What is Life like for the Whore of Babylon? She tends her garden, keeps up with the housework (by her standards), and goes to bed early. She ruminates on her decisions, tries to trust herself and slowly make what amends she can. It was good to see you again.

- W.B.

Climate Change and the Maldives

Water Lilies

Water Lilies (Naissance des pieuvres) is the very respectable first film (from 2007) of French director Celine Sciamma. It is a careful portrait of the private world of love and friendship created by three girls (in two pairs) as they manage expectations and violations visited upon them with increasing frequency from the larger world.

Low Expectations

"His cluelessness makes the atrociousness of his movie utterly supernatural."

- David Edelstein on Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones

"A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Liv Ullmann, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until 12/20...

"So you've seen Precious, eh? What did you think?"

"Precious" was definitely one of the most complicated depictions of abuse I've ever seen. The hype didn't detract from my experience because the story was well told. It wasn't naive and didn't claim that any problems were solved, which made the love, especially self love, even more powerful. Ian drew my attention to the controversy about skin color and casting. (Does Hollywood Still Have a Brown Paper Bag Test?) That criticism is totally founded, but its still a good film. I really agreed with what Theresa Wiltz wrote about the mother's character on theroot.com: "we recognize the humanity in the monster, without wanting to forgive her of her trespasses." I think that's really important and uncommon in a story about abuse and violence, because denying the humanity of abusers encourages observers to distance ourselves from the problems that really do lead people to hurt each other. This phenomenon came up in this week's This American Life rebroadcast in the section about Elizabeth Smart.

World AIDS Day

"What the Buddha actually suggested is that it is the avoidance of the elusiveness of the object of desire that is the origin of suffering. The problem is not desire: it is clinging to, or craving, a particular outcome, one in which there is no remainder, in which the object is completely under our power."

Post a comment for Zoe Brasi

Sometimes for me anxiety feels like an inarticulate messenger, trying to bring me information but without skills for clear communication. So I try to say, "All right, I have received your message, you are free now." But it seems like I don't really set it free - I keep it tied to the porch, or I let it go but I leave food out for it so it can slip on its old shoes, tread its well worn, comfortable path, and enter the house at a moment's notice.

But other times, the message is so cruel and mean. It doesn't seem inarticulate at all, but effective and precise. I think for me, the reason for this is that I want to break myself down so someone else will mother me. I don't want to be capable, I want to be comforted. I don't want to have dreams and passions that I must relentlessly work and risk for. I want to be rocked in a rocking chair.

What all this has to do with eating our own skin, I still haven't figured out. I enjoyed our conversation about it a while back, though.

Where is my power?
Is it in the air around me?
Is it in my mind?
Where is the love that surrounds me?
How can I harness all my goodness
and unleash it upon the world?
Where is my power?
I'll take it in the time allowed me.

Recently I've been waking up with a familiar anxiety, looking around at my room from under my warm sleeping bag and not wanting to emerge. Then somehow out of habit I'll remind myself that this is my life. This is the only life I have in this form. Whatever is coming, whatever sadness or loneliness, is mine to feel and interpret. So I water my plants, I play with Moondog, I make a safe area in my heart for a wild, axe-wielding 13 year old.

This was my favorite scene from Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

"How do I accept life?"
"Get a tattoo see a shrink play a racket sport wear perfume and fake eyelashes pussypop 3x a day meditate take pictures w pinhole camera scream?"

I just got home from my elective, where we had three poster presentations, one of which was mine and Bridgette's! Our presentation was about trying to change the medical standard of care so that sex assignment surgeries are not performed on intersex babies immediately after birth. I really enjoyed researching this project and in the process came upon the beautiful website for the Intersex Society of North America, whose positions I have now enthusiastically adopted. They basically say that doctors should be completely forthcoming with parents, immediate emotional support and counseling should be available to the family, medical testing should be done to attempt to determine the underlying cause of ambiguous genitalia, (this is because some causes raise associated medical concerns AND because for some of the underlying causes, the vast majority of children will identify as girls while for others they will more likely come to identify as boys) and finally, the parents should use all available information to assign a gender, either boy or girl, to the child, and no surgery should be performed until the child is old enough to make an informed decision about it. The ISNA specifically advocates that parents assign a gender to their child, and not raise the child as a third gender. One of their reasons for this is that they feel to raise children in this way isolates them while at the same time making it seem like male and female are fixed categories, and intersex is a fixed third category. On their FAQ page they include this amazing section:

Why Doesn't ISNA Want to Eradicate Gender?

