Wordless Wednesday: Stumped and More Stumped

Yesterday was a very rough day. My computer crashed. Luckily I have a very gifted friend (Hi, Nate!) who dedicated his entire day to rescuing everything (well almost everything... I lost all my pre new camera photos and some of the new ones including a picture of a cardinal I was very happy about. Sigh.) Anyway, he did all the work, but I'm still feeling tired and disoriented and I can't make up my mind what to do for Wordless Wednesday, which is clearly also becoming quite wordy. I was going to just do the tree stumps, but... then... I couldn't decide because there were some other things too and so stumped which was originally going to be tree stumps is now tree stumps and other stuff.

Happy Wordless Wednesday

Fable of the Month: Marta Mishnagel and the Whale

Marta Mishnagel was a fisher-woman. It had not been easy to overcome the prejudice of her parents and the other villagers, who did not consider fishing to be woman's work. But it had been a struggle she had to win, for Marta had been born with the ocean calling her name, and from before she could remember, the fishes and creatures of the sea had sung to her and told her strange and wonderful tales of their lives below the waves. So fishing was not a job to her, it was a calling, as deep and pure as any call to priesthood or service. In some ways, to say she was a fisher-woman was a misnomer, for Marta did not really fish, so much as go to sea and tell her friends what was needed (who was hungry or in need) and because they loved her -- and she them -- fish would joyously leap into her nets until she had just enough. She, for her part, would sing sweet songs to them and tell them tales of the wondrous mysteries of land life, just as they told her of the sea.

Things went on like this until the whale appeared. It stayed a short distance from her boat, never speaking, but always watching and listening. The whale was large, even as whales go, and Marta knew (how she wasn't sure), that this whale was old, very very old, as old as time, even, for she was the Great Mother who had swum the sea since time began. Marta was deeply honored by her presence. She was also more than a little uneasy, for she knew that the Great One did not pay casual calls, and she knew too, from somewhere in her soul, that her destiny was connected to the Great Whale. It was just that she didn't know how and the whale was so big and so primal and all-knowing, and she, Marta was so small and insignificant. It must be her imagination that the Great Mother could want her. And she sighed with sorrow at her unworthiness, and with longing to connect to that great, powerful darkness. Each day she sighed so, and each day sailed a little closer, thinking -- perhaps at least I can touch her, hoping also that the whale would speak and tell her what to do. When finally the day came that she was close enough to touch the great whale's side, tentatively, for just an instant, she "heard" (felt, really) the great deep voice say gently:

"No, Marta, it is not enough to simply touch me. You must enter inside."

"Oh, no," cried Marta, deeply shaken.

"I feel your power and I see your beauty and I am so drawn to you, but I don't want to die."

"Who will not die, cannot live," sighed the Great One. "That is the law of the Universe."

"I am too afraid," cried Marta, and sailed away, only to return the next day, and the next, and be told again, each time: "It is not enough to simply touch me. You must enter inside."

After a time, the Great Whale spoke again and said: "Marta, you cannot escape the law of the Universe. One way or another, you must enter in. You may enter of your own free will, or I will swallow you, but enter you must. It is your destiny. It is not a question of whether, but how. Enter, child, it is time." And saying this, the whale opened her vast mouth. Marta, trembling, eyes closed, leaped over the side of her little boat and dove deep into the dark maw of the great beast, fully expecting to die. But of course she didn't. Instead, she heard a voice say sweetly: "Open your eyes, child. Look around. Explore. In that corner is magic. Over there, the timeless void of Time. Beyond that, the fountain of inspiration and creativity. Over there, the garden of eternity and the hall of past lives. And in the center, at the core, if you touch my heart and feel its beating, you will touch Great Mystery itself." And Marta did just that. And she was never the same again.

THE END

The Alphabet Backwards: "R" is for Reiki

Today's letter in the alphabet backwards series is "R" and there is no question for me about the topic. It has to be Reiki. Reiki is and has been a central part of my life for almost 30 (!!!) years now. It stuns me to realize it has been that long.

The hands in the photo below are channeling reiki. If you click on them, it will take you to a larger version of the photo for a better effect. I hope you'll try it and let me know what, if anything, you experience. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself. I guess I should tell you what reiki is first.



Reiki (which is pronounced Ray-key) is an ancient Tibetan form of hands-on healing. I learned about reiki at a workshop I did to learn a Hawaiian massage tecnhique called Lomi Lomi Nui. It was an awful workshop - a psychological and physical ordeal - that left my ability to walk permanently damaged. But that's a long, sad story for another day. I had already been to a different workshop where we explored the idea of hands on healing and I had loved doing it. At this Lomi Lomi Nui workshop I did some healing work on a woman who had sprained her ankle. It was a very intense experience. I could literally feel her ankle healing - and she could too. She asked me if I was doing reiki and I said "what's that?" She told me a bit about it and I thought it would be nice to put a name to what I was doing. Plus she had told me that one of the things learning reiki was supposed to do was to help provide empathic people like myself from absorbing other people's emotional garbage. That alone made it sound worth exploring. At that time in my life I had only just begun to realize that I was in some ways a sponge for other people's emotions - particularly negative ones. I knew people had always said being around me made them feel better an I had never quite understood it, had never understood either, why sometimes I would walk into a place feeling fine and minutes later be profoundly sad or weary. So anyway, I decided to explore reiki so I could a) give a name to the energy work I had discovered I had a deep love/gift for and b) see if I could get a bit of psychic armor in the process.

Let me start by saying that I was as big a skeptic as anyone when I first started exploring this stuff. Sounded stupid to me. Sounded like something people were probably talking themselves into. But then after a little bit of experience, I found there were things I couldn't deny. I could "feel" people soaking in energy that was moving to them through my hands. And it wasn't always the same. It varied from person to person, from experience to experience, even from place to place on the same body. For want of a better description, the energy moving between me and another person had "texture." It moved through me to them differently. Some people had walls up and when I described it to them, it made perfect sense. Some people swallowed the energy whole in big gulps. Sometimes it felt hot, sometimes cold. In the early days of working on people, I often saw images. Working on a friend of mine, I saw/felt her as soldier from Ancient Rome badly injured with a leather tunic bound into raw wounds. I felt (as did she) the quality of the energy shift from hot to cold as I removed this "vest." I didn't tell her until afterwards what I was experiencing, what I was working on. She's a nurse and she said that the shift we both experienced made perfect sense as to how you would treat such wounds, which were, effectively like burns. That's one of the things I love most about reiki - that it has it's own intelligence. It's not something that I do as much as something that is done through me. I get to participate in little miracles, but I'm not responsible for them. I don't create them. I'm just a kind of lucky witness.

My nephew - a skeptic if ever there was one - allowed me to put him on the table, just to humor me. He was studying a martial art called akido at the time and unknown to me, had a lot of pain in his wrists and elbows. He got of my table stunned that the pain was gone, convinced that there had to be some logical explanation for it. If it works on a skeptic as dedicated to logic and proof as my nephew, well....

These days I work mostly long distance using a number of teddy bears - Raphael Emmanuel (the handsome grey guy in the photo) for people and Jasper and for cats and dogs. That's almost more astonishing than sitting in your living room with your hands on a teddy bear and experiencing sensations in someone miles away. It still astonishes me. I remember working on a woman years ago and feeling a long Capital I shaped incision running the length of her back, and feeling like (I know I sound crazy, but this is what I felt) angels were performing some kind of surgery along the incision. Talking to her after the session, I learned that she had suffered spina bifida (I think) in her childhood, had spent several years in a body brace and did in fact have an I shaped incision on her back. Wow.


Working on animals is so much fun. They don't put up any resistence as so many people do. They just soak it in. If their humans are home when I work on them, they usually tell me they can time the start of reiki and finish of the session almost to the minute. One of my favorite long-distance animal stories is about a kitty who ended up being named after me (Raven's Reiki). I've kind of lost touch with her, but at the time I knew a woman in Australia who bred Siamese cats. One of her cats was in labor and she asked me to do reiki. She thought all the kittens had been born but when I worked on her cat, I felt like there were two left, one didn't feel alive and the other felt very weak. Because of this, she rushed her cat to the vet and low and behold - the vet discovered a still-born kitty and the barely alive Raven's Reiki. I reikied him for the next few days and he caught up with his siblings in a matter of days - something she said was unheard of in her experience. Pretty cool.

There's so much I'd like to say about reiki. It has so enriched my life. Anybody can do it. I think we are all born with the capacity to offer healing. Reiki is just one form of doing so. I like to think of it as unconditional love that comes through me to another person who opens his/her heart and body to receive it. There are other formal kinds of healing besides reiki - Kwan Yin, Johrei - are just two others. I think of it as picking up on different radio frequencies. However you channel it, it's still unconditional love, just coming through different air waves. Something like that. I personally don't think training and attuments are necessary for one to tap into offering healing. What I think they do is strengthen the connection or maybe wake up skills that have lain dormant. Workshops offer group experiences which I think make them worth the price. Lots of people now offer on-line and long-distance attunements. (An attunement is basically a ritual introduction/induction.) If you think about learning reiki and you can manage it, do go for a live workshop because it offers you a chance to experience using the energy on a number of other people and discovering how unique each reiki experience is. Like therapy, I think learning something like reiki is a blessing everyone can benefit from.

I'm going to stop here. I've already probably written too much. You can check out my reiki website for more information if you are interested. Just for the fun of it, click on the healing hands picture I posted at the top of this essay. It will take you to a page with a larger version. As the picture says, the hands are channeling reiki energy. I can feel it. I hope you can too. I'd love to hear about what, if anything, you experience.

That's it for the letter "R." See you next Monday for the letter "Q." Have a great week.

Project Green, Last Take: This and That

Ok... I was going to put a bunch of other things... but I am having one of those days when I can't decide on anything and everything I decide on seems wrong. It's 3 pm and I haven't accomplished anything, so I'm going to settle on these last two pictures for my final Project Green post. Thanks to Anna Carson for this fun idea. I hope you'll check out the many wonderful green pictures that have been posted from all around the world this past week. Now to tackle the even harder task of Monday's Alphabet backwards task. Agggh.

Project Green: Take 7

My Sunday offerings for this the next to last day of Anna Carson's Project Green.

The first is a Tibetan Prayer flag that has hopefully been sending prayers for peace and healing for Mother Earth out into the Cosmos. The second is a bottle that once contained a simply glorious after shave/body lotion. My late sister brought it home from a trip to Bermuda. It has always been special to me.

One Single Impression Part 2: Flowering

This week's One Single Impression Prompt was flowering. I have made my post in two parts. The first is a long poem. I wanted to try a few haiku as well, though. And I almost didn't aplogize...

One Single Impression Part 1: Flowering

I'm posting two One Single Impression posts this week. I thought there was going to be nothing from my brain this week and then this came pouring out this morning. Clearly, it's not a haiku. I'll add a second post with some haiku shortly... hopefully. Oh! And this is my 100th post - or as my friend Rich at the Foothills of Opinion calls it, my "100th bloggerversary."

