The tone of the dreams I had last night was exactly that of the film “12 Years a Slave.” Horrible film about a prominent free black man (Chiwetel Ejiofor) from Saratoga, NY, who was taken on pretense of a great musical opportunity (he was a violinist) to Washington DC and there kidnapped and sold into slavery.
The brilliance of the film (adapted by John Ridley from Solomon Northup’s memoire and directed by Steve McQueen) is in the depiction of how a free black man had little or no idea of the slavery happening in his own country and was wholly naive to the point of victimization. I confess I, too, did not know, have never seen, really, free black men depicted during that time period. How vastly different was he when he returned to his family. Humiliated and broken, to say the least.
Fortunately the true story didn’t end in the condition of slavery. Solomon Northup was blessed to meet a man from Canada (Brad Pitt) who was willing to risk his life in getting a message to Northup’s family in NY. A very wealthy white man arrived with a sheriff to the plantation and freed him. I do not recall the man’s name but I believe, having looked at the biography briefly, that he was a lawyer who was related to Mr. Northup’s father’s former slave owner who had freed the family. I believe, therefore, the name Northup was also his.
It was a horrible movie. Not in the craft of it, writing, direction or acting, but in the story itself. Difficult to watch. In fact I closed my eyes throughout when the beatings were too harsh to bear watching. I confess to being one who will fast forward or mute such scenes especially in a story that is based on reality. T. S. Eliot said that human kind cannot bear very much reality. And this is a singular characteristic that permits evil—and how good men who do nothing are co-perpetrators, as I believe it was Thoreau who said so but not in those words. Those who are horribly and unforgivably cruel are sustained in their cruelty by the likes of those who cannot bear to see or believe that such cruelty exists.
The depiction of slavery in this film ... I’m at a loss as to how to qualify it in words. Excruciating. This speaks to the brilliance of the story as portrayed, as told, as lived cinematically to evoke the kind of identification with the key character that it does. I don’t know that it gets too much farther apart in relate-ability than the chasm between a 21st century well-educated, well-traveled middle class southern white woman and a 19th century northern black man kidnapped and sold into slavery to be beaten nearly to death on many occasions, live in constant fear of savagery, and miraculously freed. I identified with him and with the victimization to the point of being unable to watch great stretches.
There are two scenes that cinematically are quite brave as they are appropriate and powerful. Time in film, of course, is very different than real life. Communicating a point is different in art than in, say, teaching. So to watch how a man is partially lynched and left hanging, hands tied behind his back, feet (I believe) tied together, who is literally spared as long as he is able to keep pressing his very tippy toes into the mud beneath him to take off just enough pressure to prevent choking for an ungodly length of time, is horrific but necessary. We “get it” but we’re forced to stay with him because we don’t get it unless we are forced to stay with him. To stay. To stay. It is not enough to get it that he is left hanging. But that he is left. Hanging. We are forced to stay. McQueen lets the scene run far, far longer than the usual “we get it” length of time, forcing us to squirm in our vicarious choking for longer than I’ve ever seen in a film. We learn that in fact we will never—ever—really get it. We stay. Other slaves proceed with their lives and duties, barely looking his direction (one risks her life to give him water from a cup and wipe his mouth—a subtle but profound gesture of kindness that imparts dignity), and unless you are looking directly at him, at his booted toes working against the mud, he dangles there like a dead man. Forever, movie-wise. It. Is. Unprecedented.
A second most memorable scene comes after Solomon has trusted the Canadian (having been betrayed at least twice before) with his secret and the man has promised to deliver his message at the risk of his own life, calling it his duty to try to help him. On this wide screen, McQueen has a close up on Solomon’s beleaguered and terrified, sweaty face which takes up well over a third of the frame. The expression is fraught with fear and hope against hope. He is surveying the land—behind him in blended, shapeless hues of green expanse of land. It is a long, long scene. The countenance is at the left hand side of the frame and looking to his right, our left. Such a crop conveys not only an imbalance but a destitution and hopelessness. Emotionally this conveys how his gaze is slammed against the boundary of his fate. Again, we get it. But we can’t really get it. So we are forced to stay. There is nothing to live for if there is no hope. Then his gaze begins to shift and suddenly, yet miraculously not breaking the fourth wall, his gaze holds directly looking at us. Again, we get it—he his looking at the vast hopelessness of his situation, the impossibility of ever again seeing his family, the fear at this prospect is clear in his eyes and the deep waving creases in his forehead and around his eyes, nose and mouth. He’s not looking at us, he is looking past us at all of this. But we are looking directly at him, into his eyes, into the face of our own fear—that just as the Canadian said to the slave owner, all it takes is a law to be passed and your freedom is wholly lost. But no law, he goes on to say, can change the unchangeable truth that every man, no matter his race, is meant to be free—slavery is a cruelty that will bring a day of profound reckoning before God. And while he speaks the truth, we are invited to dwell in the reality along with Solomon to experience how fragile and vulnerable we are to the forces of cruelty. Then his gaze continues to his left, our right hand side of the frame where there is expanse and space, a composition that allows the eyes to see balance and hope. One man’s conviction and willingness to risk his own life results in another man’s merciful release.
Yet the horror is sustained in his inability to free the young woman who is perpetually beaten because she is favored by the cruel drunk bastard who owns her. She embraces Solomon, as if giving him her soul to take away with him from that hell. It seems to be the very heart of such cruelty that Solomon rides away in the carriage as she stands in the road watching him escape her fate.
But it doesn’t end there. The injustice continues. The epilogue reveals that while Solomon and his family’s lawyer take the men to trial—those who kidnapped him as well as those who illegally sold him—were not convicted for their crimes.
While Solomon was successfully reunited with his family, accepted back into their lives after being so radically altered for 12 years, he was never the same, of course. In so much as I will never forget the impact of that young girl’s life and spirit and desperate desire to die...and the vision of her standing in the roadway as he leaves her behind, no doubt he was forever haunted with immoveable grief at her unrelenting suffering. What else could he do but fight as best as he could for freedom on their behalf, knowing the very people he suffered with would never benefit. He fought against slavery every way he could—through discourse in the public meeting places as well as serving in the underground railroad for the remainder of his life.
It’s a horrific story. Don’t see it. Even in its outcome, his return, there is no lift. No sense of a redeeming aspect. We are left with the full weight of our advantages, petty complaints, inadequacies, collusion with cruelty hanging around our necks, left to tippy toe forever...hoping to be cut down, to be set free. Yes it’s a metaphor; I run the risk of sounding impertinent and even disrespectful—as if I still don’t really get it. But I know enough, respect enough, grieve enough to know that, gratefully, I never will.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Trying to see death (flash fiction)
091513
The house was dark and quiet, as it was every morning when she rose at 4:00 to spend time being before having to face the chaos of the day. Living alone was glorious. She moved through the house in the dark as easily as midday. Flipped on the light in the kitchen and squint blinked until her eyes adjusted. She filled the kettle, plugged it in, pressed the lever. There was a message on her cell—leaving for ny. Dad’s gone.
Expected and unexpected death. Had it always been like this? This looming presence of ending or loss? She was nine when her great grandmother died. It wasn’t scary or particularly sad but it was profoundly memorable and interesting then and now. It was the first time she saw death in a person. The body was laid on top of flowers on a table and she stepped up a moveable wooden stair to see her better. Now she knows that the flowers where really attached to the sides of the casket but her memory is that of the descriptions of old English kings and warriors whose bodies were laid on a funeral pyre of jewels and armor and wild flowers.
Apparently death has always been here. Always been lurking in the shadows and behind closed doors and people’s secret anguish veiled in black netting and spoken of in awkward short phrases—sorry for your loss. And, may God comfort you in your time of loss. And the hardest one for her to write but the truest, no one is ever old enough to lose your mother.
She inhaled a breath slowly, intentionally, focused on its ability to relax her shoulders and expand her chest. The water had boiled and she poured it into the cup she’d poured water into for tea for more than twenty years. She had visited her newly married sister and their newly born baby girl. To commemorate the occasion she bought this teacup that was now solidly a part of her daily routine. Her sister’s two kids were grown and off to college. Where does the time go?
She sat outside on the porch in the dark, just the amber street lamp sending an odd glow but not enough to define anything in her back garden. Such quiet and peace. What about those who are miserable. Those who are older, who see no purpose to their life? Would death be better? Would it be an answer to the misery, the perpetual depression. If it is true that there is another life beyond this one, that being “saved” means eternal life with God and returning to the presence of all who have gone before, all whom we have loved and lost and by extension who we would have loved had life overlapped, then yes, a resounding yes, this life can be counted as less than satisfactory, is lived in shadow and amber street lamps and purple flowers that pop on the stem and fall off by noon where nothing is permanent not even the same cup for twenty years, not even the dreams and goals of youth that wear thin, soiled and scuffed by necessity and the unforeseen.... Surely yes to move on is something to be planned for, expected, anticipated, like the date you count down to and pack the night before and stay awake with relishing how good it will be to be home the next day. Shouldn’t death be like that? What is death after all? What is this life? This life, here? What exactly is each of us supposed to contribute?
An invisible mocking bird pierced the stillness with his song that sounded like he said “right now, right now.” Thank God for all the living things around her who brought her focus to the joy of the moment, the peace that passes understanding. The pleasures of a cup of hot tea and birdsong. She checked the time on her cell. So bound to the time. To the moment. Right now she had to get her shower and dress for the day. Right now she had to make breakfast and gather lunch. Right now she had to make sure she had all her stuff together.
Once again it was time to leave for work. She opened the door to the garage and pressed the garage door opener, opened the trunk of the car and put her satchel in, shoes for the rain inevitable this time of year, and lunch bag. As she looked out from the garage, she saw what she saw every day and had seen every day for the past four years in this house. But suddenly everything was different. Everything held its breath for her to see reality for the first time. The dark of night was just beginning to lift a shade into that deep dark navy blue, dim street lamps cast a pale glow. She loved this quiet, calm neighborhood stretched beyond her house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Established, gated community whose houses were all similar with only a small variation, maybe four different styles. Mailboxes all the same with slight variations. She looked down the street at the series of 2x2 white posts on either side of the street with a white cross post upon which the black mail boxes sat in regimen. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the vision of these mailboxes, these crosses that bore the names of all her neighbors; they appeared like tombstones, those white crosses that mark graves in rows in a military cemetery. Her neighbors identified on their mailboxes slept right now in their homes...superimposed in a vision, a mere foreshadowing of their imminent graves.
The house was dark and quiet, as it was every morning when she rose at 4:00 to spend time being before having to face the chaos of the day. Living alone was glorious. She moved through the house in the dark as easily as midday. Flipped on the light in the kitchen and squint blinked until her eyes adjusted. She filled the kettle, plugged it in, pressed the lever. There was a message on her cell—leaving for ny. Dad’s gone.
Expected and unexpected death. Had it always been like this? This looming presence of ending or loss? She was nine when her great grandmother died. It wasn’t scary or particularly sad but it was profoundly memorable and interesting then and now. It was the first time she saw death in a person. The body was laid on top of flowers on a table and she stepped up a moveable wooden stair to see her better. Now she knows that the flowers where really attached to the sides of the casket but her memory is that of the descriptions of old English kings and warriors whose bodies were laid on a funeral pyre of jewels and armor and wild flowers.
Apparently death has always been here. Always been lurking in the shadows and behind closed doors and people’s secret anguish veiled in black netting and spoken of in awkward short phrases—sorry for your loss. And, may God comfort you in your time of loss. And the hardest one for her to write but the truest, no one is ever old enough to lose your mother.
She inhaled a breath slowly, intentionally, focused on its ability to relax her shoulders and expand her chest. The water had boiled and she poured it into the cup she’d poured water into for tea for more than twenty years. She had visited her newly married sister and their newly born baby girl. To commemorate the occasion she bought this teacup that was now solidly a part of her daily routine. Her sister’s two kids were grown and off to college. Where does the time go?
She sat outside on the porch in the dark, just the amber street lamp sending an odd glow but not enough to define anything in her back garden. Such quiet and peace. What about those who are miserable. Those who are older, who see no purpose to their life? Would death be better? Would it be an answer to the misery, the perpetual depression. If it is true that there is another life beyond this one, that being “saved” means eternal life with God and returning to the presence of all who have gone before, all whom we have loved and lost and by extension who we would have loved had life overlapped, then yes, a resounding yes, this life can be counted as less than satisfactory, is lived in shadow and amber street lamps and purple flowers that pop on the stem and fall off by noon where nothing is permanent not even the same cup for twenty years, not even the dreams and goals of youth that wear thin, soiled and scuffed by necessity and the unforeseen.... Surely yes to move on is something to be planned for, expected, anticipated, like the date you count down to and pack the night before and stay awake with relishing how good it will be to be home the next day. Shouldn’t death be like that? What is death after all? What is this life? This life, here? What exactly is each of us supposed to contribute?
An invisible mocking bird pierced the stillness with his song that sounded like he said “right now, right now.” Thank God for all the living things around her who brought her focus to the joy of the moment, the peace that passes understanding. The pleasures of a cup of hot tea and birdsong. She checked the time on her cell. So bound to the time. To the moment. Right now she had to get her shower and dress for the day. Right now she had to make breakfast and gather lunch. Right now she had to make sure she had all her stuff together.
Once again it was time to leave for work. She opened the door to the garage and pressed the garage door opener, opened the trunk of the car and put her satchel in, shoes for the rain inevitable this time of year, and lunch bag. As she looked out from the garage, she saw what she saw every day and had seen every day for the past four years in this house. But suddenly everything was different. Everything held its breath for her to see reality for the first time. The dark of night was just beginning to lift a shade into that deep dark navy blue, dim street lamps cast a pale glow. She loved this quiet, calm neighborhood stretched beyond her house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Established, gated community whose houses were all similar with only a small variation, maybe four different styles. Mailboxes all the same with slight variations. She looked down the street at the series of 2x2 white posts on either side of the street with a white cross post upon which the black mail boxes sat in regimen. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the vision of these mailboxes, these crosses that bore the names of all her neighbors; they appeared like tombstones, those white crosses that mark graves in rows in a military cemetery. Her neighbors identified on their mailboxes slept right now in their homes...superimposed in a vision, a mere foreshadowing of their imminent graves.