We’re often asked why ISNA doesn’t forcefully advocate for a genderless society. Many times, these questions come from people with a genuine interest in gender studies and educating people about intersex. The truth is that we share lots of common ground with people in the humanities and/or activist communities who have fought long and hard to insure that the voices of marginalized people are heard.

When women of color told feminists that their lives weren’t reflected in theories that assumed white experience to be universal, scholars listened. When queer people came forward to say that theories of gender that neglected sexuality often fell short of capturing the realities of their lives, scholars listened. Without a doubt, scholars have a rich history of taking the voices of marginalized people seriously and changing their theories and practices accordingly, and now ISNA asks that scholars listen to what people with intersex conditions have to say—even if it might not be what they’d like to hear.

The whole website is so heartfelt and articulate - I love it. I think our presentation went very well - people seemed interested and asked a lot of great questions. It was the highlight of an already good day. The other presentations were very interesting, too. One was about legal and economic issues around surrogacy and another was about the history of forced sterilization in the United States. Such a good way to spend the evening!

I have also been a hat knitting machine! I am on number three in as many weeks!

No one has more of a right to love, life, or acceptance than anyone else. The circumstances of our birth or parenting don't add anything to or take anything away from those rights. We need to hear more voices, not fewer, and living in a way so that others can be heard is different from silencing ourselves. Living in a way that lets others take up all the space they need is different than constricting ourselves. There is room for all of us to expand, and if we don't do it in life, we will do it in death as our bodies decompose and spread all over the earth.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
~ Marianne Williamson

My Day

Yesterday was my day. I set myself to the ongoing task of accepting myself and my decisions, resisting an overarching narrative of success or failure, treating myself kindly and letting love, support, and happiness flow through me unhindered to the people who have what I think I want. I kiss myself, I chew my own food, I marry the bed.

Two Friends Stories on Double X!

I came for Beth Schwartzapfel, I stayed for Audrey Bethel! This was an amazing coincidence because these two friends don't know each other. It reminded me of my first solo trip to the NEC Libriary in good ol' Henniker, where I happened to be flipping through a feminist reader and found an essay by Jessica within its pages!

This is a still from the movie my Miami friends John and Hanan made about the bellydancing troupe Hanan started in Cuba! I haven't seen it yet. I think its called House of Arabs...not sure what the title's all about.

Don't you know me, Bloomsburg?

I'm the new Berlin Wall! Try to tear me down!

I got up at 5 again today. I took Maude's advice and greeted the dawn with a breath of fire. We had a lecture today from our classmate who started as a first year last year but ended up taking part of the year off because he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He spent the hour giving us an elegant, thorough, and personal presentation of the embryology, innervation, vasculature, pathophysiology, and history of his cancer. He walked us through every step of its diagnosis and treatment, including the surgical notes from his procedure and a graphic video about it - laparoscopic retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. Finally, he told us how much of a difference it made to him that he was here as a part of a small medical community, and we should never forget that we could actually wake up tomorrow and be diagnosed with cancer. He asked us to consider how we would feel about how we had spent the last several weeks if that happened. This message, which I might have dismissed as child's play just a few months ago, came at a very important time for me. I have continued to prod myself with worries that I would have been happier at Evergreen, and just yesterday I felt a really clear breakthrough about it. I thought about how many years of my life, important formative years, I have spent here in Central PA, and how radically changed the course of my life has been by the time I have spent here. I felt that this place is here for me as much as any other, offering me as much as any other, and I don't want to take it for granted. More importantly, I want to feel open to all that is here for me, embrace it, and thrive. I felt blessed in this purpose by Hedwig, whose child lover sang these words to us this morning as I drove to school:

Forgive me,
For I did not know.
'Cause I was just a boy
And you were so much more

Than any god could ever plan,
More than a woman or a man.
And now I understand how much I took from you:
That, when everything starts breaking down,
You take the pieces off the ground
And show this wicked town
something beautiful and new.

You think that Luck
Has left you there.
But maybe there's nothing
up in the sky but air.

And there's no mystical design,
No cosmic lover preassigned.
There's nothing you can find
that can not be found.
'Cause with all the changes
you've been through
It seems the stranger's always you.
Alone again in some new
Wicked little town.

