Weight of the World (Dar Williams)

Remember our Love in the Time of CoronaVirus journal?  It was Rob's brilliant idea (mid-March 2020, only a few weeks into the pandemic) to start and pass a blank notebook back and forth among family members, to share our thoughts, drawings, poems, songs, etc. during this challenging time.  What a tangible gift this has been to ourselves, and each other.  The book, and the act of rotation, has served to remind us that Family. Is. Everything... and the MossFam6 is indeed a strong and powerful force to Do Good in the world... 💞

It became obvious a few days ago that the journal had gone MIA; indeed, no one had written in it since mid-April (the culprits were discovered, and we are back in busy-ness).  Then again, four months ago, the pandemic seemed to be less threatening, since most people took advantage of the free vaccines and there were fewer COVID outbreaks, and certainly of less severity.  

Unfortunately, there is a segment of the population who have *refused* to get vaccinated which, because of the new Delta variant, has now fostered additional illness, as well as death.  Are you f*cking kidding me?!?  The first poem below says it all.

It is indeed Feel Good Friday and, as is tradition, five items below of beauty, interest, and humor to brighten/enlighten your day/weekend/week.  Enjoy! 

~ Op-Ed: As a doctor in a COVID unit, I’m running out of compassion for the unvaccinated. Get the shot:  In a letter to the unvaccinated, Dr. Anita Sircar writes: If you believe you can ride out the pandemic without getting vaccinated, “you could not be more wrong. This virus will find you.” 

~  How Walking (Just Walking!) Changed My Life:  When I was in college, my roommate, Kristi, convinced me to go to the gym with her. I remember feeling intimidated. I was slight, pale and Goth-leaning with oxblood lipstick and zero muscle tone. I was certain everyone could tell I was an imposter in borrowed Lycra.


~ Lorde’s Work Here Is Done. Now, She Vibes.:  She was a teen phenom who followed her hit “Royals” with a critically acclaimed album. But now 24, the New Zealand musician isn’t chasing hits. She’s following the sun.


~ Modern Mrs Darcy:  Modern Mrs Darcy, which derives its name from a Jane Austen book, is a lifestyle blog for nerds who appreciate Anne’s modus operandi of approaching old, familiar ideas from new and fresh angles. While Modern Mrs. Darcy isn’t strictly a book blog, Anne writes frequently about books and reading. (thanks to Michele for the heads-up!)


~ MUST HAVE (2): A Friend With An “Oh Sh*t Kit” (scroll about halfway down): In my circle, I am that friend, the one who comes prepared. But I'm an amateur compared to my friend, S. She’s got Hermione Granger-level wizardry happening in her bag, which she calls her “oh sh*t kit.”

SONG:  Weight of the World by Dar Williams

BOOK:  Miracle in the Mundane: Poems, Prompts, and Inspiration to Unlock Your Creativity and Unfiltered Joy by Tyler Knott Gregson

POEM(S):  Delta by Rachel Mallalieu

You remember what it was like

in the early days—

when restaurants sent food

and churches dropped off

care packages

Everyone said thank you

& sometimes clapped

and even when the waves

of patients crashed

into your emergency room,

you were able to breathe

Now, you’re so weary,

that when it begins again,

you can hardly muster

energy to care as

your vaccine antibodies

engage in combat with

the squadron of medications

you consume in order to control

your autoimmune disease &

you hope the antibodies win

because you’re placing

breathing tubes

into eager airways again &

when your friends

don’t get vaccinated,

you take it personally & you

know this isn’t about you,

but you’re spent, nothing’s

left & you don’t think

you can watch

people die alone again

while you hold their iPhones as

they gasp goodbye

You stop kissing your children

for a little while & you also

update your will

But on your days off,

you take long hikes and

walk the ridge

where butterflies flit

among the milkweed blossoms

You kneel beside a monarch

& pray that your vaccine holds

as you rest in the shadow

of its stained glass wings

[Rachel Mallalieu: “I am an emergency physician who’s been on the front lines of the Covid battle for 18 months. I also developed an autoimmune illness this year, which makes every Covid encounter feel even more dangerous. As spring gave way to summer, it felt like we had turned a corner. I went weeks without seeing cases in my ER. My teen children were vaccinated, and my younger kids went to camp. Suddenly, my ER has multiple Covid patients every shift again. They’re younger, sicker, and some are dying. It is exhausting to be in this battle; we finally have the weapon with which to fight, and some refuse that weapon. These days, I just try to do right by my patients and take care of myself and my family when I’m off.”]

Moss-Gathering by Theodore Roethke 

To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber

And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,

Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat, 

The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots, 

And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top, —

That was moss-gathering. 

But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets 

Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:

And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, 

As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;

Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,

By pulling off flesh from the living planet;

As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration. 

[Susan's note:  with that title, how could I resist?!?]

QUOTE:  "Here's the thing: If you wait for ‘normal’ to return, if you endlessly torture yourself with the fact that reality refuses to match your expectations, if you complain nonstop about all the surreal shifts and vagaries of the culture, if you halt all deep, inquiry-based practices - spiritual, physical, otherwise - until the mask mandate drops or the virus is cured or all QAnon/anti-vaxxers slither back into the muck and the world somehow rights itself in a way you agree with, well, you will likely be miserable for quite a long time.  We must move. Invoke more life. Seek more truth, ever more skillfully. Smile and sigh through the cotton/Lycra covering part of your face and just. Get. On. With. It. Because the other option is just fatalism and doom and endless whining. And no one wants that." ~ Mark Morford

Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise (The Avett Brothers)

An interesting week, to put it mildly.  I was experiencing my own turmoil in various aspects of my life so, as well as turning inward to find the growth opportunity, I had some great conversations with a few dear friends and family members.  These days I find myself very scattered, unfocused, disorganized... which meant that the agenda items I was attempting to accomplish ended up with multiple mistakes, meaning that I spent more time correcting than I did accomplishing.  Yikes.

Also, over the last week, Sarah has been working with Colin on his listening skills, especially walking through their apartment complex, making sure he knows that the command of "red light" means STOP... immediately!  She is also teaching him about looking left-then-right-then-left-again, then holding her hand at a busy intersection before crossing, even in the parking lot.