Friday, August 2, 2013
Rest, Dragonfly. Rest (flash nonfiction)
Wings outstretched, upside down, the young dragonfly was sinking through the water. I scooped him up thinking I was merely honoring the dead, when his wings twitched in my palms, a tiny spurt of vibration. I assumed it was reactionary even after death—some animals, I know, twitch even after they’re dead.
I tenderly released him on the side of the pool, wings down. He twitched. I wondered if maybe it would have been kinder for him to have drowned rather than twitch through a prolonged death. I considered putting him back in the water...but what a stupid thought! Maybe I had gotten him in time! Maybe he was reviving! He twitched again, several of his legs spinning out, a pair rubbing his head. Tiny sporadic twitches. I swam another lap to give him privacy, hoping and praying (though that sounds odd, yes I prayed for the little critter—dragonflies and ladybugs are extra special) for him to revive.
It was still pitch dark outside, only about 6:15. The half moon high over head gibbous waning. The world held its breath, dark and quiet. Wee dragonfly was lifeless... his legs all meeting and folded over his body. He was dead. My heart sank. I swam another lap.
He was dead, still dead. I swam another lap. Poor wee dragonfly. Come on dragonfly. Come on dragonfly. Still not moving. But...WHAT? He was right side up! Right side up! But stone still. What a marvel! How had he righted himself? So tiny. So fragile. He balanced, tilted, lopsided, his wings transparent tissue paper heavy with wetness. I heard myself chanting quietly, come on dragonfly, come on dragonfly... Do dragonflies hear? I was afraid, too, that he might be afraid of me, so I tried not to get too close. That was difficult... Such a human inclination to comfort with physical touch. I wanted to stroke his back...pet him. I swam another lap.
He could buzz and move in short—not even a second’s worth—spurts. But he was moving. Sporadic, dazed drunkeness. Rest dragonfly. Rest. Take your time. Come on dragonfly. Don’t be afraid. Take your time. He sat still. Obediently resting. I swam another lap. Hope carries a great deal of energy. I wanted to see the little guy fly off successfully. Surely he would make it!
This time he was gone. I searched and searched, eye level with the deck...he was nowhere to be found! I could only imagine him popping up in the air—I hoped with confidence that he’d gained back enough life that he could go whatever distance he needed to return to his family. Last night on the last walk around the island, swarms of these angelic creatures landed on the spikes of bushes that grow along the eastern wall of a building. More like fairies than dragons. Swarms like that are usually a sign that a great storm is approaching. I don’t see a single dragonfly now. But now the sun is rising with not a cloud in the sky—there are gentle wisps in the far-off eastern horizon. A beautiful day.
As I finished writing that last word (thinking I was finished with this story), guess what landed on the top of my thermos barely a foot away from my face? A wee, worn dragonfly! I have been whispering to him now for a good five minutes. I took a couple of pics but dared not stand or move too much. What joy to have him here! Fearless. If he is the same dragonfly, he needs to rest. I feel completely insane wondering, presuming, believing this is the same little guy I rescued two hours ago... There are so many people now in the pool. The sun still hasn’t risen above the building to our east, but it is mostly quiet—one sporadic mind-numbing jigsaw in the garage. A mourning dove, millions of very annoying noseeums are driving me stark raving mad. But here—here is a beloved dragonfly...companioning me here as I have been writing about him for the last...hour maybe! What a blessed and enchanting visitation. What a gift! I can’t take my eyes off of him... So fragile looking but yet quite sturdy, quite robust. Weary, but alive.
Life is good.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
yellow marble...untitled...writer's block...
What is it? She asked, turning the small yellow object in her hand.
Enjoy the downtime, he’d said. That was three months ago and still her muse was silent. Not just her muse but her will. Her interest. Her passion lay dead on the floor.
I think it was once a marble.
The yellow...thing...did now seem to possibly fit that identification but still it was misshapen for a marble. But yes, perhaps it was glass.
What am I to do with it?
Let go of the future. You cannot make or be held to a promise that is so dependent on other variables outside your control. They will all come to know that.
Besides, she added in her own skepticism, they have no doubt already forgotten. I have already become a joke, a part of their story. Remember that one teacher we had junior year...?
The silence screamed like fingernails on a chalkboard. There were no real thoughts. No dialogue. No characters pulsing with a life beyond this ticking clock. The dead heart beat still pounding out the passing of glorious and open minutes with no sound and no life and no impulse. Just fear. And rustling of leaves so green and voluptuous in this season of afternoon storms and searing sun.
You must lose weight. And get 8 hours of sleep. This will keep your memory working and your brain will get younger.
I want to lose wait, she quips silently back to the flat LED screen whose prophet is bald and wearing all black.
Seriously, what is this thing? She rubs it between her fingers and the tiny sphere’s odd pocks and markings are rough among the smoother surfaces. It is as if someone had blown a length of thick glass and while it was still warm, wrapped it into a ball.
You know what it is.
I know what it was intended to be. A kind of story device.
A beginning.
A place to start.
A ticking of the clock with something. Anything.
The threat of passing wakefulness empty of any story has shut you down.
The anniversary of her death approaches and she would say what to you today?
No, those are your words of futility. Your expectation weighs down the future like an anchor dropped through the glass bottom boat.
My words exactly. You are sinking.
We are all sinking.
But I can’t hear you speak. I find no voices only passing motors and whispers of all the green. Green upon green of mindless joy and vibrancy. Mindless pleasure itself growing and plump with the fullness of their intended being while I sit here in this stifling heat and wonder where my next meal will come from. My next story. This story. Two stories that lie flat. Unbreathing. Unmoving. And I ungrieving look on.
A marble. This imagined thing that did not lead anywhere. I could thump it with my thumbnail across the empty room in my head and it would hit no wall because it does not exist. This yellow marble flawed by the glassblower who isn’t even a character and I have nothing to offer the blank page. The marble has failed.
She pops it in her mouth to keep from speaking.
Enjoy the downtime, he’d said. That was three months ago and still her muse was silent. Not just her muse but her will. Her interest. Her passion lay dead on the floor.
I think it was once a marble.
The yellow...thing...did now seem to possibly fit that identification but still it was misshapen for a marble. But yes, perhaps it was glass.
What am I to do with it?
Let go of the future. You cannot make or be held to a promise that is so dependent on other variables outside your control. They will all come to know that.
Besides, she added in her own skepticism, they have no doubt already forgotten. I have already become a joke, a part of their story. Remember that one teacher we had junior year...?
The silence screamed like fingernails on a chalkboard. There were no real thoughts. No dialogue. No characters pulsing with a life beyond this ticking clock. The dead heart beat still pounding out the passing of glorious and open minutes with no sound and no life and no impulse. Just fear. And rustling of leaves so green and voluptuous in this season of afternoon storms and searing sun.
You must lose weight. And get 8 hours of sleep. This will keep your memory working and your brain will get younger.
I want to lose wait, she quips silently back to the flat LED screen whose prophet is bald and wearing all black.
Seriously, what is this thing? She rubs it between her fingers and the tiny sphere’s odd pocks and markings are rough among the smoother surfaces. It is as if someone had blown a length of thick glass and while it was still warm, wrapped it into a ball.
You know what it is.
I know what it was intended to be. A kind of story device.
A beginning.
A place to start.
A ticking of the clock with something. Anything.
The threat of passing wakefulness empty of any story has shut you down.
The anniversary of her death approaches and she would say what to you today?
No, those are your words of futility. Your expectation weighs down the future like an anchor dropped through the glass bottom boat.
My words exactly. You are sinking.
We are all sinking.
But I can’t hear you speak. I find no voices only passing motors and whispers of all the green. Green upon green of mindless joy and vibrancy. Mindless pleasure itself growing and plump with the fullness of their intended being while I sit here in this stifling heat and wonder where my next meal will come from. My next story. This story. Two stories that lie flat. Unbreathing. Unmoving. And I ungrieving look on.
A marble. This imagined thing that did not lead anywhere. I could thump it with my thumbnail across the empty room in my head and it would hit no wall because it does not exist. This yellow marble flawed by the glassblower who isn’t even a character and I have nothing to offer the blank page. The marble has failed.
She pops it in her mouth to keep from speaking.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Passing Wakefulness
061213
Her eyes were green—slightly darker than peridot, slightly darker than the pristine waters at Abaco...they were vibrant with life and I looked into them as if by looking and holding the gaze I would hold her in my life and in her living. I wasn’t aware I was dreaming, I wasn’t really dreaming, but I was asleep, or rather, I was aware that this was a moment outside the time of wakeful passing. I was aware that I had to look at her, look at her vibrant green eyes in all their clarity and reality, dimension and being; it was up to me, to my unbroken visual and visible bond in seeing her that would sustain her and sustain me and sustain all the relationship that we had known my entire life. If I looked away, she would be lost to me. I made a mental note, too, of how the coloring of her eyelids matched that green of her eyes but not with the harshness of a teenager who might be experimenting, not with the cheap application of the shallow attempt to seduce, it was somehow a transfiguration, an appropriate compliment to her eyes, as if the color emanated from them like a prism throws light from the sun. There was a slight holding of my breath in that shadow of disbelief when gazing at someone loved and lost, having the perpetual body memory of embrace at the occasional physical meetings on holiday, that holding of breath in suspending the unmoving moment beyond time to absorb presence and recognize someone in soul while certain physicalities didn’t conform with certain memories. In shared life she was darker in hair color, and makeup—her lids were always a subtle red earth tone. Her eyes a fascinating gray like blue shadows over heather, the blue gray of distant appalachian mountains in mist. Striking beauty, heads would literally turn in double take when we were out and about. Her age had always been about 25 years older and while she did not look at all like a photo of her in youth, this was her soul gazing back at me through that color of green I cannot describe and is fading, dulling, shifting in the attempt. This “dream” did not have the timber of other dreams, it was not made of the same stuff. It was real. It felt like the clairvoyance I possessed when I was so young and prayed to have it pass. Now I regret that prayer. And now I have had this prayer answered. She was there with me. We shared our being, our connection, our selves beyond this material life but with the material that engages the senses. This time she did not touch me. When she was alive, I would dream of her and it would be the form of her I have always known and it would be her laugh and it would be our shared stories and it would be our walks along the beach and it would be her maternal embrace and it would be a visit that I always longed for and never had enough of and it would be her life without the hindrances of her commitments, and mine. But this was only being. This was only her face gazing back at mine, not looking like her but being her. I want to believe...that this was an outstretched affirmation that she is ... still ... living beyond this quintessence of dust and pain and heartache and situation. I feel her. I long for her. But not in the way I always had before in wishing I could figure out a way to travel to visit...but in a way that hopes beyond empirical doubts that there is more beyond this mortal coil and that we will BE in that space I glimpsed, that presence I felt, that connection I live in...
Rereading the above, I wonder if I was perhaps looking in the face of love itself...and since she is the most recent “lost” love, the connection and the thought and the “solving” of identity was found in the memory and desire for her. Perhaps if it is the face of love itself then she is all those who have gone before. And it occurs to me quite ... laughably ... that perhaps she is also my Muse who has gone missing so profoundly. Perhaps I spent the night encountering her green, peridot eyes.
The force of more than one answer, or identity, or solution, or reality comforts me always. A perpetual yes to what might seem a choice, but in the end is the One Thing. At the time of encounter, I knew those eyes to belong to BeBe. Now in reflection, I recognize them to carry the soul of my Muse. And while I never regarded BeBe as my Muse, particularly, I understand the essence of all connection grows from a single source of Love and Soul, the Holy Spirit in perpetual presence. Who knew the color would be peridot. There is a quickening that comes with the smile of contemplating my Muse has green eyes. That BeBe is with me beyond this passing wakefulness. All who have gone before are here in this other place and otherness. That I can feel, really feel, that sense of Belonging.
I only hope and pray this will feed the stream of my consciousness in working on one of the Stories.
Her eyes were green—slightly darker than peridot, slightly darker than the pristine waters at Abaco...they were vibrant with life and I looked into them as if by looking and holding the gaze I would hold her in my life and in her living. I wasn’t aware I was dreaming, I wasn’t really dreaming, but I was asleep, or rather, I was aware that this was a moment outside the time of wakeful passing. I was aware that I had to look at her, look at her vibrant green eyes in all their clarity and reality, dimension and being; it was up to me, to my unbroken visual and visible bond in seeing her that would sustain her and sustain me and sustain all the relationship that we had known my entire life. If I looked away, she would be lost to me. I made a mental note, too, of how the coloring of her eyelids matched that green of her eyes but not with the harshness of a teenager who might be experimenting, not with the cheap application of the shallow attempt to seduce, it was somehow a transfiguration, an appropriate compliment to her eyes, as if the color emanated from them like a prism throws light from the sun. There was a slight holding of my breath in that shadow of disbelief when gazing at someone loved and lost, having the perpetual body memory of embrace at the occasional physical meetings on holiday, that holding of breath in suspending the unmoving moment beyond time to absorb presence and recognize someone in soul while certain physicalities didn’t conform with certain memories. In shared life she was darker in hair color, and makeup—her lids were always a subtle red earth tone. Her eyes a fascinating gray like blue shadows over heather, the blue gray of distant appalachian mountains in mist. Striking beauty, heads would literally turn in double take when we were out and about. Her age had always been about 25 years older and while she did not look at all like a photo of her in youth, this was her soul gazing back at me through that color of green I cannot describe and is fading, dulling, shifting in the attempt. This “dream” did not have the timber of other dreams, it was not made of the same stuff. It was real. It felt like the clairvoyance I possessed when I was so young and prayed to have it pass. Now I regret that prayer. And now I have had this prayer answered. She was there with me. We shared our being, our connection, our selves beyond this material life but with the material that engages the senses. This time she did not touch me. When she was alive, I would dream of her and it would be the form of her I have always known and it would be her laugh and it would be our shared stories and it would be our walks along the beach and it would be her maternal embrace and it would be a visit that I always longed for and never had enough of and it would be her life without the hindrances of her commitments, and mine. But this was only being. This was only her face gazing back at mine, not looking like her but being her. I want to believe...that this was an outstretched affirmation that she is ... still ... living beyond this quintessence of dust and pain and heartache and situation. I feel her. I long for her. But not in the way I always had before in wishing I could figure out a way to travel to visit...but in a way that hopes beyond empirical doubts that there is more beyond this mortal coil and that we will BE in that space I glimpsed, that presence I felt, that connection I live in...