So when you've got no other choice
You know you can follow my voice
Through the dark turns and noise
Of this wicked little town.
Oh it's a wicked, little town.
Goodbye, wicked little town.

I went to a talk today called "Baryshnikov and Bohr: The Biochemistry of Ballet". The first slide was "Oranges" by Ellsworth Kelly. "When you think of a cell, what is the first thing that comes to mind?" A circle. A semipermeable phospholipid bilayer. The cell membrane gathers together the components necessary for life and maintains their appropriate concentrations so life can continue. How wonderful! How wonderful to imagine our predecessors, little vesicles of the components necessary for life. And when enough of these cells came to be, they began to interact just as the components necessary for life interacted. They touched membranes; they opened and closed to each other. If it were not for the membrane - the best boundary of all, proof that boundaries are necessary and life-giving, boundaries say YES AND NO - water, carbon, nucleotides, phosphate compounds, everything necessary for life would just be scattered to the winds in random concentrations! We couldn't even get started. This little bubble of fat gathered up a mouthful of its surroundings and created a little environment, a little womb, a little home, a little safe space, protected for just a moment from the randomness outside. The point was not to hide away in fear or solitude from the environment outside. The point was to interact, to exchange, to be penetrated by and secrete into the environment outside from a point of strength and just the right amount of structure. Now we are cathedrals of those tiny microenvironments, and we interact just as the components necessary for life interacted. We touch membranes, we open and close to each other.

Pablo and Marek met Sandino's grandson, Walter, at the 2009 NicaNet East Coast Conference on the Streets of Baltimore!

Favorite Poems from High School

To Be of Use

Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Ego Tripping

Nikki Giovanni



I was born in the Congo.

I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the sphinx.

I designed a pyramid so tough that a star

that only glows every one hundred years falls

into the center giving divine perfect light.



I am bad.



I sat on the throne

drinking nectar with Allah.

I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe

to cool my thirst.

My oldest daughter is Nefertiti.

The tears from my birth pains

created the Nile.



I am a beautiful woman.



I gazed on the forest and burned

out the Sahara desert.

With a packet of goat's meat

and a change of clothes,

I crossed it in two hours.

I am a gazelle so swift,

so swift you can't catch me.



For a birthday present when he was three,

I gave my son Hannibal an elephant.

He gave me Rome for mother's day.



My strength flows ever on.



My son Noah built an ark and

I stood proudly at the helm

as we sailed on a soft summer day.

I turned myself into myself and was Jesus.



Men intone my loving name.

All praises all praises,

I am the one who would save.



I sowed diamonds in my back yard.

My bowels deliver uranium.

The filings from my fingernails are

semi-precious jewels.



On a trip north,

I caught a cold and blew

my nose giving oil to the Arab world.

I am so hip even my errors are correct.

I sailed west to reach east and had to round off

the earth as I went.

The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid

across three continents.



I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal.

I cannot be comprehended except by my permission.

I mean...I...can fly

like a bird in the sky...

In Celebration of My Uterus

BY ANNE SEXTON

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
but you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are singing like a school girl.
You are not torn.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
and of the soul of the woman I am
and of the central creature and its delight
I sing for you. I dare to live.
Hello, spirit. Hello, cup.
Fasten, cover. Cover that does contain.
Hello to the soil of the fields.
Welcome, roots.

Each cell has a life.
There is enough here to please a nation.
It is enough that the populace own these goods.
Any person, any commonwealth would say of it,
“It is good this year that we may plant again
and think forward to a harvest.
A blight had been forecast and has been cast out.”
Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the ass of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.

Sweet weight,
in celebration of the woman I am
let me carry a ten-foot scarf,
let me drum for the nineteen-year-olds,
let me carry bowls for the offering
(if that is my part).
Let me study the cardiovascular tissue,
let me examine the angular distance of meteors,
let me suck on the stems of flowers
(if that is my part).
Let me make certain tribal figures
(if that is my part).
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper,
for the kissing,
for the correct
yes.

The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator
Anne Sexton


The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

She took you the way a woman takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

For Alice B. Toklas

The Autumn bush clover's
Under-leaves are colouring
From this point on,
For one all alone
Will sleep be harder to find?

Anonymous


Between the trees
Drips moonlight,
seeing it I know
Heart draining
Autumn has come at last.

Anonymous


Chrysanthemums in Autumn:
While they shine
I'll wear them in my hair,
For sooner than the flowers'
May come my ending.