There Will Be No Flowering of This Youth

They come home in body bags or flag-draped coffins
Barely acknowledged except as numbers
There will be no flowering of this youth
Or the countless collateral dead
They will not hold smiling babies in their arms
Kiss their wives, husbands, lovers
There will be no flowering of this youth

And other burnt-out damaged lives
Will wither on the vine
Of our indifference and inaction
As madmen hold sway
Spending lives with reckless abandon
To purchase power or oil
Or "victory" - whatever that is - at any price
There will be no flowering of this youth

I was told once "You become the thing you hate"
Never has it seemed more true
Than when the acceptability of torture
Can even be discussed
And young men die abroad
As their country is destroyed from within
There will be no flowering of this youth

Meanwhile, as bodies pile up and families grieve
The rest of us do nothing
We barely feel the pain unless the dead belong to us
And the coffins continue coming home
Along with the wounded and spirit-damaged
Here and everywhere
While the world's heart is breaking
There will be no flowering of this youth

- Katherine E. Rabenau

Project Green, Take 6: Green Rocks!

Here's my Saturday contribution to Anna Carson's Project Green. I love rocks, so I thought I'd try to take pictures of some of my green rocks. Not as easy as I hoped it would be. These don't do their subjects justice. But I had fun, except for screaming at the cats who saw no reason to stop walking back and forth on their little ledge, just because I wanted to put rocks on it and take pictures.

There are some incredible photographers (real photographers) participating in Project Green. I hope you'll check them out. Have a great weekend!

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 10

This is week 10 of the Saturday Wordzzle challenge. Anyone new to the process can refer back here to find out how it works. Expecting company tonight, so I'm posting extra early this week. We no longer have the benefit of colored text (or if we do I don't know how to do it), so I guess I will go with bold for the 10 word and bold italic for the mini words and see how that goes. I also can't figure out how to center things now. I'm generally irritated by all of this, but life goes on, I guess and I could have much more difficult problems to contend with, so I'll stop whining and get this posted. I'll leave that incoherent sentences about lack of color and centering, and tell you all that Jay Simser, hero of the hour, solved my dim-wit problem. "Try clicking compose in the upper right hand corner," he said. I did, and order has returned to my blogosphere. Thank you, Jay!

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: pleasant, fluky, desperation, penumbra, hoarsely, triumph, burden, colander, Kermit the Frog, lavender And for the Mini Challenge: avalanche, masterpiece, yellow, alligator, thieving


Here's my ten-word offering for this week.

Sitting under the penumbra of his colander shaped hat, Kermit the Frog sang in a hoarsely pleasant voice about the burden of being green. Watching the parade of other stuffed animals saunter along the toy store aisles, however, he realized with a fluky sense of triumph, that perhaps his tragic desperation had been misplaced. I could, he suddenly thought to himself, have been lavender and that would have been much worse.

And here's my mini challenge:

Although some hailed it as a masterpiece of creativity, there was a virtual avalanche of criticism from others who accused the artist of being a thieving poseur, simply because the giant sculpture was a somewhat modern version of The Thinker made entirely of alligator clips covered in paper mache made from yellow post-it notes, all of it stolen from his place of work.

And the mega challenge:

Stan "the Alligator" Almagorda, was - in his real life outside the ring - the mild mannered Martin Johnson. He was a tender father who read bedtime stories to his twin daughters every night and pretended to be Kermit the Frog, in a remarkably good imitation of the "real" thing. His at home voice was quite pleasant compared to the hoarsely rasping grunts he used for his WWF persona. He worked very hard keeping a penumbra of privacy around his children so that they would not be burdened by the fluky desperation of thieving yellow journalists harassing them and rifling through his and their lives with no regard for decency or their privacy. They had to be especially careful that nobody discovered that his arch rival Bruno Bunker (aka the Avalanche) was in fact his best friend and the girls' godfather. In later years, when the girls were older, they would live to regret the great blackmail material inherent in Bruno's regular performances as Don Quixote of Bensonhurst which had been such an instant triumph with the girls that he reprised the role often and even allowed them to film the theatrical masterpiece fully costumed in his colander hat with the lavender feather, their father at his side wearing something equally absurd. For now, though, they knew only the joy of the children's laughter.

This week's vanity wordzzle used the words: home, happy, scanner, smoke, flower, unsweetened iced tea, jealous, calculator, gym, widget

“What the hell is a widget?” Lucinda roared, angrily crumpling up the large instruction sheet which had come with her new exercise machine She had decided it would be easier and more efficient to do her workouts at home than at the gym, but here she was, tired after a long day at the office, forced to drink damned unsweetened ice tea instead of the gin and tonic that she craved desperately, and the damned instructions for the stupid machine didn’t make a lick of sense even if she knew what a widget was. It was insufferable. She wanted a cigarette too, but no, she couldn’t smoke either. She would show that bastard for leaving her. He would be sorry. He would want her back and she would happily laugh in his smug, stupid, ugly face. It would be his turn to be jealous. Yes indeed. Yes indeed. She pulled out her calculator and quickly computed how long it would take her to lose the desired 30 pounds if she allowed herself one drink a day. One probably wouldn’t hurt. But no, she needed to shape up and shape up fast before the stinking bastard hooked up with some flowering young thing who was all gooey-eyed and fresh faced and would worship the ground he walked on just as she had once done. Damned bastard. How could he have left her? How? She had given her all to make him happy, had given him two beautiful children and put him through his last two years of college. And what did she get for thanks. “Sorry, honey, it just isn’t working for me any more. I need my freedom.” Son of a. . . A voice from the computer announced cheerily – “You’ve got mail,” and she headed eagerly over to see what it was, wondering if maybe he had changed his mind, was ready to apologize, come home, then caught herself and shook her head. Fool. It was then that she noticed the scanner. It had been one of his favorite toys and now, suddenly, Lucinda thought, “Ah.” Perhaps a little revenge was in order. It would be a three-pronged attack. He was never coming back even if she lost 30 pounds and revenge was definitely sweeter than this lousy iced tea. First she would send his picture to a number of law enforcement agencies… Let’s see… If she was careful of her phrasing…. Lucinda sighed, mixed her self a stiff drink and smiled happily for the first time in days.


Anyone who wants to emulate the amazing megawordzzlers can try merging both challenges and make another megawordzzle. It's fun! I'm so glad that Jay Simser invented it. As if megawordzzles weren't enough - it seems to be a guy thing - some participants are adding extra layers of difficulty. Jay incorporates pet salamanders into his paragraph every week, the pirate not only got all the words in, but he used them in order.

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: cranberry sauce, amber, laundry list, coffin, morning glory, shalom, mystery, sparrow hawk, pumpernickle, stained glass
And for the Mini Challenge: margarita, gum wrapper, spring fever, Darfur, lace

By the way: Spelling is not something I am very good at. If you notice a misspelled word (and you will), let me know and I'll fix it.

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

Project Green: Take 5BRelics from My Past

Two relics from my youth. The first a little picture frame and photo I have held onto long after the friendship died of neglect and betrayal. I'm the nerdy one on the left with the big smile. The second is a "nebish," (I think they had some other name too) popular in the 60s. When I went away to college my mother set one of these up next to my high school photo and labled them "before and after." She had her moments.

That's my personal offering from Project Green today, though I hope you'll look at the post below and enjoy the exquisite photos my beautiful niece took in Peru.

Celebrating My Niece Diana with a little Project Green on the Bottom

Today is my wonderful niece Diana's birthday. Diana is the youngest of my sister's three amazing children (I've talked about Matt and in October, you'll meet Cindy). They have gone and grown up, something I find shocking since I myself have barely aged (emotionally anyway) since they were toddlers. Now they are older than I was when they were born. It's an outrage! But much as I'm stressed that their being older implies that I'm also older, I wouldn't trade the magnificent people each of them has evolved into for a truckload of toddlers or my own youth restored.

What are some things I can tell you about the wonderful Diana?

She has always known her own mind. I always tease her that her first word was "no." I'm not sure I'm kidding, either, but she has grown into the kindest, smartest, most generous and creative person you can imagine. And she's beautiful as you can see from her picture. That was taken when she visited me here a couple of years ago. I wish I had a scanner. She was an adorable baby too.

Diana has always walked her own path. She became a vegetarian way before it was fashionable and is now a vegan, a raw foodist and an expert on food and nutrition. She and John, her significant other, have created an amazing website called Foodscout.org. It's wonderfully informative about the nutritional content of foods as well as providing information on what foods are good for different aspects of your body/health. It's very easy to use and full of interesting information. I hope you'll check it out, not just because Diana is a wonderful person and put a lot of effort into gathering all this data, but because it's rich in fascinating facts about what the stuff we put into our bodies does to/for us.

Diana is brilliant smart. She has worked as a computer programmer or code writer or something way over my head - and she and her friend John have started their own new web design company (Xondie) combining their technical knowledge with their wonderful creativity. Even though Diana's techno smart, she's also a musician, writer, artist, photographer. A while back, never having drawn before, she decided to go through the book DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN. I've included two of the the amazing drawings she produced in just a couple of months of working with that book. Is she awesome or what? She took some amazing photos when she went to Peru last year and with her permission, I'm sharing a few of them below for Project Green although I'm going to make a separate Project Green post today as well.

I think one of the best things about Diana is her passion for the things she believes in. It's deep, but it's always gentle and kind. She stands up actively for what she cares about - and she takes action to make the world better - but she does it with grace and without trying to force anyone else to her will. A good example of that is the campaign she helped run to rescue an elephant named Bamboo. I think that's the way great people - and this isn't just auntly pride - I believe she carries greatness - move the world forward.

I love Diana's sense of humor (I like to think it's similar to mine in some ways) and her magical, creative approach to life. She decided on where to go to college by - I think I have this right - randomly picking a state and going from there. She ended up in Austin, Texas, then lived in Seattle, Washington and, after toying the some more exotic possibilities that made my auntly heart quiver anxiously) is now she's happily exploring North Carolina. She is a free spirit in the best sense of that word. (Can you tell I adore her?)

Diana is also profoundly generous. I'm not sure where I'd be if she hadn't helped me to buy my house. On the streets, maybe, or in some kind of public housing. Instead, I have a home of my own and something to leave behind. Instead of scary and uncertain, my life is secure and rich in the things that count. Besides that life-changing financial generosity, Diana gives me a gift even more precious. She makes me feel loved. I was going to write a poem for her birthday, but maybe instead I will stay with the poem I wrote the day she was born.

Diana Susan Kantor, with a smile in your eyes,
May your life be filled with happiness, experience make you wise
May you learn to find the beauty in a world that's often sad
May fate provide you pleasure, protect you from what's bad
May you know the magic of the stars, the beauty of the snows
May you hear the music of the wind as through the leaves it blows
May flowers blossom in your path, their fragrance fill the air
And silver moonbeams light your dreams and keep you free from care
And may all the seasons offer you the best they have to give
And love and friendship stay with you through every day you live
If such power lay within my grasp, no grief you'd ever know
Joy alone would fill your days, no tears would ever flow
But sad times are a part of life and give to joy its worth
So the best that I can wish for you is less of tears than mirth
And so I offer you this verse, this frail and foolish rhyme
But may the love that lies within be yours throughout all time.

- Katherine E. Rabenau

This feels like such an inadequate expression of how much I love and treasure this unique and special human being who is the daughter of my sister and who is also the daughter of my heart. I feel so blessed to be her aunt, so blessed to know her. I'd give her the world if I could, but all I have at the moment is words and my love now and forever.

I Love You, Diana. Happy Birthday!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Below are three of my favorites of the wonderful photos Diana took in Peru... they seem perfect for Project Green.