Rereading the above, I wonder if I was perhaps looking in the face of love itself...and since she is the most recent “lost” love, the connection and the thought and the “solving” of identity was found in the memory and desire for her. Perhaps if it is the face of love itself then she is all those who have gone before. And it occurs to me quite ... laughably ... that perhaps she is also my Muse who has gone missing so profoundly. Perhaps I spent the night encountering her green, peridot eyes.
The force of more than one answer, or identity, or solution, or reality comforts me always. A perpetual yes to what might seem a choice, but in the end is the One Thing. At the time of encounter, I knew those eyes to belong to BeBe. Now in reflection, I recognize them to carry the soul of my Muse. And while I never regarded BeBe as my Muse, particularly, I understand the essence of all connection grows from a single source of Love and Soul, the Holy Spirit in perpetual presence. Who knew the color would be peridot. There is a quickening that comes with the smile of contemplating my Muse has green eyes. That BeBe is with me beyond this passing wakefulness. All who have gone before are here in this other place and otherness. That I can feel, really feel, that sense of Belonging.
I only hope and pray this will feed the stream of my consciousness in working on one of the Stories.
Monday, May 27, 2013
052713 Small Town Security Measures (flash non-fiction)
Saturday on a holiday weekend brings a little bustle to this small town on the river close to the beaches. It can get downright touristy at certain times of the year, but it maintains that quaint small town feel. It’s easy to let your guard down. It's the kind of town where they always say you’d never expect something like that to happen in a small town like this.
The café which opens to the street on the front side as well as to the street on the other front side is small and popular. The sidewalk out front with the railroad tracks running across the street has five wrought iron tables, each with four wrought iron chairs. Today at lunch the table farthest to the right sat two young couples, each mother with an infant. One mother would breast feed twice and change the baby’s diaper and both families would leave before it happened.
The table just to the left of the front door had two women, a man, and a brown and black dachshund on the lap of the lady who faced out, her back to the door. They spoke French, appeared to be young retirees, from Canada most likely. Canadians have a bad reputation in this part of Florida. They often impede traffic, or are rude to store clerks. Perhaps it is just a difference in culture and the two do not understand one another. They say getting to know someone, learning to understand, finding a common bond, is the best security against violence. That’s what they say.
The tables outside the café are under a pleasant awning with potted palms loosely framing the eating area. People are still able to walk by, however, between the row of five tables and the street where cars are diagonally parked. The young families left. The Canadians spoke softly in French except to the waiter, when their English carried no accent, and were lively and pleasant, chuckling from time to time.
A couple of doors down, there is a new frozen yogurt place and a young mother and father and little boy about five years old have come out and are walking slowly down the street, the boy sets the pace as he licks his multicolored yogurt cone. They take their time, enjoying the day. As they approached the tables, the dog, having seen something down the other way, barked. This caught the attention of the little boy with butter colored hair. He stands barely taller than the height of the dog on the lady’s lap. He says very quietly, “Can I pet your puppy?” The lady nods and says yes. The father says to let him hold his ice cream cone and the boy turns to his father and hands over the cone with total abandon then touches the “puppy” on the head with a light hand and strokes him attentively and deliberately all the way down his back to the tail. He has been taught how to pet a puppy. The father’s “be gentle now” was unnecessary, but likely a reassurance to the owner that the boy will be gentle. The boy strokes him a second time and smiles at the lady then reaches back to his father for the cone of yogurt. His father says, “What do you say?” and the little boy looked the lady in the eyes and smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you.” She nodded back to him. “You’re welcome.” The family resumed their walk down the street.
This holy, sacred, perfectly ordinary exchange between strangers connected through respectful request to touch and generous acceptance to be touched brought peace to the world. Tears to the eyes. And it happened here. It happened in this small town. More of this, please. More human beings letting down their guard for the sake of trusting a brief moment of connection. Polite, respectful, generous. Aware and open to their surroundings. Giving. And receiving.
The café which opens to the street on the front side as well as to the street on the other front side is small and popular. The sidewalk out front with the railroad tracks running across the street has five wrought iron tables, each with four wrought iron chairs. Today at lunch the table farthest to the right sat two young couples, each mother with an infant. One mother would breast feed twice and change the baby’s diaper and both families would leave before it happened.
The table just to the left of the front door had two women, a man, and a brown and black dachshund on the lap of the lady who faced out, her back to the door. They spoke French, appeared to be young retirees, from Canada most likely. Canadians have a bad reputation in this part of Florida. They often impede traffic, or are rude to store clerks. Perhaps it is just a difference in culture and the two do not understand one another. They say getting to know someone, learning to understand, finding a common bond, is the best security against violence. That’s what they say.
The tables outside the café are under a pleasant awning with potted palms loosely framing the eating area. People are still able to walk by, however, between the row of five tables and the street where cars are diagonally parked. The young families left. The Canadians spoke softly in French except to the waiter, when their English carried no accent, and were lively and pleasant, chuckling from time to time.
A couple of doors down, there is a new frozen yogurt place and a young mother and father and little boy about five years old have come out and are walking slowly down the street, the boy sets the pace as he licks his multicolored yogurt cone. They take their time, enjoying the day. As they approached the tables, the dog, having seen something down the other way, barked. This caught the attention of the little boy with butter colored hair. He stands barely taller than the height of the dog on the lady’s lap. He says very quietly, “Can I pet your puppy?” The lady nods and says yes. The father says to let him hold his ice cream cone and the boy turns to his father and hands over the cone with total abandon then touches the “puppy” on the head with a light hand and strokes him attentively and deliberately all the way down his back to the tail. He has been taught how to pet a puppy. The father’s “be gentle now” was unnecessary, but likely a reassurance to the owner that the boy will be gentle. The boy strokes him a second time and smiles at the lady then reaches back to his father for the cone of yogurt. His father says, “What do you say?” and the little boy looked the lady in the eyes and smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you.” She nodded back to him. “You’re welcome.” The family resumed their walk down the street.
This holy, sacred, perfectly ordinary exchange between strangers connected through respectful request to touch and generous acceptance to be touched brought peace to the world. Tears to the eyes. And it happened here. It happened in this small town. More of this, please. More human beings letting down their guard for the sake of trusting a brief moment of connection. Polite, respectful, generous. Aware and open to their surroundings. Giving. And receiving.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
freewriting on the conflict of writing and teaching
Flannery O’Connor warned me today—she grabbed me by the shoulders and with those piercing green eyes she said with fierce passion: do not abandon the story; do not abandon the mystery.
I love story. I believe with all my heart the story will save you. Will save the world. I believe that the source of power in story is its ability to engender empathy. It is empathy that connects us, protects us, enables us to love and accept those who are unlike us but with whom we can identify at the most basic level—our need to be loved, fed, protected. Our desire to love, nurture, protect. This is also the ultimate mystery—who we are and why we do what we do. This is character and plot, pure and simple.
I also love kids. Now THAT is a mystery. I like the power of discovery, the openness most kids have in exploring the world... But the harsh irony is that I spend all day banging my head against the walls of formal education where it is my duty to teach the tools of analysis. “We murder to dissect” has rung in my ears since I was in high school myself and wondered why the teacher was teaching a great poet like Wordsworth who basically undermined everything she was teaching. Now I do the same.
Because I have to teach the minutia of analysis and how to speak authoritatively of the author’s purpose, the structure of the story, the intent of meaning through an element, the textual properties and means of explication, I feel I have pounded the flavor out of the meat of mystery and pleasure and joy and true power of a novel—to alter and change us, sometimes without our conscious collusion.
Most of the year I languish under the desire and critical need to write, to create story, and summarily fail. Most summers I dig and dig, struggle against the solid, stony ground of my imagination until once again I strike gold...or oil...or clear flowing waters of story... But I seem to lose ground every year, find I am farther and farther away from finishing worthy stories, worthy novels, A worthy novel, to hand to a stranger and be read.
I don’t know why. It is a puzzling mystery. But I want to write. I want to learn how to tell a story. A story with meaning. I want to give to “someone” what I have loved in receiving great novels, great film, great short stories, great poetry.
I tend to blame my job for being stifled and barren. Oddly, pathetically, I feel I have made a sort of secret deal with my ancestors...I have not borne children, therefore (or because) I will bear stories. And yet I have not done so. Not really. Not right now. Not for a long time.
Even this...this...emotional dribble...is a violation of all that is story. I am emoting and telling...not creating a story with pathos or empathy. I am merely emoting.
I walked very fast today my 40 minute walk around the circle and I took Flannery O’Connor’s collection of essays with me and I read as I walked. The humidity is so heavy and there were few walkers which I never realized before how much I prefer not having to pass others on the walk. Sad isn’t it? Anyway, got back and showered. As I washed my face I was suddenly overcome with sadness thinking (didn’t even realize it—surprised me) about a particular student who is so very, very intelligent and is in so much trouble. He has two more weeks of probation...he has four felonies. He’s 16 years old. His record will be expunged when he is 24. Yet he has already established a habit of breaking the law. It truly blows my mind that he is living that life. I love this kid—he is bright and deeply insightful. He picks up on subtleties in literature and poetry that even the majority of my IB students miss. I know that this kind of sensitivity and high intelligence often gravitates toward the flames of self destruction but I don’t understand exactly why and I certainly don’t know how to stop it—only he can stop it. But how can I help?
And I cried at all of this thought that didn’t have words until now. This kid who is the youngest of three boys, three years apart. His oldest brother is the scholar and the favored one whom his father loves—this boy feels that so keenly, I can see it ooze from every pore as he smiles calmly in the telling of it. His brother, the one in the middle, 19 years old, he whispers, is transgender, doesn’t feel like he’s in the right body. This draws a lot of pain and confusion from his father. He is a great disappointment. Of himself he says that he is the greatest disappointment of his father. Whatever crimes he has committed...time he has done in jail...whatever it is, he feels he has deeply hurt and alienated his father.
Whenever I grow despondent about the writer’s block, the energy drain, the distance my stories keep from me, a friend of mine tells me that I am doing far more important work teaching and engaging with these kids. But...I feel that I have betrayed a gift...a particular trust...I am not living up to my potential, not fulfilling my calling to write. I am failing at the purpose of my life—this is how I feel, this is a deep and passionate conviction. No excuses. I am a story teller. I must tell the story. But every day I fail.
I don’t know how to fight this dragon. I don’t even know which thing is the dragon... Is the dragon the failure to write, or is the dragon the feeling that I am failing.
Underneath all of this and perpetually is the haunting of my Japanese American friend. Twenty years ago, this friend who spent his childhood in the Japanese internment camps in California, mentioned his gift and love of writing. I asked him why he wasn’t writing, except within the context of his ministry. He said he had to make a choice and because of his experience in the camp he chose to follow the calling of Christ to minister to those who are victims of a system that beats them down and keeps them down. He felt it was more honorable to give his life to others rather than to his writing talent which he considered to be a selfish indulgence.
I disagreed. And I told him so. I’m sure he smiled at my impertinent youth and delusion.
The reality is I must work, earn a living, where I have a reciprocated feeding of the soul—I find this in teaching. Writing (as a career) is too unpredictable, too precarious, too insecure, too risky.... So I cannot give up a stable income on the way way off chance that my God-given gift and talent, the promise I made to my ancestors, might fail...might become cursed in the face of the more noble and higher calling of teaching. Ironically it already feels it is cursed, as if in teaching I am squandering my opportunity, desire, need, gift.
It’s not that I want to give up teaching; it’s that I want also to devote my life to the craft of writing. To find a way to truly inspire the love and joy in the mystery of the story...I want to cultivate that curiosity and I want to nurture my own muse and engender in me that ability to write the story even as I teach others how to find meaning in other people’s stories.
But deep down I fear it is a serving of two masters...unless I can find a way of recognizing it is simply a single coin with two sides...
I love story. I believe with all my heart the story will save you. Will save the world. I believe that the source of power in story is its ability to engender empathy. It is empathy that connects us, protects us, enables us to love and accept those who are unlike us but with whom we can identify at the most basic level—our need to be loved, fed, protected. Our desire to love, nurture, protect. This is also the ultimate mystery—who we are and why we do what we do. This is character and plot, pure and simple.
I also love kids. Now THAT is a mystery. I like the power of discovery, the openness most kids have in exploring the world... But the harsh irony is that I spend all day banging my head against the walls of formal education where it is my duty to teach the tools of analysis. “We murder to dissect” has rung in my ears since I was in high school myself and wondered why the teacher was teaching a great poet like Wordsworth who basically undermined everything she was teaching. Now I do the same.
Because I have to teach the minutia of analysis and how to speak authoritatively of the author’s purpose, the structure of the story, the intent of meaning through an element, the textual properties and means of explication, I feel I have pounded the flavor out of the meat of mystery and pleasure and joy and true power of a novel—to alter and change us, sometimes without our conscious collusion.
Most of the year I languish under the desire and critical need to write, to create story, and summarily fail. Most summers I dig and dig, struggle against the solid, stony ground of my imagination until once again I strike gold...or oil...or clear flowing waters of story... But I seem to lose ground every year, find I am farther and farther away from finishing worthy stories, worthy novels, A worthy novel, to hand to a stranger and be read.
I don’t know why. It is a puzzling mystery. But I want to write. I want to learn how to tell a story. A story with meaning. I want to give to “someone” what I have loved in receiving great novels, great film, great short stories, great poetry.
I tend to blame my job for being stifled and barren. Oddly, pathetically, I feel I have made a sort of secret deal with my ancestors...I have not borne children, therefore (or because) I will bear stories. And yet I have not done so. Not really. Not right now. Not for a long time.
Even this...this...emotional dribble...is a violation of all that is story. I am emoting and telling...not creating a story with pathos or empathy. I am merely emoting.
