Because I’m leaving for 10 days, I watered because we haven’t heard the sound of rain in a while. While rain would be a sound for sore ears right now, I expect my wish will be granted in Portland OR. So, I went outside to say hello to the sun as it begins it journey back north, lengthening my days by merely perceptible moments. But something inside me feels the change and knows we’re heading back into the sun.

My petite lemons in the shade nevertheless seem to glow in the reflected light, and to sparkle with the dewy secret of their ripeness. The sprinkler drops have yet to dry on their fragrant skin; their fragrance is a presence in the air nearby, smelling like sunshine.

I see the sun everywhere in the yard this afternoon. This is a good time and a good place to thank my love for this year and bid it gone and, and to imagine more love for everyone in the new year about to begin.

Goodbye 2011, and Good Riddance

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.”

~Homer, Iliad

I’ve been caught up in a plague of stupid. It's too soon to tell if it's fatal.

My recent visit to the Cardiac Nurse Practitioner to recount my increasingly troublesome symptoms and drug side effects was another exercise in futility that always ceases to amaze me. My concerns were met with a blank uncaring shrug and the advice to increase my medications. I've experienced better bedside manner from hospital nurse call buttons. I've experienced more compassion from Chase Bank.

Trying to explain the details of how Chase Bank has once again screwed me would make my eyes bleed, and reading them would make your heart break. That is, unless you already suspected what the greedy, rapacious, inept thieves at Chase Bank do for a living. I've experienced more competence from the California Department of Human Services.

Meanwhile, my friends at California DHS have embarked on yet another round of vague demands for further documentation before ruling on an application for a family member to receive MediCal. In case you’re playing along at home, this is the fourth time they have demanded, and I have submitted, documents to validate the qualifications of the applicant. I have to wonder how many potential applicants simply give up, pack their belongings into a grocery cart, and move into the nearest alley to await death.

If 2011 was a patient on life support, I would tattoo "DNR" on it's forehead. The winter winds can't scatter the misfortunes of 2011 like dead leaves on the ground soon enough for me.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

‘From quiet homes and first beginnings, out to the undiscovered ends, there’s nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends’
Hilaire Belloc’s ’Dedicatory Ode’

Christopher Hitchens died the other day.

To me, Hitchens was an inspired writer. His writing was articulate, amazing, cogent and sparkling throughout with literary gems and original thoughts. He was a master who could craft the perfectly expressed thought and clearly present the most inspired original idea. He could nail the most devastating argument; or voice the most scornfully appropriate criticism; or coin the most delightful term. And because we were both the same age, and shared a similar taste for dark humor, I persuaded myself that I had at least something in common with this complex man whose writing has given me such pleasure over the years – even when I disagreed with him.

You can probably find dozens of tributes by his famous admirers, and samples of his writing on line (here’s one of my favorites) but I particularly was struck by the impromptu eulogy in his brother Richard’s blog today, and from which I take Belloc’s poem quoted above. The post thanks people for their kind wishes and then takes Christopher’s courage as its topic:

“Much of civilisation rests on the proper response to death, simple unalloyed kindness, the desire to show sympathy for irrecoverable less, the understanding that a unique and irreplaceable something has been lost to us. If we ceased to care, we wouldn’t be properly human…

“Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it…

“He would always rather fight than give way, not for its own sake but because it came naturally to him…

“Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood, because you think it is too important not to… I’ve mentioned here before C.S.Lewis’s statement that courage is the supreme virtue, making all the others possible. It should be praised and celebrated, and is the thing I‘d most wish to remember…”

Peter Hitchens on the death of his brother Christopher Hitchens on 12/15/11

Margins of Error

The bells jostle in the tower
The lonely night amid.
And on my tongue the taste is sour
Of all I ever did.
- A.E. Houseman

The days are getting shorter, but soon they will begin to grow marginally longer. There is something about December that makes one think of endings more than beginnings. I always take a deep breath of relief when I make it to the winter solstice. It feels to me like I have rounded the racetrack once more and crossed the finish line to begin another lap. Right now though, tonight is the last full moon of 2011, and I'm not quite at the line, and sorrow dogs my steps.

Right now, as I approach the end of the final lap of the lunar year, the doubts and regrets I carry are heavy, and I keep my thoughts from freezing only by blowing on the last coal of slowly smoldering anger deep inside. If I can hold on another ten days, we can chuckle at the tired family joke – always told on 22 December – about how the days seem to be getting longer.

I came across an old poem I’d saved many years ago on a similar dim December day, and I imagine its speaker must have been writing it on a similar day. It’s a sort of science fiction imagining of a post-apocalyptic future, and it has seeped into my restless dreams, accompanied by the mysterious thumps and squeaks the dark house makes in the night.