I of course had an epiphany that I should use that as my life-metaphor for a while; rather than rushing headlong into potential problems, I would internally look left-then-right-then-left-again, especially where emotions are concerned.  What's the hurry?  Look how much time we have available to ourselves these days.  Use it as a commodity, and not a catastrophe.  Slow the f*ck down, Susan.  Better to delay my response than to say or do something I'd eventually need to back-pedal or retract.  I had a few occasions today in which to do just that, and the outcome was better than hoped for.  Colin became the Master and I the Grasshopper.  "The teacher appears when the lesson is ready to be learned", right?

I've also recalibrated a few other things in my life, beginning with TV.  I do love movies and series, but I've lately been using them to numb out, rather than escape.  Plus, every minute I spend in front of a screen, I am taking away from my primary love:  reading.  Vowed to turn that around and, over the course of the last few days, I am much calmer and more "here".

My sleep patterns have been really off too, because I am waking up earlier, eager to face the day (with a book), but then there's just so much of it (ha!).  My new end-of-evening routine, also instead of TV, is to turn the lights down low, stretch out on the guest room couch with Pandora, headphones (my new best friend!), and The Avett Brothers station (which has included James Taylor, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Coldplay, The Beatles, for about an hour (the Dar Williams station is great too).  I can then segue very easily into sleep in my own bed... hopefully by midnight.  Aaahhh!

What are some effective coping mechanisms for you?  How are you getting out of your own way (and head) to take better care of yourself, without falling down the rabbithole?

Of course, the news is full of gloom and doom, panic and pandemonium, chaos and crisis.  This essay by Mark Morford (my favorite SFGate-columnist-turned-yoga-instructor) popped up in my e-mail yesterday.  Perfect timing!

How to avoid the temptation to drown in fatalism? Learn to swim. You know, spiritually speaking.

You don’t have to ‘look on the bright side’ or ‘focus on the positive.' This is a myth, and often feels forced and childish, in denial of events and issues deeply in need of your passionate attention.

Just stop obsessing on the dark and the bleak. Stop fetishizing doom. Step back from the addictive abyss of incessant dread, and find some stillness.

Note that this does not give you license to numb out and refuse to read any media, engage in any essential discussions, form any opinions whatsoever because you deem yourself too precious and "sensitive." That's merely avoidance, vain self-importance disguised as humility. It''s also bullshit, just your ego being passive-aggressive with the gods. Your rejection of reality, of the harrowing vagaries and difficult beauties of the human condition, is of no service to anyone, particularly yourself.

It is also, of course, unwise to try and take it all on, to try and make sense of everything that's happening, slot it all into reasonable boxes of legitimacy. This way madness lies, along with a crushed spirit. It's also impossible. The gods wish to remind you: The karma of the world is not yours to solve. You gotta learn to navigate.

Here is the most difficult thing you can do, and also the simplest: Get strong and clear and calm – get your manic thoughts and doomsday-obsessed emotions out of the way of your innate divine intelligence – and then watch what emerges, spontaneously, from the innermost heart, your truest Self.

Hint: It ain’t gonna be cruelty. It ain’t gonna be violence. It ain’t gonna be MAGA or guns or racism. Nor, conversely, will it be all-day rainbow bunnies and perky 'it's all good' nonsense.

Sit. Fucking. Still. Get real.

It might not be comfortable. It won’t at all be easy. But it will look shockingly like love.

NR:  Beartown by Fredrik Backman (excellent novel by the author of A Man Called Ove... 💖 )

 

SONG:  Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise by The Avett Brothers

BOOK:  Life Is in the Transitions:  Mastering Change at Any Age by Bruce Feiler  (thanks to AmyB for the heads-up!) 

POEM(S):  it will all be messy for a little while longer by Maya Stein

“I feel a little rough around the edges,” I say to a friend on a video chat, because this is

how it is now. And she replies, “We all are,” though from where I’m standing she looks

beautiful, glowing, a midday California sun arrowing photogenically on her cheekbones,

so I tell her so. She says, “I like you in that blue hat” and “It’s so good to see your face,”

and I think about how much faster we’ve gotten with telling the truth. I hit “record”

again, say something about the latest harvest from our garden, about my mother’s

upcoming visit, and she says something about the date she’ll go on after her

appointment with the therapist. It will all be messy for a little while longer, but we don’t

say any of that. Instead, I pan the camera to a body of water and she says, “Where is

Scott Street?” and we say “I love you” and “Talk soon,” because this is how it is now, too.

We Did Not Ask For This Room by Stephen King

We did not ask for this room,

       or this music;

       we were invited in.

Therefore,

because the dark surrounds us,

       let us turn our faces toward the light.

Let us endure hardship

       to be grateful for plenty.

We have been given pain

       to be astounded by joy.

We have been given life

       to deny death.

We did not ask for this room,

       or this music.

But because we are here,

       let us dance.

QUOTE:  "People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.” ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who)

I seem to be posting less and less... a combination of busyness and tiredness and time-challenges, oh my - it's certainly not that I'm intentionally neglecting my blog... but on a general list of priorities these days, it seems to be inching farther down.

However, it's like my walking routine: when I don't do it, I miss it - just as my legs twitch when I'm ready to lace up my New Balances and hit the road (or when I can't if it's raining or I'm going to a meeting), so do my fingers have the Pavlovian urge to type type type away with some new global discovery or self-revelation.

The following is motivated by the ongoing Democratic Convention, which I've been avidly following - how 'bout that Hillary? ("no way, no how, no McCain" indeed... :-)

Thank you, George W. Bush
Without your dark and spectacular failures, we wouldn't be so ready to leap forward. Kudos!
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 13, 2008

And then it came to pass that I happened to catch the tail end of a recent episode of "Miami Ink," that odd little reality show on TLC about the trials and tribulations of an unabashedly macho but still adorably funky Florida tattoo shop offering all sorts of engaging quirks, especially if you harbor a mild appreciation for decent Koi fish tattoos and giant ridiculous motorcycles and lots of sweaty siliconed sun baked Miami cheese.