I walked very fast today my 40 minute walk around the circle and I took Flannery O’Connor’s collection of essays with me and I read as I walked. The humidity is so heavy and there were few walkers which I never realized before how much I prefer not having to pass others on the walk. Sad isn’t it? Anyway, got back and showered. As I washed my face I was suddenly overcome with sadness thinking (didn’t even realize it—surprised me) about a particular student who is so very, very intelligent and is in so much trouble. He has two more weeks of probation...he has four felonies. He’s 16 years old. His record will be expunged when he is 24. Yet he has already established a habit of breaking the law. It truly blows my mind that he is living that life. I love this kid—he is bright and deeply insightful. He picks up on subtleties in literature and poetry that even the majority of my IB students miss. I know that this kind of sensitivity and high intelligence often gravitates toward the flames of self destruction but I don’t understand exactly why and I certainly don’t know how to stop it—only he can stop it. But how can I help?
And I cried at all of this thought that didn’t have words until now. This kid who is the youngest of three boys, three years apart. His oldest brother is the scholar and the favored one whom his father loves—this boy feels that so keenly, I can see it ooze from every pore as he smiles calmly in the telling of it. His brother, the one in the middle, 19 years old, he whispers, is transgender, doesn’t feel like he’s in the right body. This draws a lot of pain and confusion from his father. He is a great disappointment. Of himself he says that he is the greatest disappointment of his father. Whatever crimes he has committed...time he has done in jail...whatever it is, he feels he has deeply hurt and alienated his father.
Whenever I grow despondent about the writer’s block, the energy drain, the distance my stories keep from me, a friend of mine tells me that I am doing far more important work teaching and engaging with these kids. But...I feel that I have betrayed a gift...a particular trust...I am not living up to my potential, not fulfilling my calling to write. I am failing at the purpose of my life—this is how I feel, this is a deep and passionate conviction. No excuses. I am a story teller. I must tell the story. But every day I fail.
I don’t know how to fight this dragon. I don’t even know which thing is the dragon... Is the dragon the failure to write, or is the dragon the feeling that I am failing.
Underneath all of this and perpetually is the haunting of my Japanese American friend. Twenty years ago, this friend who spent his childhood in the Japanese internment camps in California, mentioned his gift and love of writing. I asked him why he wasn’t writing, except within the context of his ministry. He said he had to make a choice and because of his experience in the camp he chose to follow the calling of Christ to minister to those who are victims of a system that beats them down and keeps them down. He felt it was more honorable to give his life to others rather than to his writing talent which he considered to be a selfish indulgence.
I disagreed. And I told him so. I’m sure he smiled at my impertinent youth and delusion.
The reality is I must work, earn a living, where I have a reciprocated feeding of the soul—I find this in teaching. Writing (as a career) is too unpredictable, too precarious, too insecure, too risky.... So I cannot give up a stable income on the way way off chance that my God-given gift and talent, the promise I made to my ancestors, might fail...might become cursed in the face of the more noble and higher calling of teaching. Ironically it already feels it is cursed, as if in teaching I am squandering my opportunity, desire, need, gift.
It’s not that I want to give up teaching; it’s that I want also to devote my life to the craft of writing. To find a way to truly inspire the love and joy in the mystery of the story...I want to cultivate that curiosity and I want to nurture my own muse and engender in me that ability to write the story even as I teach others how to find meaning in other people’s stories.
But deep down I fear it is a serving of two masters...unless I can find a way of recognizing it is simply a single coin with two sides...
Monday, April 29, 2013
Staying Present (flash fiction . . . well, mostly non fiction, really)
She shook her head at the sight. Even the kid riding the bicycle is texting. Fatal car accidents on the rise because fools think they can text and drive. She threw her stuff in the trunk and got behind the wheel. Errands to run.
Look at that. People can’t even take a walk without rolling through a song list or reading an iphone. Even Wendy plays games on her phone when she’s just walking across campus. What is wrong with people? She’s in and out of the grocery store in less than a half hour, only two people chatting on a cell as they shop. She’s called her mom before to double check a brand name but this lady was gossiping about somebody. Pushing a cart! In the cereal aisle! Seriously? In the grocery store? Slowing everyone else down!
Short drive home she noticed several drivers on the phone. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the temptation—that’s why her cell was normally in the trunk. But walkers? Or waiting for someone, anyone, even a doctor, you people can’t just enjoy your own surroundings? Be where you are? Pay attention and find peace in the moment? She often had imaginary conversations with the world. Be aware and be connected—why are you people so bent on escape...from everything?
Being aware of your surroundings is the first lesson of Buddhist meditation. It is also at the core of Christianity to see someone in need and respond to it, see past the initial appearance with intuitive and reflective depth. It takes practice. In meditation, even as you are detaching from all cares, you are to remain aware and the master who carries the bamboo stick knows when you are present and when you have allowed your mind to become distracted. A slap on the back of the head with a bamboo stick will bring you back into the present.
She was aware of her short comings. Knew her flaws and imperfections. But this? She would never text, much less text and drive. And when she walked she enjoyed looking at and seeing the nature around her. She might read upon awaiting a doctor or appointment, but she always had that feeler out, aware of her surroundings and the others in the room. Though in a different story the focus might be on her restraint from grabbing a noisy digital game from some prepubescent and hurling it across the room. Children need to learn to interact with other people—even adults, and especially at a meal. But back to the story at hand.... The point is even if she were reading a book or thumbing through a magazine, she could still be polite with someone in her vicinity. One thing she knew for sure, she was in the moment. Paying attention. People have even commented on how street-smart she is. She made it a concerted point to be present.
Took in her groceries and then headed for the front door to go back to the street for the mail. Probably two days since she got the mail. Bills only came maybe three times a month and otherwise it was trash, so she didn’t always get the mail. She froze at the sight. The front door was unlocked. Damn. Sometimes it happens.
Next morning she put everything in the trunk, car keys in hand but no office keys. She searched the house twice—once on the surface, the second time into the seams of the sofa, in the silverware drawer. Where in this world...I had them yesterday to get into the room...played with them in my pocket on the way to the time clock. Didn’t I? She searched the car twice in between searching the house. Could have dropped under the front seat...under the passenger seat. In the trunk—maybe came off her finger as she chucked everything back there? Maybe I left them in the media center when Sandra and I were looking at that stuff on her computer. Even considered perhaps they fell out of her pocket at the grocery store.
Not in the media center. She began to tremble a little bit at the thought. No keys. Could be anywhere. How could she lose them. For real. She decided she’d call the grocery store in an hour when it opened.
She put down her things outside her door, having walked with a friend who was chatting about some things going on in her life. As they stood talking, across the hall the admin. assist. came out dangling the keys from her fingers. “Custodian found them in your door handle after you left and gave them to me. I told him I’d get them to you this morning.”
Some bamboo sticks are heavier than others. They make a loud hollow noise when they hit the back of your head.
Look at that. People can’t even take a walk without rolling through a song list or reading an iphone. Even Wendy plays games on her phone when she’s just walking across campus. What is wrong with people? She’s in and out of the grocery store in less than a half hour, only two people chatting on a cell as they shop. She’s called her mom before to double check a brand name but this lady was gossiping about somebody. Pushing a cart! In the cereal aisle! Seriously? In the grocery store? Slowing everyone else down!
Short drive home she noticed several drivers on the phone. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the temptation—that’s why her cell was normally in the trunk. But walkers? Or waiting for someone, anyone, even a doctor, you people can’t just enjoy your own surroundings? Be where you are? Pay attention and find peace in the moment? She often had imaginary conversations with the world. Be aware and be connected—why are you people so bent on escape...from everything?
Being aware of your surroundings is the first lesson of Buddhist meditation. It is also at the core of Christianity to see someone in need and respond to it, see past the initial appearance with intuitive and reflective depth. It takes practice. In meditation, even as you are detaching from all cares, you are to remain aware and the master who carries the bamboo stick knows when you are present and when you have allowed your mind to become distracted. A slap on the back of the head with a bamboo stick will bring you back into the present.
She was aware of her short comings. Knew her flaws and imperfections. But this? She would never text, much less text and drive. And when she walked she enjoyed looking at and seeing the nature around her. She might read upon awaiting a doctor or appointment, but she always had that feeler out, aware of her surroundings and the others in the room. Though in a different story the focus might be on her restraint from grabbing a noisy digital game from some prepubescent and hurling it across the room. Children need to learn to interact with other people—even adults, and especially at a meal. But back to the story at hand.... The point is even if she were reading a book or thumbing through a magazine, she could still be polite with someone in her vicinity. One thing she knew for sure, she was in the moment. Paying attention. People have even commented on how street-smart she is. She made it a concerted point to be present.
Took in her groceries and then headed for the front door to go back to the street for the mail. Probably two days since she got the mail. Bills only came maybe three times a month and otherwise it was trash, so she didn’t always get the mail. She froze at the sight. The front door was unlocked. Damn. Sometimes it happens.
Next morning she put everything in the trunk, car keys in hand but no office keys. She searched the house twice—once on the surface, the second time into the seams of the sofa, in the silverware drawer. Where in this world...I had them yesterday to get into the room...played with them in my pocket on the way to the time clock. Didn’t I? She searched the car twice in between searching the house. Could have dropped under the front seat...under the passenger seat. In the trunk—maybe came off her finger as she chucked everything back there? Maybe I left them in the media center when Sandra and I were looking at that stuff on her computer. Even considered perhaps they fell out of her pocket at the grocery store.
Not in the media center. She began to tremble a little bit at the thought. No keys. Could be anywhere. How could she lose them. For real. She decided she’d call the grocery store in an hour when it opened.
She put down her things outside her door, having walked with a friend who was chatting about some things going on in her life. As they stood talking, across the hall the admin. assist. came out dangling the keys from her fingers. “Custodian found them in your door handle after you left and gave them to me. I told him I’d get them to you this morning.”
Some bamboo sticks are heavier than others. They make a loud hollow noise when they hit the back of your head.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
my FINAL trip to WALMART. EVER
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THAT PLACE????
Mr. Sam Walton is no doubt spinning in his grave.
I went later than usual because I awoke later and debated whether to go but decided I really could not run out of toilet paper. So I left here about 6:15 this morning with a kind of “bet” to be back by 7.
No hand baskets. I searched... A floor manager asked what I was looking for and then replied that there was only one in the store because people steal them. WHY? I overreacted. She said she heard a lady say they are great for garden tools. But the basket doesn’t belong to her!!! I suggested they set up a thing like the airport—put in your money to rent it and then get your money back when you return it that way if they don’t put it back at least they’ve bought it. She thought maybe selling baskets like that for garden tools. Later I thought they could make the baskets out of stuff that the alarm system will go off when they try to steal them—and why aren’t cashiers taking them at the register?
Then I shopped. Got my stuff in good time even though I was greatly slowed down by a push basket and spent too much wasted time looking for a mother’s day card and a sympathy card and I know better than to try to look for something meaningful in that place.
Oh yeah and then I remembered that WALMART in their stupidity have taken away all cashiers except ONE so that the four “self checkouts” are the ONLY way to check out. Of the four, one was not working and one was crashing with a customer and the cashier did not have a CLUE how to make it work and there was no one else around. Meanwhile the other two registers each had a guy with a basket FULL and I mean bulging on top full of groceries. People are AMAZINGLY SLOW at this job!!!! A cashier develops a rhythm and near-intuitive interaction with the scanner but these people do NOT (including me, I admit) have that rhythm AT ALL. And I was behind three other people with modest amounts of products to check out. A guy came up behind me who helped save me—he was a calming presence and poor guy was only buying a bouquet of roses. I should have let him go in front of me but honestly, it never crossed my mind—I am usually the very consummate kind person in stores and stuff. But I was seeing nothing today in that store but RED.
THIS is wholly unacceptable. And I heard the woman say to the customer loud enough for everyone to hear that she was the only cashier until 7. I looked at my phone—it was 7:00. I was there till nearly 7:30 and not another cash register opened while i was there--- to check out my ---- SIXTY DOLLARS???? SIXTY???? That was twice what I had expected so obviously even though I did buy vitamins, the prices of their groceries are going up too. And of course by the time I got to the register to check stuff out I was seething and trying so hard to calm down that nothing worked. Items didn’t swipe, I plunked in the wrong number for the apples. I didn’t always put the item into the bag properly. I knew I had to get out of there soon or let out a blood curdling scream. And then because I put in the wrong apple number, the cashier had to come over and check it all out before I was "released."
I am fairly certain that this system allows for a great deal of theft—if people can walk out with the handbaskets with impunity they certainly can syphon items back into their basket without running them through that blasted register with theoretically four going at once with only one cashier in attendance.
WALMART—YOU HAVE CUCKOLDED YOURSELVES. I’m not going back. It is NOT worth the “savings” if there are any anymore, and it is not worth the distance and the time and the rising of my blood pressure. It is now 8:00 in the morning and I am livid!!!! on a SUNDAY! On a day OFF!
I must now back away from the computer slowly and retreat to the kitchen for very strong earl grey, hot and some bacon and eggs to calm me down.
OH WAIT—I forgot to gripe about the EGGS that were broken and only one that had good ones in of the acceptable two weeks date on them...I forgot to mention how difficult it was to find things and then the little stockers were just pulling up the absolute front item—about three per brand. Really?
But my favorite moment, when I first arrived and headed for the vitamins and dental floss...I was in that aisle looking for the biotin when I heard loud high voices of silly teenaged girls and I just rolled my eyes. Then they walked by but not close together, first one and then the other. My first impression was they were dressed up as vampires for Halloween but it’s April...so I skipped only a slight beat with that thought adjustment and then the teacher in me called to them inside my own head that they shouldn’t be out in public dressed like prostitutes and then I realized that they ARE PROSTITUTES. LOUD and young prostitutes. Probably 18 to 20. I didn’t get a CLOSE look at them...just a passing one—TWICE. But as I had to follow them at one point, every single person in the store, male or female and of all ages, walked past, turned and watched them for a minute. Just like they wanted them to. And yeah I don’t even need to describe their very tight too short skimpy dress on one and painted on shiny red pants down to the ankles of the other, both with very high heeled pumps and they walked in them like I do in my birks—by that I mean only with the same level of comfort, obviously they swish when they walk and I don’t—and they had very big boobs—or at least the first one I saw did—with ruffles that framed the cleavage, and teased hair and red red red lipstick and tiny clip handbags. I mean they were the stereotype. One’s hair was teased, the other’s was straight. Now as jarring as that was at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, it is not necessarily part of the reason I’ll never go back to Walmart so I’m glad I didn’t think of it until after my rant. In fact they might have actually been the highlight of the trip and possible reason to return—character research.... Naaaah...
