Discovery

That the world is new to me every day seems ridiculous and sounds trite, but it's true. Why just yesterday I believed that the hordes of bushes greening by the east side of my new house were roses, but they're not. They're blackberries. And so this summer there will be more blackberries than the bears and I can eat. I will have to drop them by the buckets at the neighbor's and their neighbor's, leave them for the mailman, and bring them to every event.

As it turns out, the whole world operates like a blackberry bush. Take love, for instance. Love is not stagnant but always shifting, simultaneously rooting and deracinating, growing into something so surprising it hardly resembles its original form. How comforting (in an agonizing kind of way) to know that things are rarely what they seem--roses are not blackberries--and nothing stays the same forever. How beautifully absurd that tomorrow the world will be new again, that the bushes and the bears and love and I will be different than we are right now.

Un Autre Monde

What if there is no lineality to time
No beginning, no end
Nothing solid amid the revolutions

That mark billions of years.

What if there is a parallel universe
Where simultaneous selves
Live out earthly inclinations

Isn’t it comforting, this thought
That perhaps somewhere, at sometime
I am getting to know

The infinity of you.

Research Finds Dying Increases Mortality

Dying, whether naturally or by accident, is now presumed to be the leading cause of death, according to researchers.

A recent scholarly review of 60,000,000,000 deaths indicates that all cases of death have one thing in common: the individual, at some point and by some means, died.

"This is big news for the research world," says a researcher, whose next project involves linking human mortality with animal mortality. "If we can find even one species for which death increases mortality, we will be able to draw connections between humans and animals."

The experts in this study said it took them roughly 2,000,000,000 years to complete the analysis, but that the startling results were worth the commitment. "If we have saved just one death, then we will have done our jobs, and I can rest in peace," says another researcher.

When asked how humans could try and cheat death, a researcher replied, "Well, there's really only one way to decrease mortality, and that's to not be born in the first place." But he agrees that people might have a difficult time controlling this habit.

"I didn't have much say in it," claims Ima Heer, who says she knew she would expire one day, but until now wasn't sure how it would happen. "In a way, you don't want to know what will cause your death," she continued, "but I guess it's better to know that it's dying. I guess that kind of takes the pressure off."

Of the 6,500,000,000 people interviewed for this article, most agreed with Ms. Heer, but didn't realize the extent to which dying increased mortality. Some researchers claimed the analysis was flawed, but few could argue with the end results. "This opens up a whole new field of study," asserts yet another researcher. "Now we can really work on figuring out how not to be born," which experts say will drastically decrease mortality. "We're all trying to figure out, every day, how to not die. Now we're on our way. This is a very exciting time for science," exclaimed an expert.

The study's researchers are busy wrapping up loose ends, but will begin working on animal mortality and not dying very soon. In the meantime, experts recommend not thinking about how dying increasing mortality, and just concentrate on living.

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Inspiration for the above provided by: CNN

There are a lot of dead people whose deaths were probably caused by dying. Many more so, in fact, than alive people: See?

Ms. Understood

I always loved the bumper sticker that read, “Feminism: The radical notion that women are people.” I first learned about feminism in my junior year of college; why it took me so long I have no idea, probably because it wasn’t a popular topic in the ubiquitous patriarchy of prep school. Now, the older I get, the more single I become, alternating between relishing and dreading my freedom as a thirty-something single feminist in a society that doesn’t know quite what to do with me. What I hate is persistent inequality, the glass ceiling, and the question of whether or not the United States is ready for a female president. Why, in the age of supposed post-enlightenment, are we asking such an idiotic question? Compared to Dumb W, Clinton looks like a Mensa candidate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of the neoliberal, smoke-blowing power couple on steroids, but could we possible get any worse in the White House?

What I also hate is the media’s portrayal of women and the messages sent to young girls that they must be stick-thin, big-breasted, and smart but not too smart lest they make their boyfriends look inept. We are taught to know and do all but appear as though we don’t know and can’t do it all. We are also taught to compete with other women, sometimes viciously, instead of engaging in sisterhood. It’s no wonder most of the women I know have no idea how to be strong and independent without being mistaken for ax-wielding bitch lesbians, how to be accommodating without being doormats, or how to fully appreciate their intelligence and beauty.