This episode featured the story of a young, fresh-faced Iraqi War vet, a big, shy sweetheart of a kid who, it turns out, had both of his legs blown off at the knee by an improvised explosive device. As a commemoration, he came to the shop to get a giant flaming skull tattooed on his shoulder — a skull with, um, a couple of femur bones stuck in there, somehow, in honor of his former appendages. Well, OK.

I hereby shall not question the kid's garish taste in body art. But in the process of describing his injury to the artist/camera, the guy said something rather startling, something I didn't quite expect, considering his young age and his lack of legs and the violence with which they were taken from him, even though it's a refrain we've all heard a million times before.

In sum, he said, You know what? Despite the horror of it, despite the brutal war, it turns out getting my legs blown off was probably the best thing to ever happen to me. It made me appreciate life in a new way, discover new abilities, experience a new vitality. In fact, only through getting my legs blown off do I finally feel truly alive, and what's more, I actually feel sorry for people who don't get to experience life this way.

That's what he said. More or less.

Now, I don't always agree with this line of thinking. In fact, I outwardly reject the idea that it's only through trauma, through pain or suffering that you truly grow or learn, find your creative thrust or the "true" meaning of life. It's certainly one way, it's certainly often wildly effective, it's certainly the way it has to happen for some people before they finally wake up, but it's far from the only way.

But then, as I'm watching footage of this kid waterskiing and climbing mountains and grinning like crazy on his skinny metal prosthetics, I realized, well now, what an absolutely perfect analogy for our mauled, tattered, shell-shocked nation at this very moment in time.

Ain't it so? Because America has, figuratively speaking, had its legs blown off at the knee. We have been hobbled and traumatized and numbed, our once indestructible ego ripped away, had our entire moral and ethical infrastructure blasted out from under us in the most bloody and irresponsible and ignoble way possible.

And the primary explosive that did it? A deadly and useless war. Wait, that's not quite right. It was the inept leaders and disastrous reasoning behind the war, the pathetic cadre of hawks and neocons and insular kill-'em-all demagogues in the Bush Administration who veered the nation so far off course we ended up in a bloody ditch just outside Purgatory, a place teeming with recession and torture and homophobia, Patriot Acts and surveillance and fear.

And so, like this kid who actually thanked the fates for blowing his legs off, I'm here to suggest that maybe it's time we offered up some sort of warped, tentative thanks to George W. Bush, for all the appalling trauma he hath wreaked upon us. Maybe he is, in a slightly nauseating way, the best thing that ever happened to us. You think?

Maybe he's exactly what we needed. Maybe Bush's brand of frighteningly inept politicking has been just the right kind of sociocultural emetic to induce a true purge of our congested system, just the thing to finally snap us out of our lethargy. Hell, sometimes you gotta go deep into the darkness to realize just how much you need the light.

So thank you, George, for exemplifying and embodying everything that's wrong with the neocon agenda, for serving as the final death knell of the failed conservative movement, of a once-noble Republican Party that's run out of ideas and has turned bitter and nasty and paranoid.

Thank you, Dubya, for setting the stage for Obama and Hillary. Because the truth is, even as recently as eight years ago, if you'd have asked if we as a nation would be anywhere near ready for a female or black president, it would have felt incredibly premature, a good 20 years off before we could entertain such an idea. But so potent has been the recoil against everything you stood for — the misogyny, homophobia, classism, fear of "the other," of foreigners and minorities and alternative beliefs — that we are ready to be inspired and reinvigorated sooner than anyone thought possible.

Thank you for your embarrassing rejection of science, your refusal to support any climate change initiative, for furthering the war-for-oil agenda, for blocking stem-cell research, for serving all your masters in Big Energy, Big Agribusiness, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Auto. Thanks for gutting the Constitution and front-loading the courts and trying to hack away at women's rights, gay marriage, privacy rights and on and on.

Because it turns out, inviting all that darkness and corruption and holding back all the energy of progress and change is less about hastening the Second Coming (sorry, better luck next time), and more like pulling back on a slingshot. It just gets tighter and tighter and the pressure builds until eventually you just gotta let go, and then boom — or I should say, Obama.

Now, this is not to say it can't all happen again. History is, unfortunately, a very bitchy and unreliable teacher. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who, post-Nixon, were saying, well thank God we'll never go through that again, we've sure learned our lesson. I mean, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and, um, fool me ... won't get fooled again.

We'll just have to see. For now, the bleeding is slowing, we are finally getting up off the sickbed, testing our shiny new prosthetics, hobbling toward the new. Soon, maybe we'll learn to run, ski, climb mountains, even dance on the international stage again with something resembling grace and renewed self-respect.

We might even say, you know what? It turns out getting our political, moral and spiritual legs blown off was the best thing that ever happened to us. Dubya actually did us a huge favor. Can you imagine?

SONG: Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who

BOOK: Won't Get Fooled Again: A Voter's Guide to Seeing Through the Lies, Getting Past the Propaganda and Choosing the Best Leaders by Joseph H. Boyett

POEM: The War Works Hard by Dunya Mikhail (translated by Elizabeth Winslow)

How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places
swings corpses through the air
rolls stretchers to the wounded
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins...
Some are lifeless and glistening
others are pale and still throbbing...
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky
sows mines in the fields
and reaps punctures and blisters
urges families to emigrate
stands beside the clergymen
as they curse the devil
(poor devil, he remains
with one hand in the searing fire)...
The war continues working, day and night.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets
it contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs
provides food for flies
adds pages to the history books
achieves equality
between killer and killed
teaches lovers to write letters
accustoms young women to waiting
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures
builds new houses
for the orphans
invigorates the coffin makers
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader's face.
It works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.

QUOTE: "The military doesn't start wars. Politicians start wars." ~ William Westmoreland

Love in the Library (Jimmy Buffett)

You are not reading enough
Has the Internet killed the joys of sitting down with a good book?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The pile is waiting. The pile is getting higher. The pile looks impressive, probably isn't, still feels slightly overwhelming, vaguely threatening, even as it sighs, waits, drums its fingers on the inside of my skull, promising all manner of wonder and insight and syntactical bliss if I'd just, please, maybe, right now, even for just an hour or three, pay it some serious, focused attention. Please? It's a bit of a problem. More than that, it's a moral, ethical, personal issue, a deep indignity of the soul, a painful twist to the nipple of my id.

