End-of-Year Ruminations -- Yours, Theirs, and Mine

 The year 2010 is almost done and while some are busy making New Year's resolutions, others express year's end with an essay or a poem.  The two examples below, although not written this year, seem annually relevant.  I like their humor, creativeness, and spirit--they make me smile, they remind me of shared musings, of yearned-for blessings.  How can one not share them?

What December Said to January

Let the record
show I did
not go willingly.

Nor am I impressed
by the ruse you
call “The First,”
which you use
to hide the fact
I passed this way.

I am offended,
not ended.

Do not forget,
I have frozen ponds
and cast blood-red berries
to the ground; I have
blotted out the sun.

You have crocuses,
I’ll grant you that;
but I have summoned them;
the rest you leave for
spring to solve.

My advice to you?

Take pride in what you do
and never follow suit;
your days are numbered;
be true to them.


From Poems, Slightly Used, by William Michaelian

Infinite Gratitude

For all those events, people, and experiences in this life and all others, that have helped me to grow and change and evolve, I give gratitude. Where I am is what I am.

For all of you, your infinite variety, your innate and beautiful diversity, and all that you have taught me, whether joyous or saddening, I give infinite gratitude.

For everything you have ever given me, will give me, or have never and never will give me, I return infinite gratitude. There is no loss, no absence, and nothing missing. Nothing is ever lost.

For everything that challenges me to grow, release, clear, and Just Get Over It, I give endless thanks. For those moments that offer me endless opportunities to clear and release judgments, hatred, and close-mindedness, I give deep and infinite gratitude. For those reflections in the mirrors of xenophobia and self-delusion, I return peace and light. For those victimologies and woundologies projected outwards onto the mirror of the world, I reflect only clear light. The moon reflecting in still water.

For everything that bleeds, infinite peace.

For everyone whose heart has not yet fully opened, because of fear, misunderstanding, hate, or desperation, infinite layers of white light. For every closed mind and closed heart I have ever encountered, infinite layers of the highest form in the Universe of the bright blue light of compassionate lovingkindess.

For every soul whose sacred contracts have not yet been fulfilled, infinite time and infinite patience. From this life, to the next. We journey together. For every kindred soul, born again and again, till we get it right, thanks for playing the Game. You are all expert players, and you all, always, win in the end. We go forward together. For every player of the Game, there are no wrong choices, and we all return to Union, in the end. Not one soul shall be lost. For every bond of karma not yet formed and for every bond already released, infinite learning, infinite grace, infinite love. The Buddha and the Cosmic Christ are not-two.

For every aid and comfort, infinite gratitude. For every act of tough love, infinite gratitude. For every moment of utter goofy hilarity—that laughter which brings us into the Universe of Essences—infinite gratitude. For every mutual shedding of tears, whether from suffering or from laughter, infinite gratitude.

For every pointless moment of ecstasy or despair, infinite gratitude. For every curse and vow and damning, infinite compassion. For every unnecessary lover, infinite transcendence. For every senseless act of beauty, infinite gratitude. For every meaningless suffering caused by lack, infinite abundance. For every random act of kindness, infinite awareness of the larger pattern. For every absurd and illicit and senseless desire, infinite fulfillment. We create our own realities, and so does everyone else.

For every word and world of blessing and hope, infinite gratitude. For every word and world of hurt, infinite gratitude. For every bridge between words and worlds, infinite gratitude. The Way is Light, and Love, and Truth, even when the Way is Dark, and Pain, and Obscure. Guidance comes from inside and from outside, there is no separation. The natural world is the supernatural world.

May we all receive blessings of perfect protection, grace and ease, and Light for the highest good for all concerned!


~~ A personal essay by writer/ artist/ musician Art Durkee, originally posted on December 24, 2006, on his blog Dragoncave.

some trees in my back yard

SUMMING UP

Blogging this past year has introduced me to a truckload of good writing, a virtual Arena full of fiction, poetry, art and music I might never have discovered were it not for fellow bloggers.  I've gained a friendship or two from writerly communications with some of you and have benefited enormously from your occasional feedback, advice and/or encouragement, as well as the random remark here, indelible impression there, and remembered, oft-repeated sayings of what seems to me a summing-up of a worldview with which I  find connection--little life mantras as spontaneous affirmations, not merely said, but lived.  For example:  Art Durkee's "It is what it is" and Bob Arnold's signatory "All's well."   

These are not just unconscious sayings.  It takes some people years and years to come to the level of acceptance of life as it "is", not how one wishes it to be; to habituate to a view of life that enables you to greet every single setback or hardship or calamity with the attitude that despite everything, life's still "well"--all of it.   

I mention this here in detail because these two simple phrases somehow this past year bore themselves into my subconscious, over time replacing a long-ingrained auto-response that always seemed somehow to start with the question "Why?", dwelling too much on life's unfairness, settling for life's limitations instead of imagining its possibilities.  But most of all, not understanding its ... Isness.  You end up somehow concentrating on the separate parts, the good, the bad, the gray, the  inconceivable, not seeing the whole picture, how it all fits together, etc., always trying to make sense of it, never succeeding.  And along comes:  "It is what it is."  Period.  And:  "All's well."  Seven words, from two people I have never met, caught in my consciousness, from fishing the waters of the Internet. 

I don't understand the How, and will never probably figure out the Why.  Especially the Why.  Doesn't mean I intend to stop asking.  But it no longer seems important that I KNOW.  I still want to.  Heck, who wouldn't?  But it always seemed somehow so important to arrive at that information before I died.  Dying and not knowing--that, for me, was my idea of Hell, the laughing parting gesture of the trickster, the ultimate cruel joke.  But now, the sheer thatness of what is, is enough.  (Cue from the curtain master:  You're readers are squirming.. Wind it up already!).

My year-end gratitudes won't be as eloquent as Art Durkee's above but it seems a fine tradition to emulate. So I thank all the bloggers, writers, poets, artists, truth & justice seekers, animal lovers, free spirits, spiritual soul mates and fellow planet dwellers who have energized and inspired me in this past year--Thanks for making me laugh, for teaching me things, for showing by example how to be a better person, for sharing your thoughts and the wonderful products of your creativity.  I won't even attempt to name you all, there are just too too many.  I go plunging into the new year with all my hopes and flaws, my verbosity meter furiously clicking away--'keepitshort keepitshort keepitshort Keep-it-SHORT", proving that Awareness by itself is not enough.   Another lesson noted.

Goodbye 2010.  Hello to Whatever.  I'm ready.

