Sweet Spot (Antje Duvekot)

Good but very low-key week... exactly what I needed after the breakneck pace of the last few.  Zoom with Nancy and Judi, a library pick-up, volunteering in the community garden this morning.  Much weeding, and joyful satisfaction!  We harvested apple bananas (yes, that's a real thing!) and papayas for the food bank, saw many peacock butterflies (thanks to Claire for the ID), and even spotted, amidst the chicken wire (to keep out the iguanas), a chrysalis... 😃

On my way out, I stopped into the farmers' market in front, and bought beefsteak tomatoes, two different kinds of sweet potatoes, Gala apples, locally-made vegan coconut yogurt, as well as baba ganoush.  The first thing I did when I got home was make a tomato sandwich (to quote songwriter Guy Clark:  "only two things money can't buy, that's true love and homegrown tomatoes"... ❤ )  Yum!

I've also tried to catch up on my reading, because putting together the TCC newsletter was taking up a lot of my discretionary time; it was a fun challenge, but I do get grumpy when I don't consume words on a regular basis.  Reinstating a feature I haven't used in a while:

NR:  House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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

~ Baking That’s Simple, but Always Satisfying:  In her new monthly column, Genevieve Ko shares easy, streamlined recipes, like handmade crisps and cookies, so you can feed your loved ones (and yourself) effortlessly.

~ Books Don't Cost A Thing: A #GoodbyeFines Playlist:  It's one fine day at the Library! On October 5, The New York Public Library announced that we're closing the book on late fines. That's right—NYPL no longer charges late fines on overdue material. 

~ Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill:  This site is Atlanta's first Community Urban Food Forest, as well as a new model for a City of Atlanta park. The food forest will produce a wide variety of fresh, flavorful, and healthy nuts, fruits,  vegetables, herbs,  and mushrooms, which will become available for public consumption.  Located in an area identified as a food desert, the site was a working farm as recently as 2000. Neighbors still talk about the land’s former owners, Ruby and Willie Morgan, who left excess produce from their farm on fence posts for neighbors to claim and enjoy. 

~ Designed to remind us of stories worth sharing:  At Anecdote, we’re making fragrance a conversation piece. Inspired by personal recollections and cultural trends, each candle is an everyday luxury designed to remind us of stories worth sharing.

~ William Steig’s Books Explored the Reality That Adults Don’t Want Children to Know About:  Writers for young children have a nearly impossible task: to amuse both the kid being read to and the adult doing the reading. Doing one or the other is hard enough, and only a select handful of geniuses can manage both. William Steig is one. 

SONG:  Sweet Spot by Antje Duvekot

BOOK:  Yes! I AM by Opal Murray (my dear friend Opal from the UUCFL asked me to review her book; I agreed, and was beyond relieved that it was a lovely read.  Don't be surprised if it ends up in your mailbox in the next few months... 💗 )

POEM:  Field Guide by Tony Hoagland

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,

up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather

floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,

like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.

That’s all.

I mention this in the same way

that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,

so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

QUOTE:  "Be amazed. Take a step back and look at your life with gratitude every now and then. Be amazed. Squeeze every last ounce of goodness out of what is around you. Savor it. Soak it up. Luxuriate in it. Be amazed. When you’re burned out, bone weary, and bedraggled, use amazement to fill yourself back up. Seek out those situations, people, and activities that remind you of what it means and how it feels to be amazed." ~ Leslie Ralph

A Prayer for the Sane (Danny Schmidt)

Everything continues to be different... ever-changing... in flux.  What is effective one day isn't the next.  Stay at Home means just that.  I am now so deeply in the mindset of social distancing such that, if someone on TV shakes hands or hugs, I gasp, then remember that's not "real life".  Reminds me of when my mom was in home hospice (almost 11 years ago), end-of-life stages, and we (myself, my sister, my brother, her friends) were trying to keep up with her caregiving. A constant battle of troubleshooting and problem-solving. Attempting the most risk-adverse scenarios.  

I remembered that I used to watch the show In Treatment, loving the unique approach of one client per day (25-minute episodes), wrapping up with the therapist seeing *his* therapist at the end of the week.  Made it through all of Seasons 1 and 2, and two-thirds of the way through Season 3, at which time I went up to Atlanta to be with my mom in May 2009, ostensibly for a two-week visit, which turned out to be until her death on July 19, and then another month to sort out the will, her belongings, and the sale of her house (I was executor).