See, I love books. Admire and appreciate and adore. Was a lit major at Berkeley, read voraciously, still love to read, still like to consider myself a big consumer of books and deep thinker about bookish issues and ideas and authoralia.

And yet, if I'm painfully honest, I have to admit it: I barely read books anymore. Not nearly like I used to, anyway. Not for a long, long time. And chances are, if you're at all addicted to the new media vortex, neither do you.

It's become a social conundrum, a cultural sore spot, a morose sign of the times. The question has been posed by agents and writers and a confused, hyperconsolidating publishing industry: What happened to all the readers? What happened to the culture of books? And the hint of fatalism, just underneath: If few truly read anymore, what of the state of the American mind? How much more dumbing down can we possibly stand?

Oh sure, books still sell, product is moving like crazy, but by and large it's truckloads of self-help and how-to flooding over a precious handful of sure-hit novelists, topped off with the grand cherry that is Oprah, single handedly keeping the tepid melodramatic coming-of-age family saga alive. In between, 18 zillion copies of "Eat, Pray, Love."

But overall, the message is bleak: Fewer writers of real talent are being discovered, fewer publishers are willing to take any sort of risk, and serious, literary-minded reading, that glorious pastime, that fine personal art, the immersive and transportive and beautiful intellectual fertilizer, appears to be giving way to the more addictive but far less nourishing hellbeast of new media and the Net.

It's an easy beast to blame. I skimmed through Nicholas Carr's fascinating and depressing piece in the recent Atlantic Monthly ("Is Google Making Us Stupid?"), which talks up, among other things, the downfall of deep reading, of spending uninterrupted hours immersed in a literary tome or even a long essay, a victim to modern media's vicious ADD, short-attention-span approach to engaging the world of ideas.

Carr's upshot: The Net might actually be rewiring our brains, changing the way we read because it's changing the way we think, forcibly adapting us to tolerate only bite-sized summations and simplified blips at the expense of deeper thought, of the ability to parse ideas, to sink in for a long, committed intellectual journey.

Proof? That's easy: Just try to sit down with that dense copy of W.G. Sebald or Haruki Murakami after spending any portion of your week online, and watch as your Net-addled brain becomes almost instantly anxious and frustrated, eager after just a couple thousand words to jump away, ogle pictures, watch dumb teens humiliate themselves on YouTube, buy some shoes.
Christ, if TV numbs you out, encourages a passive, flaccid state of intellectual disengagement, the Net does the opposite, slamming so many tiny shots of pseudo-meaning and media and nothingness into your brain over the course of a few hours, it's like getting stung by a swarm of horny bees.

It seems all dour and dreary and unfortunate because not a week goes by that you don't hear about some gloomy book fair or publishing industry merger or the death of a legendary independent bookstore that just couldn't compete not only with Amazon, but with a generation trained to read nothing more challenging or lengthy than grammatically mangled e-mails or snarky text messages or snide 300-word pop culture takedowns on Gawker.

Ah, but I do believe all is not lost. There is lingering hope. I am moderately sure a brain thusly amped on the wicked energy drink of the Web can, through honest time spent, through forcibly yanking the Ethernet cable out of one's cerebral cortex, be re-rewired, untrained, re-addicted to the deeper juice. In fact, it isn't that difficult, really. We just like to think it is.

I can personally attest. About a year ago the most astounding thing happened: The hard drive on my MacBook suffered a rare and painful meltdown when I was away on vacation. I was, much to my initial horror, to be e-mail/Net-free for over a week. What was I missing? Who was e-mailing? What about all the blogs and the news and the Significant Global Happenings? What of all the salacious offerings of nubile flesh and social wonderment stroking my in-box as I sat there, entirely cut off and adrift?

Mercifully, the yoga kicked in and I quickly shrugged, sighed, noted the incredible opportunity, the gods trying to tell me to unplug. I hit the bookstore and bought three thick, sticky literary novels like a misguided vegan buys some grass-fed steaks for the first time, and devoured them whole.

As I did so, an amazing thing happened. Time slowed down. The brain quickly returned to its normal breathing. The mental seizures and the near-constant desire to click away and leap to something different, faded and soon vanished. And the books I so loved suddenly moved from the bottom of the intellectual priority list straight back to their original, top-tiered state of grace.
I vowed to never let them drop so low again.

Even though, right now, they have. Even though, right now, even as I add to the glorious pile of must-reads on my desk, I realize I've been sucked back into Net-time again, back to the world of instant feedback and clickable everything, as the pile grows heavy and scornful and lonely. Ah but here again, an opportunity. For it is here that I remember the most wonderfully humbling lesson of all ...

When I finally got my precious MacBook back, when all e-mail was restored and all Net access was re-granted and I was able to dive back into the perky digital maelstrom, when I spent a few hours and got all caught up, it finally hit me: I'd missed exactly nothing. The world was exactly the same. The beautiful churn continued, same as it ever was, with or without me. Isn't that fantastic? Someone should write a book about it.

SONG: Love in the Library by Jimmy Buffett

BOOK: The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World by Guillaume de Laubier, James H. Billington (photographer)

POEM: In the Library by Charles Simic

for Octavio

There's a book called
"A Dictionary of Angels."
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She's very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

QUOTE: "To those with ears to hear, libraries are really very noisy places. On their shelves we hear the captured voices of the centuries-old conversation that makes up our civilization." ~ Timothy Healy

Beautiful Day (U2)

Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 6, 2008

I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I'm having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell's the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me. But you gotta wonder, why has, say, the JFK legacy lasted so long, is so vital to our national identity? Yes, the assassination canonized his legend. The Kennedy family is our version of royalty. But there's something more. Those attuned to energies beyond the literal meanings of things, these people say JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side. And it killed him.

Now, Obama. The next step. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

Let me be completely clear: I'm not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I'm not saying the man's going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically draw to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time.

SONG: Beautiful Day by U2

BOOK: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

POEM: Searching for the Dharma by Xu Yun

You've traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.

So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.

The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung

make heavy baggage.

Here! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers.

Their meaning is the same

but they're much easier to carry.