Tsurayuki


Ever my tears
Fall with the showers;
At my ancient home,
The lustre of the Autumn leaves
Is deepest of all.

Ise

Class was postponed by one hour this morning, so I had the luxury of turning off my alarm on a school day, sitting down with my breakfast, listening to music and drinking my morning coffee at home. It feels so different and good. Even though we just had a long weekend, my mind has been asking for time to stop. These little moments of calm help me accept that it will keep going, no matter what I do.

Dreamed of hanging out with Zoe and Luca last night. It was still in the apartment, you were holding hands. It was very nice and made me miss you.

This Buster posted on facebook gave me some nice moments of childlike wonder. Also, I've been enjoying reading Pema Chodron's When Things Fall Apart. I'm resisting the urge to concretize. Actually, its been a really really long time since I've concretized.

The reunion that made me consider believing in God.

This evening Moondog and I went for a walk and even though I had been feeling good when I left the house, after just a few steps I could feel the tension rising inside me. I spent the walk trying to talk myself down, and still ended up crying on the edge of the woods. I looked around and felt the emptiness of everything around me, of me. The longer I looked at it the more deeply I understood how we are responsible for making the meaning in our lives. Remembering this seemed to let things pop out at me - a little bird hopping in the grass, Bonnie's kindness across the street, the old neighbor couple.

Its about that time of year when I long for Velvet Goldmine again. Maybe its the way autumn makes you romanticize the past. Visions of Jack Fairy and a green jewel that fell out of a satellite of gay love into Oscar Wilde's Moses basket are dancing through my head. Tonight we toast the Death of Glitter!

"You know, if you're gonna claim that you're gay you're gonna have to make love in gay style, and half of these kids just aren't gonna make it. "

Soliciting exciting summer ideas. Group projects especially encouraged.

A toy designer has created a process for people to dry and tan their own placentas to make them into one of a kind teddy bears for their children. This could be a sincere idea, a way for the child to continue her relationship with her "little sibling", as the placenta is called in several Southeast Asian cultures. It could also be wonderfully creepy, especially if you put it in a glass jar like a Mutter Museum specimen.

I watched a goat at Farm and Wilderness eating her placenta when I was little. It was mesmerizing and nauseating to watch her dutifully choke down that cold, slimy, bloody, rubbery pile of flesh and membranes. Now my opinion is: just eat it, people! You only live once! What's so disgusting about it, really! Just take one bite!

Today I left Lydia in the competent hands of my colleagues and moved to another cadaver. I felt a little unsure about leaving her behind, but promised to let the new donor inspire in me all the respect and reverence that Lydia had. No name has come to me clearly yet. This new woman is taller and fleshier than Lydia, and she has large brown freckles on her arms. She was 90 when she died. Working with her today I thought about the woman who came to the Community Health Center yesterday to see Pat. She was 78 years old, calm and sharp, a snowshoer, a flautist, whose husband died six months ago. In anatomy lab, I looked into the chest cavity of my new donor and tears fell down my face as I looked at her lungs and heart. My classmates asked if I needed to leave, but I wanted to stay. I remember reading how some medical students have felt like there is no room for emotions in human anatomy lab, like they aren't welcome. I haven't felt like that so much, and I thought, for me it makes sense that this would make me cry and it's no reason to leave the room. Then, to my surprise, our professor handed me a scalpel and I, still crying, removed some beautiful seaweed like fat from around her heart and lungs.
What was it about today? My body stood next to her body, with its heart beating and its chest expanding and retracting, bringing air into the lungs so I can do what I do, heart pumping oxygen to my brain so I can think, heart circulating hormones in my bloodstream so I can have these wild emotional experiences, so I can soak cloth with blood, so I can cry with a scalpel in my hand. Her body lay in repose next to mine, having put aside the undulations of living, having chosen to postpone her composting so I could learn from her. Ten or fifteen minutes after I removed her right lung with its horizontal and oblique fissures, felt the impressions made in it by the esophagus and the spinal cord, examined the primary bronchus, pulmonary artery and vein, I was reading our lab manual out loud so we would know what to do next. All of a sudden, in the middle of a sentence, a wave of nausea rose up from my abdomen, making my jaw feel tingly and my head spin. What was happening? Was my body revolting against death? Saying, "We are in a room full of death, but we are alive! We should get out of here and live! How did we get here? Was it something we ate? Have we eaten the pomegranate seeds of Death? Maybe we should throw up everything we've eaten to make sure we can still Live." Was it menstruation, turning up the volume to eleven on everything I feel? Like how when I'm bleeding I get so tired I feel like a truck full of tired hit me on the highway, or how I get so hungry I feel sick with sharp discomfort? Or was I dipping my toes into the fetid cesspool of death, understanding physically that it isn't necessarily comfortable or dignified, that it will make me shit all over myself and clench my fists with terror, that I may not be ready but it will happen anyway. There is a little bit of death in every cycle, the darkness in the sky before the new moon. Every release of the built up uterine lining is a chance to feel your death around you. This is not because you missed a chance to have a baby, its because the menstrual cycle is a life cycle in and of itself. This is one of the greatest gifts given to a menstruating human being, this chance to get to know death little by little. Day to day, I am walking on a mountain pass with a beautiful but frighteningly steep slope just to the side of the trail. When I have my period, I take a few days to stand at the edge of the slope and look out, thinking to myself, "I am not ready to fall. I need to just stick to the trail." But then today as I stood at the edge and contemplated falling, a rock shifted beneath my feet and made it all more real to me. When I found my footing again I stepped back a little bit, but its not time yet to keep walking. I'm just going to sit here for another few days and keep thinking about it.