Mr. Sam Walton is no doubt spinning in his grave.
I went later than usual because I awoke later and debated whether to go but decided I really could not run out of toilet paper. So I left here about 6:15 this morning with a kind of “bet” to be back by 7.
No hand baskets. I searched... A floor manager asked what I was looking for and then replied that there was only one in the store because people steal them. WHY? I overreacted. She said she heard a lady say they are great for garden tools. But the basket doesn’t belong to her!!! I suggested they set up a thing like the airport—put in your money to rent it and then get your money back when you return it that way if they don’t put it back at least they’ve bought it. She thought maybe selling baskets like that for garden tools. Later I thought they could make the baskets out of stuff that the alarm system will go off when they try to steal them—and why aren’t cashiers taking them at the register?
Then I shopped. Got my stuff in good time even though I was greatly slowed down by a push basket and spent too much wasted time looking for a mother’s day card and a sympathy card and I know better than to try to look for something meaningful in that place.
Oh yeah and then I remembered that WALMART in their stupidity have taken away all cashiers except ONE so that the four “self checkouts” are the ONLY way to check out. Of the four, one was not working and one was crashing with a customer and the cashier did not have a CLUE how to make it work and there was no one else around. Meanwhile the other two registers each had a guy with a basket FULL and I mean bulging on top full of groceries. People are AMAZINGLY SLOW at this job!!!! A cashier develops a rhythm and near-intuitive interaction with the scanner but these people do NOT (including me, I admit) have that rhythm AT ALL. And I was behind three other people with modest amounts of products to check out. A guy came up behind me who helped save me—he was a calming presence and poor guy was only buying a bouquet of roses. I should have let him go in front of me but honestly, it never crossed my mind—I am usually the very consummate kind person in stores and stuff. But I was seeing nothing today in that store but RED.
THIS is wholly unacceptable. And I heard the woman say to the customer loud enough for everyone to hear that she was the only cashier until 7. I looked at my phone—it was 7:00. I was there till nearly 7:30 and not another cash register opened while i was there--- to check out my ---- SIXTY DOLLARS???? SIXTY???? That was twice what I had expected so obviously even though I did buy vitamins, the prices of their groceries are going up too. And of course by the time I got to the register to check stuff out I was seething and trying so hard to calm down that nothing worked. Items didn’t swipe, I plunked in the wrong number for the apples. I didn’t always put the item into the bag properly. I knew I had to get out of there soon or let out a blood curdling scream. And then because I put in the wrong apple number, the cashier had to come over and check it all out before I was "released."
I am fairly certain that this system allows for a great deal of theft—if people can walk out with the handbaskets with impunity they certainly can syphon items back into their basket without running them through that blasted register with theoretically four going at once with only one cashier in attendance.
WALMART—YOU HAVE CUCKOLDED YOURSELVES. I’m not going back. It is NOT worth the “savings” if there are any anymore, and it is not worth the distance and the time and the rising of my blood pressure. It is now 8:00 in the morning and I am livid!!!! on a SUNDAY! On a day OFF!
I must now back away from the computer slowly and retreat to the kitchen for very strong earl grey, hot and some bacon and eggs to calm me down.
OH WAIT—I forgot to gripe about the EGGS that were broken and only one that had good ones in of the acceptable two weeks date on them...I forgot to mention how difficult it was to find things and then the little stockers were just pulling up the absolute front item—about three per brand. Really?
But my favorite moment, when I first arrived and headed for the vitamins and dental floss...I was in that aisle looking for the biotin when I heard loud high voices of silly teenaged girls and I just rolled my eyes. Then they walked by but not close together, first one and then the other. My first impression was they were dressed up as vampires for Halloween but it’s April...so I skipped only a slight beat with that thought adjustment and then the teacher in me called to them inside my own head that they shouldn’t be out in public dressed like prostitutes and then I realized that they ARE PROSTITUTES. LOUD and young prostitutes. Probably 18 to 20. I didn’t get a CLOSE look at them...just a passing one—TWICE. But as I had to follow them at one point, every single person in the store, male or female and of all ages, walked past, turned and watched them for a minute. Just like they wanted them to. And yeah I don’t even need to describe their very tight too short skimpy dress on one and painted on shiny red pants down to the ankles of the other, both with very high heeled pumps and they walked in them like I do in my birks—by that I mean only with the same level of comfort, obviously they swish when they walk and I don’t—and they had very big boobs—or at least the first one I saw did—with ruffles that framed the cleavage, and teased hair and red red red lipstick and tiny clip handbags. I mean they were the stereotype. One’s hair was teased, the other’s was straight. Now as jarring as that was at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, it is not necessarily part of the reason I’ll never go back to Walmart so I’m glad I didn’t think of it until after my rant. In fact they might have actually been the highlight of the trip and possible reason to return—character research.... Naaaah...
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Growing Light in the Garden
Early morning in the hours before dawn
I sit safely on the inside of the screened in porch
and listen to the inky black darkness
to the gurgling frogs and wonder if they are frogs
or maybe it’s the little lizards teasing one another
with soft higher pitched trickling giggles
while it’s still cool and gentle and calm.
My tiny ancient desk lamp blinds
these tiny ancient flying creatures
that seem to pester only until dawn.
They hop and sit on the white paper of my manuscript,
scatter across the white tile
and flop a few times before dying.
The rising of the sun announces their final death
to the singing of mocking birds and cardinals.
And yet I don’t know who they are,
these tiny, delicate, whimsical,
dainty flyfairies.
They come only in April and gasp for the light that kills them.
Harmless,
but before I realize it,
they stick to the bottoms
of my feet and track the house
in the stretch of time
I move about in the silent darkness.
Then as the sun hammers out the pervading darkness
I watch the clouds take shape to the distant sound of the turnpike
like perpetual man-made thunder.
It isn’t pleasant,
but it is constant
with an occasional blast
of a motorcycle
or heavy metal truck.
But in my visual vicinity
I am in a tranquil garden and
the gurgling of the amphibians quiets
while the songs of individual birds rise.
A family of hungry chicks shrill whistles nearby
waiting for their breakfast.
The oak and pine and palm stand still,
like a held breath,
cuing full resting stillness of the hibiscus,
oleander, dragon bamboo, bougainvillea,
walking lilies, fading amaryllis, orchids,
boston ferns, purple showers,
a buddha belly and other exotic plants that populate
my tiny courtyard space...
Until the fullness of dawn seems to launch
frenetic squirrels spinning up and
down the oaks’ trunks and limbs,
their toenails shredding and scratching the bark
sounds like my cousins on the Carolina farm
chasing each other on the golden pebbles of the car path
through the field,
our tennyshoes chewing the gravel,
our giggles gurgling out into the vast quiet of the past
to travel into the future
and linger
vibrant
here
in the present garden
of squirrels and giggling, chirping frogs
and lingering clouds
and dying insects
and growing light.
I sit safely on the inside of the screened in porch
and listen to the inky black darkness
to the gurgling frogs and wonder if they are frogs
or maybe it’s the little lizards teasing one another
with soft higher pitched trickling giggles
while it’s still cool and gentle and calm.
My tiny ancient desk lamp blinds
these tiny ancient flying creatures
that seem to pester only until dawn.
They hop and sit on the white paper of my manuscript,
scatter across the white tile
and flop a few times before dying.
The rising of the sun announces their final death
to the singing of mocking birds and cardinals.
And yet I don’t know who they are,
these tiny, delicate, whimsical,
dainty flyfairies.
They come only in April and gasp for the light that kills them.
Harmless,
but before I realize it,
they stick to the bottoms
of my feet and track the house
in the stretch of time
I move about in the silent darkness.
Then as the sun hammers out the pervading darkness
I watch the clouds take shape to the distant sound of the turnpike
like perpetual man-made thunder.
It isn’t pleasant,
but it is constant
with an occasional blast
of a motorcycle
or heavy metal truck.
But in my visual vicinity
I am in a tranquil garden and
the gurgling of the amphibians quiets
while the songs of individual birds rise.
A family of hungry chicks shrill whistles nearby
waiting for their breakfast.
The oak and pine and palm stand still,
like a held breath,
cuing full resting stillness of the hibiscus,
oleander, dragon bamboo, bougainvillea,
walking lilies, fading amaryllis, orchids,
boston ferns, purple showers,
a buddha belly and other exotic plants that populate
my tiny courtyard space...
Until the fullness of dawn seems to launch
frenetic squirrels spinning up and
down the oaks’ trunks and limbs,
their toenails shredding and scratching the bark
sounds like my cousins on the Carolina farm
chasing each other on the golden pebbles of the car path
through the field,
our tennyshoes chewing the gravel,
our giggles gurgling out into the vast quiet of the past
to travel into the future
and linger
vibrant
here
in the present garden
of squirrels and giggling, chirping frogs
and lingering clouds
and dying insects
and growing light.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Losing car keys at the ACT (flash non fiction)
The room is half full of students ready to take the ACTs. The process of checking in all the students is going very slowly as we have about a hundred and fifty expected today. My count is 25. One student is called Dalton—he’s tall and filled out like healthy senior guys get. He has a friendly, sincere smile that frames a truckload of metal braces. In fact, he’s the youngest of five boys who hauntingly look identical. His seat number puts him in the front row and he fidgets for three or four minutes and finally says to me, as I’m standing in the doorway chatting with my neighbor teacher as we await the students who trickle in, “Ms Ballard, I can’t find my car keys.”
“That’s bad.”
He nods.
“Maybe they’ve fallen in the hallway or out front on your way in from the car. Can’t let you out to look, though. Once everyone is checked in up front, I’ll ask Ms Marcus if she’d be willing to take a look outside for you.”
He nods again. “Last time I lost my keys, I found them in the car with the engine running while I was in McDonalds.” It’s that priceless impish yet innocent and charming grin with all the metal that probably keeps him alive at home.
Twenty minutes later the rest of the testing students have filled my room and I watch down the hall another five minutes or so until all the students testing elsewhere are in and call to Ms Marcus to tell her about the keys and that Dalton drives a red Prius.
“Sure, no problem,” she began with her fabulous edge of sarcasm, a sense of humor that stays in tact even in the midst of her patience being tried and stretched. “I’ll look, since that’s what I’m here for, to go look for some kid’s car keys he left only God knows where.” She walked away toward the front door.
“He thinks he might have left them in the ignition. With the car running,” I call after her.
A girl in the back of another row says, “Wait, are you talking about a car out there now? What color is your car?”
“It’s a red Prius”
“Oh yeah, it’s out there. Engine’s still running.”
The class busted out laughing. Dalton shook his head.
“I parked next to it and looked over and there was nobody there. I was wondering what happened to the driver.”
The kid next to him says, “Yeah, how can you do that? How can you just not know your keys are still in the ignition? I mean, you got out of the car and the engine’s still running?”
Dalton shrugs his shoulders. “Somebody asked me for help and so I jumped out of the car to help him. Never thought of it again.”
Did I mention Dalton is the youngest of five brothers, all exactly like that?
“That’s bad.”
He nods.
“Maybe they’ve fallen in the hallway or out front on your way in from the car. Can’t let you out to look, though. Once everyone is checked in up front, I’ll ask Ms Marcus if she’d be willing to take a look outside for you.”
He nods again. “Last time I lost my keys, I found them in the car with the engine running while I was in McDonalds.” It’s that priceless impish yet innocent and charming grin with all the metal that probably keeps him alive at home.
Twenty minutes later the rest of the testing students have filled my room and I watch down the hall another five minutes or so until all the students testing elsewhere are in and call to Ms Marcus to tell her about the keys and that Dalton drives a red Prius.
“Sure, no problem,” she began with her fabulous edge of sarcasm, a sense of humor that stays in tact even in the midst of her patience being tried and stretched. “I’ll look, since that’s what I’m here for, to go look for some kid’s car keys he left only God knows where.” She walked away toward the front door.
“He thinks he might have left them in the ignition. With the car running,” I call after her.
A girl in the back of another row says, “Wait, are you talking about a car out there now? What color is your car?”
“It’s a red Prius”
“Oh yeah, it’s out there. Engine’s still running.”
The class busted out laughing. Dalton shook his head.
“I parked next to it and looked over and there was nobody there. I was wondering what happened to the driver.”
The kid next to him says, “Yeah, how can you do that? How can you just not know your keys are still in the ignition? I mean, you got out of the car and the engine’s still running?”
Dalton shrugs his shoulders. “Somebody asked me for help and so I jumped out of the car to help him. Never thought of it again.”
Did I mention Dalton is the youngest of five brothers, all exactly like that?
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Margaret Thatcher RIP April 8, 2013
How in the world did I miss the passing of Margaret Thatcher??????
This might just be the cosmic reprimand for listening to "Pillars of the Earth" every time I'm in the car instead of to NPR at least every other time...
I will spend the day (which by the time "you" get this, will be tomorrow since I have yet to discover how to post when I want to post and not when this blogger wants to post, which is about 10:15 p.m. EST) after working until 1:00 reading about her and revisiting her contribution to the world. She was a great lady---whether you agree with her politics or not, you have to give her credit for being great. As lame as that sentence is, if she'd been a man... i can't even finish that sentence either.
Just cannot believe that no one in my daily monotonous world mentioned it at all...anywhere. I found out because I finished reading "Escape from Camp 14" and was surfing on what might have developed there and saw a headline that suggested because the book is so good, U.S. govt. officials and U.N. officials are beginning to press China and collectively press Kim Jong Un about the camps, the camps (especially 14) are reinforcing their security...and as I was scrolling through that I saw a comment about Thatcher's passing...
Will look it up more later but now I have to go proctor tests...
Since it's happening I have to add...here it is Saturday morning, 6:40 a.m. and I am beginning to hear a SAW?????? I seriously hope whoever is awakened by that across the way will RAIL COMPLAINTS... why can't they make stuff like that quiet? I know, I'm on the wrong planet for quiet.