Fortunately I am not hate-full. What I love is that despite my emotional and romantic state I am truly not alone in my search for myself. I love that last week without intention I stumbled across bell hooks’ affirming and life-changing book, Communion: The Female Search for Love, which reminds me that I can embrace my femininity and feminism, and that I must do the hard work of learning to love myself fully in order to have healthy relationships with anyone. I’m starting with my feet, as hooks suggests, an oft forgotten body part which I think are particularly amazing considering they work hard everyday to get me from here to there.

Photo: These are not my feet, but I love this image. Credit: Sean Duggan.

Abbey Road

It's a wonder that westward settlers put their stakes in Southeast Utah. It's a no-man's land, prickly and anhydrous, with bright, burning days and steel cold nights. And yet the landscape is like no other east of the Colorado, the red rock virtually jumps out of the periphery like an absurd 3-D pop-up children's book, almost too fictional to be real, almost too red to be earthly. The sky with its infinite layers of every shade of blue stretches out beyond the imagination and loses itself behind the 2.5 mile-high peaks of the La Sal mountains.

Decades ago, this area was generally unknown except to uranium miners and cowpokes. Now Moab is a haven for weekend warriors, mountain bikers and hikers out to conquer the windswept terrain and leave their indelible mark upon the land. Of course, tourism requires paved roads, trash bins, and signs to stunt stupidity. Urban dwellers must be reminded to not feed coyotes or trudge upon the cryptobiotic crust that is elemental to the fragile ecosystem of the desert. How far we've come.

Edward Abbey wrote about his disgust for progression in Desert Solitaire, a must-read for visitors to this edge of the West. His other, more popular title is The Monkey Wrench Gang, a fiction-esque tale of a misaligned group of eco-raiders working against man and machine. Abbey did most of his writing in a quiet spot in the foothills of the La Sals, a rather special place named Pack Creek. I visited Pack Creek for the third time just a few weeks ago, walking in Abbey's dust, breathing in the memories of a place that once was. Every afternoon, as the sun tilted westward I would set out, bundled up, breath fogging up my glasses, and I would look out for the elk or the coyote or the bobcat I knew were on the lookout for me. Instead, I saw only signs: Seldom Seen Road, Abbey Road, and my favorite, Take the Other Road. As I rounded the bend behind our cabin I would imagine I lived in Pack Creek amongst the Aspen colonies, amongst the elk, coyote, and bobcat. And I could almost see the ghosts of settlers before me who knew well enough to put down stakes in this awesome land, this otherworldly and cavernous paradise, this dry and deserted Zion.

Forsooth!

Let's face it, the majority of the United Statesians are wasteful. We not only produce a disproportionate amount of pollution, we also waste vast amounts of resources, like fossil fuels, water, and food so we can live comfortably. And by comfortably, I mean in a way that the majority of the world's population would find abounding. But this entry is not an animadversion. (Okay, maybe it is, but I just really wanted to use that word.) This entry is about wasting food... for good.

When you think of the holidays, what first comes to mind? Santa Claus. No, what else? Christmas trees! No, what else? Wrapping paper? Geez, you suck at this. Duh, gingerbread houses. What better way to ring in the holiday season than with a miniature replica of a warm and cozy house made out of gingerbread and frosting and various candies manipulated to look like roof tiles and stone walkways. (Have you ever stopped to think just how truly weird the human race is?)

Anyway, back to gingerbread houses. Interestingly, making replicas (of saints and crosses and the like) out of gingerbread dates back to the good old medieval days when people used to empty their piss pots in the streets and say things like, "Forsooth!" whatever that means. Of course, the ingredients needed to make these fine edible saints and crosses were very expensive and thus a tradition that was reserved for commercial bakers or wealthy households. Oh, the more things change, etc.