I know I should lighten up, just like Houseman should have. It's going to be close this year, but I estimate I have just enough energy left to make it to the solstice. I can only hope my estimate is within the margin of error. After that, things will begin to look up. Which is more than you can say for the people who left this epistle behind.

Blogger removes the lovely spacing of this poem and makes it into solid blocks below. You should really appreciate the poem as the author wrote it by clicking on the link at the end of the poem.

...It is colder now
there are many stars
we are drifting
North by the Great Bear
the leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rock
to southward
Red sun grey air
the crows are
Slow on their crooked wings
the jays have left us
Long since we passed the flares of Orion
Each man believes in his heart he will die
Many have written last thoughts and last letters
None know if our deaths are now or forever
None know if this wandering earth will be found

We lie down and the snow covers our garments
I pray you
you (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names
I will tell you all we have learned
I will tell you everything
The earth is round
there are springs under the orchards
The loam cuts with a blunt knife
beware of
Elms in thunder
the lights in the sky are stars
We think they do not see
we think also
The trees do not know nor the leaves of the grasses hear us
The birds too are ignorant
do not listen
Do not stand at dark in the open windows
We before you have heard this
they are voices
They are not words at all but the wind rising
Also noone among us has seen God
(... We have thought often
the flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
pointed to one tree but it was not so.)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous
The wind changes at night and the dreams come

It is very cold
there are strange stars near Arcturus
Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky

Archibald MacLeish, Epistle To Be Left In The Earth

My Tax Dollars At Work, Not to Mention My Public Education System

I have been dancing with California Department of Health and Human Services since September to apply for benefits for a family member. Because they routinely lose papers sent via mail, I have braved the online application system. This system is fraught with its own perils, mostly associated with attaching documents to verify various and sundry things about the applicant's status. In response to my latest attempt to reply to an earlier request for additional verifications, I received this message this morning.

I have altered the following document only to remove the case number at the beginning and the lengthly privacy notice at the end. I have also, mercifully, deleted the name of the person who sent the following:

Good Morning,

Case number XXXXXXX

Thank you for emailing us at ACCESS Center. We apologized, we do not
processed paperworks here at ACCESS. I will just send your
verifications to the imaging to be imaged and so the worker who will
processed your case and see these verification provided.

Thank you.


“Please feel free to contact ACCESS again if you have any additional
questions. Thank you….”

Await Anticipation

“I Like You. I’ll Kill You Last.”

- My favorite Hallmark birthday card ever

Douglas Adams once wrote two sentences that sum up my day so far. I’ve been trying to tilt my virtual lance at the metaphorical windmill of Internet banking. Got knocked off my faithful steed within the first nanosecond I tried to access my account so I could balance my checkbook prior to paying bills. Now, balancing my checkbook is fraught with peril at the best of times, but today has been more perilous than most in recent memory. (Good thing recent memory goes no farther than 48 hours.) I had to offer up the name of my first pet to even get through the door of the credit union online banking site. A dark foreboding filled my veins like ice water filling your boot as you step onto the thin ice.

But I was talking about Douglas Adams. Here’s his existential brainteaser: "He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

In the event that there is an afterlife, consider this post my sincere, desperate, hope and prayer that incompetent bureaucrats get their guts eaten out for all eternity while they’re chained to rocks like that mythological character What’s His Name.

In a completely unrelated but equally baffling message from beyond, there was a marquee on the church down the hill from me that said “Expect Hope”. This infuriates me, and not just the gratuitous capitalization. Next week will they have something else repetitious and redundant and not to mention content-free like “Believe Faith”? I hope not, but I expect so.

For someone constantly on the lookout for meaning, I can only take these recent events as a clear message that the end of civilization is near.

Once I was a bureaucrat myself. I know firsthand how depressing the quotidian existence of one who is paid too little to sort forms at a metal desk where one’s predecessor died of a massive stroke while sorting an earlier version of the same forms. So, there is a special place in my heart for the bureaucrats who have been pecking at my own guts while I try to comply with The State, the Internet, and the “would you like to complete a survey about our service?” pop-up windows.

Unfortunately for us all, that special place in my heart has been clogged with atherosclerotic plaque and slowly shriveled into a blackened scab through which blood flow is only a distant memory. So I merely hope.

Muddy Water = Sleepless Nights

“Do the things external which fall upon thee distract thee? Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around. But then thou must also avoid being carried about the other way. For those too are triflers who have wearied themselves in life by their activity, and yet have no object to which to direct every movement, and, in a word, all their thoughts. “ - Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations

Sound advice, right? Wrong. Although he doesn’t say so, Marcus surely knows there is often a fine line between trying to learn something new and good, and wearying oneself by such activity. It comes down to finding a way to govern one’s thoughts.