Poem(s) of the Week: The Elder Kitty PoemsProject Green (see photo below poems)

These poems were not written by me but by the late great fur-person, Abigail the Wonder Kitty, also known as the Antique Kitty or the Ancient One (among her many titles). Abby was a teacher to me in many ways, including the gentle nobility with which she left this life at the age of 21 plus. (I wrote a piece about her death at the time for my column on Suite101.com. Anyone who is interested can read it here.
This photo was taken in Arizona when she was 19. I think she was quite beautiful. But I digress. In the last six or seven years of her life, Abby found not only her physical voice, but her poetic voice. She was not prolific - she only wrote three poems - but I think she had a thing or two to say. I have chosen to share my two favorite Abby poems today. The sister she refers to in the first poem was my first cat and Abby's life-long companion Katrina, who died at 16 while we still lived in New York. I had intended to post something else today, but something (or perhaps someone) insists on these.


SONG OF AN ELDER-KITTY

They are who they are
And I am me
Abigail, Elder Kitty
I have no regrets
I have lived my life my way
Kept mostly to myself
Enjoyed the simple pleasures
Of hugs and food and a good brushing,
An afternoon of sleep twined against my sister’s soft purr
Or scrubbed meticulously by her fierce, determined tongue
That was how she finally received me
Those many years ago when we were young –
With a bath –
After she hissed and snarled and acted gruff
But I knew better
Saw at once her tender heart
She’s a little older, you know, and puts on airs sometimes
But mostly you couldn’t ask for a better friend
She’s so smart and sure of herself
I watch in awe sometimes
She and Person are close in a special way
I know I am loved – deeply loved,
But I do not hold the same place in Person’s heart
my sister does
It used to bother me
Once, a long time ago
And not so long ago, really.
It bothers Person
But I have learned, somehow, that it is not against me
It is not that I am loved less
It is that the bond between them is primal,
time-worn across the ages
They have know each other since time began
And I am a new arrival
Now that I understand, I am learning to let the love in
And life is truly grand and blessed
I can no longer jump as high as I once did
But I can still do a good zany run
And now I sing my heart’s content
Loud howls.
Person says it is opera
And sometimes she laughs and smiles at my songs
And sometimes she shouts and acts quite fierce
But she is funny that way.
She snarls so grim and in the next breath
She is all apologies and love
And good, strong tender hugs
And sometimes she sings to me – to us
And tells us all our names
For me there is Dougie and Abby-Dougie,
And Dougal MacDougal, and Wandagail
And Wanda the Wailer and Munchkin
Or Dumpling.
I am also known as Wanda the Wiggler
And Princess Furry Face the Second
And Munchkinetta
The list is long
I like that.
I like my life
I am Abigail the Elder Kitty
And I have found myself at last.
May your lives be as blessed.





THE ELDER KITTY SPEAKS AGAIN

I think my person is going deaf
I talk to her at the top of my lungs
And she just doesn’t seem to get it
Perhaps she is just slow in the way these humans are
They are remarkably clever sometimes
And quite the dullards at others
But I digress
Our new home is cold and damp
But I am glad to have the desert behind me
We are on our own again, Person and I,
And it feels good to be free to be ourselves
To have my freedom back is worth a lot
Person tells me that I’m very old
She seems quite obsessed with it
Like age is some kind of talent I possess
Me, I just take things one day at a time
And find what solutions I can to my troubles
It’s a bit embarrassing not to jump so well any more
I used to be quite the leaper once
And now I’m forced to pull myself up most places
Frustrating, I can tell you that - and embarrassing too
But Person roots me on and tells me I can do it
And so I can
You wouldn’t think it would make a difference, really,
But it does
Wanting someone you love to be right
I love snuggling up against her now,
Though I didn’t always – not in the same way, anyhow
I’m not sure sometimes, who is comforting who
And maybe it doesn’t matter
As long as we are both at peace
I speak my mind these days
I’ve given up on being shy
It’s quite a relief, really to just be me.
Age has it’s privileges after all, I guess
And I’m learning that
I’m learning too to enjoy the simple things
A patch of sunlight on the floor
A soft blanket
A tasty meal
And of course the sound of my own voice
Pitched loud enough for all to hear
I am Abigail, Elder Kitty
Hear me roar!

Ever the over achiever, Abigail is mutli-tasking from the great beyond and has entered herself into Anna Carson's Project Green with this photo of herself with her (and my) favorite blanket.

Wordless Wednesday & Project Green: Woodchucks, Birds, Moons & A Stray Cat

Happy Wordless Wednesday & Happy Project Green

Project Green: Take 2

Well, I've been struggling about what to post today and I think I'm going with Anna Carson's Project Green. I feel so outclassed by the amazing photographers who participate in this, but it's earth day and I don't much feel like writing anything, so...

I have to say that I'm really not enjoying the changes in the posting system that have been instituted lately. It has taken me almost an hour - something like 13 tries - to get my first photo uploaded. Now I'm having the same problem with #2. Aggggh. I wanted to add a third photo... on the theory, I guess, that two or three mediocre photos add up to one good one, but it will be next Tuesday by the time I get another one to upload, so I'm just going to leave it at this and feel cranky and deprived.

"Happy Earth Day," she snarled.

Project Looking Through

The magnificent, witty and talented Dianne at Forks Off the Moment has been participating in something called Project Looking Through hosted by Mark, whose blog is called Regular Life.

I thought I'd participate too. I feel a bit guilty because this project favors Angel who spends much of her life "looking through" and dreaming about what's on the other side. Tara Grace who lived long and hard on the other side can't see very well as a result of days out in the big world. She glances out from time to time, but she would rather sleep or circle the room yelling at me than waste her time peering out windows and doors.

The Alphabet Backwards: S is for Spring

Well, it's the Monday, Alphabet Backwards day, day of dread most weeks, but apparently my psyche has decided to cut me some slack this week and we are thinking of happy uncomplicated words. In fact I think I'm going to keep it simple and just pick one happy, angst free word today. Spring.

Spring has sprung here in Hancock. The robins are running around, there are flickers and woodpeckers and sparrows. There are daffodils and forsythia. The trees are not in blossom yet, by and large, but you can see the leaves and flowers coming. And it's greener. The grass has taken on life again. My spirit has breathed a sigh of relief and joy. Angel is happy too. We've had a few days warm enough for open windows and her world has expanded with smells that I'm sure are beyond my nose's puny capacity to interpret or even notice. Angel kitty may still be inside, but she is one step closer to her life dream. She is a happy kitty and that makes me a happy human. Tara could care less. She has done outdoors. She has no desire to do it again.

I love the layers of color that are part of Spring and that everything seems sort of surprising even though we are expecting it and watching for it. Spring is soft, somehow. Dramatic and subtle at the same time.

Then there are the sounds of Spring too. Right now, even though I can't see it - darn - I can hear a cardinal singing in the distance... while other, less melodic birds chirp an accompanying chorus.



I think that's all I have to say today. I'll keep it short and add some photos and a "Spring poem."



SPRING

Sweet, soft, subtle
There's renewal just in watching
The hidden depths of trees
Slip quietly from their winter shells
The green grass rising like a gentle tide
Daffodils and croci surfacing for air
While winged and furred and crawly things
Celebrate
A living painting
Evolving to perfection




And that's the letter S. Happy Monday.

One Single Impression: Color

The prompt from One Single Impression this week was color. I'm trying to break the habit of apologizing when I post stuff. I realize that saying that I'm not apologizing is a covert way of doing so. It's a process. I'm tapering off. For some reason I couldn't change the text
colors this week.... when I was going for rainbow colors. Aggggghhhhh! Oh - you'll probably figure this out for yourself. The pictures are about the color, not so much the text.








radiant rainbow arch
curved across the distant sky
shimmering beauty










radiant crimson
color of blood, of roses
gore and beauty both










glowing rich orange
fruits, flowers and neon glow
you have many moods










sunshine and lemons
yellow is flowers and sun
morning light begun









green of grass and trees
rippling in a summer breeze
rich, cool, lush with life







azure skies and oceans
color of my lovers eyes
shining, sparkling blue









rich, dark Indigo
bridging blue and purple hue
delighting the eye









delicate flowers
violets, iris, rich orchids
you are rainbow's end










then there's dusky pink
color of the heart chakra
color of true love


***********








I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Some Saturday Afternoon Politics

Ran across these items and thought they were worth sharing. I SOOOOO want Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney impeached. Better late than never. Better in jail than in office.

This first one discusses a way to force the impeachment issue by by-passing the House of Representatives. Very interesting.



This is a great speech from Boston Legal.



And a little Dennis Kucinich because any day with Dennis K. in it is a good day. I wish he were more right about the American people.

I also recommend checking out a brilliant woman named Raine Eisler. You can listen to some of her radio clips here. She talks Social Economics and changing the way we view economical issues. She has a lot to say. Here's her website too.

I hope this country wakes up before there's no democracy left to save.

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 9

Well, I think I'm going to post on Friday evenings from now on because I realized that some of our participants are in time zones where it's already Saturday so I might as well give them a little more time - and it means people can post as soon as they are ready.

Since this is week 9 - can you believe that! - of our challenge, I'm going to just get right down to it without any introduction.

The words for this week's ten word challenge were: cocker spaniel, penultimate, fetters, warranty, tarmac, quartz, paparazzi, apple sauce, earsplitting, laxidaisical (my apologies for spelling this so badly it should have read: lackadaisical) And for the Mini Challenge: spinach, interwoven, compromise, tennis, intangible

Here's my ten-word offering for this week.

Applesauce was not just any cocker spaniel. He was a world champion and normally his was a mellow and lackadaisical approach to life. Every dog, however has his day and between the swarming paparazzi, the ear-splitting noise of the jet engines he panicked, broke free of the not very sturdy fetters that bound him to his trainer's control and made a dash for it, knocking over one of the swarming photographers in his desperate flight across the tarmac. "Damned stupid dog broke the quartz on my watch and the warranty is expired. I should sue," she muttered to herself. But Applesauce was not a champion for nothing and as if sensing the photographer's thoughts, pulled out of his panic, and returned to gently nuzzle her hand and then pose as nice as could be, giving her the penultimate prize - a personal interview/photo session with a movie star would have been better - and boosting her career to a new level. A week later, she happily bought a new watch and put a deposit on her new car with the profits. Better yet, the whole event made her famous and she got invited to be a guest on The Ellen Show and meet one of her very favorite stars. "Awesome dog," she smiled to herself, looking at the framed photo that hung on her wall. "Awesome dog."

And here's my mini challenge:

Marsha sat looking at the interwoven strings of her new tennis racket. For most people, she supposed it was just a thing, but to her, it had an intangible beauty that only those who loved the game as utterly as she did could know. She had briefly thought to compromise on a somewhat less less expensive implement, but had decided that it was worth any sacrifice she might have to make in other ways to have this particular racket. That said, living on a diet of home-grown tomatoes and spinach was beginning to lose it's poetic beauty now that two weeks had passed. But tomorrow she reminded herself, she and her treasure would set foot on the court. And they would win. Yes, she thought, she had made the right decision.

This is what I came up with for the mega challenge:

Alas, there are no warranties on priceless, one-of-a-kind objects. It had been the penultimate tennis racket, its curved wooden edges and its delicately interwoven strings making it a virtual work of art. Something about it's grip, it's design, made her feel victorious even before she stepped onto the tarmac of the tennis court for her matches. It held a place of honor in her home when she was not competing, sitting proudly between the large quartz sculpture, oddly named "Intangible" that had been given to her by the equally oddly named artist who called himself - God knows why - "Spinach" and an original Picasso. On this particular December day, those on the tour of Glenda Nelson's house would never forget the ear-splitting screams as the usually mellow, even lackadaisical player, walked in upon her young niece's cocker spaniel, Applesauce, who had somehow broken free of his fetters and decided to feast on the beloved racket. "Out, out, out!" she shrieked in a decidedly un-mellow voice. "There will be no compromise this time, dog! Wagging your tail will not help!" As if the event was not bad enough it itself, several enterprising paparazzi wanna be's, snapped half a dozen photos of the racket, the offending dog, and her melt down. Worse yet, there was video and she would be forced to watch the tragic scene over and over on TV for weeks and years to come.

