Category: Essay Musings

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ art unexpected}

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November 19, 2015

6:28 pm

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Essay Musings

One of the wonderful things about living in a large city for five years was all of the civic art. There were brass plaques with bits of poetry, quotes etched in sidewalks in some obscure part of town, carved granite proverbs on the front of old buildings. Here in suburban California, we’ve got the odd mural, but in an old, old city like Glasgow there are plinths and statues, museums all over, the odd bit of stained glass in a hallway window of an old pub… art was just everywhere.

Glasgow Cathedral 30

I love this painting. It’s called The Sabbath Candles, by Dora Holzhandler who was born in 1928 and died last month in West London. I didn’t know she was famous… I thought the painting was just a wonderful thing I’d discovered.

The description says, “An evocative painting, depicting the artist’s warm personal memories of a Jewish family’s traditional Sabbath meal.” I love this painting. I found it tucked away in a tiny gallery on the grounds of The Glasgow Cathedral, just on a walk one day, wandering the grounds to get out of the rain.

Important or obscure artists, “discovered” by nobodies. I’m grateful that beauty is all over, and that finding it makes us all equal.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ stuck that way}

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November 17, 2015

9:57 am

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Essay Musings

Scone Palace 15

Remember when you were little and your mother said if you kept making that face, it would stick that way? Well, now you know that the face doesn’t stick, maybe, but the habit of MAKING faces… does. And I had no idea I do this when I’m taking pictures, and yes, indeed, I look completely ridiculous, but it was a lovely summer (never mind the jacket) afternoon I spent taking pictures of palaces and peacocks, walking the maze with Liz and the Weasels (which really does sound like a cover band). Today I’m grateful to own my dorky expressions and the lines I was once afraid they’d leave on my face – today I’m grateful to shrug and ask, “Who cares?” Because seriously: who does? And who says they matter?

thanksfully 3.0 ♦ continent, not country}

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November 16, 2015

7:59 am

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Essay Musings

Blair Drummond 038

Africa is a stranger, even – especially? – to the African American; a dark blot on the page in history which signaled the *shameful Middle Passage; a claustrophobic “Dark Continent” of literature modeling colonialism; a shotgun shack porch onto which the awkward mixed child is tossed; a crowded box into which many are stuffed, stamped, Return to Sender; the place we’ve never been and aren’t sure we have the means to discover.

Africa is the uncomfortable sibling, the ignored twin, from whom too many of us wrest clothes and custom, accessories and art, rooting thoughtlessly, tossing her things without looking, without asking, without first knowing her, or her true name.

A continent, not a country. A continent not a country. Shall I say it again?

A choir of many voices, a volume with many pages, a series with sequel after sequel after sequel. Like us: original. Like us, similar. Like us.

Africa is…

Africa is.

New music I have sampled and surprised myself into tasting again, and again – African. New voices, poets I have discovered and rediscovered – African. Picture books! Fashion. Philosophy. Innovations. African. After years and years and years of turning away, of cringing discomfort, of outright shame, I am grateful today that of the many inner worlds which we inhabit, there is still something new to discover in the outer one, and that I have finally developed respect and affection for the continent from whence – even centuries ago, even not knowing the country code or address – I came.

This poem by Kenyan-born Somali poet Warshan Shire is popping up around the internet this week, and goes nicely with my thoughts about the ubiquity of African talent being noised about in the world which uses without acknowledgement of Africans.

what they did yesterday afternoon by warsan shire

they set my aunts house on fire

i cried the way women on tv do

folding at the middle

like a five pound note.

i called the boy who use to love me

tried to ‘okay’ my voice

i said hello

he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,

and these are what my prayers look like;

dear god

i come from two countries

one is thirsty

the other is on fire

both need water.

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap

ran my fingers across the whole world

and whispered

where does it hurt?

it answered

everywhere

everywhere

everywhere.

The poetry of Kenyan born Somali-British poet, Warsan Shire, can be found on her blog and at her Tumblr.