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

Conn Hallinan yesterday at Truthout--some "Are You Serious?" awards:

The George Orwell Award

 

to the U.S. Defense Department for dropping the name of “Psychological Operations”—“Psyops” for short—because the “term can sound ominous.” Instead Psyops will now be known as Military Information Support Operation, or MISO, which sounds like a Japanese soup.

Some military contractors, however, apparently didn’t get the memo about using names and acronyms that sound “ominous.” Northrop Grumman just successfully tested a radar system that will be attached to Predator and Reaper armed drones to allow the killer robots to “detect individuals walking over a wide area” and track vehicles, watercraft, people, and animals, as well as “stationary targets of interest.” Given that the drones pack Hellfire missiles and 500 lb. bombs, you really don’t want to be “interesting” when they are around.

The news system is called the “Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar” or “Vader” for short. Sounds of heavy breathing are not included in the basic package.

The Mary Wollingstonecraft Shelly Award (the author of Frankenstein)

goes to the University of California at Berkeley, MIT, and Cornell University for using Defense Department money to turn the beetle, Mecynorrhina torquata, into a cyborg. The beetle is fitted with an electronic backpack attached to the animal’s wing muscles, allowing scientists to control the beetle’s flight path.

The idea is to use the little beastie (actually, as beetles go, kind of a big beastie) to crawl or fly into areas where the “enemy” is. Once the “enemy” is identified, the military can target the area with bombs, rockets or artillery. This is a tad rough on the beetles.

According to researchers Michael Maharbiz and Hirotake Sato, the long-term goal is to “introduce synthetic interfaces and control loops” into other animals. “Working out the details in insects first will help us avoid mistakes and false starts in higher organisms, such as rats, mice, and ultimately people. And it allows us to postpone many of the deeper ethical questions about free will, among other things, that would become more pressing if this work took place on vertebrates.”

The other awards, here.

Spontaneous Eruptions, Ensculptured

Photo by Ilse at Beantown Daily Photo


Captured moments
frozen in stone
(or photographs . . .
or words)

I've lived that feeling.
I know its rush.
It's can't-not-singness,
don't care who frowns.

Photo by Lawrence Lui


Running barefoot in snow, fists clenched -
how you see a thing
Images mirroring muted responses, abruptly awakened
like cold water splashed on a tired face
Look, look what's happening, Look
Joy, YES!
but this also.  This other.

Rock solid or crumbling; real, imagined,
everything mixed, location just a backdrop.
Yes! comingling with NO, twin minds sharing the same pulse
The who not important, the why irrelevant.
Words useless here.

Hearing it. Seeing it. Feeling it.

Life.





 

The Best Gift Ever

Icycle Time

When I first moved to Vermont I found it strange to find signs posted on houses or buildings warning about the icycles.   I had never thought of icycles as downright dangerous before.  Until, of course, you get stabbed in the shoulder or conked on the head by one.  I'm not talking little baby icycles here.  Icycles in this part of the country can get pretty huge.

Our icycles here in my Quebeckian environs don't come with warning signs but can be equally jabby and daggerish.  You just have to be careful where you walk.   The ones hanging from various sections around our roof aren't gigantic but there are a lot of them.

Icycles, like the snow on the ground, seem a permanent fixture, for four or five months of the year at least.  If we do get a bit of a warm spell (meaning not frigid), the road snow may melt but the piles on the ground remain, just getting added to with each new snowfall, till late March (or in some years, April (and in one year, there was still some around the first days of May, about which time you get really, REALLY anxious for Spring). 

Got two seed catalogues in the mail this week, for springtime planting.  They do that (send them out so absurdly early) just to torture you.  "Dream on, ha ha.  Dream on....").

And so it goes.  C'est l'hiver.  But it won't really go, for a long, long time yet.  Meanwhile, best to just enjoy it.  Even those toothy looking icycles.

Poems and Carpentry

Today's post is about carpenters, and poets tooling their words.

Meet the Carpenter Poets of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts:

"There's much to be said about parallels between writing and carpentry. There's the act of creating something out of common supplies, fitting board to board, word to word, the beauty of the product and the pride in the craft. The house we live in, the poem that lives in us."

Carpenters and the tools of one's trade provide a rich source of metaphors for the difficulties one faces in life but can also be a meditation on life in general, as well as the act of creation and pride in one's craft.   (Some fine examples, over at Salamander Cove yesterday (2010121): a valve becomes the conduit for "the one-way flow of time we take for granted"; an aging carpenter dreams of a scaffold that'll take him higher and higher; a poet whose stock and trade is words, admires the carpenter's way ... )

Poets sometimes write about their everyday worktools, objects used to fashion other objects, paralleling the skill and creativity one puts into creating a poem. Dave Bonta over at Via Negativa, for example, has recently published a book called Odes to Tools, a collection of 25 poems inspired by common hand tools. ("Doesn't a favorite tool often become more than just an instrument of the worker's will? Doesn't every successful tool in fact acquire a bit of an aura ...?")

In Carpenters of Light  (A Critical Study of Contemporary British Poetry by Neil Powell, published in 1979-80), a chapter is devoted to Donald Davie: Poet as Carpenter, on page 60. Unfortunately, the online version only goes up to page 55. Curious, I googled Donald Davie and found his poem "Under the Grain," where his interplay of words common to carpentry (grain/ingrained, peeling/shavings, planes, level, shelving, etc. are juxtaposed with images of tortured love. I've read this poem four times and each time discover something new and absolutely mind-grabbing in it.

Under the Grain

Why, by an ingrained habit, elevate
Into their own ideas,
Activities like carpentry, become
The metaphors of graining?
Gardening, the one word, tilth? Or thought,
The idea of having ideas,
Resolved into images of tilth and graining?

An ingrained habit . . . this is fanciful;
And there's the rub
Bristling, where the irritable block
Screams underneath the blade
Of love's demand, or in crimped and gouged-out
Shavings only, looses
Under a peeling logic its perceptions.

Language (mine, when wounding,
Yours, back-biting) lacks
No whorl nor one-way shelving. It resists,
Screams its remonstrance, planes
Reluctantly to a level. And the most
Reasonableness of settlements betrays
Unsmoothed resentment under the caress.

~~ Donald Davie

The Sewanee Review, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Winter, 1959).