Although I am not particularly wealthy I do have wealth potential, and therefore I can afford to buy extra graham crackers (the lazy person's gingerbread), and icing (a.k.a. frosting in a plastic tub--this, by the way, is not actually a food, but the synthetic version thereof). I can also afford the various candies needed to spruce up my fake, edible house. Of course, now you're probably wondering where all this is going. The truth is it's really just a v-e-r-y long caption for the above photo of my amazing gingerbread concoction. Notice that I have a lamp post and lights on my house. It's a very upscale edible house.

The thing is, no one is going to eat it. And if so, the eater would die from poisoning since there is an entire tub of frosting on my house, which I had to use in order to cover up the graham cracker frame (kind of like insulation) and so the other graham crackers would stick on top of the frosting (like aluminum siding). Let's face it. It's cute, but it's the ultimate waste of food. I can only hope that my other conservation efforts help balance out the karma.

Cheap Hope

Okay, okay, it's been a while. However, I have been writing, only it's the kind of writing that would put you into a welcome coma after the first paragraph. Lately, I've been typing lots of sentences like this one: "These cognitive and social outcomes, which are anchored in social psychological research, have provided scholars with a framework for measuring the impacts of curricular and co-curricular diversity initiatives on campuses nationwide." Don't worry, even I'm not sure what that means, although, damn, it sounds pretty good.

Alas, I have been inspired, finally, and even though I sincerely lack the time during this final rush to the semester's end, I offer you all some... cheap hope.
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Yesterday in my Student Activism class I had a kind of epiphany to the epiphany I had several years ago. We were all discussing hope. In the dark. That is, Hope in the Dark, a relatively recent book by Rebecca Solnit who is a self-proclaimed activist. No. Wait. Don't rush off to Amazon.com. Save your $13.95 for something that wasn't actually written in the dark. Okay, it's not that bad, and she does bring to light (sorry) some very important points that most of us do not discuss nearly enough.

In case you're just joining us from a seven-year (or twenty-year) stint at the space station, all is not well on our beloved planet. Not only are we poisoning our air, water, and soil, as indicated by the life-sized graphs in Mr. Gore's Oscar-winning PowerPoint presentation, we're also insisting on continuously blowing things up in the name of democracy. Freedom, apparently, can only grow in the compost of destruction. And we have at the helm either the biggest weiner to ever walk upright or the scariest dictator since, well, you get the idea. Funnily enough, no one can tell which he is. But I digress.

The point is, we seem to be doomed. And either we're too stupid to notice, or too tired to care, and definitely most of us are too busy to feel we can do anything about it. Fortunately, there are those of us who have the luxury of meeting every week to talk about how doomed we are and what we should do about it. You must feel safer already, except I hate to tell you that we didn't really come up with anything. And I can't offer you safety, sorry, I've the power of a dust mote compared to the Bilderberg group (well, go ahead, you can Google them now, just come back). However, after a semester of discussing our doom, I can offer you something truly exceptional.

Let me tell you about it. It's something you always have. No one, not even the Bilderbergs of this world, can take it away. Isn't that remarkable? You must feel better already. Let me illustrate what I mean: My mom says we all have this little flame that can never be extinguished, not even in the darkest of times. I believe her because she's been right about everything else (especially about home perms not being a good idea). And I have this friend who believes in reincarnation of souls, which is kind of weird because he doesn't seem to believe in much else, so I have to believe him too. In case you need a third example, go find an old Odetta album, and she'll sing it to you, "This little light of mine...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." So this flame, it never dies, not in the dark, and not when we're "dead," and it's even got its own soundtrack. So the epiphany... the flame, it's fueled by hope, see?

Now, this is how to use it. The next time you are feeling as though the world is beyond repair-- this usually includes frustration, anger, despair, depression, anxiety, all those bad feelings derived from a fear that drives us to the mall--don't buy anything. First of all, you don't need anything, despite what MasterCard, Wal-Mart, or AT & T tell you. You have plenty. Secondly, you are complete just as you are, and no snazzy sweater, shiny shoe, or sleek cell phone (or 42" flat screen plasma) is going to make you feel any better about the state of your world or the world around you.

Instead, curl up next to the flame and fill the room with hope. It's cheaper. Sing it, Odetta.