*The “shame” of Africa in American history is that Africa’s presence was shown to many African American children ONLY in terms of colonialism. Africa was NOTHING but a place from whence came slaves, and of which there is no story but of amusingly naked tribal folk in thatched huts with innocently godless ignorance who barter cows for wives and can be bought, like tiny children, with bright pieces of worthlessness, of mindless violence, dire poverty and/or famine. That is a lie, and a source of shame to many black students and a missed teachable moment for EVERY student, and darn it, teachers, you must do better, no matter what curriculum you’re handed. < / rant>.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ work}

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November 15, 2015

8:28 am

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Essay Musings

Oban 104

PALADIN OF SOULS, the novel which earned Lois McMaster Bujold both a Nebula and her fourth Hugo for Best Novel, has a moment in there where the main character, Ista, is resentfully realizing her life is at a standstill. It seems she’s been called to a place where her hands seem tied. “What am I suppose to do now?” she rages in the loosest of paraphrases. And the answer she receives is, “work.”

Today I am grateful for the things which occupy our hands when our hearts and our minds cringe from the news.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ keeping faith…}

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November 14, 2015

10:27 am

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Essay Musings

3children4

Monkey in the middle, with apologies to my siblings, who didn’t ask to be on my blog.

This photograph needs work, needs me to crop and center, balance the colors, sharpen the focus, maybe eliminate the age spots – but at the end of the day, it stands best as it is; a testament to times past and bad photography. (Also, can we talk about the set of scales? And the potted plants of Justice and Mercy? And what looks like either turkey legs or metal fish on the wall? What is with the preponderance of metal wall art of that time period?? Ah, the seventies. So much for which to answer.)

At three, I already had church shoes, church dresses, and carried a church purse. When I was dating Tech Boy, my mother sent him a snapshot of me at the age of two, red tight-clad legs crossed, felt Bible on my lap, feet clad in shiny patent leather, head tilted to listen attentively. (I think that was a less-than-subtle clue that I was a Church Girl. Read into Mother Actions what you may.) At that point, I already knew all the songs for my set, a great many of the stories, and The Reason we got up and got dressed early on a weekend morning when it seemed that no one else in the entire neighborhood had to move. I was raised in the church.

This week, I read a piece in Slate about the “Nones;” parents who want to raise their children “in faith” but who have abandoned their faith and just want to keep the connection. Not surprisingly, the desire for children raised with church seems to be a desire for mainly its customs. When so large a percentage of the dominant culture in America is either busy appropriating another culture, or denying the need for anything but a bigger melting pot, there is still an active minority with a deep and vibrant wish to enroll their kids into a history, a collective greater than their individual selves. They want them to share the same stories and songs, to know and to value the same aphorisms, to pick up and tie into a long abandoned, frayed and knotty cord which once bound us in a nostalgic, *largely imaginary “one nation, under God.” And for that, they’re willing to send them with grandma, and/or schlep them to synagogues and sanctuaries themselves.

It strikes me, again, what a disguised blessing not conceiving has been. From observing the deep cracks in the foundations of primary school education (oy, Common Core math!) to seeing the battle for control of speech and expression and belief on university campuses this week — I quail. I would be well out of my depth to guide any progeny through faith issues. I am reading the news of the day and trying to keep up, and can barely find greater comprehension for myself, much less for another, whose choices and experience would need to be curated and vetted. And yet, when she was far younger than my old self, my mother did do all the things I’m too troubled or anxious or uncommitted to do. She did raise me in faith.

Though our Venn diagram of beliefs have less overlap than they might, though any denominational tenets I disagree with I tend to …ignore in a ridiculous and thoroughly immature way, though I’m not sure I’m actually all that good at this organized religion thing, nor can I embrace the fiction that mine is any better than yours (except for those whose faith require sharing from door to door – as an anxious introvert, that wins the WORST), I’m here. I am here. I am part of a collective, greater than myself. I know songs that a lot of other people know, and have had the experience of believing whilst singing. I have, in a manner of speaking, the privilege of faith culture, though not a mega-church thing; we’re small and weird, and that’s okay, too. Religion, a cup with its cracks and crazes (or is that just crazies) and obvious flaws – is a graceful vessel which holds something life-giving, a thing which still has value if it teaches us to think deeply of what we do not understand, and to accept broadly that we never will, and may not need to do so. As a mile marker that points me “along a trail that’s rising always upward,” it shows me the path where others have gone before. And even when I don’t care to walk where or how they have walked, I am convinced this road has value. I am grateful for being raised “in the church.”