Hedley is now the head baker at Kripalu!!

It might seem from writing "why are we alone?" that Lenya is in what Americans call "a bad mood." Its not true. She is actually just wondering WHY? Are the answers we think are so important even true? In some ways it is completely obvious that, as Rosa says, Len is not alone. All right, Rosa, you are right. Look, I am not feeling sorry for myself here! I am just trying to reflect on the scattering. Is the scatter good? Is it really offering such a unique educational experience as laid out in its charter? Or have I just forsaken my more traditional Moldovan ways for some American wild west idea of "independence"? Am I just obsessed with masculinity once again, heading out for the frontier with something to prove? All I'm saying is I want to eat dinner with you every day.

I am reflecting on Jophet now. When was the last time we had any experience beyond what falls into the category of "The Visit"? I do believe it was 2003. And with Zoe?? Before my busy last year, it was one seminal summer in Chisinau in gone but not forgotten 1998!! I couldn't hear Rosa very well because it was loud where I was, but it was something like, "well, aren't those some of your most intense ___________?" "Yes," I said, "those are some of my best memories. But I want to spend my life with the people I love, not just call them on the phone."

Then another time, Jophet said something like, our community will continue to exist in fits and starts. This seemed like the hard truth I had to face. It seems like the truth to face now. But I'd like to call to mind the night outside the Machias Grange, not much more than a year ago. Some young ladies had been talking to you about raking again. We were sitting outside in the dark after and I asked you if you were considering it. You said "No, I'd need my people with me." "But they can be your people now", I said, "What's the difference? We're all people." You said, "The difference is they're not you(s)."

I am the first to admit there is no solution, but that kind of practical explanation comes up short for my heart, as I have been reminded again and again this past year. So if you've been thinking of spending any time in the Bloomsburg area, I can only say that I support the idea whole-heartedly.

Why are we alone? Why are we alone? Why are we alone? Why are we alone? Rosa I love you!

For Rosa

The human wrist contains eight carpal bones: scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, piseform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, and hamate. When we learned about them in Anatomy lecture, our professor taught us the useful mnemonic device, "Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can't Handle." I really like this because it causes me to consider the experience and implications of trying a position I can't handle. This will be very helpful in memorizing the names of these eight irregular bones.

Edie's tattoos!

Why do you think it is that some people just don't want a tattoo? How did I end up as one of those people?

Happy Birthday, Wolf Pup.

Messenger
Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

I am willing to do things even if I am not skilled at them. I am willing to present this process for criticism. I do not have the time to develop fine skills at everything I would like to be good at. I will die before I can become skilled at everything I would like to be good at. In the meantime this is what I can do.

I like it when The Shrew visits me on weekends because we can just go to our tent and sit on moss together. She really is lovely company once I get her settled in from her long trip.

The Shrew is back. This explains a lot.

"We are entering the howling waste but we are armed...With our hearts that are targets and shields, with our skulls that collect the dew! Mystics in the Wilderness!" - grille

The High Times Will Come Again.