This week's vanity contribution is a mini wordzzle and uses the words: sweater, voluptuous, diaper, the Devil, macaroni

When she had asked the Devil to make her look voluptuous in a sweater, Gertrude Glitch had not been thinking in terms of a dozen babies, milk-swelled breasts, and a life of dirty diapers and macaroni suppers. She had intended something more glamorous. It's not fair, God, not fair! But then she looked at the sleeping baby in her arms and thought that maybe, just this once, the Devil had slipped up.

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Anyone who wants to emulate the amazing megawordzzlers can try merging both challenges and make another megawordzzle. It's fun! I'm so glad that Jay Simser invented it. As if megawordzzles weren't enough - it seems to be a guy thing - some participants are adding extra layers of difficulty. Jay incorporates pet salamanders into his paragraph every week, The Pirate not only got all the words in, but he used them in order.

Next weeks words are again a mix of suggestions that came from The Pirate, Michael, Richard, and the Teach and a few from me. I would love to have more suggestions for words/phrases from other participants.

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: pleasant, flukey, desperation, penumbra, hoarsely, triumph, burden, colander, Kermit the Frog, lavender

And for the Mini Challenge: avalanche, masterpiece, yellow, alligator, thieving


Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Poem of the Week:Poem for my Mother and Father

I was going to post something different this week but something made me think I should post this one.

My mother and father were born 5 days apart in 1910 and died three months apart in 80 years later, my father in October 1990 and my mother in February of 1991. My mother after an illness that lasted between 15 and 18 years. You'd think I'd know exactly, but I don't. The poem says ten, but it was longer than that. It was a long, long time. I read a number of posts this week about people losing their parents. I guess that's why it feels like this is the time to share this poem. It's a loss we are never ready for.


POEM FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER - APRIL 25, 1991

I want to bury my parents' ashes
Quietly
In an un-grave
A sweetly flowering tree peacefully renewing the earth
I want sunshine and blue skies and butterflies
And maybe an angel or two
To sing a silent, magic song and hold my hand
I'd like some wildflowers -- yellows and purples
And maybe some blue as well
And a mild, gentle breeze to kiss my cheek
I'd like greenness and laughter,
Some children playing, maybe, to remind me there's renewal
And then I'd like a picnic
Full of laughing and remembering the happy times;
The sad ones too, but gently, with sunlight on them
And maybe we could sing a song or two or share a favorite poem.
These parents are my babies now
And I want to protect them from any more pain
Because their dying wasn't sweet.
Ten years coming, it was long and slow and hard,
Their dying one death, though two events,
My mother, slowly/quickly fading
Body and mind failing in a subtle and coordinated dance
My real Mom disappearing way back,
Spirited away somewhere, herself and not herself
Each sad replica dying in turn,
Replaced by a paler, sadder clone
My father holding on,
Clinging vainly to those rare, cruel flickerings
of who she was once
Clinging too the false hope that he could somehow have her back
Trying to will her with the force of his love
Once more into the fierce, proud, vital soul she once had been
That struggle sometimes costing him the magic that was there
His eyes so focussed on a distant past
That he missed the sweeter moments of the now
Hard not to do it --
So confusing to have someone change so much,
and not change, too
It must have broken his heart; finally did, really...
But what I want to say is:
Her illness had them both
It does, I think, with couples so close
It may be only one body dying, but the lives and souls are joined
And everybody's got the disease
That's why we grieve so hard,
Because our way of being in the world gets lost
We lose each other and we lose ourselves, too
But sometimes, also, we're re-born
And that's scary and joyful and sad
And it's always lonely, because it has to be
Even if you have the best company in the world,
Even if the Universe is giving it's all to push you from the womb,
Still, it's a different universe, even though it's the same
And it's hard to share it
And that's why I'd like to bury my parents ashes quietly
In an un-grave
Because living and dying, alive and dead
We gave and still give birth to each other
And that's a very private thing
It's pain and love and creation all mixed up
And it's awesome
And terrible
And wonderful
And holy
And I don't understand it, but I know it's true
I've lived their death and been reborn
Each and both
Life and death, vastly different but the same
A circle, whole, unbroken and eternal
And that's why I'd like to bury my parents' ashes
Quietly,
A sweetly flowering tree peacefully reminding me
That they're not gone.

- Katherine E. Rabenau

***********

I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Picture Fiction Challenge: A Muse By Any Other Name

Ok... I think this is the third monthly Picture Fiction Challenge created by R.E.H. at his Ramblings of a Madman and my second attempt at it. Each month, R.E.H. randomly chooses five photos over at Flickr.com for each of five assigned categories: Character, Setting, Objective, Random Object and an Item. Each photo must be included the story in accordance with its assigned role. I thought this was REALLY hard last month. This month I thought it was REALLY REALLY hard. It was also fun and now that I have posted my own, I can't wait to go read what other participants have come up with. Last time they were all very different from each other and wonderfully creative and entertaining. I recommend that you check it out... and consider joining in next month.

Here are the pictures R.E.H. gave us to work with and their assigned roles.







And here - for better or worse - is my story.

A MUSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
or
Brandy and the Zen Monster

Brandy Wines was tired of being a rock star. She was tired of life in the big city, tired of her walk-up apartment in a so-so part of town, tired of battling her way through bums and crazy people just to get to and from work. She was tired of fighting with her band about where to perform and how much they would get paid. She was tired of road trips and loudness, tired of drinking to fit in.

More than anything, she was tired of the nightmares which had begun filling her nights so that she woke exhausted and baffled and a little bit frightened. Rock stars did not get frightened and Brandy Wines did not like the feeling one bit. She had tried drinking more but the dreams had persisted. So she had tried abstaining completely. That didn't help either. The creepy little monster - it looked like stuffed toy gone mad with a huge mouth and spiky teeth - was there every night almost as soon as she closed her eyes and right before she awakened again. Some nights, it would lumber towards her making viscious cackling noise, getting bigger and bigger with each step. Other nights it would attack while she dreamed she was on stage, remaining small. But it's teeth would turn into fangs and it would nibble at her ankles and torment her, moving in circles around her feet so that she never knew where it was going to bite next, so that she couldn't out-maneouver it. It was exhausting and she had no idea what it meant, but she knew that she couldn't take much more. What made things worse was that she had begun to watch for it when she was performing, to half expect it to dart out from behind the drums and attack her as she leaped and gyrated on the stage. And she was tired down to her bones. Something had to change. She knew that.

Eventually, she got so desperate, she decided to try therapy, much to the scorn of the rest of the band. At first she had almost given in to their mockery, but desperation had won over embarrassment and she was glad that it had, because therapy was helping. Her therapist was wonderful, helping her to quiet her mind and look at the dream from outside her fear. Everyone and everything in her dreams, he had told her was a part of her, so they had to try and figure out what she was trying to tell herself. What was her psyche trying to tell her and what part of her did that strange little monster represent? They tried a variety of gestalt type techniques. You would have thought that being a performer, that would have been right up her alley, but it seemed performing for her was a way of maintaining a mask so she pretty much left the stage when her therapist tried to get her to go into the dream. "Not happening," she replied. Not that she didn't try. It was just too scary. Finally her therapist suggested that she try dialoging with the dream. "Try having a conversation with the monster... just put down what ever comes into your head first. Don't edit, don't second guess. Just go with it." Frankly it had seemed like a stupid idea to Brandy, but she tried it anyway and the result had been nothing short of mind boggling. It went something like this:

Brandy: Hi, may I speak to the toothy little monster in my dream?

Monster: About time, jerk face.

Brandy: About time?

Monster: Well, I've been trying to get your attention for about two years now. You are a hard nut to crack.

Brandy: Well, at least you're a monster with a sense of humor. What is it you've been trying to tell me?

Monster: Oh, now you want to know. What if I don't feel like telling any more?

Brandy: Well, I'm guessing that if you didn't still want to tell me whatever it is, you wouldn't be tormenting me every night.

Monster: Could be. Maybe I'm just mean.

Brandy: Well, you have a sense of humor and you're talking to me, so my instincts tell me that you aren't as mean as I thought you were.

Monster: Ah... this gives me hope

Brandy: Hope about what?

Monster: Hope that I can save you.

Brandy: Save me? Save me from what?

Monster: Yourself.

Brandy: I'm listening.

Monster: About time.

Brandy: I think we covered that.

Monster: Ah, yes we did. I'm just a touch bitter still... and exhausted... It's hard work haunting dreams every night and feeling like you are getting nowhere. I was at my wits end.

Brandy: Well, I was trying to listen...

Monster: No you weren't. You were trying to make me go away.

Brandy: Guess you've got me there. Now that you've got my ear, how about spilling the beans. What was so important that you've been torturing me?

Monster: You're killing yourself. You have to stop what you're doing or you'll die.

Brandy: Killing myself? What are you talking about? I'm the most clean-living rock star in history.

Monster: More than one way to kill yourself. You aren't killing your body self. You're killing your creative self, your spirit self, your inner song-bird.

Brandy: My inner song bird? I sing for a living.

Monster: But it's what you sing. You don't love it any more. In fact you hate it. You run around the stage and scream and jump up and down because it's a habit. You hate it.

Brandy: I don't hate it.

Monster: Don't lie. You haven't loved it for a long time. It bores you.

Brandy: But I need to earn a living.

Monster: You have plenty saved up. Like you said, you are a very clean-living rock star.

Brandy: Well, that won't last me forever.

Monster: Did I say you had to stop living? Did I say you had to sit comatose? I don't think so.

Brandy: Well, what are you suggesting.

Monster: Something quieter. Something softer. Something that expresses your true self.

Brandy: I don't know who my true self is.

Monster: Obviously. If you did, I wouldn't have been chasing you around in your dreams to get your attention.

Brandy: So do you know who my true self is?

Monster: Yes.

Brandy: Well?

Monster: Please, I can't tell you. You have to open your heart to her.

Brandy: What are you? A Zen monster?

Monster: Zen monster? I like that. I think perhaps I am.

Brandy: Can you give me a hint at least, Zen Monster?

Monster: A hint? Hmm. I think perhaps I could do that.

Brandy: I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Monster: You're welcome.

Brandy: Uh, the hint please...

Monster: Oh, yes, of course... the hint is this: "Look to the goldfinch."

Brandy: God, you ARE a Zen Monster. What the hell does that mean?

Monster: You're on your own now, babe. I've done my part.

Brandy: Does this mean you won't be bothering me any more.

Monster: If you do as I've suggested, I see no need. Don't cross me though. If I come back rested, what you've been through so far will seem quite the cake walk.

Brandy: Well, thank you for talking to me I guess. What on earth does "Look to the Goldfinch" mean?

Monster: You'll figure it out. I have faith in you.

Brandy: You do? Really?

Monster: Really. Mind if I go now? I'm a bit weary and looking forward to some R&R.

Brandy: Well, OK. Thanks again. I guess.