Almost Famous

Last night I dreamed I was Ellen Barkin. Only I didn't know it until someone started calling me by her name. "Ms. Barkin. Ms. Barkin. You forgot this." I turned and in that instant knew I was no longer me, but someone exciting and worldly. Someone who knew Al Pacino and George Clooney.

Later, I thought, "I wonder if Ellen Barkin dreamed she was me last night." I can imagine her reaction this morning, waking up to a bright Malibu day clouded by last night's journey into my life. "How terrificly mundane," she would mutter, amazed. "How breathtakingly ordinary."

Woman beaten by own emotions

In a bizarre twist to last Sunday’s incident, authorities discover that 35-year old Suzette Kewe’s surprise attackers were her own emotions. There were no obvious clues of the assailants at the scene, but detectives assigned to the case didn’t let that stop them. “It was plain old good police work,” says Sergeant Goodeye. Reports from detectives play out a tale that will ring familiar with many 30-something women. “I could hear loud music,” Kewe’s neighbor, Alice Wantsit, told police. “I’m pretty sure it was Stevie Nicks. Then I smelled chocolate chip cookies baking. That’s when I knew it was a pity party.”

Pity parties, thrown by women for themselves in order to feel worse about something they already feel bad about, are common, says Dr. Knowtal, head psychiatrist at F. Farm Medical Group. These parties usually include sad music perhaps reminiscent of past boyfriends, pints of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk, and several boxes of tissues. “These women should pull themselves together and get to a bar at this point,” says Knowtal, who recommends two to four shots of vodka. “But instead they retreat inward and lament. That’s when they can really get into trouble.”

And trouble is what Kewe faced when her emotions got out of control. “I think I heard Jealousy first, screaming at all the others about a friend getting married,” says Wantsit. Anger apparently sided with Jealousy at this point, which proved too much for Joy, who was overcome by the others. Happiness allegedly ran out of the apartment, and although Love put up a fight, it was not match for the overpowering Despair. Wantsit tells police she could only take so much and knocked on Kewe’s door to tell her to turn down the music. That’s when she found Kewe and called 911.

Kewe was unavailable for comment, suffering allegedly from what most would consider the mother of all hangovers.

Poetry Thursday

Chasing Night Dreams

The hopeful tune of an owl,
The belly-groan of a bullfrog,
The constant chirp of a cricket,
Sing to the fog
that blankets the field
and sleeps on limbs.

All of this follows a storm
that rocked the clouds and swept the earth.
Now lightning bugs chase lightning
into the drying sky.

The flashes and the fog,
The chirps and groans and tunes,
lull me to sleep
in my safe sheets,

But I long to be wading through the grass,
the leftover rain catching my ankles,
the night dreaming of me instead.

Poetry Thursday

Traveler

How does any journey start?
One step? A plan? A 2 a.m. idea?

Catching a wind that pushes the tail,
the window rolled down to breath in the local flavors,
I could be anywhere:
the rounded, verdant hills of my home,
the brushed pale prairies west,
the horizontal earth south.

Eventually direction matters less,
each mile becomes not a way to leave
or arrive,
not a marker at all, really.
Food happens when you find Dottie’s café
at the junction of CR 17 and 220,
a three-calendar spot off a blue highway.

Watching one amorphous moment lapse into another,
the window rolled down to let in the aged, baking sun,
I am everywhere at once.
Thoughts are liquid during
moments like these. Silently they slip through the
built up, pent up, beat up brain, and into
the airy fields of corn,
the auburn brawn of desert rock,
the china thin pearl of Pacific fog.

Photo credit: C.M. Lynch

Poetry Thursday

Cardinal

This morning
a cardinal perched at the window
cocking its head to look at me
looking.

I suppose you could say
his presence was a sign
his red boldness hiding a fortune
Or perhaps it is less than extraordinary
a common action, not nearly worth all this trouble.

Pay attention to this poem.
It is not about a bird,
but the way you look at the morning without looking into it,
as if it weren’t the most fascinating thing,
as if you see it everyday
a moment so full of possibility and miracle,
miraculous enough
that once
the thought of a bold red cardinal must have seemed absurd.