QUOTE: "The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light." ~ Felix Adler

Barack Obama, Get Happy (Susan Werner)

From MoveOn.org:

[Tuesday] night Senator Obama locked up the nomination.

Amazing.

After years of DC insiders running the show, a progressive candidate who started in politics through community organizing, who unequivocally opposed the war in Iraq, who isn't afraid to stand up to the politics of fear, an African-American, became the Democratic nominee for president.

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

The great Barack Obama insurrection
Hillary was ready. Hillary was unstoppable. Hillary was, by all accounts, a lock. What the hell happened?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 30, 2008

Are you paying any sort of attention to this moment in time? Are you reading bits and hints about the transformation, the shift, the unusual and slightly surreal energy coursing through the nation? Are you tattooing this seminal period on the sacrum of your sociopolitical consciousness? Are you under 50? Then there's been nothing else like this in your lifetime. And there probably never will be again.

You gotta take it all in, you know? Because it was no time at all ago, less than a year, and Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination was pretty much a given, and even I was relatively thrilled and gung-ho for her candidacy, especially given how she was so ahead in the polls and so ahead in fund raising and so ahead in public opinion her imminent nomination felt much like a slam dunk, a forgone conclusion, a sure thing.

And therefore it was all something rather otherworldly for progressives, a bit unprecedented, a Democratic race to watch only for the sheer historic value and for the surprising quality of the other candidates involved, and not because there was any doubt as to the eventual outcome.

Just a bit beyond incredible, then, what has happened since, in such a short time, in this, one of the more fascinating turning points in American history.

It almost cannot be understated: Barack Obama's steady, astounding, almost inexplicable rise to the top to not only become the presumptive Democratic nominee but also to overtake one of the strongest, smartest, most well-funded, tenacious rival candidates in American history — and also to out-poll his deeply connected Republican opponent — is both remarkable and historic on a number of fronts.

But the thing is, no matter how you crunch the data and try to logically analyze all the components that made Obamapalooza happen, there appears to be something just beyond the logic, just outside the normal machinery, that makes you shake your head in amazement, and perhaps remember this forever.

On one level, I suppose it's not all that unusual. There have been plenty of scrappy, outta-nowhere, come-from-behind victories in political races before. There are plenty of tales of one candidate holding an overwhelming lead early on, only to have his lunch eaten by some brilliant, whippersnapper upstart. JFK charmed the hell out of the planet and revealed the deep sourness of once-omnipotent Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton, the handsome, populist Arkansas governor with minimal big-stage experience but loads of effortless charisma, came from seemingly nowhere to build a phenomenal following and stomp all over the doddering, baffled, how-much-is-a-gallon-of-milk Bush 41.

But with Obama, as with just about everything about his campaign, something feels different, more historic, deeper and more profound and even a bit more, how do you say, intimate. It is not politics as usual. It is not just another smart, deeply intelligent upstart senator making a surprising play for The Show.

You have to take note. Because Obama has accomplished his astonishing rise without the normal weaponry of American politics. As of yet, there have been almost no dirty tricks. He has not really attacked Hillary, has not "gone negative" or run a nasty smear campaign or swiftboated her; he has not employed, in short, any of the disgusting tactics Karl Rove's Republican party notoriously used against Al Gore and John Kerry so as to lie themselves into a brutal and failed chokehold of power.

Verily, plethoric are the pundits who've been trying to parse just why, exactly, Obama has been so much more effective, so much more far-reaching and cross-cultural than the once-unstoppable Clinton, not to mention McCain or anyone else. What is it about him, exactly? What is it that draws such a broad circle of endorsements, from Ted Kennedy to Andrew Sullivan, John Edwards to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich?

It's the networking, they say. Obama is the first "Facebook candidate." He's the first to successfully leverage all the modern tech, the viral marketing, YouTube, Web 2.0, lovely videos by celebrity rappers who are nearly moved to tears by the man's speeches. Yes, that must be it.

Or maybe it's his remarkable, idealistic team of aides, his hotshot fresh-faced speechwriters, his wondrous oratory skill. Is it the cool campaign posters? Is it the game-altering speeches on race in America? Or is it what the terrified right-wing hatemongers are calling "liberal guilt," the feeling that we on the whiny tree-hugging ultra-PC left feel so gosh-darn guilty about how blacks, Hawaiians and Harvard-trained lawyers have been treated, lo, these many millennia — even more so than the oppressive treatment of women — that Obama gets our vote out of sheer nervous remorse?

Problem is, those explanations feel insufficient and inadequate and, in the case of that last one, exceedingly stupid. Is there not something else going on? Is there more to it than just a battle between old school/new school styles of campaigning?

Maybe the answer lies elsewhere. Maybe you need to look to the dark side for a hint, for a bit of proof that there's more to this moment in history than mere shifting times. It comes in the form of that very ugly and violent rumor that gets whispered among skeptics and conspiracy theorists and joked about by cretins on Fox News, and even sighed by many otherwise happy, progressive idealists, those who've had their dreams shattered and hopes pummeled enough times that a form of sinister cynicism creeps in.

It is this: Some feel Obama will not survive. There are those who think something violent and lethal is bound to happen to him and not merely because he's black, but because he's too revolutionary, too much a force for harmony and peace, and the forces of darkness and oppression in America, be they troglodytic Southern racists or anarchist radicals or insular BushCo die-hards, simply cannot have that.

There is no need to invite that repulsive idea in for long. It is too dark, disquieting, pointless, not to mention how it feels like it could create some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy by mentioning it too damn much in the media. But it is worth noting for one curious aspect: It is a fear borne of a truly rare historic circumstance, the amazing idea that someone like Obama is, to put it bluntly, too good for this particular role, a bit too conscious and enlightened for what is a brutal and soul-numbing and potentially deadly political machine.

Then again, maybe, in a morose way, this is how we know transformative change is arriving, perhaps quicker than expected, but arriving nonetheless. We're already deeply scared of losing it. Really, how long's it been since we've felt anything like that?