This might just be the cosmic reprimand for listening to "Pillars of the Earth" every time I'm in the car instead of to NPR at least every other time...
I will spend the day (which by the time "you" get this, will be tomorrow since I have yet to discover how to post when I want to post and not when this blogger wants to post, which is about 10:15 p.m. EST) after working until 1:00 reading about her and revisiting her contribution to the world. She was a great lady---whether you agree with her politics or not, you have to give her credit for being great. As lame as that sentence is, if she'd been a man... i can't even finish that sentence either.
Just cannot believe that no one in my daily monotonous world mentioned it at all...anywhere. I found out because I finished reading "Escape from Camp 14" and was surfing on what might have developed there and saw a headline that suggested because the book is so good, U.S. govt. officials and U.N. officials are beginning to press China and collectively press Kim Jong Un about the camps, the camps (especially 14) are reinforcing their security...and as I was scrolling through that I saw a comment about Thatcher's passing...
Will look it up more later but now I have to go proctor tests...
Since it's happening I have to add...here it is Saturday morning, 6:40 a.m. and I am beginning to hear a SAW?????? I seriously hope whoever is awakened by that across the way will RAIL COMPLAINTS... why can't they make stuff like that quiet? I know, I'm on the wrong planet for quiet.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
040613 today’s playdate with comcast
(hang in there, it gets better...if you get tired of reading the goofy sitcom, skip down to the bottom)
Jermaine: Hello Kim, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Jermaine. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Kim : My Issue: i sent my payment in by U.S. mail (paying three other bills as well that day) on March 26...called Tuesday April 2 because it hadn't cleared. Woman i spoke with said billing offices were closed good friday and holy monday so maybe that's w
Jermaine: We are proud of our Customer Guarantee, which includes being here for you, 24/7! You have reached the right person, and I would be glad to assist you with your Billing concern today.
Jermaine: I understand that you have inquiry if the payment sent has already posted on the account.
Jermaine: I will be more than happy to help you on checking this for you today, Kim.
Jermaine: I will exhaust all options to assist you today and I assure you that we would be able to come up with a resolution together on this chat by providing you with the information you need.
Jermaine: Let me go ahead and access the account so that I can assist you further.
Kim : okay...i just am getting really nervous with having sent my bill on the 3.26.13 and it's not processed yet and today is 4.6.13.... so i REALLY want to know whether the location in jensen beach is open today for me to run to the bank and cancel that check then run to the office and pay over the counter...but i can't find it
Kim : find them online i mean
Kim : to find out what their hours are today
Jermaine: Oh, let me verify, you would like to check the office hours for Jensen beach local office, correct?
Kim : all the other bills is sent on that date were cleared---two by 3.28!!! and one by 4.2
Kim : ye
Kim : yep
Jermaine: No problem.
Jermaine: I will check on the payment history on the account for you
Jermaine: May I also please have the last 4 digits of the SSN to ensure the security of your account?
Kim : xxxx
Jermaine: Thank you so much for providing the information.Please give me a minute or two to pull up your account.
Kim : and also tell me what the last notation is on it from the last time i called...please?
Jermaine: While waiting, you can check out Comcast.net. Comcast.net is a one stop personalizable website for up-to-the-minute information on news, weather, finance, sports, entertainment, travel and more. To learn about these and other great Comcast features for Video, High Speed and Digital Voice visit www.comcast.net
Kim : and when i tried to call in a little bit ago the recording came on with high volume of people calling ... the billing office! ... i presume i'm not the only one with this question? is there a reason the processing isn't happening?
Kim : hello?
Jermaine: Thanks for waiting, Kim.
Jermaine: I have accessed the account.
Jermaine: May I know how much is the payment that was sent last 03/26/13 so that I can assist you further?
Kim : 59 something...isn't that on the account?
Kim : whatever the amount due reads...i think...59.41...?
Jermaine: I am now checking if that payment has reflected, Kim.
Jermaine: I have checked the account, however, there is no payment that has reflected for the payment that has been sent last 03/26/13.
Kim : i know that. that's why i'm "calling"!!
Kim : i want to know the times jensen beach location is open so i can go pay it by hand after i cancel the check that's lost somewhere... am i the only one whose payment is lost at the moment?
Jermaine: Oh, no problem.
Jermaine: Let me check that local office information.
Jermaine: I have now the list of the local offices in your area.
Kim : ok
Jermaine: You may view the local office hours on this link: 005E87104ADB0B4A944E5DE8C06BCB5C5012BF99C6BCDBA978989121B1987F771CBC3F73233D23A4BA1FDEB249C3061E961A314D1B09F2B86CA4FD674CB086DF2CF139B8F03F974CCB147483E59F367DC59049E15571E72D499F4916882EA2EB452C5D1C7A5BB3BE918F925A27605071B9C97C20E1EBBC8C3D39B8325B77B0702B8CA2F3EF74D4BF6BA" target="_blank">https://www.comcast.com/paymentCenters/FindPaymentCenters.cspx?eqs=F8598CAA29BA0CC062A3FCE52A1EE904638FDF433D1B36E834494F31B165A91505DFAB4B433C9A0A247F784394B871863A1F5DD1F2D715BC8C2852972005E87104ADB0B4A944E5DE8C06BCB5C5012BF99C6BCDBA978989121B1987F771CBC3F73233D23A4BA1FDEB249C3061E961A314D1B09F2B86CA4FD674CB086DF2CF139B8F03F974CCB147483E59F367DC59049E15571E72D499F4916882EA2EB452C5D1C7A5BB3BE918F925A27605071B9C97C20E1EBBC8C3D39B8325B77B0702B8CA2F3EF74D4BF6BA
Jermaine: As I have checked, local offices hours is from Monday-Friday: 8:00am-6:00pm.
Kim : okay. so what are the chance that the check would be there and clear in the next...48 or 72 hours? where are you located?
Jermaine: If the payment sent is a check, let me set expectation that it will take 5-7 business days for it to be posted on the account.
Jermaine: Is there anything else I can assist you with further, I'll be more than happy to help you with any other concerns you may have.
Kim : 5-7 business days sooooo...means sending on the 26th with a friday-monday four day weekend, that's seven days so far, right? and please confirm that there will be no late charges until....what date? because i in good faith (and lots of headaches and trouble right now tracking and tracking...) will be exceedingly unhappy if i incur a late charge at this point in my "relationship" with comcast. does my "notes" section indicate that i called on 4.2.13?
Jermaine: As I have checked here, there is no late fee that has been added and reflected on the account.
Kim : 1) at what point would there be? and 2) do you see where i called on 4.2.13?
Jermaine: And I can also see here that you have contacted last 04/02/13 and inquired if the payment has been posted, however, no payment has been posted yet at that date.
Jermaine: A late fee is assessed for all balances not paid beyond the billing date.
Kim : okay. thank you. you mean the NEXT billing date...?
Jermaine: Yes, that is correct.
Jermaine: As for the check payment, what I can recommend is contact the bank where the check is associated with to find out if that payment went through on their system.
Jermaine: You are most welcome!
Jermaine: Is there any thing else that I can help you with today?
Kim : it has not. and when i look online at my comcast acct., it's still showing that i owe it. it's very frustrating. because i have paid it! no i don't think you can at this point. thanks for the info on the jensen beach location
Type Here:Analyst is typing.
I am glad I have resolved your inquiry today.
Jermaine: We have outlined no additional steps as everything has been accounted for, and I can assure you the appropriate steps have been taken today so you can definitely consider this issue resolved.
Jermaine: It's been my pleasure to have assisted you and resolved your billing concern.I am happy you contacted Comcast today.Have a great day and take care, Kim !
Jermaine: If you need assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us through Live Chat (available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Comcast also offers great FAQ and Help forums located at www.Comcast.net to help you solve many issues on your own. You can also reach us through our Hotline 1-800-9346489 or 1-800-XFINITY. Thank you for contacting Comcast! We appreciate your business!
Kim : i did check with the bank...but it isn't cleared...i check there first and t hen comcast and then the bank and then comcast and then the bank and then comcast...sure would like to know where that check is and why it's taking comcast so long to process it.
Kim : see you later.
Then there’s the survey...I pretty much skipped down to the last question that I have “very highly” been involved in trying and trying and trying to deal with an issue and wrote this in the comment section:
customer guarantee thing...got to #3 and decided to skip down to this. i always find the reps friendly...but sometimes i get conflicting information. i had an altercation with comcast for five months SOLELY because there were too many cooks in the kitchen led by someone in the philippines who didn't know what he was doing and that was perpetuated with every subsequent call (at least once a week) for five months. five. finally, i think his name was napoleon? resolved it--i think. and your survey does not address this issue. the issue of actually fixing it as opposed to saying it's fixed. ALSO when a rep says they'll do something and then they say they can't really prove it (by sending or printing a receipt, etc.) it's annoying then to be asked if it's resolved in a survey especially when it's a week or so later that the crashing blow surprise is that it isn't or that a NEW stupidity has been somehow added or redirected or...completed on top of whatever the original issue was... in the last five months---whether online chat, on the phone or even in person at the jensen beach location, only ONE PERSON finally fixed the issue (napoleon?). BUT THEN the very next billing cycle, i YAY saw that it was for the correct amount!!! but when i sent in my payment...two weeks ago...it still has not cleared. it's exceedingly frustrating to spend more time dealing with what could be so simple as paying a bill than i spend with my best friend. by the way, the visiting technician in the midst of all this...in january?..., was AWESOME. but your people on the phone...and over the counter, seem to keep hitting the wrong buttons on my account... i just don't understand. i love the product--xfinity...but comcast the company? not so much. now i have to drive over to the bank to cancel a check and then drive on monday, after a long day at work, in horrendous rush hour traffic, to stand in that horrific line of unhappy people just to pay a bill that i have already paid once. so...what exactly IS the customer service guarantee?
I should have added (but I only now thought of it): is it the guarantee that we will indeed need a lot of customer service?
Update: this very day, after all that (which of course includes the call I made last Tuesday) the mail came and in it an envelope from comcast. In it was (and I am ANGRY that my camera is dead!!!) my check made out to them stapled to a form letter that said it was being returned to me because it was damaged by the postal delivery folks in GA!!!! Seriously? It didn’t look like the kind of damage that would preclude PAYING MY BILL so now I’m out fifty cents because of the post office? Because of comcast? LISTEN UP COMCAST, if you cared even a pinky toe’s worth for your customers, you’d’ve applied that payment or at the very least you’d’ve made a note in the file so instead of me calling a hundred times the FIRST time the rep could say, it says here the payment was damaged and is being sent back to you. THAT seems so easy. And do not tell me that the world doesn’t work that way because I KNOW it doesn’t...and comcast is to customer service what an IED is to peace and love.
Jermaine: Hello Kim, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Jermaine. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Kim : My Issue: i sent my payment in by U.S. mail (paying three other bills as well that day) on March 26...called Tuesday April 2 because it hadn't cleared. Woman i spoke with said billing offices were closed good friday and holy monday so maybe that's w
Jermaine: We are proud of our Customer Guarantee, which includes being here for you, 24/7! You have reached the right person, and I would be glad to assist you with your Billing concern today.
Jermaine: I understand that you have inquiry if the payment sent has already posted on the account.
Jermaine: I will be more than happy to help you on checking this for you today, Kim.
Jermaine: I will exhaust all options to assist you today and I assure you that we would be able to come up with a resolution together on this chat by providing you with the information you need.
Jermaine: Let me go ahead and access the account so that I can assist you further.
Kim : okay...i just am getting really nervous with having sent my bill on the 3.26.13 and it's not processed yet and today is 4.6.13.... so i REALLY want to know whether the location in jensen beach is open today for me to run to the bank and cancel that check then run to the office and pay over the counter...but i can't find it
Kim : find them online i mean
Kim : to find out what their hours are today
Jermaine: Oh, let me verify, you would like to check the office hours for Jensen beach local office, correct?
Kim : all the other bills is sent on that date were cleared---two by 3.28!!! and one by 4.2
Kim : ye
Kim : yep
Jermaine: No problem.
Jermaine: I will check on the payment history on the account for you
Jermaine: May I also please have the last 4 digits of the SSN to ensure the security of your account?
Kim : xxxx
Jermaine: Thank you so much for providing the information.Please give me a minute or two to pull up your account.
Kim : and also tell me what the last notation is on it from the last time i called...please?
Jermaine: While waiting, you can check out Comcast.net. Comcast.net is a one stop personalizable website for up-to-the-minute information on news, weather, finance, sports, entertainment, travel and more. To learn about these and other great Comcast features for Video, High Speed and Digital Voice visit www.comcast.net
Kim : and when i tried to call in a little bit ago the recording came on with high volume of people calling ... the billing office! ... i presume i'm not the only one with this question? is there a reason the processing isn't happening?
Kim : hello?
Jermaine: Thanks for waiting, Kim.
Jermaine: I have accessed the account.
Jermaine: May I know how much is the payment that was sent last 03/26/13 so that I can assist you further?
Kim : 59 something...isn't that on the account?
Kim : whatever the amount due reads...i think...59.41...?
Jermaine: I am now checking if that payment has reflected, Kim.
Jermaine: I have checked the account, however, there is no payment that has reflected for the payment that has been sent last 03/26/13.
Kim : i know that. that's why i'm "calling"!!
Kim : i want to know the times jensen beach location is open so i can go pay it by hand after i cancel the check that's lost somewhere... am i the only one whose payment is lost at the moment?
Jermaine: Oh, no problem.
Jermaine: Let me check that local office information.
Jermaine: I have now the list of the local offices in your area.