That night, Brandy slept deeply for the first time in a very long time. In her dreams she was sleeping in her bedroom back home in the mountains where she had grown up. Outside the window she heard a voice singing an incredibly beautiful song. The words and melody vibrated through her being. Her dream self rose from it's bed and walked to the window and looked out on a magnificent old tree in full flower. And on its branches singing with as beautiful a voice as legends attributed to the nightingale, sat a goldfinch, small and radiant in the morning sun. As it's song washed over her, Brandy realized that she knew both the words and the melody to the little bird's song. She had written them years back and - fearful of what her band mates might think - had tossed her composition into a box in her closet, along with at least a dozen others. As though reading her thoughts, the little bird seemed to bow to her and, although she knew it was impossible, she thought she saw it look her in the eyes and smile.

She woke the next morning refreshed and at peace for the first time in many years, knowing what she had to do. Even the insensitive clods in her band recognized that something had happened. Before she even opened her mouth to speak, they knew intuitively that she said was leaving the band. When she told them about her dream of moving to the country and finding a home somewhere in the mountains, they couldn't even resent her decision, though it was inconvenient for them because just looking at her peaceful radiant face, they knew she was doing what was right. They didn't even try to change her mind or protest.

Three years later, after her first single folk album, SONGBIRD came out and went gold(finch), they visited her at her mountain retreat and were perhaps a little envious, not of her success, but of the radiant happiness that still glowed from her. Her house was simply and elegantly decorated. There was one odd thing that almost every visitor commented on. It was an strange stuffed creature with a gaping red mouth, big teeth and beady black eyes. When people asked about it - as they often did - she would get an odd little smile on her face and reply. "That? Oh, that's my muse. "

THE END

Comparatively Wordless Wednesday: Looking Out My Back Door

Because I am a home bound agoraphobic who also has physical disability to contend with, my little camera has given me new views of my relatively small world. These are some views from my back door.

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Couldn't resist adding Credence Clearwater singing "Out My Back Door":

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Heads or Tails Tuesday: A Mini Rant & A Video Clip

My offering today for Skittles' Heads or Tails Tuesday is bitter and angry. The prompt is "tip" or anything that rhymes with tip. This is just the tip of the iceberg of my rage and hurt.



George W. Bush is an evil man who holds my country in his grip
I am angry that he will be allowed to slip through history's door unimpeached
Unpunished for crimes against the US and the world
For crimes against the Constitution and basic human decency

While Congresspersons snip at each other about trivia
Bush and Co. chip away at the Constitution
Chip away at decency
Chip away at human rights
Chip away at help for the poor
Chip away at all that's good

So much lip service to God and patriotism
As we become a people who allow
Other humans to be stripped naked,
tied to a board and fake drowned
While we become a people who make excuses for torture
For ignoring the law
And democracy is flipped the figurative bird

All our hands - not only his
Drip with blood

What does this say about us?
Nothing good.

I also thought I'd share this thought-provoking video clip from The $3 Trillion Shipping Spree:

The Alphabet Backwards: Taxes, Terrific and Thank You

There are so many words that start with T and many "big" themes - time, terrorism, theology - that I wanted to write about. But somehow, it isn't in my heart to do that today. There's so much I have to say about each of those subjects - or at least I think I have something to say - but when I sat down at the keyboard to tackle them, my brain took off for the parts unknown. Perhaps Aruba or Jamaica. I don't know. Not here anyway. Nothing was coming out of my head and I couldn't even force it. I started thinking. Well, "I just won't post today," but for someone like me, skipping a day is a slippery slope and I really don't want to start down it. So I have been brooding and fuming and worrying about what to do and what's wrong with me and then suddenly I thought. Ok. It's April 14th. Taxes. How could I have missed something that obvious?

So here are a few not overly coherent thoughts on the subject of taxes. I've left this post for too late in the day and my brain is just not cooperating with me at all today, even though it has finally agreed to a topic. Maybe it's Spring fever. If today was an "r" day, I could post the amazing pictures I took of my favorite robin this morning. He came nice and close to the house and I got some awesome pictures... But I'm stuck with "t" and an uncooperative mind, so here's the best I can come up with....

Here's my heretical statement. I think taxes are good.

I admit that I don't like paying taxes any more than anybody else does. Well, that's not true. I don't like letting go of money because it's pretty scare, but I think taxes are really quite a fine and worthwhile thing and it drives me crazy that we elect nincompoops like George W. Bush in part because of promises like "no new taxes." I just don't understand why Americans react to the phrases "lower taxes" and "no new taxes" like Pavlov's dogs salivating at the sound of a bell. The benefit to be gained from those phrases is just as much an illusion as the empty bowls Pavlov's dogs salivated over. We have been programmed to react to the idea of taxes like they are some kind of punishment or a penalty we pay. But taxes are important. They are our contribution to keeping aspects of society going. Roads need to be paved, our social security system needs to be maintained, trains and ports need to be kept running... and our schools need to be nurtured and supported. Not doing those things in a timely way costs us in the long run.

I'm not saying our system is perfect. (I think it's awful and in drastic need of repair.) Does our system need to be more fair? Absolutely. The middle class and the poor are carrying an absurd proportion of the burden while rich people are benefited with absurd breaks and excuses for not paying their fair share into the system. It's absolutely crazy.

What's crazy too, is that we all jump up and down with joy at the pseudo tax breaks and rebates, that are really sleight of hand or flat out lies. Besides the fact that the kinds of "breaks" people like Bush offer don't amount to enough to buy more than a few bags of groceries, they are also really illusions, because services have to be paid for somehow. So the cost of these "breaks" just trickles down to our State and local governments. We pay for them either in higher taxes there or in cut-backs that harm society as a whole and that ultimately cost us more when neglect catches up to us. Look at our school systems. Look at our neglected rotting infrastructure. That's what our tax breaks have bought us. Bush's big gala "tax rebate" when he first took office still makes me cranky. They spent billions on publicity and paper work. I got some absurdly miniscule amount of money from that expense and - adding insult to injury - it was TAXABLE the next year. Grrr.

I think the old "penny wise, pound foolish" adage applies to our view of taxes. Being cheap doesn't always save you money. I admit that it's relatively easy these days for me to be benign on the subject of taxes. My disability stipend is so small that I don't have to pay anything. But I have never resented paying taxes the way most people seem to. I never made much money, so I can't say I was delerious to see those dollars go. I can't say I always approve of how the government spends my tax dollars. I wish they would put more into helping the poor than they do into dropping bombs and planning interstellar spy networks. Still, we all benefit from good roads, from well educated children, from sewer and water systems that are well maintained. Those things have to be paid for. We can pay for them now with a few more dollars out of our pay checks or we can pay for them later with collapsing bridges, schools with not enough books and no music or art programs, and other things that cost us in more than just dollars and cents.

The next time some politician tries to seduce you with a promise he or she can't really keep, stop and think about what those new taxes might buy for you and your children and your children's children. Sometimes a penny saved is a penny earned and sometimes a penny saved is a penny wasted. Or that's what I think.

Anyway, as you write your check to the IRS or wait for your rebate, maybe think about shifting your attitude about taxation. Next time some politician tries to enchant you with the promise of lower taxes, stop and think about what that means, what it really means. Then vote for someone who promises FAIRER taxes. Vote for someone who promises to use taxes for the public good. And be grateful that you have enough money that you OWE taxes. Be grateful that you live in a magnificent - flawed, deeply troubled at present - but still magnificent country.

Well, I'm not so happy with how I've written this, but I'm really excited with my robin pictures. I think they are TERRIFIC ( that's a "t" word) and I'm excited about them, so I'm going to share one.


Happy Monday! Happy Tax Day tomorrow. Thank God/Goodness we are such a rich and blessed nation. Thank you for abundance and beauty in all it's forms. Which just reminded me that Thank you is another "t" word. Thank you to all of you who read and respond to my posts. You are TERRIFIC too!

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

One Single Impression: Glory

The prompt for this week's One Single Impression is "glory." I'm not very happy with these - they are not glorious - but they are the best I could squeeze out of my brain this week. I tried to write another poem for autism awareness month also.



Look around my friend
There is glory everywhere
Just open your eyes


~~~~~~~~


oh morning glory
blossoming at break of day
your beauty stuns me


~~~~~~~~


The glory of war
Civilians accept the lie
Soldiers know better


~~~~~~~~


Many thousands dead
Torture, cruelty, lies for greed
War brings no glory


~~~~~~~~


The wonder of you
Opens my heart in joy
I feel life's glory


~~~~~~~~


"Glory be," she cried
And I thought "yes indeedy"
It is a grand life


~~~~~~~~
He is Himself
for Connor

As with any child
There is glory in small things
He's not a label after all,
Not an "ism"
He is himself
Unique, special
Looking for love
Just like the rest of us
Austism is a part of him
But it isn't who he is
Who is he, then?
He is his mother's son
His father's boy
His brother's friend
He is his own glorious and beautiful self
And what more could we ask?

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 8

Well, I think I'm going to post on Friday evenings from now on because I realized that some of our participants are in time zones where it's already Saturday so I might as well give them a little more time - and it means people can post as soon as they are ready.

Since this is week 8 of our challenge, I'm going to just get right down to it without any introduction.

The words for this week's ten Word Challenge will be: galaxy, delta, redecorate, dearth, offshoot, Uther Pendragon, cordial, gingerbread, foretold, bonnet And for the Mini Challenge: palliate, functionality, jungle, brass, asphyxiate

Here's my ten-word offering for this week.

Delta Dingwater, from the planet Zong in outer galaxy of the Uther Pendragon Nebula didn't tell many people about her home planet. A noted explorer and anthropologist among her own people on Zong, she had learned early on to blend in. She had been stranded here on earth waiting for the rescue ship for about two years now and was thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to explore earth culture in depth. Fortunately Zongian and human anatomy were sufficiently similar that she was able to blend in easily. That said as a planet, Earth was a delightful contrast to the bleak world of Zong. To say there was a dearth of color and plant life on Zong was so far beyond understatement that it made her cry. Much as she was enjoying her time on earth she also looked forward to bringing the wonders of Earth home to her own people. She was convinced that she was to be the savior who had been foretold to her people, whose world had once (according to the history and mythology books) been as lush and wondrous as Earth. She looked forward to introducing Zongians to the wonders of earth's flora - she especially love blue bonnets and tulips, with roses running a close third. And trees. Trees! She could, she liked to muse, redecorate not just her own chort (as houses were called on Zong) but the whole planet with all this new life. And then there was the food. Oh, the food Earthings enjoyed! So many flavors and textures. Beyond the necessities there were magical things like gingerbread, cherry cordial, brownies, ice cream... oh and then brownies and ice cream together... and chocolate chip cookies... and chocolate itself... and beer and pretzles.... she could go on and on. Her research into earth food was extensive. An unfortunate offshoot of this research was that she had grown quite rotund. She would have to do something about that if she was going to fit on into the transport ship home, she mused, nibbling on yet a new food discovery, the glazed donut. Taking another sip of her chocolate milk shake, she thought - foolishly - "how hard can that be?"


And my mini challenge:

Stranded as they were in the depths of the Amazon jungle, there wasn't much the expedition could do for Marco except to offer comfort, water, and a little bourbon to palliate the severity of his symptoms and do what they could to keep him from asphyxiating before the rescue chopper arrived. He had been delirious for two days now, and his ramblings had been most informative, consisting as they did of prolonged monologues on the functionality of brass knuckles and the virtue of infiltrating your enemy's operation so you could make a hit from the inside. He had also cried a good deal and asked God why he should be taken now, when he had given up crime and was trying to do good. Luckily for him those tending to him spoke very little English as was also true of the helicopter crew when they arrived to rescue him, so perhaps, God was, after all, giving him a second chance.