Mein liebster feind

Though my week felt uncomfortable and unsettled, my weekend has been very nice. There have been some important milestones since I came back here. For one thing, I harvested and ate my first wild mushroom all on my own, and it was only about a half a mile from my doorstep! It was a lovely lobster mushroom, poking its fiery tail out of the dark earth at me. I made two batches of fruit kimchi. Moonshine is getting happily settled here - he likes to watch birds. And I have been through one week of school. It often feels like a frenzy of information exposure, but hopefully I will learn to organize it well.

Yesterday I spent some time walking around good old White River Junction, probably tied with Fellow's Balls as my favorite VT town. There is a new all ages pool hall and the man in charge, in faded yellow suspenders decorated with tools, spent a long time showing me around the place. They have Atari arcade games and a player piano and their flyers say, "White River Junction - An Oasis in the Crumbing Empire." Then I stopped by the Center for Cartoon Studies but it was closed so I went to the COVER store which is like a thrift store and found a little present for one of my Jophet-flowers, the Bomb in Gilead one. Next, I went to the clothing store and donated a fur lined wool coat made in Pampa, Texas that had been given to me by the original owner, herself in Pampa bred and born and bred. They should be able to fetch a pretty penny for it. Then I went to the yoga studio and found myself behind a two children and a man. He said, "Is she in there? Is it this way? All right, I'll follow you." and the little ones wended their way down corridors and around corners until they saw a woman behind a desk. They all lit up when they saw each other and ran into each others' arms. The woman was so happy it almost seemed like she would cry with joy. She said, "I didn't think I would get to see you!" All of these things made me feel very very good about the town.

Later I watched My Best Fiend. So much integrity, alongside the most intense open childlike mad driving desire for love. There is something about the people who are trusted by butterflies.

Mount Moosilauke, 4802 ft

Off to a good start.

The orientation session that is going on right now is a presentation about disability insurance in which, to warm up the crowd, the sales reps showed photographs of famous people with disabilities and asked us to identify each celebrity's name and disability. I'm proud to say that I won a water bottle for correctly identifying Larry Flynt.

"Rachel?? We are just so fucked up on the internet! Put that on your blog, why don't you? Or are you trying to avoid using the f-word? OK, I'm checking my email...I have no new messages...that is just so devastating to my self-esteem..."
- Abel Santamaria

When I pulled up into the driveway on Rand Road, I accidentally locked the keys in the car in a way you can only do with cars that lock automatically. I locked my phone and wallet in there with them, but somehow was lucky enough to have placed my shoes outside the car before shutting the door, or I'd have had to show up barefoot to the funeral. I wandered through the garden and saw someone rustling around by the pond. It turned out to be Jason. He put on some presentable clothes and we drove to the cemetery on the Old Concord Road, just across the road from where the Bennett boys place lilacs every Memorial Day. On the way over I used Jason's cell phone to call the mechanic, Danny's. He said he could go up and get my keys out of my car while we were at the funeral and leave an invoice there for me. So we parked in the cemetery and as we walked up to the small crowd we saw two cows pulling something behind them...Jason guessed they had pulled Shirl's casket up to its final resting place. People were placing flowers on it - lilies and wildflowers, zinnias and sunflowers. A Skip McKean fuel truck drove by. The religious figure presiding over the service said a short prayer and spoke of Shirl as an old friend. Then Morris Day, the well digger told the story of the time when he was ten and he borrowed Shirl's horse, Duchess, and walked her out on frozen Pleasant Pond, and when he came back and told Shirl what he had done, "Shirl kicked my ass, and that's the truth. That was the only time cross words were spoken between us." Then his nephew Tim/Mo spoke. He said Shirl always worked with them and taught them how to do things the old way. He said, "Whenever we were bringing hay in, he would leave some of it loose. I don't know about any of you, but I could get in a load of loose hay right now." He was followed by two of Shirl's great nieces. Then several people stood up and told stories about him. After it was all over, we went up and hugged Lucy. She asked me what I've been up to and said, "I have your letter! Shirl always saved it. He took a lot of pleasure out of it."

