November 2015 – Page 2 – {fiction, instead of lies}

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ poetry friday}

November 20, 2015

11:14 am

5 Comments on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ poetry friday}

Ach, November. Could you have been a rockier month if you’d tried? As it’s nearly over and I remain horrified and bemused by so many things in the news – the spin cycle of politics, the repellent and continual violence within our country and outside its borders, the dark and the cold so many face mentally and physically – I am actively trying to find the light and the joy I will need to take me through. I might call this post “Keeping Faith, II” because it’s … a topic my mind goes around and around and around.

I’m on a Louis Untermeyer kick at the moment; he was a contemporary of Frost and Pound, but he was a jeweler in New York who only did poetry for a “hobby.” And yet, multiple volumes of poetry and children’s books throughout his lifetime, the “hobby” really bore fruit. The topic of these two poems – and the fact that the first was written as the events of WWI roared on – gave me a grim little smile. It was ever thus, this beating the bushes, trying to find the what does it all mean? and why must it be this way?

Life, occasionally, does not have an easily accessible path.

Faith

What are we bound for? What’s the yield
Of all this energy and waste?
Why do we spend ourselves and build
With such an empty haste?

Wherefore the bravery we boast?
How can we spend one laughing breath
When at the end all things are lost
In ignorance and death? . . .

The stars have found a blazing course
In a vast curve that cuts through space;
Enough for us to feel that force
Swinging us through the days.

Enough that we have strength to sing
And fight and somehow scorn the grave;
That Life’s too bold and bright a thing
To question or to save.

Louis Untermeyer, These Times (1917)

Mockery

GOD, I return to You on April days
When along country roads You walk with me,
And my faith blossoms like the earliest tree
That shames the bleak world with its yellow sprays—
My faith revives, when through a rosy haze
The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly,
Young winds uplift a bird’s clean ecstasy …
For this, O God, my joyousness and praise!
But now—the crowded streets and choking airs,
The squalid people, bruised and tossed about;
These, or the over-brilliant thoroughfares,
The too-loud laughter and the empty shout,
The mirth-mad city, tragic with its cares …
For this, O God, my silence—and my doubt.

– Louis Unternmeyer, The Little Book of Modern Verse, edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse (1917)

Boy, that second one is kind of a kick in the teeth.

I’m grateful when I run across old poems like this, poems capable of examining the antithetical ideologies which most of us are constantly juggling. We human beings are complex; these poems reflect the complexity. More complex and philosophical poetry can be found this Poetry Friday at Tricia’s Miss Rumphius Effect; please stop by and be her November guests. Happy Friday.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ art unexpected}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 19, 2015

6:28 pm

1 Comment on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ art unexpected}

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.

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 ♦ a candle}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 18, 2015

11:36 pm

1 Comment on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ a candle}

Musings on Extemporanea

“Better,” it is said, “to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Today I’m grateful for the candles in the form of individual people doggedly Doing Things; people who don’t collapse in despair at the state of the world, but who find their tiny corner of it, and get to work.

I think of my friend Colleen, who since 2011 has been organizing a tiny book fair for a Ballou Sr. High school in D.C., a school that I’ve never been to, probably will never visit, and don’t know much about, except that they are an underserved population in a school of over 1,200 students. They finally got a new school when the old one was falling to bits around them. But, in that new school, they started out with 1,150 books in their library. That worked out as less than one book per student, which is considered fairly shameful for a public high school, that place where you go to get information… The American Library Association (ALA) standard for a school library is 11:1, not 1:1. Over the years, Colleen has been chipping away at this book imbalance – with the help of friends and strangers. Five years later, they’re getting closer.

It’s one school, not the world. It’s books, not college tuition or jobs. It’s a candle in the dark.

(P.S. – Their wishlist is still on Amazon.)

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ stuck that way}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 17, 2015

9:57 am

1 Comment on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ stuck that way}

Essay Musings

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}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 16, 2015

7:59 am

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Essay Musings

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.

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}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 15, 2015

8:28 am

1 Comment on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ work}

Essay Musings

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…}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 14, 2015

10:27 am

5 Comments on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ keeping faith…}

Essay Musings

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}

by Tanita S. Davis

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.

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 ♦ awkward}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 12, 2015

3:45 am

3 Comments on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ awkward}

Musings on Extemporanea

Normally, I am a fan of the awkward, because I am as awkward as heck. But sometimes, awkward gets real, REALLY real, really quickly. And then it’s just… horrible. Sometimes, when you least expect it, awkward turns a corner into okay. Blessed are the awkward, for they shall careen through life, occasionally wincing, occasionally standing tall.

I hate having things done on the house. I’m an… uncommitted housekeeper, but I don’t think I can ever have cleaners in because pride and my mother’s disapproving ghost (and she’s not even remotely dead) and I was a housekeeper myself. Also, I dislike people wandering around. I loathe lawn mowers, leaf blowers, vacuum cleaners, and losing my concentration. I do well enough distracting myself; having folk loose and about makes me twitchy, but at least for outside things, it’s got to be done. When we moved in here, the neighbors on either side of us, whose ages ranges from 60-80, both gave stinkeye, and one warned us, “you two take care of that house.” (You damn kids, stay off my lawn, was probably his next thought.) Tech Boy does a lot outside, but he also has a rapidly degenerating spinal situation, so shouldn’t and can’t do everything. Thus, we hire several lovely people with extension ladders and power tools as needed.