SONG: Barack Obama, Get Happy by Susan Werner

BOOK: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

POEM: A Morning Offering by John O'Donohue

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcome the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Wave of desire I am shore to

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invite me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

QUOTE: "If we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." ~ Senator Barack Obama

From a Distance (Julie Gold)

Song: Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla

Earth Day redux - I know I've said this before but (repeat along with me) "I love Mark Morford!"... :-)

How to sing like a planet
Scientists say the Earth is humming. Not just noise, but a deep, astonishing music. Can you hear it?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

This is the kind of thing we forget.

This is the kind of thing that, given all our distractions, our celeb obsessions and happy drugs and bothersome trifles like family and bills and war and health care and sex and love and porn and breathing and death, tends to fly under the radar of your overspanked consciousness, only to be later rediscovered and brought forth and placed directly in front of your eyeballs, at least for a moment, so you can look, really look, and go, oh my God, I had no idea.

The Earth is humming. Singing. Churning out a tune without the aid of battery or string or wind-up mechanism and its song is ethereal and mystifying and very, very weird, a rather astonishing, newly discovered phenomena that's not easily analyzed, but which, if you really let it sink into your consciousness, can change the way you look at everything.

Indeed, scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can't really fathom it, so low it can't be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, "like dozens of lazy hurricanes," as one writer put it.

It all makes for a very quiet, otherworldly symphony so odd and mysterious, scientists still can't figure out exactly what's causing it or why the hell it's happening. Sure, sensitive instruments are getting better at picking up what's been dubbed "Earth's hum," but no one's any closer to understanding what the hell it all might mean. Which, of course, is exactly as it should be.

Because then, well, then you get to crank up your imagination, your mystical intuition, your poetic sensibility — and if there's one thing we're lacking in modern America, it's ... well, you know.

Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Or maybe the planet is more like an enormous wine glass, half full of a heady potion made of horny unicorns and divine lubricant and perky sunshine, around the smooth, gleaming rim of which Dionysus himself circles his wet fingertip, generating a mellifluous tone that makes the wood nymphs dance and the satyrs orgasm and the gods hum along as they all watch 7 billion confused human ants scamper about with their lattes and their war and their perpetually adorable angst, oblivious.

But most of all, I believe the Earth actually (and obviously) resonates, quite literally, with the Hindu belief in the divine sound of OM (or more accurately, AUM), that single, universal syllable that contains and encompasses all: birth and death, creation and destruction, being and nothingness, rock and roll, Christian and pagan, meat and vegetable, spit and swallow. You know?

But here's the best part: This massive wave of sound? The Earth's deep, mysterious OM, it's perpetual hum of song? Totally normal — that is, if by "normal" you mean "unfathomably powerful and speaking to a vast mystical timelessness we can't possibly comprehend."

Indeed, all the spheres do it, all the planets and all the quasars and stars and moons and whirlpool galaxies, all vibrating and humming like a chorus of wayward deities singing sea shanties in a black hole. It's nothing new, really: Mystics and poets and theorists have pondered the "music of the spheres" (or musica universalis) for eons; it is the stuff of cosmic philosophy, linking sacred geometry, mathematics, cosmology, harmonics, astrology and music into one big cosmological poetry slam.

Translation: You don't have to look very far to understand that human beings — hell, all animals, really — adore song and music and tone and rhythm, and then link this everyday source of life straight to the roar of the planet itself, and then back out to the cosmos.

In other words, you love loud punk? Metal? Jazz? Deep house? Saint-Saens with a glass of Pinot in the tub? Sure you do. That's because somewhere, somehow, deep in your very cells and bones and DNA, it links you back to source, to the Earth's own vibration, the pulse of the cosmos. Oh yes it does. To tap your foot and sway your body to that weird new Portishead tune is, in effect, to sway it to the roar of the universe. I mean, obviously.

At some point we'll probably figure it all out. Science will, with its typical charming, arrogant certainty, sift and measure and quantify this "mystical" Earthly hum, and tell us it merely comes from, say, ocean movements, or solar wind, or 10 billion trees all deciding to grow a quarter millimeter all at once. We will do as we always do: oversimplify, peer through a single lens of understanding, stick this dazzling phenomenon in a narrow category, and forget it.

How dangerously boring. I much prefer, in matters mystical and musical and deeply cosmic, to tell the logical mind to shut up and let the soul take over and say, wait wait wait, maybe most humans have this divine connection thing all wrong. Maybe God really isn't some scowling gay-hating deity raining down guilt and judgment and fear on all humankind after all.

Maybe she's actually, you know, a throb, a pulse, a song, deep, complex, eternal. And us, well, we're just bouncing and swaying along as best we can, trying to figure out the goddamn melody.

SONG: From a Distance by Julie Gold

BOOK: Earthsong by Bernhard Edmaier

POEM: The Widening Sky by Edward Hirsch

I am so small walking on the beach
at night under the widening sky.
The wet sand quickens beneath my feet
and the waves thunder against the shore.

I am moving away from the boardwalk
with its colorful streamers of people
and the hotels with their blinking lights.
The wind sighs for hundreds of miles.
I am disappearing so far into the dark
I have vanished from sight.

I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore
and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.

I am so small now no one can see me.
How can I be filled with such a vast love?

QUOTE: There's music in the sighing of a reed; there's music in the gushing of a rill; there's music in all things, if men had ears: their earth is but an echo of the spheres."~ Lord Byron

Question (The Moody Blues)

I've been saving this column for two months - when I read today's poem, I knew I'd found a cosmic match... :-)

Study says many studies suck
Research shows we are far too drunk on stupid studies that tell us what research shows
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 1, 2008

Here is this lovely questionnaire. It is part of a big national study designed by a major medical clinic/university/government body and it is therefore presumably quite important and serious and high-minded and its conclusions might very well go a long way toward telling us a great deal more about who we are as a people, as a species, as a weird semi-intelligent flesh-eating creature of this vast and impenetrable galaxy. Please respond accordingly.

Question No. 1 (please be as specific as possible): Exactly how much of an idiot are you? More to the point: How arrogant and ignorant and out of touch with your body, your heart, your mind, your divine sense of self do you feel you are on a day to day basis? Are you, in short, a moron? How much of a moron? Too much of a moron to actually understand this paragraph? Please check the little box on the right. No, the other right. Thank you.