*Keeping in mind that the phrase “under God” was added to the declaration in the relatively recent past of 1954, and that neither civil rights nor civil liberties were established for anyone but white males at that point, we cannot possibly say the nation was “under God” then, nor is it now, as a democracy isn’t a theocracy. Thus, my description of it as “largely imaginary.” I don’t doubt that the Mayberry version of Christian American existed for someone somewhere, but not for the entire nation by any stretch.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ anxiety}

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November 13, 2015

12:48 pm

6 Comments on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ anxiety}

Essay Musings

I actually had a less personal post in mind today, but at this moment, I am observing myself actively spin up (down?) into an anxiety …episode.

I’m going to talk about it, so should I say “trigger warning?” No? Okay: if watching other people melting down sends you there, LOOK AWAY. Visualize some calm, k?

I’m not sure that I can call what I go through an “attack,” as if it’s some vileness that comes from outside of myself, instead of this, in-house, home-grown variety. Panic, yes, that indeed is straight-up, blindsiding, wake-me-at-3-a.m. attack stuff, but for the moment, we’re not above DefCon 3, so it’s just anxiety.

Hah. “Just,” she says.

Anyway, so, I’m having A Thing, wherein I have nine half-started emails opening, twitchy muscles, a tapping foot, and am conscious of dwelling on how much cleaning has to be done before we can have people over, and the first of the holidays is immediately on the horizon, and I have shopping to do and food to prepare for the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and my brother’s birthday is coming the Saturday after Thanksgiving (what does he want?), and eldest sister’s surgery the day before Thanksgiving, and yesterday she told me what to do with her clothes in case she dies (a donation to ThredUP, if you’re interested; she thinks they’re amazing) and on a loop it crosses my mind that my niece is flat-hunting, and older sister is completely stressed out job-hunting, and there’s the usual family fol-de-rol and I’ve got stuff to do and I was going to go have another cup of tea, but maybe caffeine is not A Good Idea, because I can actively feel pressure, in my chest, over all of these things, and I started spot-cleaning the floor, which probably makes it just look dirtier, and I know I am dwelling on the cleaning thing, even though it is a random Friday morning well before the holidays and no one has died, and the likelihood of anyone dying this minute is very, very small, despite the fact that alive organisms die by minuscule degrees at all times, and there is nothing in the world the matter with this bright, bold autumn day, and I actually slept okay last night, but I am nonetheless spiraling down (up?) into this… nonsense.

Again.

Like the swing of a pendulum, like the shift of the tide, here we go and back, forth, and back again.

West Kilbride 16

Look at this calming, empty water. On the other side, Ireland. Somewhere.

What’s funny is that writing the above took me roughly four hours. What’s funny is during the above anxiety diatribe I had to get up and go into the entry way to pace and then I noticed that the summer hats were still on the hat tree in the entry way, and I needed to weed them out and just leave out the felt hats for warmth, but honestly, it’s still sunny and California so maybe not all the straw hats have to be packed away it’s not like I’m somewhere with serious weather like Nebraska, so I picked up five hats and put back three. And the hat tree is really dusty, and probably all of the hats, too, and I felt a hitch in my breathing and sure, I know people are coming to see me and aren’t judging me because this holiday is celebrating gratitude and the diversity of experience of coming to where we are in this country but every culture has cleaning and words for bad cleaners and did I say that we really need to do some cleaning before people can come over…?

On second thought, that’s not funny, that’s… me. There is no escaping ME. None. And in the midst of this, if I just think about writing, or doing anything which is, like, WORK, it’s like going through an intersection and being t-boned by a semi. So, I don’t go there, if possible. I breathe. I breathe. I breathe.