Mega challenge was a super challenge for me this week - in fact all of them were - but here's what I wrote:

When the magnificent ship Uther Pendragon ran aground on the delta near Margaret's house she was thrilled and excited by having a little drama to palliate the boredom of living alone in a tiny backwater town and by the proximity of a ship full of lonely men. The dearth of eligible men in Tyler Mills (which was a tiny offshoot of the minimally larger town of Tylerville) was profound. So Margaret happily did what she could to redecorate so her little house would look it's best, hanging the new curtains she had been saving and putting some tulips and blue bonnets into an old brass bowl whose functionality she had questioned until now. Then she baked up some some biscuits and some gingerbread men, made a fine stew, set out a bottle of cherry cordial, doused herself in so much perfume that she was in danger of asphyxiating everyone in a 5 mile radius or possibly even in the galaxy and waited happily for the first visitors she knew would soon arrive across the jungle-like marsh that led from where the ship was stranded straight to her house. What she could not have foretold was that among the sailors who arrived at her door, would be Ned Witherspoon, the man of her dreams or that his ship's Captain, Admiral Jacks (a man with adventure in his soul and romance in his heart) would marry them before setting off to sea again a week later.

This words for this week's vanity wordzzle (something I wrote a long time ago and am sharing here because it's the only way anyone will ever read it) are: Linoleum, jade, giraffe, candle, kitty, Mr. Potato Head, aloe, wishes, incense, iron

I will always remember the first time I visited Martha’s house. I had thought her quite an ordinary person, and I suppose in many ways she was. She was a secretary. Her wardrobe was neither exotic nor prudish. She was quiet and pleasant, smiled easily, but also always seemed to be holding something back. That holding back was probably why I accepted her invitation to coffee that Monday evening after my third group therapy session. I was pretty depressed and to be honest I figured even anything was better than going home to my own lonely prison. So, anyway, I said yes. And you know how you somehow usually imagine what a person’s home will be. I always kind of figure that people dress themselves kind of the way they dress their houses, so I expected it to be beiges and neutral colors, nothing too memorable. Boy, was I wrong. I guess the first thing that hits you when you walk into Martha’s place is the color. And the rich smell of incense. And the thousand little details. But then, the next thing, the thing that always stays with you, with me, anyway, is the altar – or maybe Shrine is a better word. First off, it’s big. I mean really big, like a whole corner of the room, but shaped like a triangle with the middle cut out, so you can sit inside of it. And it’s built in tiers – three, I think, each maybe six inches deep and probably a foot tall, so it kind of rises up around you. There are three big cushions in the middle space, really plush and each one a different color and texture, so they are like different moods that touch your eye. And there are all sorts of candles, dozens of them. But it’s the objects that sit in various places that really make it both strange and magnificent. There’s a holiness about the space that makes the oddness of her artifacts seem quite normal. It is quite unnerving and yet somehow healing. I don’t know how to explain it, but let me tell you some of what she has there. The first thing I noticed was an old, half-broken Mr. Potato Head and next to that this exquisite porcelain flower sitting on a square of red linoleum. Then there was an odd little jade kitty, a baseball, a stuffed giraffe, a funny little black iron kettle which I guess was for burning incense, lots of crystals in different shapes and colors and sizes, some angels, a carved snake, and oh, a bunch of animals, then a whole host of photographs scattered all around. Some in frames, some just lying there. A lot of them were of her as a child, but there were some other children too, another iron pot that said wishes and had a had paper and a pen sitting next to it. Then there were the plants, all kinds. Ferns, violets and one aloe plant that I especially remember because I had never seen one with a flower before. It was awesome, like this work of art, like a soul spilling out of itself, mourning and rejoicing, remembering and forgetting, discovering and releasing all at once. Just looking at it was a religious experience – and I like to think I’m an atheist. All she said was, “I thought you’d like it. We can have our coffee here, if you’d like.” It was good she said that, because I couldn’t have torn myself away, it was that special, like love poured out of it and washed over you. “Make a wish,” she said, “make as many as you want and then just say thank you when you put them in the pot. You’ll be surprised at how well it works.” It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had. Like everything was magic. She told me all about every item on the altar and how she had built it and why and taught me how to create my own, which I have done – am doing. It was an amazing experience. I never saw her again after that, though. She didn’t come back to group and when I asked some other people about her they didn’t seem to even remember who she was. But I’ll never forget her.

Anyone who wants to emulate the amazing megawordzzlers can try merging both challenges and make another megawordzzle. It's fun! I'm so glad that Jay Simser invented it.

Next week's words are again a mix of suggestions that came from Jay, The Pirate, Michael and Richard and I tossed in a few of my own. Suggestions for words/phrases from other participants are always welcome. Also any advice/suggestions on how to make the process easier would me much appreciated.

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: cocker spaniel, penultimate, fetters, warranty, tarmac, quartz, paparazzi, apple sauce, earsplitting, laxidaisical

And for the Mini Challenge: spinach, interwoven, compromise, tennis, intangible


Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO MR. LINKY!!!!!

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

The Memory of an Old Friend

I was going to write about the nature of time today, but for whatever reason, I can't get it to come out right, so I think I will make a small tribute to an old friend. Recently, through the miracle of Facebook, I reconnected with an old college friend, Lynda, who I hadn't heard from in years. She, her then husband and I and two other friends shared a house during my junior year in college. It was one of the best times in my college life, probably in my whole life. They were all wonderfully creative and good people and we had fun together. I have a few favorite memories of our days together.

One is dressing up in Victorian (or Victorian-ish) costumes for the Literary Journal photo. I was so shy and reserved that this was a big deal for me. I wish my scanner worked. It's a very silly photo but we had a great time making it.

My second memory is one I bore my friends with any time we play games. The five of us who lived in the house used to play Clue and other games with some regularity. I don't know what it is about me and Clue, but I almost always win. One afternoon we had played a few games and I was all set to win yet again, but I had to go to the bathroom. I returned, smugly announced that so-in-so did it in wherever with whatever the weapon was. Pulling the cards out of their little packet, I was stunned to discover that I was completely wrong. How could this be? I was so sure.... Well, of course, they had taken advantage of my absence to switch the cards. I thought it was wonderfully funny then and it still makes me laugh just thinking about it. It probably isn't that funny to anyone else. But it's one of my favorite stories so I have to share it. We laughed a lot in that house on Forest Avenue. I was as happy there as I was capable of being at the time.

The other thing that Greg and Lynda taught me was a profound life lesson. I had the delusional belief that I was luckier than everyone else on the planet and I used to like to treat us to things once in a while, especially home make chocolates from a little shop around the corner from our house. One day I was about to buy us a treat and they said, "let us do it." I started to argue with them about it and they said. "Did it ever occur to you that since it gives you so much pleasure to do this, it might give us pleasure to do it too?" I've never forgotten that. Receiving is also a way of giving. Generosity has many faces.

Greg, was a gifted artist and a beloved friend. In reconnecting with Lynda, I learned that he was murdered at about this time twenty years ago. I'm not sure of the exact date. I had spoken with him not long before and we had planned to get together for coffee and then we never did. I learned about his death - but not his murder - in the same week that my sister was murdered.

One other memory I have of those days is learning that Greg had a twin brother and that he had been killed in Vietnam. Daughter of an alcoholic, that night was one of two in my life when I got black-out drunk. I wish I didn't remember any of it. I can't imagine the pain Greg's parents have gone through to lose not just one son, but two to the worst kinds of violence this world has to offer. That is too cruel.

Anyway, yesterday I took a photo - not the best, I'm afraid, of an etching that Greg gave to me almost forty years ago when he and I were young and had no idea that the future would bring such violence into our lives. I wrote a poem for it at the time. It's not a very good poem and at 60 seems kind of like an amusing thing for my 20-year-old self to have written, but I will share it anyway.

FROM AN ETCHING BY GREGORY JACKSON

Sleeping, my youth lies dead
Beneath the dust and cobwebs of old age
The pale head, cushioned by tattered rags
of unspent dreams
Lies musing peacefully
And I, in mourning,
Stand behind the net of slender threads
Afraid to rouse him from that useless slumber

- Katherine E. Rabenau

Thank you, Greg, for having been my friend. I know you are with the angels.

Poem of the Week

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Wordless Wednesday: Signs of Spring

Hopefully Spring will come soon. At least there are signs now that it is on the way.

Happy Wordless Wednesday

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I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Heads or Tails Tuesday: Expression Elephant Style

Well, I was going to skip Skittles' Heads or Tails Tuesday today because I'm feeling lazy and beyond. Thought I'd just post this little You-Tube Video that someone sent me in my email a few days back. And then I realized I can be lazy and have my Head or Tails Tuesday too, since this little elephant is certainly expressing him/herself in a most remarkable way. I have to admit that it never occurred to me that an elephant could paint with a portrait... Ah, I love it when I get to cheat. I hope you enjoy this.

The Alphabet Backwards: An Assortment of "U's"

Well, of course the obvious word for U is umbrella, but since I never leave the house, umbrellas are kind of meaningless to me. Truth is, even when I was out in the big world, I didn't much care for umbrellas. They seem like more trouble than they are worth. I tended to lose them and when I did use them, they either blew inside out or didn't seem to keep me very dry. I'd just as soon get wet. So that takes care of umbrellas.

Then I though about ubiquitous, but really other than the saying that it's a cool sounding word which means "existing everywhere at the same time," there isn't much to say. It really is a great word, though. Had to mention it.

Next we have upset. I have a fair amount to say about this one. I have been very upset for the past few days. Last Thursday, I got a thing in the mail from my bank saying I bounced a check - guess it didn't bounce, it just "reverberated," but the bank gets to punish me $30 worth. My SSD money just gets me through the month and I am - well I THOUGHT I was - very careful about being sure my checks are covered. I can't figure out what I did wrong and that alone freaks me out. My mind being the creative little stinker that it is, has created a variety of scenarios of doom and destruction. These range from identity theft, my SSD has been taken away and nobody told me, I'm going to lose my house.... Oh, my mind goes on and on in ever deeping and crazier circles. I know that it's all insane. I reason with myself. I remind myself that everyting is correctable. I remind myself that people make mistakes. Do I listen? Sort of. Sometimes. So I'm already freaked out and on Saturday I get ANOTHER letter from the bank. Saying something about $116 and telling me that they are taking ANOTHER $30. Now I'm convinced that my identity has been stolen and/or that SSD is punishing me for something. I see myself homeless. I even went to - my imagination is a wonder - the idea that maybe I'd been reported dead. Where that came from is a mystery. It's the way my mind works when it is at it's most upset and dysfunctional. Mercifully my friends came over yesterday and as I talked through the two letters from the bank, it seems - you would not believe how badly these letters are done - that both refer to the same check. It's still unclear (another nice "u" word) whether they are going to charge me $30 twice, but at least it seems that only one check bounced. Only. Ugh. I'm not agoraphobic for nothing. I'm still trying to work up my courage to call the bank and see if I can clarify what happened. I did call to check my balance in between the two letters from the bank and my disability money was there and enough money that I sent out payment for my bills. Of course, I am still in a panic that everything is going to bounce and that my I'm never going to recover. Agh. It is so annoying being me some days.