From what I have gleaned from glancing through a whole slew of recent studies, these are, apparently, the questions we most need answered. These are the questions that plague us and torment us and, oh my God, if we only had the answers to these questions and the many, many other urgent queries like them, such as: Is sunlight necessary? Is breathing compulsory? Is having a dog around sort of nice? If you eat less crap, will you feel better? Sleep: Who cares? Should humans move? God: WTF? — we might just figure out how to live long enough to, you know, accidentally stab ourselves in the eye with a fork and bleed to death.

Which is perhaps an overly snarky way of saying: Many of these studies are getting dangerously inane. And insulting. And actually harmful. Because if you believe many of these deceptive factoids that fill our newspapers and magazines and universities, if you take them as they're meant to be taken, as helpful guidelines for behavior or even as some sort of serious demarcation of human understanding, well, we are doomed indeed.

Why? Just look. Here is a nice study, from just recently. It concluded that if men between the ages of 40-70 get even a tiny bit of moderate exercise a few days a week — and by "tiny bit" we mean merely getting their beer-bellied Cheetos-sagged asses off the couch and away from the plasma for a meager half an hour a day just to walk down the street at a pace only slightly faster than a tree sloth — they will "halve the risk of premature death from all causes."

Is this not incredibly helpful? At long last, humanity shall no longer believe that fat, lazy, stupid older men who never ambulate are actually fit and healthy and will live to be 100. What's more, it turns out actually moving the human meatsack in a vertical, mobile manner appears to be moderately beneficial to the various biological systems that struggle every single minute to keep us from falling over and dying. Wow. Who knew?

Here is another, along with its actual headline: "A Little Wine, Sunlight Help Boost Women's Health." Well, grab my brain stem and yank it like a weed, really? This hunk of genius reporting was, in truth, the combination of two astonishing studies, one that found women who drink 6.8 ounces of wine per day (i.e.; two glasses) might boost their "good" cholesterol, and another that says getting a bit of sunshine cranks up your vitamin D and hey gosh we all need a little vitamin D and therefore after one million years of human evolution we can finally say that a little wine and sunshine might be good for oh my God just kill me now with the relentless mind-numbing inanity of it all.

OK fine, one more: "Spouses Who Fight Live Longer." Cute. Pithy. Bordering on mildly interesting, something about how letting off steam makes you healthier in a relationship and duh duh duh THIS IS A TOTAL INSIDIOUS BULLS- LIE!

Whoops, sorry. But really now. Let us examine this for a sec: Sure, couples who can discuss their issues and share emotions and who actually respect their mates, yes, they might live longer because, well, they're healthier overall than the numb thick dolts who repress their rage and beat the dog and then get sick all the time and suffer depression and alcoholism because they're shut down miserable meatwads and oh by the way THIS ALL HAS ABSOLUTELY ZERO TO DO WITH COUPLEHOOD OR FIGHTING and everything to do with whether or not you're a tolerable and decent and somewhat emotionally open person regardless of marital status or whether you scream at your husband about the dishes, and therefore "Spouses Who Fight Live Longer" is complete misleading crap and it should be "Emotionally Functional Humans Are Better Off Than Repressed Stunted Time Bombs Gosh What A Shock But We Had To Make Something Up To Get Our Goddamn Funding."

Look, I know. Studies rule. Studies are our cultural cocaine. We cannot get enough. I cite them all the time myself in this very column. Many studies are incredibly helpful and informative, and without the trillions of formal scientific studies we've enjoyed to date we would know precious little about everything from medicine to human behavior to how many orgasms a woman can have in a day (unlimited!) to the average number of erections a healthy male gets in his sleep (5.3!) and the exact number of times George W. Bush and his scabrous lizards lied to the nation so as to lead us into a disgusting and horrid war (935!) and, well, a million other Very Important Things.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe we have reached — or rather, far surpassed — Inane Study Saturation. Maybe the scientific method we rely on so desperately to illuminate every single microfacet of our lives has become far too much of a fanatical religion unto itself, a bloody altar of ostensibly infallible truth to which we have gladly sacrificed the nubile virgins of common sense and intuition and consciousness and spiritual intelligence. You think?

This, then, is the danger: Despite the frequent inanity, despite the insulting silliness of much of the information, we've been led to believe that it is only through a relentless obsession with tiny, data-driven studies that we can obtain real knowledge, real understanding of what we're about and how we should eat, sleep, screw, breathe.

As such, we risk perhaps the most vital and precious aspect of human understanding, our innate sense that everything is far, far more complicated and messy and juicy and fluidly interconnected, far more non-dissectible than we like to imagine, and in fact trying to dismember human experience into its drab components merely destroys the holistic integrity of the whole damnable circus.

Look at it this way: It's a bit like touching your lover softly, carefully on the lips. It's either a dry, mappable array of specific nerve endings and chemicals and saliva glands and swarms of bacteria and random synapses screaming their desperate need to procreate, or it's, well, pure goddamn poetry. Study says: Your choice.

SONG: Question by The Moody Blues

BOOK: The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries by Shannon Moffett

POEM: The Enigma We Answer by Living by Alison Hawthorne Deming

Einstein didn't speak as a child

waiting till a sentence formed and

emerged full-blown from his head.

I do the thing, he later wrote, which

nature drives me to do. Does a fish

know the water in which he swims?

This came up in conversation

with a man I met by chance,

friend of a friend of a friend,

who passed through town carrying

three specimen boxes of insect

she'd collected in the Grand Canyon-

one for mosquitoes, one for honeybees,

one for butterflies and skippers,

each lined up in a row, pinned and labeled,

tiny morphologic differences

revealing how adaptation

happened over time. The deeper down

he hiked, the older the rock

and the younger

the strategy for living in that place.

And in my dining room the universe

found its way into this man

bent on cataloguing each innovation,

though he knows it will all disappear-

the labels, the skippers, the canyon.

We agreed then, the old friends and the new,

that it's wrong to think people are a thing apart

from the whole, as if we'd sprung

from an idea out in space, rather than emerging

from the sequenced larval mess of creation

that binds us with the others,

all playing the endgame of a beautiful planet

that's made us want to name

each thing and try to tell

its story against the vanishing.