I'm not very good at carpentry (or sewing, or weaving, or house repair or concocting culinary masterpieces) but I do love working with words and creating artful images, writing children's and other stories, and watching master craftsmen and craftswomen--carpenters and poets alike--at work. My tool is a beloved green fountain pen, with an extra-fine nib, or a sometimes quirky computer keyboard. Like an apprentice, I marvel at what can be done with fabric and leather and wood and stone--and words. How does one become accomplished in these endeavors? Practice, practice, practice. (Write, write, write.)  But for now, I'm getting much more pleasure out of just looking. So many varied 'weavings' to marvel at;  so many ideas for future creations. There are not enough hours in the day, or days in the year.

Changing the Wallpaper

not a been-to place ...
digital

Here is where you say it is.

Drawn to,

I plunge in.

Home.

_______________________

Was getting a bit tired of the summer scene from Tuscany--every day, all that sun, all those brilliant yellow flowers.  I can be there just by imagining.  Don't need a picture.  Sometimes it's nice to change the mental room around.   Tuscany had me walking barefoot in a vineyard or sitting on a hillside basking in the warmth.  But I can only take so much of summer, real or imagined. I start looking for those winds.

It's brutally cold outside. I don't have to imagine winter.  All I have to do is look outside my window.  

I miss swimming, though. I miss mountains and faraway, interesting skies. I wanted something that went farther than inviting pleasurable oblivion--some scene that called out to that part of me that houses more than just small remembered pleasures or wishful journeys--to that thing that's always there, at the core, that only rarely surfaces, that gets lost in the same 'ol, same 'ol.  This scene takes me there. Instantly.

It's not just the whispering silence, or the sky, or the water, or the shadows on snow, or even their combination.  It's what I feel when I'm in that brought-out place--like it knows me.  I have never been there--the place depicted here--and yet I know it.  It's not real, but more real somehow than the scene outside my window.  Why is that?

Funny thing--that big white round spot that looks like the sun (or full moon, out of place) descending absurdly low and fast-approaching, is not in the original wallpaper design. It appeared, mysteriously, when I took the photograph--a result of the flash, I suppose.  (See original here--Exotic Scenic Spot Wallpaper #5.)

How one can climb into a fictional scene in a book, a painted landscape, a song from the radio, an old photograph, the words of a poem--and feel at home. Like being a visitor in frozen time, bringing the There here. (Home isn't actually a real place, though.) How weird. And wonderful.

Nobody's Listening

                                   the war never ends
                                   inside my body
                                   a fist

                                   ~~ Shinji Noya




__________________

Hidden treasures, beckoning

Last week, in the basement of a local church thrift shop, wedged in between some old, much-used French recipe books and decades' old romance novels, I found this wonderful little bilingual French-Spanish book of poetry, Des yeux d'un autre regard/Ojos de otro mirar (Eyes to see otherwise), by Homero Aridjis, published by Ecrits des Forges, Ottawa, Canada, 1999, translated by Emile Martel.  It was sold to me for 25 cents.

What a wonderful introduction to a poet with whose poems I had been heretofore unfamiliar. I do not know Spanish and I am still learning French but already I am able to sense a kindred spirit--a poet who loves Monarch butterflies and cares deeply about the environment, Aridjis's words seem so familiar, penetrating instantly through the blur of translation directly into my heart.

I come new to poetry that several of my compatriots have been reading already for many years. Odd, though, it was as if this book found me, instead of the other way around, because I was already almost out the door when I hesitated and turned back with the thought, "I'm just gonna go look one more time, there might be some poetry books hiding somewhere in there," and sure enough--there one was!

On returning home I discovered a website offering 16 of Aridjis's poems from the bilingual anthology of Homero Aridjis, 2001.  (Oyos de otro mirar/Eyes to see otherwise (1998). Selected Poems 1960-2000). Selected and edited by Betty Ferber and George McWhirter (Manchester: Carcanet Press Ltd.)  Click here for the original Spanish, here for a translation into Macedonian; and here for the English translation, by Betty Ferber, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Martha Black Jordan, Philip Lamantia, W.S. Merwin, George McWhirter, John Frederick Nims, Kenneth Rexroth, Jerome Rothenberg, Brian Swann, Barbara Szerlip, Nathaniel Tarn and Eliot Weinberger. 

Only two of those poems appeared in the little book I found at the thrift shop.

Homer Aridjis's latest book, Solar Poems, translated by George McWhirter and published by City Light Books in San Francisco in March 2010 was the first bilingual edition of a complete single volume of his poems that had been originally published in 2005.

Just reading the titles of some of the poems in the index makes me want to get this book:

"Meeting with my Father in the Orchard"
"Self-Portrait of a Young Man Out Walking in His Past"
"Recommendations for Life as a Ghost"
"Landscapes of Nothing"
"Light Pulsing on the Rails"
"You Are Astonished by Shadows"
"Poems for an Insomniac"
"The Hungering Spider of Deep Love"
"The White Cat of Early Morning"
"Ballad of Friends Now Gone"
"Place"

To read the first poem in the book--click here, where he talks about the expanding universe that fits into our mind:

               into our expanding minds fit all the stars
               our mind is a verse towards the universe.

Click here to read two of his poems that appeared in Jacket 15: "Goethe Said That Architecture" and "Rain in the Night".

Enjoy.

ambiguity

moon hides behind tree's lattice -

wait for sign of light

A Carrot in Her Toaster

I confess that rhyming verses are less compelling reading for me than lines allowed to stretch or contract, not subject to alignment with the lines above. I love the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, though, and from time to time find contemporary rhyming poetry that delights or moves me. Such is the case with the poetry of one Marion Sharville, who lives in England. Her sons set her up on a blog five years ago, when she was 83, "to try to keep me off the streets and out of trouble", she says. (One of her sons who left a comment signed himself as "Son No. 7")

She writes poems rhymed and unrhymed, as well as short stories, on her blog, A Carrot in the Toaster.

In The Veteran's Journey, she describes what it's like for soldiers when they're shipped back home, broken, damaged, unable to function. An excerpt:

His mates who fell, still live inside his head
as homeward bound to strangers, he now goes.
Responsibilities and cares make up his bed
back in a life that he no longer knows.

Here's another sample (non-rhyming) poem:

CHILD MINDING

A clatter as the old box is
tipped out on to the kitchen table,
adding more clutter to the things
not yet cleared away.

Small hands reach for treasures.
Eyes large, tongue helping,
she concentrates on building a world.
Reality takes a back seat and life dances
between the butter dish and the sugar bowl.

The quietness is inlaid with
the child’s soft humming.
Contentment settles like a
carelessly thrown cashmere shawl.

~ ~Marion Sharville

In one of her short-short stories, Car Owner Preferred, a man searches for companionship through the classifieds, with surprising results.