Kim : ok
Jermaine: You may view the local office hours on this link: 005E87104ADB0B4A944E5DE8C06BCB5C5012BF99C6BCDBA978989121B1987F771CBC3F73233D23A4BA1FDEB249C3061E961A314D1B09F2B86CA4FD674CB086DF2CF139B8F03F974CCB147483E59F367DC59049E15571E72D499F4916882EA2EB452C5D1C7A5BB3BE918F925A27605071B9C97C20E1EBBC8C3D39B8325B77B0702B8CA2F3EF74D4BF6BA" target="_blank">https://www.comcast.com/paymentCenters/FindPaymentCenters.cspx?eqs=F8598CAA29BA0CC062A3FCE52A1EE904638FDF433D1B36E834494F31B165A91505DFAB4B433C9A0A247F784394B871863A1F5DD1F2D715BC8C2852972005E87104ADB0B4A944E5DE8C06BCB5C5012BF99C6BCDBA978989121B1987F771CBC3F73233D23A4BA1FDEB249C3061E961A314D1B09F2B86CA4FD674CB086DF2CF139B8F03F974CCB147483E59F367DC59049E15571E72D499F4916882EA2EB452C5D1C7A5BB3BE918F925A27605071B9C97C20E1EBBC8C3D39B8325B77B0702B8CA2F3EF74D4BF6BA
Jermaine: As I have checked, local offices hours is from Monday-Friday: 8:00am-6:00pm.
Kim : okay. so what are the chance that the check would be there and clear in the next...48 or 72 hours? where are you located?
Jermaine: If the payment sent is a check, let me set expectation that it will take 5-7 business days for it to be posted on the account.
Jermaine: Is there anything else I can assist you with further, I'll be more than happy to help you with any other concerns you may have.
Kim : 5-7 business days sooooo...means sending on the 26th with a friday-monday four day weekend, that's seven days so far, right? and please confirm that there will be no late charges until....what date? because i in good faith (and lots of headaches and trouble right now tracking and tracking...) will be exceedingly unhappy if i incur a late charge at this point in my "relationship" with comcast. does my "notes" section indicate that i called on 4.2.13?
Jermaine: As I have checked here, there is no late fee that has been added and reflected on the account.
Kim : 1) at what point would there be? and 2) do you see where i called on 4.2.13?
Jermaine: And I can also see here that you have contacted last 04/02/13 and inquired if the payment has been posted, however, no payment has been posted yet at that date.
Jermaine: A late fee is assessed for all balances not paid beyond the billing date.
Kim : okay. thank you. you mean the NEXT billing date...?
Jermaine: Yes, that is correct.
Jermaine: As for the check payment, what I can recommend is contact the bank where the check is associated with to find out if that payment went through on their system.
Jermaine: You are most welcome!
Jermaine: Is there any thing else that I can help you with today?
Kim : it has not. and when i look online at my comcast acct., it's still showing that i owe it. it's very frustrating. because i have paid it! no i don't think you can at this point. thanks for the info on the jensen beach location
Type Here:Analyst is typing.
I am glad I have resolved your inquiry today.
Jermaine: We have outlined no additional steps as everything has been accounted for, and I can assure you the appropriate steps have been taken today so you can definitely consider this issue resolved.
Jermaine: It's been my pleasure to have assisted you and resolved your billing concern.I am happy you contacted Comcast today.Have a great day and take care, Kim !
Jermaine: If you need assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact us through Live Chat (available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Comcast also offers great FAQ and Help forums located at www.Comcast.net to help you solve many issues on your own. You can also reach us through our Hotline 1-800-9346489 or 1-800-XFINITY. Thank you for contacting Comcast! We appreciate your business!
Kim : i did check with the bank...but it isn't cleared...i check there first and t hen comcast and then the bank and then comcast and then the bank and then comcast...sure would like to know where that check is and why it's taking comcast so long to process it.
Kim : see you later.
Then there’s the survey...I pretty much skipped down to the last question that I have “very highly” been involved in trying and trying and trying to deal with an issue and wrote this in the comment section:
customer guarantee thing...got to #3 and decided to skip down to this. i always find the reps friendly...but sometimes i get conflicting information. i had an altercation with comcast for five months SOLELY because there were too many cooks in the kitchen led by someone in the philippines who didn't know what he was doing and that was perpetuated with every subsequent call (at least once a week) for five months. five. finally, i think his name was napoleon? resolved it--i think. and your survey does not address this issue. the issue of actually fixing it as opposed to saying it's fixed. ALSO when a rep says they'll do something and then they say they can't really prove it (by sending or printing a receipt, etc.) it's annoying then to be asked if it's resolved in a survey especially when it's a week or so later that the crashing blow surprise is that it isn't or that a NEW stupidity has been somehow added or redirected or...completed on top of whatever the original issue was... in the last five months---whether online chat, on the phone or even in person at the jensen beach location, only ONE PERSON finally fixed the issue (napoleon?). BUT THEN the very next billing cycle, i YAY saw that it was for the correct amount!!! but when i sent in my payment...two weeks ago...it still has not cleared. it's exceedingly frustrating to spend more time dealing with what could be so simple as paying a bill than i spend with my best friend. by the way, the visiting technician in the midst of all this...in january?..., was AWESOME. but your people on the phone...and over the counter, seem to keep hitting the wrong buttons on my account... i just don't understand. i love the product--xfinity...but comcast the company? not so much. now i have to drive over to the bank to cancel a check and then drive on monday, after a long day at work, in horrendous rush hour traffic, to stand in that horrific line of unhappy people just to pay a bill that i have already paid once. so...what exactly IS the customer service guarantee?
I should have added (but I only now thought of it): is it the guarantee that we will indeed need a lot of customer service?
Update: this very day, after all that (which of course includes the call I made last Tuesday) the mail came and in it an envelope from comcast. In it was (and I am ANGRY that my camera is dead!!!) my check made out to them stapled to a form letter that said it was being returned to me because it was damaged by the postal delivery folks in GA!!!! Seriously? It didn’t look like the kind of damage that would preclude PAYING MY BILL so now I’m out fifty cents because of the post office? Because of comcast? LISTEN UP COMCAST, if you cared even a pinky toe’s worth for your customers, you’d’ve applied that payment or at the very least you’d’ve made a note in the file so instead of me calling a hundred times the FIRST time the rep could say, it says here the payment was damaged and is being sent back to you. THAT seems so easy. And do not tell me that the world doesn’t work that way because I KNOW it doesn’t...and comcast is to customer service what an IED is to peace and love.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
ebook more expensive than the print!
I think I read that right... Do you see what I see? I thought the whole revolution of ebooks was that it would cost the consumer so much less without the print middle-man...what does this mean?
-
And Here's The Kicker
Retail: $17.99Your price: $12.10You save: $5.89 (33%) -
And Here's The Kicker eBook
$19.99 -
Humor Writing Kit (eBook Bundle)
$37.98 -
Humor Writing Kit (Paperback Bundle)
Retail: $35.98Your price: $21.59You save: $14.39 (40%)
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Sneak Previews...RIP Roger Ebert! 1942-2013 (and Gene Siskel 1946-1999)
Siskel and Ebert taught me foundational approaches to appreciating films. Bottom line, did you enjoy the movie? With a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, they were critics who discussed the movies from a primary passion for the story form itself.
Ebert especially was a fave--I just loved how approachable his love of movies was and his sensible insights. His critical writing got to the heart but from different perspectives. Firm authority and he had extensive credentials, but there wasn't any arrogance so many critics suffer from.
I don't have a lot to say or anything unique or insightful...just sorry to see his story end at only 70.
One show I remember particularly was a review of one of the upteen sequels to Halloween and they were reviewing the film somewhat with attitude and then at the end they wrapped up the review (wish i could remember exactly---i'm sure the episode can be found out there in youtube somewhere) by pleading and begging with the audience NOT to go see it so that MAYBE they would STOP making such HORRIBLY boring and cliche sequels...it was hilarious, actually.
Sneak Previews was THE BEST film review show...i watched it even after Siskel died and whoever it was filled in...but it wasn't the same as Siskel and Ebert. But Ebert was the main man.
Ebert especially was a fave--I just loved how approachable his love of movies was and his sensible insights. His critical writing got to the heart but from different perspectives. Firm authority and he had extensive credentials, but there wasn't any arrogance so many critics suffer from.
I don't have a lot to say or anything unique or insightful...just sorry to see his story end at only 70.
One show I remember particularly was a review of one of the upteen sequels to Halloween and they were reviewing the film somewhat with attitude and then at the end they wrapped up the review (wish i could remember exactly---i'm sure the episode can be found out there in youtube somewhere) by pleading and begging with the audience NOT to go see it so that MAYBE they would STOP making such HORRIBLY boring and cliche sequels...it was hilarious, actually.
Sneak Previews was THE BEST film review show...i watched it even after Siskel died and whoever it was filled in...but it wasn't the same as Siskel and Ebert. But Ebert was the main man.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Happy Birthday Maya Angelou!!! 85 April 4
What a poet! What a magnificent woman!
Check out "And Still I Rise"--- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0
Check out "And Still I Rise"--- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0
National Geographic---love that magazine!
Monday, April 1, was the last day of spring break. My NatGeo came in that morning's mail and it was heavenly to sit out on the back patio and just absorb it. Seems I put these wonderful mags to the side and then have trouble ever getting back to them and reading them but I love them. My father loves them, too, and so I have kept up his subscription as a primary birthday present.
One of my favorite students who I recently learned (but not from her) was dis-located by Katrina and had recently moved into this area came up to me after class giddy with excitement waving the April NatGeo--same one I had just read Monday. For a brief second I thought it was a particular story--then I realized it was the magazine itself! She turned 17 last week and her aunt gave her a subscription to NatGeo and she was so excited because her very first issue had just come in the mail yesterday!
How refreshing and hopeful to have a student this age and this day excited about something so amazing and worthwhile as this magazine! Especially after another class today---who the vast majority watch reality tv--the likes of "Cat Fishing" and "Duck Dynasty"--talked me into watching an episode of DD. I cannot watch Cat Fishing. I tried several weeks ago when they mentioned it. But today I promised I would watch one episode of Duck Dynasty, and I just now did. It was THE single most boring 21 minutes of my entire life. Seriously? These kids' lives are so boring and superficial that they spend their time watching other people's boring lives? That was so discouraging. Made the excitement over the NatGeo that much more fabulous and worth celebrating!
I am tempted to digress to sheer disgust that A&E has wholly turned to shallow and superficial "E" and left "A" far far far behind. What is their problem? They want to make money. What is wrong with a society and civilization that watches that stuff? To the point of profit and perpetuation? But I do digress. Feel free to share your opinion---especially if you know of A&E shows that are heavy on the A...
One of my favorite students who I recently learned (but not from her) was dis-located by Katrina and had recently moved into this area came up to me after class giddy with excitement waving the April NatGeo--same one I had just read Monday. For a brief second I thought it was a particular story--then I realized it was the magazine itself! She turned 17 last week and her aunt gave her a subscription to NatGeo and she was so excited because her very first issue had just come in the mail yesterday!
How refreshing and hopeful to have a student this age and this day excited about something so amazing and worthwhile as this magazine! Especially after another class today---who the vast majority watch reality tv--the likes of "Cat Fishing" and "Duck Dynasty"--talked me into watching an episode of DD. I cannot watch Cat Fishing. I tried several weeks ago when they mentioned it. But today I promised I would watch one episode of Duck Dynasty, and I just now did. It was THE single most boring 21 minutes of my entire life. Seriously? These kids' lives are so boring and superficial that they spend their time watching other people's boring lives? That was so discouraging. Made the excitement over the NatGeo that much more fabulous and worth celebrating!
I am tempted to digress to sheer disgust that A&E has wholly turned to shallow and superficial "E" and left "A" far far far behind. What is their problem? They want to make money. What is wrong with a society and civilization that watches that stuff? To the point of profit and perpetuation? But I do digress. Feel free to share your opinion---especially if you know of A&E shows that are heavy on the A...
Monday, April 1, 2013
Berlin...North Korea..."In the Garden of Beasts"..."Escape from Camp 14"
Two days ago finished reading “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson. Really good book. Great angle to watch the unfolding of about four years in the mid ‘30s from the social scene in Berlin—particularly the society of foreigners—particularly the American ambassador and his family. It’s well written, has a great pace, extremely readable and I was taken with seeing how people viewed Hitler at the time. Uncanny.
While I was at my folks’ place for Easter I was telling Mama about it and she kept saying, “That’s what we’re doing now with North Korea! We keep expecting things to blow over. Or we figure the kid is crazy and surely no one will let him get away with this!” Clearly history is repeating itself, she and I believe. It’s scary really. The U.S. was timid in the ‘30s and look what happened. How many people died—and I’m not just talking the concentration camps. But there’s the night of the long knives where around 250 people were killed simply because they were beginning to balk at Hitler’s unmitigated terror and force of will with impunity. That was June 30, 1934. U.S. newspapers printed the story. It was common knowledge—yet we did nothing. Studying it in school I know I wondered why we didn’t do anything—why Germans didn’t do anything...and people there at the time kept saying things along the lines of being sure the German people would rise up and not stand for any more of this. But the German people were terrified—even leaders as high up as von Papen were terrified of Hitler’s power. And the German people were hungry and largely unemployed. Hitler promised as well as threatened and they did what they thought was best for survival at the time. But foreign governments do not have my same defense.
Especially now that North Korea seems to be behaving similarly. I am now reading “Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden (published 2012) about Shin Dong-hyuk, first person born in a work camp (Kaechon) in North Korea to successfully escape. He is the same age as Kim Jong Eun. Because this rampant torture and deadly force with impunity is happening now, and is now becoming common knowledge, and we have known for decades that the ruling Kims are cruel and crazy and unpredictable, I would say the problem now is worse than Hitler’s regime. In the NK work camps, people are being born and raised in order to fill work detail and apparently fulfill their bloodthirsty inclinations and are worked to death, literally. There is no knowledge of the outside world. There is no access from the outside world. And there is no economic benefit from polarizing the issue. No celebrity represents the problem.
What can we do? I wonder what it would take to overthrow that regime and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands impacted...what kind of society would it become to have all those people loosed at once... No sense of morality or equal justice. No sense of compassion or love. I’m only just now in chapter 3 of the life this boy led in the camps and how he escaped. I confess I am afraid to listen to international news as things develop in that part of the world. I confess I feel despair and hopelessness that anything can be done. Nor do I have any idea of what could be done. But I believe world leaders have a responsibility to gather and take serious, wise, calculated steps to change things for the better simply because it is the right thing to do.