QUOTE: To the question of your life you are the answer, and to the problems of your life you are the solution." ~ Joe Cordare

Yes We Can (will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas)

The following article has been sitting in my inbox for the past two weeks... and the YouTube video (lyrics on the right-side) arrived only hours ago - seems as if they were MFEO (Made For Each Other in Sleepless in Seattle-speak), eh?... :-)

To think one of these candidates will end up as the Democratic Party nominee is amazing, and the fact one could very well choose the other as a running mate is beyond gratifying - talk about the ultimate win-win (yes we can!).

The woman vs. the black guy
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack? The nation trembles
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

It's the question everyone seems to want to address, the imponderable and frightening and slightly insane sociopolitical phenomenon that's happening right now to such a degree that even the left is falling all over itself trying to digest and parse and comprehend it all at once, and simply can't.

It is this: Just how the hell did it come to pass and which planets finally aligned and what sort of Kool-Aid has been gulped by the universe that the two white-hot Dem frontrunners, the two brightest lights on the political spectrum for the 2008 presidential election also just so happen to be members of the two most controversial/least represented groups in modern uber-white ultra-patriarchal American snake-oil politics — which is to say, a smart, savvy woman and a smart, savvy black male?

It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative pundits and politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris? 2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.

Yes indeed, the sexism that surrounds Clinton's run like a toxic fog is almost too easy to spot. (Fox News is, naturally, fueling its entire 2008 programming schedule with it.) It is de facto, built-in, implied and inherent in the coverage of just about everything she does, and what's most amazing to me is that people are still surprised that the sexism is there at all, much less so apparent and shameless.

To which I can only reply: I'm sorry, did you somehow miss the last seven years of brutal, testosterone-drunk war-sucking macho neocon hell? Did your noise-canceling headphones somehow block out the sound of those 10,000 tiny, clashing penises, banging like Satan's own baby rattle all the way from Osama's cave to the Oval Office to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gay fetish dungeon in downtown Tehran?

Because truly, while a record number of women currently serve in Congress, Washington is still very much an inbred old-boy's network, so deeply entrenched in ancient male power structures and so drunk on stagnant machismo and so poisoned by the Christian right's woman-in-her-place mentality, it will require a couple more decades and a few hundred more dead southern congressmen before the innate sexism finally fades to a tolerable scar.

(Actually, at the moment, it's tough to tell which aspect the right hates more about Hillary: the fact that she's a woman or the fact that she's a Clinton. I think it's a lethal mix of both, the unconscionable right-wing double whammy, insult added to injury and all resulting in a liberal vagina monologue the misogynistic right is simply not ready to hear.)

As for Obama, well, he's not so easy. The inherent racism simmering all over Bush Nation right now over his, um, Negro-ness? Blackitude? Really good tan? (they don't know what to call it, safely) is decidedly more subtle, more insidious, less acceptable as public display than flat-out, everyday Chris Matthews-grade sexism, and therefore, not so easy to spot. Not yet, anyway.

So far, no one on the right really seems to know the best way to play the race card against Obama. Not that they won't try. Will they go after the drug thing? Paint him as a friend to scary hip-hop thug rappers? Resort to saying 'Obama' and 'Osama' in the same sentence so as to confuse the same red state knuckle-draggers who still believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11? Hard to tell. But rest assured, they'll find a way.

Or, you know, maybe they won't. After all, the right has its own heaping bucket of problems right now, not the least of which is the weakest and craziest and least palatable field of GOP contenders in 50 years. There's the chipper creationist nutball who loves him some Chuck Norris, the stupefied Mormon mannequin who simply cannot believe the world is so icky and complicated, the doddering Iraq-loving war vet who seems to be getting more unstable by the minute, and the cross-dressing former New York mayor who has "9/11" tattooed on his ego in fake blood. And oh yes, a zany old anti-choice libertarian who somehow keeps raising piles of cash and sending fascinating postcards from the edge of political reason. Cool!

Perhaps this is the best news of all. The right is a fractured, inchoate mess, with the once Karl Rove-unified evangelical core now gloriously splintered and disillusioned and completely unsure where to turn to find a candidate who will hate gays and slam women's rights and mistrust foreigners as much as Bush promised, but never completely delivered. They can't yet attack Obama because they're too busy destroying themselves.

But I'm most amazed/amused at the one big question that keeps hovering over the media and infiltrating the political blogs — does all this excitement over Hillary and Barack mean the nation is finally ready for a female president? A black president? Have we, at long last, come so far that a guy like John Edwards, an excellent, likable, all-around candidate and a classic populist southern Democrat, actually finishes third?

The answer, I'm afraid, is no, we are not ready. Not by a long shot.

This is the big, astounding myth. See, "ready" would imply we've more or less eliminated the sexism and at least come to terms with the racism, and therefore neither is much of a factor in the slightest. It's a bit like asking if America is finally ready to rid itself of its toxic love of guns and strips malls and numb Christian groupthink. In other words, if you have to ask, we ain't.

However, we do seem to be at this weird flash point, a privileged moment in political history where the anti-Bush recoil has become so potent and the right-wing collapse is so profound and the women/youth vote (at least at the moment) seems so invigorated that it all might coalesce just right and catapult a woman or a black male into the presidency, despite the hardcore misogyny and racism built like a cancer into the framework of this nation. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Look at it this way: Much in the same way Bush whored Sept. 11 to drag the nation to its lowest emotional, fiscal and political point in 100 years, so could the new wave of enraged, inspired voters leverage the Bush nightmare itself to bounce us as far as possible in the other direction. Hell, it could be even weirder than that: Hillary or Obama wins the nomination, chooses the other as running mate. Talk about your perfect liberal storm.

Are we ready for it? Doesn't matter. Quit asking what amounts to a dispiriting, futile question, and let's go find out.

SONG: Yes We Can by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas (will.i.am's comments on the writing of the song)

BOOK: The Politics of Hope: Reviving the Dream of Democracy by Donna Zajonc

POEM: Beginners by Denise Levertov

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

"From too much love of living,

Hope and desire set free,

Even the weariest river

Winds somewhere to the sea-"

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be

to live as siblings with beast and flower,

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet

-there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

QUOTE: A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night and a bright, infinite future." ~ Leonard Bernstein, The New York Times, 30 October 1988