Marion has a terrific imagination. She can get inspiration from the briefest observation, or reported local event. And she's not afraid to make her words sing. For example, at the end of January 2008, about 2000 tons of timber washed ashore at Worthing after the sinking of the Ice Prince cargo ship in the English Channel.  Marion sat down and wrote a poem about it, called "Worthing Wood",  to the tune of Teddy Bears' Picnic, a popular children's song.

The title of her blog intrigued me. Why in the world would anyone stick a carrot in their toaster? Marion explains:

A CARROT IN THE TOASTER

I’ll put a carrot in the toaster,
a pot of face cream in my shoe.

Anything will do
as long as it is out of place;
a silent clue what I must do
to see me through
this ‘clean forgotten’ phase.

A handkerchief, tied in a knot,
once helped a lot.
A different issue, is a tissue.

A diary to rely on,
is the answer, if I choose it,
but then, I’d only lose it.

I will create a memory-mate.

Not a lot of people boast a
carrot in the toaster.

~ ~ Marion Sharville

I love her poems and little short stories. Marion is a keen observer of human behavior; her characters are familiar, their problems and dreams and ruminations instantly recognizable. I love her sense of humor. But she also has an uncanny knack, in the more serious poems, of getting to the heart of a thing, ignoring the window dressing, as it were, going right to the core.

Four of my favorite poems by Marion, here.

So today's toast is to Marion Sharville across the pond, may her stories and poems keep coming. They have inspired me to be more observant, to catch the little things, the unsaid words, the unexpressed passions, the secret pain of others, not just as subject matter for one's writing, but a reminder that we're all connected, because these things happen to all of us--the tragic, the ridiculous, the sometimes amazing, and the just plain downright confusing. Marion's poems and stories catch those threads, and weave them out for us to see. Thank you, Madam Sharville, for putting them into words.

Human Rights Day Today

The librarian from Odessa arrested for advocating the right of Ukrainians to use their native language. She was declared insane and confined in a maximum security psychiatric hospital. A gentle woman in a white blouse and plaid skirt, we get to meet her years after.  As also a psychiatrist who refused to declare dissidents mentally ill.  For this he was himself sent to prison.  I remember when we got reports that he was on hunger strike, being forcibly fed and drugged with antipsychotic medications. And there he sits, years later, across the table from us, sharing a coffee.  The Tibetan monk, describing the instruments of torture to which he and his cell mates had been subjected, recounts the gnawing hunger and frequent beatings, that prisoners ate rats and shoelaces to quell their hunger pains. These were the survivors, the ones who eventually got out.   So many, many more that didn't; now new ones being arrested and imprisoned every day.

So here it is 2010 and not much has changed.  You write letters, sign petitions, send words of support, march in protest, hold candlelight vigils, all of which helps bring attention to the situation, but it's not enough.  Because it's still happening, it's still going on, people are still being imprisoned and tortured for what they think or believe or write or say.

My mom used to have a little Indian saying posted in her kitchen, something about walking a mile in someone else's moccasins and I  wondered if I could stand just five minutes in someone else's shoes in a dark cell, being starved or beaten, not being allowed contact of any kind with loved ones, knowing it'd be years before I got out or even if I ever would--all because of something I wrote.  Still, that's in the realm of imagination only.  I could maybe "imagine" it but I don't ever see it as happening to me.  But it could.  I mean, I could one day be in the wrong place at the wrong time and express an opinion or write something that might anger certain officials and suddenly find myself in a similar position as those for whom I once wrote letters.

According to Amnesty International,  “Too many perpetrators are getting away with some of the worst crimes known to humanity."  Amnesty surveyed conditions in 159 countries last year, noting that "people were tortured in 111 nations" and that “human rights abusers enjoyed impunity for torture in at least 61 countries.”
The report sharply criticized some of the world’s largest and most powerful nations for not fully signing up to the International Criminal Court  — notably the United States, China, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Russia.[1]

Because I was once energetically involved in human rights work, this day--December 10--when it arrives every year, jolts me out of my complacency.  What have I done lately to help further human rights in the world?  When's the last time I wrote a letter to or for a prisoner of conscience?  Or even thought much about it?   It's not enough to know that injustice happens, that it continues to happen.  Does one ever "retire" from activism?  Yes and no; no and yes.  So many other things on one's plate these days, so many other things clamoring for and eating one's time.  You profess to care, my little voice nudges me.  Care how?  But really, how much effort would it take to write one letter?  Is once a year, on the anniversary of Human Rights Day, enough?  Could writing one letter really make a difference?  Well today at least there will be many people all over the world doing just that--writing one letter.[2]



 Liu Xiaobo on the effect of just one letter:
  
One Letter Is Enough

for Xia

one letter is enough
for me to transcend and face
you to speak
as the wind blows past
the night
uses its own blood
to write a secret verse
that reminds me each
word is the last word
the ice in your body
melts into a myth of fire
in the eyes of the executioner
fury turns to stone
two sets of iron rails
unexpectedly overlap
moths flap toward lamp
light, an eternal sign
that traces your shadow

~ ~ Liu Xiaobo

Translated by Jeffrey Yang
 [From:  PEN American Center]

They wouldn't let him attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.  His wife is under house arrest. They wouldn't let her go either. He was supposed to receive his award today.  It's the first time in 75 years that no representative of the winner was allowed to make the trip to receive the medal.[3]  He may not be getting out soon, but his words are.  Greywolf Press will be publishing his poetry collection, and Harvard University a selection of his works, in 2012.  

Not everyone being incarcerated for their writings or peaceful activism is as famous or well-known as Xiaobo.  Scores of others are complete unknowns, caught up nevertheless in the web of injustice.  You rarely hear about them. Some vague notion occasionally, but it seems so far from one's daily life.  Not something one thinks about a lot, or even at all.  Even for those who follow such things, sometimes silence is too easy.  It takes over, becomes habitual:  Situation noted.  Now what. 

Maybe it's time to go bang some pans in the street, as Molly Ivins once suggested.  Or write a letter.  Something.  Anything.  My inner voice just won't let this go for some reason.  These are fellow human beings.  They could be us. We could be them. We are them--all in this together.  Some of us just get to be more free than others, get to have our say without repercussion.  Should be something that's possible for all.  (In a perfect world.  Which of course it isn't.)  (Okay, off the soapbox now.) Anyway ....if anyone cares to join in and write a letter,  grab a pen.  Get a stamp.  Some cases and addresses can be found here. 

Words matter.

Not in Your Lifetime. So what?