Back in Bloomsburg, feeling the ground shift beneath my point slippers. Everything feels familiar but strange at the same time - somehow its not very comforting that I recognize rivers and buildings, establishments and even people. Would it just feel even harder if I was anywhere else? Right now I'm looking out a window at a girl who was in my general chemistry class two years ago. And I'm also looking at the back of the head of long wavy black hair of a beautiful dancer who used to intimidate me (and still would if I gave her a chance). Some nice things have happened, like I told the young woman I was sitting next to today that I'll be gone tomorrow for a funeral, and she just leaned over and gave me a big hug. Also I made an instant friend - someone I just knew I could talk to even though we didn't know anything about each other. Then I found out hours later that she's a doula. Then there's the boy in the Caribou High School t-shirt - we had a nice long talk about Maine and then started a new table at the picnic. The director of anatomy came and sat with us and the table soon filled up and we talked about cadavers and their families and the memorial service we will hold for them. On my right was a boy from Southern California whose humility and sense of humor put me at ease.

But I feel a little lonely and I've been thinking about death - the sort of selfish callousness and detachment with which we keep living our lives when someone dies, especially if it is not someone from our innermost circle, not someone who can bring down all the walls. Shirl was tired - why should there be sorrow? I was crying for myself, not for him. But I've learned that my dream was not true. I'm not ready.

The Kind Land

Orientation started out exciting with a speech from Jim Kim, but it has quickly turned into a black hole of smiles and unnecessary well intentioned "information". Everyone is very welcoming, though, and I don't take that for granted. I just want to get the thing started anymore!

Yesterday Abel and I had a picnic of honey roasted peanuts, potato chips, and beer by the Tooky. As we were discussing all these important things in our lives, his mother called him to say that Shirl Davison has died.

"Hey, Shirl, did you ever ride a horse into Henniker?"
"Oh, sure, lot's of times!"

The night before he died I was with Sarah in South Portland where she taught me the song, In the Kind Land.

"They don't know the life we keep
They neither fish nor sow nor reap
And for them the land is cheap
In the kind land"

Highlights of the Evening

"Marat/Sade and Equus just left me unable to function after I watched them...and that's really what I'm looking for in a film."
- Zoe

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West

"I'M READY TO DIE!"
- Lenya

Merce Cunningham

clean teeth. preserve. orphan tapes. territory. confusion. not sure if all i am doing mentally or emotionally is just an elaborate plea for security, not sure if that would be a bad thing even if it were true. not sure if trusting myself is just an elaborate plea for security. it might be it might be, there is nothing wrong with that.

Driving home around 9pm, the sun was setting and there were thousands of fireflies glowing in the acres and acres of baled hay.

Make Peace

Its almost 1am now. I'll be getting up early to drive to Lisa's house where I'll meet new little Henry Makepeace. Do I understand your question then, is it hopeless and forelorn? Its amazing to me how we can swing back and forth so many times in our lives from unbridled optimism to destitute failure. The smallest gesture of kindness in the right place at the right time can give me just enough energy to take another step, just one more breath. Like in birth, you don't have to think about how the baby will come out, the mountain that looms before you, you just have to keep breathing one breath at a time. I've been feeling very grateful to Pema Chodron lately for reminding me how the flare ups, the moments of desperate heart-armoring, are actually flags that mark a door. The door can be locked and double bolted and alarmed and barricaded, or it can just be opened. What is behind the door? Just a red beating heart, all bloody and soft and strong.

I don't need anyone else to share my interpretations of the last week. Our experiences and perspectives are all different. For myself, I feel incredibly blessed and confused, full of love with the wisdom and roots of grief. Unsure of the future but afloat on a vessel of truth and trust. This is ME, this is ME coming through. I can't control it and I don't want to. I also can't control how any other human being, friend or foe, responds to or interprets me, and I don't want to control that either. If I could have controlled it, I would never have been able to create the brilliant shining stars in my life or predicted how deeply you would influence me.

1969-2009

A rat done bit my sister Nell
With Whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And Whitey's on the moon

I can't pay no doctor bills
But Whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be paying still
While whitey's on the moon

You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey's on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey's on the moon

I wonder why he's uppin' me?
Cause whitey's on the moon?
Well i was already given him fifty a week
And now whitey's on the moon

Taxes takin' my whole damn check
The junkies make me a nervous wreck
The price of food is goin up
And if all that crap wasn't enough
A rat done bit my sister nell
With whitey on the moon

Her face and arm began to swell
And whitey's on the moon

With all that money i made last year
For whitey on the moon
How come I ain't got no money here?
Hmm, whitey's on the moon

You know I just about had my fill
Of whitey on the moon
I think I'll send these doctor bills
airmail special
(To whitey on the moon)

- Gil Scott Heron

Thank you, Kiki and Herb! Thank you, Jessica, for reminding me of the Cherry Lane Theater only yesterday!
Love,
Len

Pick it up and drop it.