We have all had nights when our body is tired and wants to rest, while our thoughts are flitting around from past to future, from regrets to hopes, and from thought to unrelated thought like a 9-year-old on a Kool-Aid jag.

On such nights, I find Marcus Aurelius to be a bit of a pedantic jerk, full of what purports to be wisdom but empty of a single practical idea for living a peaceful life. I’m unable to sleep anyway, so I might as well fault this preachy pedantic philosopher as admit that while I toss and turn I’m merely stirring up the mud from the bottom of the pool of thought inside my head.

Even that kid with ADD running around on a playground knows that if you stop stirring a muddy pool of water with a stick, it will gradually become clear.

“Who can make the muddy water clear? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear. Who can secure the condition of rest? Let movement go on, and the condition of rest will gradually arise.” - Lao-tzu, The Tao-te Ching

The More You Know...

“If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

Pink Floyd

Happy thanksgiving everybody.

A Storm for Every Calm

“Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye, — though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life, — in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: — through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’ doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.” - Herman Melville

I am not generally one for drinking away my sorrows, but I was driven to try last week - and not just because it was raining outdoors and gloomy in. November 13 was a sad anniversary for me; one toasted with B&B and a PG Netflix movie. Of late, my “pondering repose of If” more closely resembles a heavy mental lumber through the deck of memories – more ponderous than pondering. The focus of my attention devoted to pondering of “If” has narrowed its beam light a dying flashlight down the damp basement steps to replace a fuse. Last week, I was so sad I would have traded my tickets to the moon for a couple of metaphorical C batteries and a pair of shoes with insulated soles.

So, to cheer myself up (this was before the B&B) I tried to think of a funny joke. Hmmm….

One of the funniest jokes in the world, to me, has always been: Why do elephants drink? Why? To forget. Now, to appreciate why the answer to this riddle was so hilarious when I was 10, you need to know the precursor cliché about elephants never forgetting. So, the joke has built-in nod-and-wink to those of us clever enough (like I was at 10) to know the secret handshake to decode this shibboleth of a joke. It’s even funnier as I age and begin to consider how hard it must be for an elephant to actually drink enough to get drunk, given its body weight.

Melville totally captures a bleak time when the earth has been long parched by the dead drought of earthy life. And I totally relate to his comparison of this soul-deep inborn longing to return to the cool dew in the Garden of Eden as it was before snakes invaded. The halting and stumbling progress of our lives toward some imagined “If” is, Melville seems to say, is a journey with an end shrouded in riddles like a dilemma, inside an enigma, wrapped in bacon. Like a hilarious riddle but with the punch line we don’t quite get until we die.

If I had a dollar for every time I wandered from “… doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of "If". If only I had a dollar. If only. Fifty cents. I'd be richer than Oprah.
If. But. But it’s sunny today. Today at least, I get a brief remission in the symptoms of my seasonal affective disorder. If only it would stay this way.

La Plus Ca Change

The Women of Darius Invoking the Clemency of Alexander

"A widow is like a frigate of which the first captain has been shipwrecked."
- Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr

I'm wondering if anybody else has noticed this. There are two parallel news stories that are almost more instructive in the coverage they are receiving than in their content. One is the boy child rape at Penn State. The other is the sexual harassment/assault of grown women by Herman Cain. Both of these stories are about sordid things that happened years ago and are just now coming to light. And yet…

Our national news the media is shocked, SHOCKED, that little boys were sodomized all those years ago and they’re just now hearing about it. The outrage and righteous indignation at the victimization of young boys is breathtaking. Nobody seems to be questioning at all whether these incidents really took place.

The Herman Cain story: not quite so much shock and outrage. Victims of Cain’s sexual abuse are being called – predictably – sluts out for money preying on a virtuous powerful man. The few stories that attempt to be fair and/or balanced to the accusers still pepper their concerns with weak conditional language: alleged, unproven, “he said/she said” and shit. Cain thinks it's all a conspiracy at worst or a joke at best. He called Speaker Pelosi “Princess Nancy” at the recent debate, and was overheard (by Fox news) making a joke about Anita Hill. That guy kills. Is this our image of a Man's Man? Sad.

While I am perfectly aware that there are many places in this world where women treated very much worse by clueless men who are little more than spoiled old children, watching these cases unfold in public simply confirms that discrimination against women happens pretty much all over the world. But here and now, in the virtual community telling us the story of these two cases of sex abuse of a weaker person by a stronger person. And by weaker person, I mean women, and by a stronger person, I mean men.