A seasoned fellow writer recently commented on how difficult it was to attract readers lately, commiserating on the idea that he might die never knowing what effect, if any, his various writings had on anyone.  Even his wife (who encourages his endeavors), rarely reads the stories and poems he writes.  ("You have your interests; I have mine.")

Which reminded me  for some reason of a friend's son, who had some talent as a painter, and wanted to spend his life pursuing it.  His mother found this impractical.  You cannot make a living at it, she said.  "You need to study engineering or computers," and when they were packing to return to Europe, she threw out all his sketches and paintings.  He was 19 at the time.  (Regardless of their worth, what mother would do that to her child's artwork, especially one who had talent and had won prizes for it and professed to want to devote his life to the pursuit of art?)   I have not been in touch with this family for many years.  I heard some years back that he was living in Paris, working as a firefighter in one of the arrondissments.  The last I heard, he had opened his own studio and made his living by teaching art, and continues to paint.

How many artists and writers labor away, doing what they love--writing or painting--while trying to support a family or under crushing time constraints, while those closest to them, while encouraging them, yet hope they  won't  give up their day job. 

I read an essay this morning about Herman Melville, written by a librarian in Rhode Island,  that reminded me that even some of the most famous writers, in their lifetime, struggled with the same misgivings, dilemmas and employment issues many writers are faced with today:  How to make sense of the times one is living in; how to get people to read what one writes--how to put bread on the table.  Melville's early novels didn't generate enough income for him to live on, and even after the publication of Moby-Dick, he apparently had trouble getting people to read his work. (When Moby-Dick first came out in 1851, it flopped, as did its sequel Pierre, which did even worse).  "By the end of the 1850s, he was no longer able to support his wife and four children."

Melville tried valiantly to secure appointment as a U.S. consul in Florence, Italy, but never stood a chance. In March, he even traveled to Washington to advance his cause, and waited in a very long line to shake the hands of the new president [Abraham Lincoln].  He was possibly the worst self-promoter of all time, and said nothing to Lincoln, though he admired him  ...     Later in the visit, he sat in the park opposite the White House, “sunning myself on a seat,” and noticed that the shrubbery was starting to bud. Then he tried to get into the Washington Monument and failed. He was a middle-aged man, next to a half-finished obelisk, with no idea where he or his country were headed. [1]

That could be now--the part about not knowing where one (or one's country) is headed.  How many of us have been in that kind of situation, though--the dream job we want beyond our reach, forcing us to take whatever is available--in Melville's case, a job gotten for him through the influence of his wife and her family, where he would spend the next 19 years inspecting cargo for a living. 

In 1866, a collection of 70 poems he'd written on the Civil War were published, in a book under the title of Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War.  It was not well received; in fact it "tanked instantly."  He kept writing, though, working for years on a massive epic poem which his uncle actually paid to have published, but that, too, bombed, its unsold copies eventually being burned. Melville died in 1891, having been almost completely forgotten.

Fast forward to now, and how many today have not heard of Moby-Dick or Herman Melville?  It would be nice to know in our lifetime, that what we write is being read, or may someday be read--and might even  continue to be read.  It would be nice for writers to have some recognition now, of course, but you see how that goes.  Usually, it doesn't.  History is full of  writers and painters and composers who died, sick or broke or in despair, unacknowledged or forgotten in their lifetimes, without ever knowing how loved and treasured their works would one day come to be, or that they'd continue to be referenced and admired by countless people all over the world.  And there are thousands more--really good writers out there, who've written some remarkable pieces--who the world, and perhaps their own countrymen, will never know even existed.

My favorite Melville quote:  "There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke." Yes, it feels that way sometimes.  :)

I like the image of him, though, sunning himself on a park bench in D.C., after a bumbled job attempt,  looking at the shrubbery.   He's just lost his chance at a shot at his dream job and unknown to him then is about to face years of employment working on the docks, inspecting cargo, and he takes the time to sit and  feel the sun on his shoulders and notice nature unfolding in the bushes nearby.

What lasts and what doesn't; what is reborn again and again; and the compulsion to write, without knowing if anyone will ever read it, much less find it worthy.  The question came out of nowhere:  Does it really matter if it all comes to naught, that one's words may never get published, or even, for that matter, get read at all.  And the answer, equally surprising (at least in regard to my own lifelong scribblings), was a resounding "No".  And that's somehow--freeing.  It's not in the end, I think, about who wrote what, or if this work is more memorable than that work. It's that the world is full of wonderful words, there for the taking (there for the keeping!), that seem so familiar, that resonate, that wake us up, that bring unexpected insight, or solace, or waves of pure delight.  And that it will always will be so, for as long as writers write.

"Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things." ~~ Herman Melville  

Amen.

Stillness, Loudness, Endings.

We said goodbye to Eliane yesterday. She was the wife of my mate's mother's brother. I've been at a number of funerals here and they are pretty much always the same. Everyone in the family is notified and come to pay their respects--first at the funeral parlor, the next day at the church, sometimes also then at the cemetery, and finally at a luncheon or afternoon buffet to all sit down together and talk.

It's been snowing all weekend. Eliane had Lou Gehrig's disease, a particularly horrible way to have to end one's life. I didn't know her well but was very fond of her, as was nearly everyone who met her. The caravan of cars driving behind the hearse from the church to the cemetery seemed endless. Six men in identical black coats and felt hats walked through the snow carrying her casket while the rest of us gathered around for prayers and a last farewell. Her son and daughters and grandchildren each placed a flower on the top of the casket and a woman with whom none of us were familiar broke down and sobbed, saying "She was like a second mother to me."

That evening was also my mate's annual office Christmas party, which was held this year at the hippodrome--not a party actually, but a shared supper, in the big buffet restaurant above the casino. What a contrast, between the silence of the group of us huddling together against the cold in the snow at the cemetery earlier, and the cacaphony of three giant wall TVs competing with a tiny disco band and a hundred voices shouting and clinking glasses and karaoke-ing. You had to shout to the person right next to you in order to be able to be heard above the din. Last year's dinner-party was much pleasanter: in a quiet little cafe that served about the best seafood casserole I have ever tasted, occasional music from a Spanish guitar.