I'll enjoy this while it lasts! Here are the things I want to work on every day that's left of my summer vacation:

- New obscene dance moves courtesy of Shawna. Anyone who thinks pussy popping is easy should try it and be humbled. And its not just meaningless vulgarity, either! Its a lot like belly dancing - its not coquettish or evasive, it is a mesmerizing assertion of your flesh and sexuality in space. So much fun! I know many people would be completely disgusted by this uncensored Ludacris video which absolutely qualifies as soft core porn. There's plenty that's annoying about it, but what stands out in my mind is how hard those ladies must have worked for those moves. I enjoy seeing sex workers' skills being appreciated and celebrated, too. These are basically yoginis and I am working to be like them. Shawna said if I practice every day for a few months I'll get it down. omg what if I could do it in a headstand?!

- Working on songs. The repertoire is expanding slowly and with any luck I will grow out of my habit of strumming only with my thumb. I am excited because my mom got a piano yesterday and I've been trying to figure out People Ain't No Good and Into My Arms.

- Reading in the sunshine. Had to renew Infinite Jest today.

- Seeing friends before I move. This project is going passable well.

That's really it for things I want to do every day. There are other things that are on my To Do Summer '09 list - at the top: bike path with Zoe.

Varuh Meje

Guardian of the Frontier, or Varuh Meje, is the story of three Slovenian students who decide to take a canoe trip down the river that separates Slovenia from Croatia. Their adventure becomes an exploration of all kinds of borders - international, personal, and gender - and the spectre of physical violence that hangs over those who cross them without institutional permission. Its from 2002, the first Slovenian film to be directed by a woman, and I really enjoyed it.

The Cult Starts Ten Years Ago.

Today's mid-morning contained an episode of the Daily Show followed by the Colbert Report, and its actually not over yet but I felt I had to report on a chilling and hysterical moment. In a segment titled "Fourth of July Under Attack," Colbert said, "Were it not for the American Revolution, all nature documentaries would look like this:" and then they cut to a clip from the BBC's Planet Earth in which a white wolf was attacking a herd of sheep, but they sped up the footage and played the music from the Benny Hill Show. I just stood there extremecida - when I would go to Gaggie and Alice's house when I was little I always took in an enormous amount of television and the Benny Hill Show was particularly disturbing to me. I liked to watch soft core porn on the cable channels and I made a Barbie whorehouse, but watching that fat old man chasing bikini clad girls through the English countryside always offended my sensibilities. Colbert knows what I mean.

INTERDEPENDENCE

25 Years After We Met

When my friend Jessica's dad Mitch died in April, Corey made this poster as a memorial.

Lenya is Published!

Simultaneous Assessment of Peripheral Tissue Oxygenation using EPR and NIR Spectroscopies
Benjamin B. Williams1, Shudong Jiang2, Rachel Haynes Coombs1, Thomas Matthews1, Nadeem Khan1, Harold M. Swartz1
1 Dartmouth EPR Center, Dartmouth Medical School, Department of Radiology, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
2 Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

Wonder of Nature! Wonder of Nature!

"I'm a little baby few days old
I'm a little snick snack some days old
I'm a little jabber talker lotta days old
and I'm a little butterfly one minute old"

Eyes of Laura Mars (spoiler alert)

John Waters once said that there are no bad films because if you are watching something you don't like, you can always just amuse yourself by studying the various light fixtures on the set. Well, gender provides me with all the light fixtures I need to get through just about anything. Laura Mars is a photographer plagued by visions of violent murder. All of a sudden, something will come over her and she won't be looking through her own eyes, but through the eyes of the killer. The killer is slowly but steadily picking off the people who are close to Laura and her work. As we watch, we see Laura tangled in a web of men, each pulling on her with his sticky silk threads from a different direction. At first we are led down the classic homophobic/transphobic horror route, but as it turns out the film veers completely from that path and instead asks us to fear something really terrifying: the overprotective macho with "mother" issues! In the end, Laura is able to save herself because she honors her illogical, hysterical, instinctive visions. I spent a lot of this movie wondering why such a strong, talented artist would let herself be pushed around by so many manipulative men, but when it comes right down to it (kind of like in real life) the Feminine so clearly mops up the court with the oppressor that their manipulations just seem childish in comparison with her wisdom.