And yet. There must be million of moments in a mind.
How could you ever remember a brief encounter with one morning?
or a single line of a poem?

Cowgirl Meets Ants

I have often thought I would have made a great pioneer woman, forging rivers on horseback, hauling stones and wood, surviving in the wilderness. I would have learned to shoot and skin, grow my own food, understand the rhythm and rhyme of the wild. I would have been able to look at the vast, Western sky and anticipate snow on a bright afternoon, or the phase of the moon by the tilt of the sun. I would have been solidly solitary, triumphant over the cold, dark mystery.

I am this woman mostly in dreams since she is rather elusive in reality, but who can blame her? There are no horses to ride, no earth to till, and too much urban sprawl drowning out the swift phases of the moon and passing of the seasons. This morning, however, she is front and center, alive, demanding, and kicking ass...against ants.

I have no beef with ants in general. In fact, I find them rather fascinating creatures, especially after reading Lewis Thomas, who says, "Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment," and then goes on to explain how each ant is both an individual and part of a living, breathing organism. Indeed, they are much like humans on Earth; one need only watch city sidewalks from 100 stories up to see the resemblance. And yet. Ants are invading my kitchen. Now it's personal. Last night they seemed immune to the nasty chemical how-can-this-not-be-cancer-causing spray, but this morning I awoke early, before the sun, to find three dozen fellow pioneers strewn about the kitchen. Backs stiff, legs up dead. I felt a bit of remorse at having been the perpetrator of such a massacre. And yet. It's me against this world of ants, and now that I have declared my intent of victory, I feel I owe it to this woman who strikes me so.

If you've never read Lewis Thomas, start here: The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (Penguin, 1978), the source of the above quote. Painting: Harvey Dunn.

Poetry Thursday

God and Catfish

One more poem
about God, and sheep,
plump genus Ovis.
Recreated artificial sacrificial gesture,
how many symbols does it take
to describe an event.
Ovis overdone-is.

Give me a few lines about the guts
of non-symbolic fish.
You know, the real kind.
Like a catfish. Unapologetically ugly,
lurking like all good Ictalurus do.
What poet could find God in such a body,
water cockroach with
barbels hanging,
lips bulging, burping along
the scum of the Santee.

Hand me lumped-up
weighted-down
water-logged flesh, not that crisp
tasteless wafer-thin wafer, wait
in line, head bowed, starve to be saved.

Starve? No thanks.
God knows I love a good
corn-meal coated, pan-fried catfish
any day of the week.

see also Woman

"You'll make someone a good wife someday," said Bob after I made dinner, washed the dishes, and cleaned the kitchen. At the time I was a whole sixteen years old, and I took his comment as a compliment. After all, what right-minded girl wouldn't want to be a good wife someday? The thought never crossed my mind that one day I would be thirty-three and not a good wife, not a wife at all, actually. I mean, I was the one who at eight insisted my sister and my friend Anne participate in a pretend wedding in which I was the bride, of course, complete with a white, frilly dress and veil. There was even a miniature paper bride and a handsome, yet soused-looking, groom for the top of the three-tiered cake.

That childhood rehearsal has yet to become a reality. In fact, it's not now and never has been even close. In my twenties I learned about feminism, and realized that treating singleness as a curable disease is downright absurd. What right-minded woman would want to be (just) the good wife? Of course, now I'm in my thirties, a successful graduate student, writer, and teacher, but at every turn I am reminded of what I lack...a husband and children, which without reason equates to the life worth living. I recently read an article that said if I don't meet someone before I get my Ph.D., forget it. Spinster-city.

That idea got me thinking. What does my singleness say about me? Am I a neurotic bitch? A crazy cat lady? A commitment-phobe in dire need of psychoanalysis? Well, not exactly. After some deliberation I can see that I'm complex and a little fruity, like a good Shiraz. I'm also independent and intelligent. I'm successful and financially stable. And I believe that a good, solid, and positive relationship is worth waiting for. As Mae West once put it, "Marriage is a great institution. But I'm not ready for an institution yet." Photo credit: Pauline Clarke