We were seated last night near this gigantic window watching the storm outside.  I am always amazed at the lengths to which smokers will go to have their 15 minutes of smoke time. A number of them, bundled in heavy coats,  braved the elements and fled outside.  We could see them pacing back and forth on the snow-covered balcony in the freezing wind puffing away on their cigarettes. (From this vantage point you can follow the race cars on the speedway nearby in the summer, and get a spectacular view of the city at night, especially colorful and lit up around Christmas time.) Before leaving, we tried out one of the slot machines in the casino below, just for fun. We started out feeding it a $20 bill and ended up winning $120. My mate said the machine probably lets new people win on the first try, just to get them to come back. But none of the other two couples won anything and it was their first time as well, so there goes that theory. Besides, how would a machine know who was a newcomer or not? A little 6-seat, glass-enclosed shuttle bus came to pick us up and drive us from the casino to the parking lot, which by this time was pretty muchs iced over. People were slipping and sliding all over the place, even with heavy boots on. We got home around midnight.

I can't get that scene out of my mind though--those six men in dark coats and hats tromping across the cemetery, carrying Eliane's coffin to her final resting place, in the cold, biting wind, snow everywhere, the sullen gray sky, absolute Stillness. The idea that yet another one of the family is gone, surrounded by so many whose names I can't remember but whose faces I recognize from meeting year after year, at a party or picnic or wedding or funeral, a continual reminder of how connected is Family. Rest in peace, Eliane. You will be missed.

The importance of music

Alice Herz-Sommer, pianist and oldest living Holocaust survivor, turned 107 last month.

Herz-Sommer swam daily until the age of 97. At 104, she published a bestselling book A Garden of Eden in Hell recalling the events of the concentration camps.  She claims to have been a close friend of Franz Kafka.  She has an active social life and continues playing the piano.

 
















"I have lived through many wars and have lost everything many times - including my husband, my mother and my beloved son. Yet, life is beautiful, and I have so much to learn and enjoy. I have no space nor time for pessimism and hate." [For more on her life, click here].

"The worst thing in life, in my opinion--is boredom."

A friend of a friend, many years ago, at the age of 95, decided to study Italian.  "Whatever for?" someone asked her.  She wasn't planning to go to Italy or anything.  It was just something she wanted to do:  Learn to read and speak Italian.   For some reason, hearing about Alice Herz-Sommer and her very active older years, suddenly made me remember that. A former elderly neighbor, after a minor traffic accident, was told he could no longer drive and his family took the car away from him. For weeks he moped about the house or stood outside at the fence, not knowing what to do. His health went downhill rapidly after that, and he ended up in a nursing home, from which one night he tried to escape. "He simply cannot live without that car," his wife told us. It represented independence, being in control of something, taking charge of things.

It seems when you get old, the first thing to go is your health; and then your patience, and then your sense of humor--and finally your sanity.  The complaint I most hear, and see, however, from visiting elderly friends or relatives over the years, is that of overwhelming, excruciating Boredom.  All the days are the same. You're continually reminded of all the things you can no longer do, the places you can no longer go, the life you no longer have.   Not everyone is fortunate enough to still have a great talent or be blessed with an ingrained positive outlook on life.  But is it ever really too late to learn something?  Even on one's deathbed, one can learn compassion, forgiveness, or how to laugh again.  Exiting life with a laugh, rather than a curse. But this post today is really about music--the importance of music in our lives.  Music for some, is like being with God.  (In another, 12-minute video that has since been removed from YouTube, Alice Herz-Sommer says that, to her, "Music is God."  As in, the highest thing.)

When she talks about the beautiful music certain composers have given us, and its effect on us, I cannot in the depths of my soul imagine what a world without music would be. I have, however met people whose worlds are like that for them--reaching for but not being able to see beauty in anything, the radio music of life drowning out the remembered joy of long lost rapture, so that death is now welcomed, one's place in life no longer known or felt.  I don't know if we can, years before the fact, determine that that won't be our plight, that we won't succumb to the ravages of time and illness or crippling debilitation, that we'll be able to face those years with grace and dignity and still find joy in life.

But things change us.  Pain and failure and loneliness and disease ... change us.  And we're given drugs to cope, or numb our consciousness. Music, I think, would be the only panacea left that would hold me together.  Music has "saved" me more times than I can remember; pulled me out of the deepest depression, consoled me, uplifted me, made me dance with complete abandon, gave me a hundred million happy memories, re-enacted on each hearing.  I think I know what Herz-Sommer means when she says Music ... is God. (Silence, too, is music, of a different sort, one without notes or a melody, but one hears it all the same.)

At any rate, what an inspiration.  People turn fifty and think it's all downhere from there on in.  Maybe it needn't be.  Maybe that's the wrong approach.  As long as the gray cells are still functioning ... Maybe, if I ever master French, I can take on a few more languages in my lifetime.  Publish a book at 95!  Wouldn't that be something!! Never say never; you just never know.

Day with the Animals

On the way to the SPA (Society for the Protection of Animals) yesterday ...

This is us en route to my first day as a benevole (volunteer) at the local animal shelter.  [Practicing making mini-videos with my little blue camera.  Hint:  Try not to hit too many red lights.  The camera doesn't know what to do when the rolling landscape abruptly stops! Also, I can't figure out how to get rid of the annoying Google pop-up ads. Click on the "x" to remove them.]

Last week a new little creature arrived on our doorstep, abandoned and starving. She was all skin and bones. We named her Chloe and took her to the SPA where she was given an exam and put up for adoption.  A less-than-five-minute casual conversation with the animal handler who came to pick the little stray cat up was all it took to get me hooked--on volunteering.  It's funny about those things--a random remark here, a casual reference there, that piques your curiosity so that you're prompted to inquire further, and before you know you're suddenly involved in something you'd never considered before. 

I did not always have a positive view about animal shelters.  Someone had once told me that after a few days, if no one adopts the animal, it is put to sleep.  That may be true of some shelters, but not this one.  Every effort is made to find a new home for their animals.  Some are there for as long as six months or more, being fed and cared for, until someone adopts them. Animals severely wounded, seriously ill or wild and unmanageable cannot be put up for adoption.   

Yesterday I got to see Chloe and play with her for a while. (Here is her up-for-adoption announcement). 

During the 2-1/2 hours I was there I walked eight dogs and did playtime with three cats. For the dogs, they asked if I preferred a short leash or a long one. The one thing I know about dogs and leashes is that it's hard to run and play when the leash is short. So I opted for the long one.

When I went into the Dog Room, all the dogs started barking as soon as they saw the leash. "Take me!"  "No, me!" they seemed to be saying. Which one to choose? I picked a 4-month old mixed-breed Labrador/Dalmation named Frip. Of all the dogs, he was the only one not barking. He was just lying there in a corner looking kind of sad. So I took him first.