This is all more stressful because I applied for an Amazon.com Visa card a while back (to get that $30 discount). They eventually approved me since despite having no money, I have great credit. I kind of forgot all about it and then I got a call - at about the same time the overdraft letter came - from some woman in India or Pakistan saying that the credit card kept being returned to them and that it was being sent to an address in Philadelphia or something like that. That kind of freaked me out too. That panicky part of me that doesn't cope with things still hasn't called Amazon.com, though I've checked the site to make sure nothing has been charged that I didn't buy and to delete all my financial information. The credit card, which was supposed to be sent to my correct address still hasn't arrived.

Urgent is another good "u" word. You'd think that given my hysteria about the above, the urgency of the need for coping with it, that I would have been on the phone to the bank first thing this morning, that I would have contacted Amazon.com last week. This is where my panic disorder really makes me crazy - or proves that I'm really crazy. I keep thinking about it, but I keep not acting, as though maybe if I sit really still and don't move, it will all go away. I hate this quality in myself. Panic may spur some people to action. It paralyzes me. In the old days, when I still lived in New York, when I still tried to leave my house, a huge aspect of my panic was that I became literally almost paralyzed. My muscles would get so tight that I could barely move, my back would be agonzingly painful. My legs would feel like jello and move like stone. My chest would constrict so badly that I could hardly breathe. And people wonder why I don't like going out.

Anyway, I'm hoping that by putting this out there, I will force myself to act. In reality, I think everything is fine and this is one of those convergences of stupid things that are either random events or little progress tests from the universe to see if I've really got the positive thinking thing down. I'm guessing that I'm not getting a very high grade. I might pass, but there is no A plus showing up on this crisis report card.

Well, I guess I could have titled today's post "True Confessions Under the Letter U."

Maybe I should end with something more upbeat - hah! another U word... they are everywhere! But I'll go with ukelele and a haiku


ukele songs
transport me to Hawaiian shores
a dream vacation

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I was so unnerved (another U!) by airing my insanity, that I almost forgot to mention Autism Awareness month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.



These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

One Single Impression: Stranded

The prompt for this week's One Single Impression is "Stranded." This seems to have tapped into my gloomy side. I thought about trying to art this week's poems up but they are very different from each other and I couldn't think of a way to do it, so... just stuck with naked words this week. The last poem is not haiku or even quasi-haiku, but is my effort to acknowledge Autism Awareness Month. I hope you'll visit the sites I have listed and find out a little bit more about a condition that very few of us understand.


Stranded on the shore
Does the old boat long to sail
On waves of memory?


~~~~~~~~~~~


Too often alone
Stranded in my baseless fears
Agoraphobic