And, it will pass. Maybe now, maybe two hours from now, maybe two months from now, God forbid, two years. But, it. will. pass. It always does.

And, maybe you don’t get how I can be grateful for anxiety, and honestly, I do see where you’d wonder exactly how masochistic one would need to be to be grateful for this mess that is sometimes my brain. But, it’s my mess. It’s me, another in a long line of anxiety sufferers, yet unique from everybody else. Fearfully, wonderfully, me. Today, I’m grateful for all the anxiety and fracturedness that makes me who I am. I’ll take me, warts and all.

(Side-note: I meant what I said about that trigger warning; while you’re having an anxiety episode is possibly not the time to look up the symptoms of anxiety. Just a tip.)


{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ celestial dancers}

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November 11, 2015

9:06 am

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Essay Musings

Reykjavik 19
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Sarah Williams, “From The Old Astronomer (To His Pupil)”

The other morning, Tech Boy had me follow him outside after he’d put the garbage cans at the curb, and there he pointed out to me Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the moon, and Orion. As one does. This picture we took in Iceland on a perfect night – freezing but so clear — but above our house was just as amazing, just as startling, even without the long exposure and the frozen fingers. One sees much, early in the cold of morning, with the sky still dark, and the seeing still clear. Before the headlights and the streetlights and the busyness of man(un)kind spills the day through one’s fingers, before life spills from the lamplit homes into the road, into the world. Before we think too much of ourselves, our doings, of our beings, of our presences here… before we become overwhelmed with our scope and our stride – we should look up and see. See the immensity of the sky, and think, “I am infinitesimally microscopic.”

Today I am grateful for my place in the universe – to be included, however briefly, in the grand scheme of things.


{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ echoes}

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November 8, 2015

6:40 am

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Essay Musings

2015 Benicia 29

If it doesn’t rain, it pours, or so the saying goes.

Tech Boy made a gigantic carrot cake for his friend W’s last day at work. W. is off to have her third daughter, who appears to be coming two weeks early. W is a woman in need of cake, and so ten and a half cups of shredded carrots, three cups of pineapple… we made a great huge one for the office. Though we have massive pans, we have smaller cake carriers, so it never all fits. We have a tiny piece left for home, but we had a tiny piece we shared with the new neighbors – a multi-generational Filipino family who wave every time they see us and sometimes move our trash cans in from the curb. They happened to be having a birthday party – and were thrilled with a small cake… and a visiting aunt returned our little gift with… two plates of fried chicken, shrimp stir-fry, a massive pile of spaghetti and meatballs, two different kinds of cake and red velvet cupcakes.

Wow.

I’m grateful today that sometimes what we put out into the world comes back bigger than we sent it. Like a voice thrown out across a chasm, sometimes a good thing comes back, magnified. And when it includes cupcakes, it’s especially good.


{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ remember}

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November 5, 2015

2:43 pm

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Essay Musings

Dream House 1992 2

When I was a college sophomore, I began drawing pictures of my someday house.

It apparently included a dream catcher, with apologies to… well, anyone with non-appropriating taste.

It also included a lot of drapery. Everywhere. It included striped wallpaper. A differently striped wallpaper border. An amazingly Jetsons lamp. And…purple carpet? Hoo boy.

The funniest thing about all of this is that I actually almost reproduced this room — sans the purple carpet — without even having seen this piece of *cough* artwork in years. Our townhouse looked a lot like this – down to my painting of mountains and water (never watercolor unfortunately), and the striped wallpaper border, people.

The past — the things that shape us — stay with us.

For good or for ill, those things which made us the people we once were also make us the people we are. Those things have an unduly heavy influence – until we make a deliberate and concentrated effort to set them aside. Today I’m grateful when the little voice says to me, “Remember, remember,” it’s not about how much fun it is to muck about with sparklers, but it’s a reminder that whatever sparks that fueled the imagination of a young woman remain, and can still kindle a fire that transforms the world.