<--Frip.    What a friendly, playful dog he turned out to be. He seemed to come alive the minute we hit the air outside.  We walked the perimeter of the grounds onto an adjacent, wooded field. I threw snowballs and he chased after them. Leaping, almost.  I had as much fun as he did. I brought him back, and next took out a dog named Renata; "I adore to live in the country!" her file says. So she, too, got taken near the woods.

My greatest challenge was walking a Huskie called Top Gun. What a name for a dog, a tribute to its perceived macho-ninity, I suppose. Sixty-four pounds of raw brute energy, it was all I could do to hang onto him. His favorite thing was diving into the snow, burrowing his nose deep into the earth and chewing on everything in sight. I had difficulty putting him back in his cage, it seems he wasn't quite ready to go back in yet.  "Offer me stability and love, and I will show you all my loyalty," his adoption file states.

It was funny:  every one of them pushed their nose into or tried to eat the snow.  A beautiful, mixed Golden Labrador named Maggie just wanted to play tug-o'-war with the leash and tried bringing a big scratchy branch back in her mouth when we got to the entrance door. To a one, they all loved being outside.

Then it was on to the cats. I got to visit Chloe, who was as affectionate and playful as I remembered her from our first meeting a mere two days before when she showed up at our back door.

The cats are not often let out of their cages and so even ten minutes of playtime or getting their hair brushed or simply being held and paid attention to is a real treat for them. My mate arrived before I was scheduled to leave and so he joined me in hosting a cat in the play room--three, actually: Glosette and Pitoune and one named  Dur a Cuir (which in French means "Hard to Leather.") What kind of a name is that for a cat? I asked. It means, he explained, the equivalent of "Tough Cookie". This cat, according to its bona fides, seems to have had a difficult life. "I have probably known the great cold of winter, without a place to warm myself.  It is why I have lost the tips of my ears," its file said. "But with my passive nature and my original look, I hope to find a loving family that will assure me a warm place for life!" 

How kind, to term a physical disfigurement "an original look."  I've heard a similar enactment of this tendency to soften the bald reality of a situation--in this case re: humans.  Say someone, one of your friends of relatives, is especially difficult to deal with;  downright weird, even.  Rather than the negative-sounding "Oh, he's impossible!" or "She's really strange", one says instead, "He (or she) is special."  

As to some of the shelter's "special" animals, one of the employees there told me he and his wife adopted two physically handicapped cats after no one came forward to take them--one cat had only three legs and the other one a mysterious condition where it could not support its own head.  Its head "bobbled" and the poor thing could not hold its head up straight. I once saw a guy in North Cambridge, Massachusetts carrying his aged dog up and down the sidewalk for a "walk" because it could no longer walk by itself. Most people would have had it put to sleep at that point. There are people for whom that is the last option, not the first. And there are people who bypass the cute puppies and kitties and choose the seemingly least adoptable creatures to take home with them, knowing these animals will require special care and may not live as long as their younger, more physically fit counterparts.

Who among us at some point in our lives hasn't lost a beloved pet to illness or accident or old age, vowing never to go through that again, declining suggestions to get another one.   Sometimes we do--get another one. You can't really replace a lost loved one, pet or person.    There will never be another exactly like them.  Ever. But love locked in for what has already passed--is love locked in.  Sometimes it's good to let love out again, for another being--one who could use it, would welcome it, and there is something to be said for the healing that comes from love recycled.  Just my opinion.  Life is too short not to share love, to take some of that love for what is already gone and allow it to flow again to what is still very much here.

Not long ago you could adopt a dog or cat here for around $20 or $30. The price has since more than doubled, mainly because the shelter is currently operating at a loss. All domestic animals are required to be registered in this city. The money from these licenses constitute 60% of the shelter's revenue but as of the end of last month they were $68,000 in the red.[1]. Many people, rather than pay the yearly animal license fee of $20 or $30, claim the animal has been lost, or deny having domesticated animals altogether. The situation is  especially problematic in the case of cats.

According to an article last week in L'Hebdo, an estimated 6,000 animals are abandoned here each year. Since January, 2010, according to the SPA, 5,635 files have been opened for abandoned or lost animals. Of these, a total of 1,723 animals have either been adopted out or reclaimed at the local SPA. Some people adopt an animal but then bring it back.  "It was too frisky", they complain; or "I don't have the patience to work with it" (in the case of a too-shy, defensive or overly energetic animal).  And so it is put up for adoption again.

The shelter can only house 40 dogs, 90 cats and a dozen other animals (such as rabbits, or parrots, or gerbils, etc.  A 4-month domestic rat named "Albert" is currently up for adoption for only $10.)   Just last week, someone left a box of newborn kittens outside the doors of the SPA. "These animals were literally frozen," said an employee who has worked there for five years. "I've seen everything," he says. "I think I could write a book."

With the new, higher prices for the adoption fee, some otherwise willing would-be adopters struggling with economic woes may think twice about forking over $75 to $115 for an abandoned dog or cat. One is always  juggling priorities. And yet people seem to find money for the latest electronic gadjet, especially around Christmas time, according to some recent polls assessing consumer-spending habits. 

All I know is, Frip and Chloe and their fellow cage-mates sure would love to find a new home this winter.

How many stray cat visitors  we have seen come and go, come and go; how many rescued, or found shot with a BB gun, or ravaged by another animal, or hit by a car, or frozen on a porch, just in our small neighborhood alone..

<-- Our Pépé, when we first found him, 6 years ago.  We found a neighbor woman willing to adopt him but two days later she knocked at the door, a brown, zipped up satchel under her arm, bringing him back to us.  Her landlady would not permit her to keep him. I'm not going to bore you with hearts suddenly melting (ours) but that's exactly what happened.  (You had to have been there.)  Suffice it to say, Pépé stayed.  We probably should not have named him before we attempted to give him away.  Made it all that much harder when he came back.  He wasn't just "that little cat" anymore.  He had a name.

It is expensive to have a dog or cat "fixed" so they won't reproduce. And when people move, they sometimes can't take their pet with them. What would happen if places like the SPA did not exist?   But it does. And both their temporary and long-term animal residents eventually all get adopted out. Some are just there a lot longer than others.They would like to expand, add more holding space, build a park behind the shelter, hire a permanent, full-time veterinarian, more staff.  They need a generous benefactor, more people willing to adopt.