~~~~~~~~~~~


She does not know him
The old man plaiting her hair
Strand by strand with love


~~~~~~~~~~~


stranded by autism's cruel grasp
locked inside himself
he circles, rocks or flaps his hands
his mother hugs him with her voice
because he cannot handle touch
or look her in the eyes
he does not speak a lot
but he can hear her love
can feel it with his heart
love is so much bigger
than the limitations we put on it
when we are ready to learn
he will teach us





I hope you will all take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel
Look Me In The Eye

Saturday Wordzzle Challenge: Week 7

Well, I think I'm going to post on Friday evenings from now on because I realized that some of our participants are in time zones where it's already Saturday so I might as well give them a little more time - and it means people can post as soon as they are ready.

Since this is week 7 of our challenge, I'm going to just get right down to it without any introduction.

The words for this week's ten Word Challenge were: fruitcake, necromancer, gibberish, marshland, Lone Ranger, hog-wild, effluvia, plaintiff, phonograph, fern. And for the Mini Challenge: frozen, history, myrmidon, Shylock, incapacitated

Please remember to add your name to Mr. Linky down at the bottom of the post. Jay Simser sent me his wordzzle, but he also has it posted on his site, so I've added his name to Mr. Linky. You may have to hunt a little for it, but it's there and excellent as always. I do have one email megawordzzle contribution from my friend Dan. Dan doesn't have a blog, so he'll just have to check in here and if he chooses, share his email for any feedback. Here's his contribution:

It was New York City 1897, Dr. Rupert G. Rowens was seated in his office reviewing the previous week's paperwork. In the distance a faint sound of a phonograph played the latest Italian opera. Like a gust of wind the door shot open slightly ruffling the leaves of a nearby fern. There stood Sidney Lucas like some by product of a necromancer only to gallop in like the Lone Ranger from some distant marshland. Dr. Rowens sat there frozen in his chair, it only took a second to realize they were not alone. Sidney a fierce Shylock amongst his peers felt the need to bring along one of his goons, a mere myrmidon to Dr. Rowens. Effy (short for Effluvia due to the dogs offensive and untimely expels of gas) the doctor's faithful chihuahua came running to the scene. The doctor hurriedly quieted the dog from going hog-wild. Sidney was there to collect on a debt. In a recent court case the doctor had taken part in for a good friend he had offered to pay the minor debt for the plaintiff. Dr. Rowens invited them in and offered them some fruitcake and tea. The men sat rather abruptly and seemed on edge. The doctor spoke only for a few minutes before Sidney demanded his money. Dr. Rowens assured the men that he had the money and left the room to retrieve it. The doctor traveled up the stairs and into his private study. He proceeded to remove the history books from the shelf unmasking a wall safe. He removed 5000 dollars and replaced the books before making his way back down to Sidney and his goon. He sat at his desk and handed him the money he assured him that it was all there and implored him to count it so he did. Sidney and his goon decided it was time to leave but just before reaching the door they both became a bit peculiar and they looked back at the doctor, they tried to speak but gibberish is all that left their lips.The doctor said "Good fruitcake isn't it" Only seconds passed before they were on the floor and fully incapacitated. The doctor merely sat at his desk calmly and at ease. Mrs. Rowens walked in and said "Dammit Rupert, how do you expect me to keep this office clean when you keep leaving the cities scum around".

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I tried something different for this week's ten word challenge:

He was a lawyer extra-ordinaire
A hog-wild Lone Ranger
Defender of plaintiffs, terror of felons
So eloquent he could make gibberish sound grand
He called political speak effluvia and railed against it
He kept up with the times; he loved new things
But also mourned his old phonograph records
Lover of ferns and marshlands and all things wild
A fruitcake necromancer, amazing chef
Dark sorcerer who stole my heart
How will I live without him?

Here's my mini:

Shylock Jones had tried to trick the family "tradition" (aka curse) when he named his daughter Myrmidon. Horrible names were a family custom that dated back through generations of family history. Nobody knew how it started, but there was a superstition among his people that to betray the tradition would lead to disaster. Myrmidon had at least sounded pretty, he thought. Most people wouldn't know the word or it's meaning. He had never counted on her reaction, had not thought it would impact her the way it did. Now he stood beside her suicide's grave, frozen and incapacitated with grief, thinking that the only way to escape this pain would be to join her.

And my megawordzzle:

Sarah smith loved words more than anything - except maybe music... and history. History was pretty cool. But back to words. Words were music as far as she was concerned. Sometimes she would sing songs made up of the gibberish of her favorite words all strung together.... to the tune of the Lone Ranger's theme song and other tunes... marshlands, myrmidon, necromancer, fruitcake... and sing me a song of phonographs, effluvia and hog-wild ferns she would chant. Today she was reading Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and at the moment was circling the room reciting Shylock's famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech. Awesome she gasped, as she came to the end and stood frozen in her tracks. The plaintiff rests. Then with a theatrical gasp, she looked over at her cat Chaucer and sank with a dramatic thump onto her favorite chair. "Chaucer, my friend," she murmurred, "I am incapacitated by the power of these words. They are too beautiful. Let me rest a moment and then I will read you some more." As if he understood perfectly, Chaucer curled up next to her purring and waited quietly for her to begin again.

This week's vanity wordzzle (old stuff nobody will get to read unless I add it here) was created from the words: maelstrom, crab, totality, stucco, green tea, periphery, bookends, truncate, prioritize

Conrad sat in total stillness in the center of his Japanese garden, so deep in meditation that he remained oblivious to the maelstrom of activity around him. The garden was exquisite, designed with such a masterful eye for detail that although the many plants and trees were laid out in such a way as to keep the eye interested and moving, the totality was none-the-less calming to the senses. It was a masterpiece of beauty - from the crab shaped fountains that sat like bookends at each end of the walk, to the miniature cherry trees that lined the periphery and separated the glass-roofed garden from the stucco walls of the house which surrounded it. He had even planted seeds so that he could eventually harvest leaves for the tea ceremony - the special green tea had been ritually planted before anything else. The garden had become his obsession, his love and his solace. "We have to prioritize, Madge," he had told his gentle, long-suffering wife. And so they had truncated plans for her study and the pool for the kids and a few vacations. Even her return to school had been put on hold. So complete was Conrad's absorption in the garden that he did not hear the screaming twins or the three-month-old; he did not let the piles of dirty laundry or the sink full of dirty dishes distress him, but simply headed blissfully to his garden. Alas, he also failed, on this particular night, to see Madge, wild-eyed and totally mad, moving towards him with a long, sharp kitchen knife.

NEXT WEEK'S CHALLENGE

Anyone who wants to emulate the amazing megawordzzlers can try merging both challenges and make another megawordzzle. It's fun. Do all three and triple your fun.

This weeks words are a mix of suggestions that came from Jay, The Pirate, Michael and Richard (check out his A to Z idea) - and I tossed a couple in myself. I would LOVE to have more suggestions for words/phrases from other participants. Also any advice/suggestions on how to make the process easier would me much appreciated. I'm new to the blogosphere and still clumsy at navigating it in some ways. I mixed their suggestions together just to make it more interesting.

Next Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: galaxy, delta, redecorate, dearth, offshoot, Uthar Pendragon, cordial, gingerbread, foretold, bonnet
And for the Mini Challenge: palliate, functionality, jungle, brass, asphyxiate

Thanks for playing. For those who are new, here are some guidelines to make the process more fun.

Enjoy! See you next week.

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO ADD YOUR NAME TO
MR. LINKY!!!!!

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Just a reminder to everyone, when you are done with your wordzzles, take a minute to remember that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days
Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique
Mother of Shrek
Full Soul Ahead
Down River Drivel

Honored

Well, it's a rainy day and was I not very happy with my post today and I'm tired and generally just a big whine and then along came The Teach and infused some sunshine and gratitude into my the situation. This graphically beautiful award was created by Greatfullivin at the Gratitude Journal blog. I'll let you go visit her site for the full description, but here's an exceprt from her description:

"... Gratitude ...is not about a passive attitude. It’s about learning. It’s about seeing things different, having new eyes! Gratitude is about keeping that happy positive outlook on life…even when things don’t go the way we want them to. It is not about giving in, lying down or accepting everybody else’s rules it’s about making your own rules!... Gratitude IS Attitude!"

Anyway, many thanks to The Teach for thinking of me and reminding me on a day when I was feeling more frustrated than grateful that I can choose how I feel about life, living ... and even today. And many thanks also to everybody who visits Raven's Nest and leaves a kind word of reassurance or recognition.

I'd like to pass this award on to a few special people. I haven't been around the blogosphere for that long but am choosing five people who seem to me to embody generosity and gratitude in their daily living and who have been very kind to me in my daily blogging.

Dianne at Forks Off the Road

Jay at Bailey's Buddy

Linda at These are the Days

Michael at Michael Manning.TV

Kim at Ramblings of 40-Something Empy Nester


There are so many others who are deserving but I can't choose everyone. Awards make me really happy and also kind of anxious, so I have not yet really dealt with another award I received in the past week - the E for Excellent Award - that Dianne so generously nominated me for (and compared me to Katherine Hepburn of all people... how cool is that?) So... I thought I'd pass THAT award on to the following people:


To Sandy Carlson and Andree - for One Single Impression, a blog which offers a weekly haiku prompt and spurred my imagination and creativity with one word each week.

Billy at Chapter and Verse already has an E is for Excellence, but he's such a good poet - and he compliments my poetry. I love compliments.

Michael at Everything in Particular because he has a great sense of humor and a passion for supporting his friends.

Michelle at Full-Soul-Ahead because she shares from her heart and it is a heart full of love.


Guess that's it... Getting awards is an exhausting responsibility and very hard on me because I want to give one to EVERYBODY so nobody's feelings get hurt. I didn't add my wonderful nieces to this list, though I added them in my heart.

Diana has three blogs: Vegan Girl, High Tech Survivor and Food Scout which is an awesome website with a blog attached to it. And Cindy has three also: Life in my Noggin, Team Wines and Sc2toggers which she and Linda (snoopmurph) are not (been very quiet there lately) co-writing.

The Circle Game

I'm a word person and sometimes a new word gets stuck in my head. This week, I've been reading my friend Linda's posts about autism and one of the things she wrote about was something called "stimming." Stimming is a way that autistic children (and really all of us on earth) find to cope with feelings of stress. For autistic children, it might involve flapping their hands and sometimes - as in the case of her young son - walking in circles. For myself, I play computer games or watch TV. If I could walk, I might pace, but that's not an option any more.

Anyway, Linda's article on stimming was in my head last night as sweet Tara Grace acted out the damage of her early life in her kitty version of stimming which involves muttering and circling the house, around and around and around... sometimes she just circles the window and my desk, making sure to stomp on my keyboard over and over (aggggh). I was watching a movie on the computer last night and she managed at one point to mute it. After I spent 10 minutes figuring out how to undo that not too good naturedly, I might add - she did it again. Within minutes of the movie's end, she stepped on something that took it right back to the start. Ironically, at the moment of this little act of torture the human, a little girl in the movie was singing Joni Mitchell's magnificent song, "The Circle Game."

After my very very worst self emerged and shrieked at poor Tara for just being herself, and as guilt and embarrassment at my reaction set in, my brain made a link to her behavior and stimming. Tara, I thought, is kind of like a feline version of a very mildly autistic child, only because she's a cat and not a child it's so very different. There's an element of humor in it. Her routine is so relentless, her muttering so passionate... it can make me laugh. It also worries me, though. Some days I feel like she will wear herself out and I feel so sad because she's not able to allow hugs. She will sometimes stop for petting - I think that's what she's seeking ultimately - some form of comfort. She's still too damaged from her early life to allow hugs. I can't pick her up and hold. I can't soothe her stress.

And I was thinking that this is just the tiniest taste of what it must be like for parents with autistic children. Tara Grace, after all, is a cat. She is my child equivalent, but she lives a cat's life. Nobody judges her for her circles. If anything they endear her to my friends. And she does not have to go out into the world. No ignorant adults or foolish children will stare at her or judge her because she's "different." She will never have to cope with the realities of operating in a world that doesn't always welcome eccentricity. Tara Grace won't have to go to school. She won't have to face the insanity of puberty with the extra burden of being different. She is safe here and sheltered from the difficulties of the wider world. As my cat, she is an eternal child and while I may worry about her, I know she's going to be ok.

I don't know how parents of even "typical" children do it, how they balance the joy and fear and responsibility of parenting. It has always seemed wrong to me that the "game" of life should be harder for some than others. At the same time I try to feel empathy for people struggling with the pain and beauty of their autistic children, I realize that I don't have a clue or a hint of a clue as to what it's really like. I have so much to learn.

I am anxious about this post. I don't know if I should post it. I don't want anyone to think that I'm comparing my cat to their children, that I am making light of something so serious and painful. I'm not. Obviously I've decided to post it in spite of my reservations. I tried to change the subject but it has refused to change and I've found that when that happens, there is usually some purpose that I don't understand. So I will risk it and hope that there is some value in these words that I can't hear through my anxiety and with the plea of forgiveness if I have offended in any way.

Just because I love it so much, I thought I'd share the Circle Game and it's lyrics. We really are all on a circling carousel in some ways. I've heard life compared to an onion where you peel away the layers as you move through experience. Either way - carousel of onion - it is an amazing ride.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we con only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and dawn
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur
Coming true
Therell be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Poem of the Week

Years and years ago, when I visited the Frick Gallery in New York City and saw this painting, I changed my mind about reincarnation. Until then, I was pretty skeptical about the idea. But when I saw this painting, I KNEW - I absolutely KNEW that I had known this person. My connection to the painting was so intense that it stunned me. It wasn't a feeling. It was a certainty. In those days in particular, I was not a person who was certain about anything much, so this was a pretty life-altering experience.

At some point not too long after seeing the painting, I wrote today's poem. Then a few year's after that, I had the opportunity to have a session (another life-changing experience) with a not yet famous psychic named Pat Rodegast who channeled a spirit named Emmanuel. I highly recommend Emmanuel's Book. It is one of my all time favorite ever books. It radiates love and healing truths about life. It doesn't matter what you think about channeling or reincarnation... it doesn't matter whether it's channeled or made up... it's a beautiful book and the material reads like poetry. I wish everyone on earth would read it. How's that for a statement. Back when I read it, I kept giving it away to people and buying replacement copies. I love that book. Think I'll go pull it off the shelf if I haven't given it away again and look through it again. It has been a while.

But I digress (what else is new?)... I took a postcard copy of this painting with me to the session with Pat/Emmanuel and asked if her what she felt about it. She said this was me in another life. I don't know if that's true or not. I kind of liked the idea of having a great romance in some other life since there hasn't been one in this one. Still out of luck. But I love his face, so I'm guessing it must have been a pretty good life. Anyway, I guess that's probably more than enough of an introduction. Here's the poem.


MEMLING'S PORTRAIT OF A MAN

I see your face

Staring across centuries of canvas

And I am drawn through time by your magnetism

I know I loved you once, or would have,

You look so much a part of me

With that quiet fanaticism

Maybe we were lovers in another incarnation

And it was so fine that neither of us has forgotten

In the five hundred years since you were you

And I, whoever I was then.


- Katherine E. Rabenau

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Just a reminder to everyone that this is Autism Awareness Month. The following blogs and posts offer an opportunity to put a human face and heart on something which for most of us is just something we have heard about but don't really understand.

These are the Days

Forks Off the Moment - We are All Unique

Mother of Shrek

Full Soul Ahead

Down River Drivel - this site will lead you to a dozen more...

Wordless Wednesday Clouds - Part Two: Forgot One

I thought this was cool... it's not photo shop... it's real...

Wordless Wednesday: Clouds

Happy Wordless Wednesday

Heads or Tails Tuesdayand Some Thoughts on Autism Awareness Month

Well, I brooded and pondered and wondered and thought about different ways to approach today's Heads or Tails Tuesday post hosted by Skittles. I thought about writing about the Fool in the Tarot Deck, about the Native American "wise fool" heyoka, similar to the court jesters of the Middle Ages. I had a couple of other ideas, but all of them required more effort than this poor fool was willing to put into it, so I decided to go for quotes, especially because I also wanted to talk about something totally not related to fools. But lets get the fools out of the way first. Here are some wonderful quotes on the subject for your entertainment:

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” - Mark Twain

Abraham Lincoln said much the same thing: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

"Only a fool tests the water with both feet." - African Proverb

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.” - Albert Einstein

“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” - Chinese Proverb

“I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.” - Theodore Isaac Rubin

Theodore Isaac Rubin also said this, which I thought was very wise: "The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."

"Even a fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying." - Harry Anderson

I add this one with some bitterness, although I didn't vote for the current non-elected president either time he stole the office: "Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." - Ambrose Bierce

"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees." - William Blake

"The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep. " - Chanakya

"The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. "
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It's good to be silly at the right moment." - Horace

"Our wisdom comes from our experience, and our experience comes from our foolishness." - Sacha Guitry

I love quotes and I could go on and on, but I'll stop here because there are more important things to talk about.

It's Autism Awareness Month

My very wonderful and very wise young friend Linda (aka Snoopmurph) whose blog These are the Days is well worth reading on any day, for it's gentle wisdom and its reflection of the beautiful soul who writes it, is writing this month on Autism Awareness. She is the mother of a young cute, sweet young son with Autism and is on a learning journey of how to best nurture and nourish the spirit of young Connor and also be fair to her older son Ian, who is not autistic. From what I can see, she and her husband are awesome parents on all fronts. I hope you'll join her on this month's exploration of Autism.

Oddly, the subject of autism came up right here in my little house in Hancock this morning in conversation with the kind gentleman who supplies me with food. I always try to respect synchronicity, so I'll share the story here as best I can and hope that it was given to me for some purpose.

A little background: Eight years ago, when I was living in Arizona, a friend of mine out there had a son - the magnificent Nicholas - who has a form of Autism called Asperger's Syndrome. Nicholas and I became great friends during my 18 months in Arizona. I practice a kind of healing called reiki and I sometimes use my voice in something called (or that's what I call it) "toning," when I reiki certain people. Nicholas loved reiki and he especially loved the sound. When I decided to move back to New York State, Nicholas was a bit upset, so I put some of my toning on a tape for him. I had that tape running this morning though I almost never listen to it - synchronicity again - when Tom, the Schwann's man, arrived with my groceries. I discovered a while back that Tom makes and plays Native American flutes and we have talked about that on a number of occasions. When he heard the tape and said - "oh, your listening to flute music" (How's that for a cool compliment?) - I told him the story behind the tape and he told me the following story from his days on the Pow Wow circuit. He gave me permission to share it. I will do so here as best I can, but know that I have not really done it justice.

Years ago, Tom was selling his flutes at a Pow Wow in Oklahoma He was sitting playing one of his flutes to entertain himself and pass the time for a while, and also watching the people coming and going. He noticed one young couple and their young son as they walked along. He said he could tell that the boy was a little different in some way from the way - he wasn't sure how - from his body language, probably. Anyway, the boy was just following along with his parents, but not really seeming engaged in the world around him. As the family neared Tom's booth and the sound of the flute became audible, the little boy stopped dead in his tracks, clearly mesmerized by the sound, completely focussed and absorbed. His parents were thrilled by this and explained to Tom their son was severely autistic and that it was always exciting for them when their he made that kind of intense connection. When Tom stopped playing, the boy didn't want to leave (Tom tells this story so much better than I do) and so he played a bit more and then on impulse, asked the parents if he could give their son one of his flutes. They were thrilled to accept since they couldn't afford to buy one themselves. He said the boy just stood there and hugged that flute like it was the most precious thing in the world. He didn't try to play it, but stood there hugging it and hugging it, looking ecstatic. And then - I was already crying at this point - he ran around the table, threw his arms around Tom and shouted "Thank You!" - the first words he had spoken in three years, according to his parents.

This story speaks to me in so many ways. It speaks of the pain and isolation of autism and how hard it must be for parents to have their beloved children locked away from them. It speaks of the power of music. And of course, it speaks to me of the power of simple acts of kindness and the power of love.

I don't really know very much about autism. I know that my young friend Nicholas has as heart as big as the world. I'm learning a bit more as I read Linda's posts about her son Connor and the journey she and her family are taking along with him. Autism is so prevalent these days that I doubt anyone reading these words doesn't know an autistic child or have a friend or family member who is living with and loving an autistic child. It would be wise for all of us to learn more about this condition. I hope you will join Linda as she explores autism all this month.