Anyway, what with those stupid liquidamber seed balls, not to mention pine needles and the still-falling leaves in between rain storms, we had to call a guy. I arranged and rescheduled him, and when he finally arrived he gaped at me as I opened the door, “You’re the lady I talked to? You?”

I nodded cautiously. “Um…yes?”

“Oh. Huh. Well…” he paused. “It’s just… you’re African American, you know? I didn’t expect that. It just… didn’t match in my head.”

Let’s pause a second. I’m sure I said something coherent, but seriously, pause. Awkward Moment Alert. Why should it be awkward for me? The “I didn’t know you were black” thing always comes across from people who mention it as if it’s… something I did. To trick them. Probably, “I didn’t know you were gay,” feels a lot like that, too. Nothing I do has any bearing on your perceptions of who I am, but whatever, right? I just stood there, a tight congealed smile on my face. He continued.

“I mean, I just met your husband one time, see, and I thought I was at the wrong house, you know what I mean? I just didn’t realize…”

He trailed off, but now my silence became unkind; the smile on my face went from unsteady to humorless. He looked at me, looked away, and kept digging the hole he’d fallen into. “I mean, after I talked to you, and all. Because you’re African American. And he’s white. It just didn’t match in my head. Not that I have any… I mean, it doesn’t matter to … I mean…”

Awkward.

Now, my friend Anne has this amazing little sound she makes when she’s rerouting a conversation. It’s “Ahh, uh-huh,” and on she goes, but because she has a Scottish brogue and talks fast, it comes out, “Ah-aha,” like the little cough a machine gun gives, just before she shoots out a hail of verbiage. So, I channeled Anne briefly with a brightly insincere smile and said, “Ahh, uh-huh, so the gutters are a bit compacted, I think, and the roof just drips for hours after the rain stops, so I’m sure you’ll have a bit of work to undo our neglect, so I’ll let you get to it,” and click goes the door, and I slither back down to my writing cave, somewhat mortified, but also somewhat baffled. Annoyed. Frustrated. Weirded out. Yes, I’m African American. I see my color in MIRRORS and other reflective surfaces, on the daily. I don’t need you to tell me what I look like – I already look like someone who wears too many layers and a ratty sweater that shouldn’t see the light of day, and did I comb my hair recently? Writers always look like they’ve fallen down a hole; I also don’t need you to tell me that I’ve somehow fallen short of your expectations in life because I’m AfAm. I … gah. Too much feels. Too much disruption. Stress. So, I shoved all the thoughts down…down, gone… and went back to work.

Or, tried. An hour of roaring leaf blowers, thuds as he and his partner walk on the roof, and hose blasts later, I’ve got nothing done, and he’s at the door again. But, I’m prepared. I grab my chequebook and hurry up from the cave. I don’t look into his face as I open the door, but focus on my archaic paper money. “How much is this going to run me?” I ask.

He pauses.

“I just want to say, the thing is, it wasn’t about value. I mean, I’m married to a woman of color, I mean, she’s dark and all, and it wasn’t about value.”

What? No. Not the “my best friend/wife/second cousin is dark,” defense, Lord, MUST he? Must I?? Aaaargh! I focused on his chin, the polite, listening smile affixing itself to my face without my permission.

“… It was just that… I met your husband. I talked to you. And your voice… I mean, you don’t sound… you sound like… you don’t sound like…” Heavy sigh, his voice slowed. “See, I’m getting in trouble again, I know it. I’m making everything worse. I felt worse after I talked to you, but the more I talked, the worse I felt like I was doing. It’s like, the harder I try this, the more it falls apart.”

And it was at this point that my conscience stepped hard on my foot, and I looked up, looked into his miserable, conflicted face. And at his heartsick expression, I internally gave myself a rabbit punch in the solar plexus, did that internal parenting thing that all of us have to do, the little tap on the back of the leg, the little nudge in the ribs. Stop. Being. That. Girl. I told myself firmly.

“You’re fine,” I said, dropping the smile. “I’m sorry. I’m not offended.”

“It’s hard to talk about race,” he said wearily.

“Sometimes,” I agreed.

“So, I just wanted to say, I just had pictured you as someone else, is all, but it’s like flypaper, the more I kept talking, the more I got stuck.”

“Okay,” I said, meaning, It’s like that sometimes. It’s okay.

It’s okay. It confused you that I spoke to you with Standard American English, which you equate with people of European ancestry, because African American Vernacular English is apparently what you’ve heard from every single person of African ancestry you’ve ever met, and perhaps you don’t think that people with dark brown skin can speak any other way. It’s okay, despite it being exhausting to hear that, to listen to you doubting my…existence as it stands, and awkward to hear to your narrow reasoning, despite it’s not being my job to accommodate and explain things to every single ignorant person on the planet. But, you know, it’s okay, because if we don’t talk about race, if I don’t listen and hear you when you try, if I don’t bear up under this awkwardness about race, we can’t move past it. Ever.

So, okay, Bob P. You’re okay. Awkward as all heck, but all right. Blessed are the awkward, for occasionally, they are very, very brave. It took chutzpah to come back and speak to me when I’m positive my expression said I’d like to drop him into a six-foot hole. Today I’m grateful for people like him who stumble into life’s china shop, break a few dishes, and know how to sweep up and carry on.

{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ celestial dancers}

by Tanita S. Davis

November 11, 2015

9:06 am

4 Comments on {thanksfully 3.0 ♦ celestial dancers}

Essay Musings

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.