There are organizations on the front line I think... Amnesty international. North Korea Freedom Coalition. Liberty in North Korea.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/north-korea-stories-from-the-forgotten-prisons/
http://www.nkfreedom.org/
http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/
http://www.youtube.com/linkglobal
While I was at my folks’ place for Easter I was telling Mama about it and she kept saying, “That’s what we’re doing now with North Korea! We keep expecting things to blow over. Or we figure the kid is crazy and surely no one will let him get away with this!” Clearly history is repeating itself, she and I believe. It’s scary really. The U.S. was timid in the ‘30s and look what happened. How many people died—and I’m not just talking the concentration camps. But there’s the night of the long knives where around 250 people were killed simply because they were beginning to balk at Hitler’s unmitigated terror and force of will with impunity. That was June 30, 1934. U.S. newspapers printed the story. It was common knowledge—yet we did nothing. Studying it in school I know I wondered why we didn’t do anything—why Germans didn’t do anything...and people there at the time kept saying things along the lines of being sure the German people would rise up and not stand for any more of this. But the German people were terrified—even leaders as high up as von Papen were terrified of Hitler’s power. And the German people were hungry and largely unemployed. Hitler promised as well as threatened and they did what they thought was best for survival at the time. But foreign governments do not have my same defense.
Especially now that North Korea seems to be behaving similarly. I am now reading “Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden (published 2012) about Shin Dong-hyuk, first person born in a work camp (Kaechon) in North Korea to successfully escape. He is the same age as Kim Jong Eun. Because this rampant torture and deadly force with impunity is happening now, and is now becoming common knowledge, and we have known for decades that the ruling Kims are cruel and crazy and unpredictable, I would say the problem now is worse than Hitler’s regime. In the NK work camps, people are being born and raised in order to fill work detail and apparently fulfill their bloodthirsty inclinations and are worked to death, literally. There is no knowledge of the outside world. There is no access from the outside world. And there is no economic benefit from polarizing the issue. No celebrity represents the problem.
What can we do? I wonder what it would take to overthrow that regime and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands impacted...what kind of society would it become to have all those people loosed at once... No sense of morality or equal justice. No sense of compassion or love. I’m only just now in chapter 3 of the life this boy led in the camps and how he escaped. I confess I am afraid to listen to international news as things develop in that part of the world. I confess I feel despair and hopelessness that anything can be done. Nor do I have any idea of what could be done. But I believe world leaders have a responsibility to gather and take serious, wise, calculated steps to change things for the better simply because it is the right thing to do.
There are organizations on the front line I think... Amnesty international. North Korea Freedom Coalition. Liberty in North Korea.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/asia/north-korea-stories-from-the-forgotten-prisons/
http://www.nkfreedom.org/
http://libertyinnorthkorea.org/
http://www.youtube.com/linkglobal
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Happy Birthday Flannery O'Connor! only one day late...
You know Flannery O'Connor, right? Brilliant, strange, southern gothic writer from Georgia? I am still fascinated with her stories---particularly her characters. How she could get into the minds of all these different characters and shape such awesome stories is a perpetual marvel.
She was born March 25, 1925; died of lupus when she was 39.
My favorite of her stories: "A Good Man is Hard to Find"; "Revelation"...so many... "The River" is still one of the most horrifying stories I've ever read. To say anything more than that is to give it away so all I can say is find yourself a copy and read it!
A compelling life theme was her belief that God is discovered in our lives at the point of pain or great violence. I think she related the words somehow---violate, violence---that to wake us out of our complacency God has to sometimes literally violate our lives. This is the crossroads, the point in our lives where we are best able to see or hear God's intention to be with us, to change something so deeply rooted and damaging that it has to be surgically altered---the violence is a means of waking us to the desire to be and pursue something better than our complacency has lulled us into. I think "A Good Man is Hard to Find" speaks to that more than any of her stories.
One bit of fun trivia---apparently a reporter once asked her if she felt universities were doing enough to encourage young writers and she replied she felt they were not doing enough to discourage them. I love that.
She was born March 25, 1925; died of lupus when she was 39.
My favorite of her stories: "A Good Man is Hard to Find"; "Revelation"...so many... "The River" is still one of the most horrifying stories I've ever read. To say anything more than that is to give it away so all I can say is find yourself a copy and read it!
A compelling life theme was her belief that God is discovered in our lives at the point of pain or great violence. I think she related the words somehow---violate, violence---that to wake us out of our complacency God has to sometimes literally violate our lives. This is the crossroads, the point in our lives where we are best able to see or hear God's intention to be with us, to change something so deeply rooted and damaging that it has to be surgically altered---the violence is a means of waking us to the desire to be and pursue something better than our complacency has lulled us into. I think "A Good Man is Hard to Find" speaks to that more than any of her stories.
One bit of fun trivia---apparently a reporter once asked her if she felt universities were doing enough to encourage young writers and she replied she felt they were not doing enough to discourage them. I love that.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Finally back on the patio before dawn to write!
First day back.* Without school’s early morning departure, the longer dark morning is heavenly. Moreso this morning because of the rain. The puffs of breeze through oaks, pines and palms. Moderate temperatures finally around 70. I am out on the patio in this holy darkness with just the old lamp hunched over the work. This beloved lamp, black iron with odd spatters of green which must have been popular in the ‘50s. The flat oval base has three ridges for pencils to lay across in front and on either side dimples perhaps for erasure or paperclips. Then the base lifts in diminishing ripples like tiny Chinese rice terraces tapering into the thin coiled neck with narrow segments for easy bending stretching about a foot and bowed as I have placed it with that single 60 or 75 watt bulb holder from which hangs the rusty chain with a tiny ball on the end, and the bulb is hooded with what almost looks like a miniature German helmet. Eight or so years ago the cord finally frayed out at the dangerous plug and a friend cut it off and hooked up the wires to a new and longer cord. This was my father’s desk lamp when he was in school and he had it at the house. I’m not sure when it was passed along to me but I know I’ve had it as long as I can remember, at least back to high school. I’ve had other desk lamps here and there at work or other locations in the house and this by far is the best and my favorite.
If that evil little coolpix camera were working—can you believe it? Two days longer than the 30 day return policy and it quits working!—I’d put a pic with this.
But my point really was more about being out here early!! First day back on the patio to focus on the writing... It is in every way delicious! (Except for the writer’s block hurdle of having been away from it so long.)
YAY Spring break!
About that rain. Last night the wind was just hurling through and as it got dark I was a bit miffed because the wind through the trees sounds like rain! And then BAM! Torrents of rain whipped through here and thunder and it was glorious! But in between—when it was raining hard and tapering just before the thunder and lightning hit, I was struck (so to speak) with the sound of the water spatting the pavers, the big rain drops tapping the leaves and suddenly in my mind’s eye I was seeing a campfire. It sounded like a big fire smacking and spitting and crackling. Of course I smiled. The two elements most opposite—fire and water—and here they sounded so much alike.
*"back" meaning it's warm enough and I'm on vacation so I can lean toward getting back to really writing...working on story...really really...it's so lovely I cannot verbalize it!
If that evil little coolpix camera were working—can you believe it? Two days longer than the 30 day return policy and it quits working!—I’d put a pic with this.
But my point really was more about being out here early!! First day back on the patio to focus on the writing... It is in every way delicious! (Except for the writer’s block hurdle of having been away from it so long.)
YAY Spring break!
About that rain. Last night the wind was just hurling through and as it got dark I was a bit miffed because the wind through the trees sounds like rain! And then BAM! Torrents of rain whipped through here and thunder and it was glorious! But in between—when it was raining hard and tapering just before the thunder and lightning hit, I was struck (so to speak) with the sound of the water spatting the pavers, the big rain drops tapping the leaves and suddenly in my mind’s eye I was seeing a campfire. It sounded like a big fire smacking and spitting and crackling. Of course I smiled. The two elements most opposite—fire and water—and here they sounded so much alike.
*"back" meaning it's warm enough and I'm on vacation so I can lean toward getting back to really writing...working on story...really really...it's so lovely I cannot verbalize it!
Sunday, March 17, 2013
How could I be lost?
Every day is a hunter’s perch
when we crouch in the center of our lives
weapons of doubt and self flagellation
locked and loaded
space is easy—terrain and landscape marred and scarred by
choices to build or demolish
it’s time that’s elusive
at exactly what point did I become committed
to being
who I am
what day was it
what was I wearing who did I know where did I live
what had I eaten for breakfast
when I decided to
or not to
be
or do
that which locked me into this place and this time
on the perpetual center of the turning world
I can only see the space
380 degrees in all directions
the past and future
point to one end
which is always here
always present
how could I be lost
(a few sentiments borrowed from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets — a stronger and more complete meditation about our impermanence and memory)
when we crouch in the center of our lives
weapons of doubt and self flagellation
locked and loaded
space is easy—terrain and landscape marred and scarred by
choices to build or demolish
it’s time that’s elusive
at exactly what point did I become committed
to being
who I am
what day was it
what was I wearing who did I know where did I live
what had I eaten for breakfast
when I decided to
or not to
be
or do
that which locked me into this place and this time
on the perpetual center of the turning world
I can only see the space
380 degrees in all directions
the past and future
point to one end
which is always here
always present
how could I be lost
(a few sentiments borrowed from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets — a stronger and more complete meditation about our impermanence and memory)
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Crane Drop Humidifier
Since I’ve had my share of annual infections that have put me down for the count, I’m trying just about everything. This cute little drop arrived on my doorstep this afternoon. It’s silent and just working like a charm so far! So tonight will be the first night to test her out.
Yesterday was the last day of the prednosone and augmentin and I’ve been feeling a little bizarre...transitioning drugs is always so much fun. I still have a few more nights of allegra D so that will tide me over I hope with the congestion thing... But that post nasal drip thing is pure evil. Makes me cough. And I have GERD. So I may be “well” but I’m definitely not 100%.
MARCH 26, 2013 UPDATE!!! I confess---I have been sleeping a WHOLE LOT BETTER with this thing! I fill her up and turn her on medium around 6 in the evening and go to bed between 8:30 and 9 and sleep really well---there is no damp feeling...am not aware of it AT ALL! there is a light gurgle sound every so often as the water kind of adjusts...but it's not intrusive at all. the first night there was a little bit of a plastic smell initially but haven't smelled that since! I love it and recommend it! easy to use and easy to clean following the directions!
Monday, March 11, 2013
daylight savings :o( 031113
Sunday, March 10, 2013
not well yet quite right memory sentence 031013
i'm getting impatient i think...the not well yet but not really sick any
more stage. and my eyes have been itching all day which tells me that
the allergies are still in full force.... but i've had the doors open
all day. can't help it.
and the glorious chimes have kept me company. i love them so much!
but i need to get out there to the garden with some sharp weapons...just not in me
yet...
and i keep napping---know i need to but also would prefer to read...two pages and i'm asleep. or write...nothing but wide white blinking abyss there sooooo... it's futile.
but it's the stage...
and i keep napping---know i need to but also would prefer to read...two pages and i'm asleep. or write...nothing but wide white blinking abyss there sooooo... it's futile.
but it's the stage...
Saturday, March 9, 2013
salad...memory sentence 030913
Sometimes there's nothing better than a salad. When I make my own, there is no lettuce--sometimes spinach. But not tonight. Tonight i had carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, AWWWW forgot the craisins! dang..., apple, onion, cheddar cheese, BACON!!!, walnuts and raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Just yummy.
I'm also hooked on a Scottish series from 2006 called Rebus. Good stories. (The series that started in 2000 is awful...i only watched a portion of the first episode but was curious that the lead guy and the guy on the cover where two different men, two different ages, two different types! Found online a guy who categories British mysteries and police dramas and fortunately he mentioned the recasting, refurbishing and rereleasing in 2006. I think it's based on a novel series.) The series is intense and captivating.
Also trying not to get too whiny about the time change. Seriously, every year I am more convinced that we just need to pick one and stay with it. Preferably the time frame where i can see the sun rise before hiding away for 8-9 hours. It is so so so difficult to go to work at 7 in the dark and not see daylight until 3:00. Borders on abusive. I never dreamed in my worst nightmare that I would ever teach in a school with no windows.
I'm also hooked on a Scottish series from 2006 called Rebus. Good stories. (The series that started in 2000 is awful...i only watched a portion of the first episode but was curious that the lead guy and the guy on the cover where two different men, two different ages, two different types! Found online a guy who categories British mysteries and police dramas and fortunately he mentioned the recasting, refurbishing and rereleasing in 2006. I think it's based on a novel series.) The series is intense and captivating.
Also trying not to get too whiny about the time change. Seriously, every year I am more convinced that we just need to pick one and stay with it. Preferably the time frame where i can see the sun rise before hiding away for 8-9 hours. It is so so so difficult to go to work at 7 in the dark and not see daylight until 3:00. Borders on abusive. I never dreamed in my worst nightmare that I would ever teach in a school with no windows.
Friday, March 8, 2013
the ring...memory sentences 030813
I love this ring. It will likely never leave my finger—yet I have promised my mother that I will leave it to my niece who was born the week after Ma died. I can’t remember the last time I took it off. Now it is...stuck...initially 15 years ago my finger was perfect, maybe the ring was a tad snug. But now the ring is far too small and the knuckle has swollen slightly, but I can still twist it. At this point, I can’t conceive of not having it on.
Far, far too often I miss my grands...and ancestors I don’t know. Sometimes I can almost feel their presence. I wonder what they would think of the world today. Wonder what is perpetually cyclical. What they would advise about different questions, thoughts, doubts, hopes I have. Are they essentially the same as what they experienced? Did they wonder about their choices and whether things would have been different if? Did they have to work at not being afraid of losing her home? Their savings? Did they fear losing their ability to endure? Did they ever get discouraged by a profound sense that everything they’d worked so hard to accomplish was ultimately futile? Did they feel obsolete?
Just look at those questions...negative, fearful, doubtful, dark. I twist the ring and it is a reminder of endurance, value, hope, joy, connection. But I have to admit, right now, I feel sad. Proud. Blessed. Fortunate. Connected. Grateful for this gift. Hopeful that this isn’t where the story ends. Hopeful there is more to this mortal life than a fragile chain of progeny, like some delicate, brief flower chain we used to make as kids...
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