All that to say, I never did view the last third of Season 3 (the final one, it turns out), and I found the series recently on HBO, intending to watch only what I missed, and then decided to start at the beginning.  Remembered why I enjoyed it so much, painful as it was/is.  

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

One of Danny Schmidt's new songs.  In his words:

I wrote and recorded this song exactly one month ago. It's hard to wrap my brain around how much our consciousness has shifted in twenty eight days. I wrote the song about our political environment, about the cognitive dissonance in the orbits of our worldviews, and about the emotional and intellectual fatigue we've all suffered for the last three years.

We're fast approaching an infection point, and we can't begin to restore a sense of common purpose until our collective conversation is informed by honesty, transparency, and factual reality again. And we must be led by someone who honors the truth, and respects those on the other side of it. Only then can we return to civility and decency. And public health.

This isn't a song about resolving dispute. It's a song about coming back to the table together, and all of us acknowledging that a table has four legs and a surface that's solid (and painful when you smack your head against it.)


SONG:  A Prayer for the Sane by Danny Schmidt

BOOK:  Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

POEM:  Don’t Tell Anyone by Tony Hoagland

We had been married for six or seven years
when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me
that she screams underwater when she swims—

that, in fact, she has been screaming for years
into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool
where she does laps every other day.  

Buttering her toast, not as if she had been
concealing anything,
not as if I should consider myself

personally the cause of her screaming,
nor as if we should perform an act of therapy  
right that minute on the kitchen table,

—casually, she told me,
and I could see her turn her square face up
to take a gulp of oxygen,

then down again into the cold wet mask of the unconscious.
For all I know, maybe everyone is screaming
as they go through life, silently,

politely keeping the big secret
that it is not all fun
to be ripped by the crooked beak

of something called psychology,
to be dipped down
again and again into time;

that the truest, most intimate
pleasure you can sometimes find
is the wet kiss

of your own pain.
There goes Kath, at one pm, to swim her twenty-two laps
back and forth in the community pool;

—what discipline she has!
Twenty-two laps like twenty-two pages,
that will never be read by anyone.

QUOTE:  "Years and years of therapy taught me to speak up because speaking up is what gets things done and gets your story and your voice heard." ~ Michelle Visage

You're Aging Well (Dar Williams)

M wrote some wonderfully reinforcing ideas about beauty on her pin-up blog the other day, which of course got me thinking about my own interpretation as well as my self-image - ultimately, in my opinion, it distills down to "beauty is as beauty does"...

I have had years/weeks/moments in which I felt stunning... magnetic... indestructible... at what would not be considered my ideal weight/size - however, because I felt involved (with my family and friends/my community/the world), I wasn't thinking about any perceived inadequacies. I've realized I have a talent (actually more of a *need*) to contribute, share and widen the circle - when my blinders are on, my ego gets in the way and I tend to concentrate on the trivialities.

Which is not to say I still shouldn't care about how I look and becoming more healthy (through nutrition, exercise and rest) - when it becomes an obsession such that I'm not only *not* enjoying life but completely narrowing my focus, something is wrong. People appreciate my authentic smile, my gift of listening, my love of music - they're not likely to spend time critiqueing my hips, my hair, my nails.

Our bodies were designed to age: sagging breasts, graying hair and crinkling eyelids - if we've made the most of our time on the planet, we should also be able to track incremental wisdom, peace and compassion. The purpose of skeletons, muscle and skin is really only to keep our souls, hearts and minds safely surrounded - as long as we live with purpose, enthusiasm and good will, we will remain forever young in the ways that count... and aging well in aspects that matter.

SONG: You're Aging Well by Dar Williams

BOOK: I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

POEM: Beauty by Tony Hoagland

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I'm probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

QUOTE: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)

In honor of Bob Dylan's 66th birthday... today! - the times, they are a'changin', indeed... :-)

SONG: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan

BOOK: Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan

POEM: Hard Rain by Tony Hoagland

After I heard It's a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood there's nothing
we can't pluck the stinger from,
nothing we can't turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt.

Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people
quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.

You can't keep beating yourself up, Billy
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
About all those people you killed—
You just have to be the best person you can be,
one day at a time—

and everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood-
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,
but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—
whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.

QUOTE: Bob Dylan was once asked if he thought of himself more as a singer or a poet. He said, "I think of myself more as a song-and-dance man."