What an interesting day it was. The downside is--and my mate warned me about this--you can get too attached to them.   Everyone I have ever known who has worked in an animal shelter, at some point, burns out.   A lot leave and don't come back.  "Too hard," they say.  "Too sad."  I can understand why.  It is hard seeing these animals all caged and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, to find a home; or arriving in pain, or too sickly or injured to be saved.  But for now, time and weather permitting, I look forward to continuing going there. Running in the snow with a happy dog--the greatest feeling in the world.  Seeing an animal get adopted out--priceless.

Stone People

 

Rain, on stone

like teardrops, sent

to wash away

uncried pain

_________________

*Photo by Tine Berge, taken "one beautiful rainy day" in Oslo.

*A reader has kindly pointed out to me that it looks more like a nose drop than a rain drop.  That's only because it was caught in the act, so to speak, the only rain drop visible when this particular photograph was taken.  Where it landed should be irrelevant. It's still "rain, on stone".   But it still looks like a statue with a runny nose.  I saw it as a metaphor, however, for people who have difficulty expressing pain--or anything at all.  People unable to speak, or sing, or cry.  Like stone statues.  Hence the title Stone People.   

On second thought, without the photo, the poem makes no sense.   Poems that need visuals, to "explain" their intention, should rethink themselves.  With or without visual accompaniment, we all see different things in the wording of a poem.  I think now this couldn't be classified as a real poem.  It's more a mental observation, on associations, pretending to be something it's not.  But I shall leave it, because the stone face in the photograph is magnificent and it "said" something to me, however awkwardly I managed to portray it.  It still does.  Stones that speak, without sound.

Fun with Harmony #3

Landscape, Interrupted

Man Contemplating Bird

_________

I am relaxing, playing with Mr. Doob's Drawing Program.

The first drawing is called "Not a Care". It is a kind of imagined voluntary liberation.

"Landscape, Interrupted" is unfinished because the darn program "saved" before I was through. I think my finger fell asleep doing the yellow grass and I pressed the wrong side of the mouse by mistake. (There was supposed to be a sea of sunflowers in the foreground. It would have taken For-ever.) I will be seeing yellow in my dreams tonight.

The bird in the third drawing has a head that looks more like it belongs to a squirrel, and its tail perhaps should go with a chicken. (It could be why the man is staring at it.) The bird wasn't meant to be there. I tried drawing a mustache on the guy's face and screwed up. You cannot erase on Mr. Doob's drawing program. So you gotta improvise. The bird is an attempt to salvage the scene. It may or may not have succeeded but it was fun.

The last (mini) drawing is another "original-idea-gone-south." It is trying desperately to be a cat, so I will let it. I call it "Sort of a Cat". He's in front of sort-of-a window, staring at a haphazardly executed brick wall. The 'bricks' are all different sizes--stacked, but not cemented together. It's made his hair stand on end.

This bunch added to the other Fun with Harmonies, #1 and #2)

Invitation to Awareness

Happy Thanksgiving! -- to all those who celebrate this special holiday.

Last year on Thanksgiving, I itemized all the things for which I was thankful. Here it is that time again, one year later and that still all holds true but no special dinner has been planned. Canada celebrated its Thanksgiving Day in October and it's nowhere near as big a holiday here as it is in the U.S.

In the U.S., for many Thanksgiving means not only a big family dinner but watching the annual parade or football game on TV, big sales on Black Friday the day after, and the horrendous traffic back for those who came in from out of town. All part of the tradition.

We have plenty of big, sit-down dinners here with my mate's family, but my fondly remembered American Thanksgivings are now a thing of the past. I don't know any Americans here, my mate's not that crazy about pumpkin pie, and I'm a vegetarian, so there'd be no turkey. Turkey is traditional but I've had many an untraditional version, with calamari or tofu or soup.  It was still a thanks-giving.  My kids are hundreds of miles away and none of us can afford to visit at this time. Hence no big family Thanksgiving get-together celebration this year. We will share our good wishes over the telephone. As for spectator parade-watching or sports broadcasts or Black Friday shopping, none of that interests me. In that, I guess you could say I'm untraditional. Pumpkin pie, however, is non-negotiable. You absolutely cannot have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. It just doesn't compute.

The most interesting Thanksgiving I ever heard about was from the wife of a former colleague who volunteered at a local soup kitchen. She told me that one Thanksgiving, to raise awareness of all the people who were starving in the world, some organization whose name I can no longer remember invited people to attend a big sit-down Thanksgiving dinner, for $15 per person, proceeds to go towards world hunger.

When you arrived, you were asked to pick your entry ticket out of a box. There were three kinds of tickets.

If you got a green ticket, you would be served the full dinner, with all the trimmings--and be allowed seconds on desert.

If you got a yellow ticket, you would be served what starving people in third-world countries sometimes get to eat--a child-sized helping of rice or thin, watery soup--and nothing else.

And if you got a white ticket--you'd get nothing at all.

So imagine you're at this banquet and you get the full meal, with all the trimmings, and you're sitting next to someone who got nothing. Would you turn and give half of what you have to that person? What if you're one of the unlucky ones who got the thin, watery soup? Or worse, the empty plate. Would you quietly sip your water and listen to your stomach growl, hoping the people next to you might offer to give you some of theirs?

I'm sure a lot of sharing went around, probably immediately, after the initial surprise (and perhaps discomfort) wore off. Giving money to a charity, for which you get a sit-down dinner, is one thing; being invited to dinner and served an empty plate and having it suddenly sink in what real deprivation is like, is quite another. (Well, the invitation did say the theme was Awareness.)  But how uncomfortable to have to sit in front of an empty plate all evening long while others are eating. That glass of water can only go so far.

I went without  lunch yesterday--not by choice.  I simply forgot.  I was working on something and the hours flew and I suddenly realized it was getting dark outside and all I'd had to eat the whole day long was a cup of coffee at 6 a.m.  My stomach began reminding me it hadn't been fed.  Loudly.  No problem.  I could open my refrigerator or reach for something in the cupboard and solve the problem, instantly.

But what if I couldn't?  What if, for whatever reason,there was none to be had and no more food would be forthcoming for another day. Another two days. Maybe even a whole week. How would I deal with that?  Certainly, after a day or two, lack of food would make me woozy, lightheaded ... lethargic, even.   I'd probably lose weight.  Temporarily fasting is one thing. Starvation, however, is quite another.

I think that's what the organizers of that unusual Thanksgiving dinner wanted to convey--that life is not fair.  Some of us get to sit down every evening to a good meal, Every Single Night.  Some can only afford to buy food meant for animals.  Some get somebody else's leftovers, fished out of a trash can.  And some get nothing at all.

So many things to be thankful for this holiday.   Awareness--however received--is one of them.