No matter how enlightened we (and our media) like to think we are about all y'all connivin' bitches, the different approaches to these two different stories, strangely, both reflect the same double standard: Guilt by Gender. Like dirty linen drying on the rope above a sooty alley, our gender-biased judgments are all the more shameful because they are almost subconscious.

Women who are sexually abused and speak out are subjected to something cruel that looks to me a lot like a presumption of guilt. But let a different class of powerless people (who just happen to have penises) be sexually mistreated, and suddenly we will have to fire the entire chain of authority and pay millions to make it right. Otherwise, those poor victims might be further victimized. When the poor Penn State victims do come forward, should we consider whether they might just have been asking for it?

One might argue that the difference that makes it so much sadder is that the mistreatment of boys was witnessed and that of the women was not. Not true. "Allegedly", other people saw Cain being a dick to women and actually told him to cool it. How nice of them, and how nice for the ladies. They also told the man raping boys to cut it out. End of story. But in Cain’s case, there were settlement agreements for Crissake. That is an acknowledgement that - notwithstanding that something inappropriate and possibly illegal happened - we all agree to exchange some money to keep it quiet. In the Penn State cases, it's (as of now) unproven "he said/they said."

The only difference with the boys is that they’ll receive their (probably costlier) settlement much longer after the fact; and of course, that we’ll all feel really sorry for them, poor kids. Meanwhile, let’s drag those “ugly,” “bleach blond” tramps through the mud for daring to challenge a respected (!) man. And should the abused boys accept a settlement? When they do, should they have to sign a non-disclosure agreement in consideration for their hush money?

Ironic isn't it, the guy who is most famous for his epigram in the title of this post considered women no more than vessels who needed men to steer them. It's sad isn't it, that Al Karr would probably identify with the level of respect given to women today. Douche.

Winterize Your Robots!

"The world is full of fickle people/
you old friend aren’t one/
inspired you write like a god/
drunk you’re crazier still/
enjoying white hair and idle days/
blue clouds now rise before you/
how many times will you still sleep/
with a jug of wine by your bed."
-- Kao Shih, To Chang Hsu after Drinking, Quoted in Poems of the Masters, China’s Classic Anthology of T’and and Sung Dynasty Verse, Red Pine, trans.

Winter is here. Hibernation has begun. I’ve lived so long here that the first rain announces winter’s arrival somewhere inside me. Despite the relative mildness of our Zone 9 winters, I have acclimated. All that is left of my roots - those east coast Mid-Atlantic snow days of yesteryear - is the fond memories.

The first big rain sooths my soul and that’s what winter feels like today after a long hot summer and a mild and warm Indian Summer. It is time to put away my tools and leave the garden behind. It’s almost time to make Dad’s eggnog, aka Bot Nog, with Southern Comfort. Almost time to turn to my indoor self; cook comfort food with last summer’s canned tomato sauce; and make your pasta from scratch.

And it is time to sew. I’ve got a date with the Pfaff-Whisperer. He’s booked for six weeks. But I scored an appointment for him to service Pfaff Creative, aka F Sewing Machine, right after Thanksgiving. I take the FSM to rehab at the end of November. I’m thinking I need a new name for FSM if I’ve got a prayer of learning how to use it by emphasizing the fucking positive and burying the burning regret and failure in the Springfield Tire Fire inside my head, where its smoldering ashes will give off toxic smoke that will cast a pall on the my attempts to approach this year’s learning curve with anything shorter than a fully-extended fire truck ladder. Seasonal affective Disorder, or psychotic break? You decide.

This gives me from now til the end of the month to get the F Quilt off the Dustbin of History shelf and tear out last year’s stubborn mistakes. My simple plan is to complete the FQ and get on to the next quilt that will surely be a thing of beauty, and a joy forever. Last spring, I met my latest quilting waterloo, folded it resentfully and put it in the I Hate You Closet, and then went outside to play.

Do I hear you say it's time for me to face the FQ with courage and valor, not with smoldering hate. You might counsel me to approach this coming indoor season’s cabin fever with a better attitude. To which I say, screw you. So, as I turn the clocks back that I should have turned back yesterday, I have to ask myself: how many times have I slept with a jug of wine by my bed?

But who’s counting? Not me, anyway. Thanks to an alcohol-induced rapidly deteriorating short term memory best described as intermittent with chance of hallucinations. And you don't even have to sleep at a Comfort Inn Express to know that's wack.

So, winterize now, gardeners. Time for comfort food and drink and living large off summer’s bounty. To the Quilting Cave!