leahbrooks.com

Winter solstice

2011-12-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

Imagine if all of the countries and peoples of the world today could believe in one common theme - that the days get shorter, and then, just when you can't imagine it, they start to lengthen again. Renewal of the light. Here are some of the ancient solstice holidays celebrated at one time, all around the world.
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TheSaami, indigenous people of Finland, Sweden and Norway, worship Beiwe, thesun-goddess of fertility and sanity. She travels through the sky in a structuremade of reindeer bones with her daughter, Beiwe-Neia, to herald back thegreenery on which the reindeer feed. On the winter solstice, her worshiperssacrifice white female animals, and thread the meat onto sticks which they bendinto rings and tie with bright ribbons. They also cover their doorposts withbutter so Beiwe can eat it and begin her journey once again.

TheInti Raymi or Festival of the Sun was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empirein honor of the sun god Inti. It also marked the winter solstice and a new yearin the Andes of the Southern Hemisphere. One ceremony performed by the Inca priestswas the tying of the sun. In Machu Picchu there is still a large column ofstone called an Intihuatana, meaning "hitching post of the sun" orliterally for tying the sun. The ceremony to tie the sun to the stone was toprevent the sun from escaping. The Spanish conquest, never finding MachuPicchu, destroyed all the other intihuatana, extinguishing the sun tyingpractice. The Catholic Church managed to suppress all Inti festivals andceremonies by 1572.
Karachun,Korochun or Kračún was a Slavic holiday similar to Halloween as a day when theBlack God and other evil spirits were most potent. It was celebrated by Slavson the longest night of the year. On this night, Hors, symbolising the old sun,becomes smaller as the days become shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, and dieson December 22nd, the December solstice. He is said to be defeated by the darkand evil powers of the Black God. In honour of Hors, the Slavs danced a ritualchain-dance which was called the horo. Traditional chain-dancing in Bulgaria isstill called horo. In Russia and Ukraine, it is known as khorovod. On December23rd Hors is resurrected and becomes the new sun, Koleda.

LuciaHappens on December 13, what is supposed to be the longest night of the year. Ayoung girl or woman is chosen to portray Lucia wearing a white robe and a redsash representing blood. She wears a crown of wreath with candles and hands outtreats to children. She is the one who brings the sun back and chases awaywinter. The chosen Lucia goes to elderly homes and hospitals very often,singing songs and glowing with candles. Very often Lucia is held at a churchwhere many woman and men dress in white and sing. However it is only Lucia whowears the crown while others hold candles. The boys are dressed as 'Star boys'and wear pointed hats.

TheMaruaroa o Takurua is seen by the New Zealand Maori as the middle of the winterseason. It follows directly after the rise of Matariki (Pleiades) which markedthe beginning of the New Year and was said to be when the Sun turned from hisnorthern journey with his winter-bride Takurua (the star Sirius) and began hisjourney back to his Summer-bride Hineraumati.

In 12thcentury Russia, the eastern Slavs worshiped the winter mother goddess,Rozhnitsa, offering bloodless sacrifices like honey, bread and cheese. Brightcolored winter embroideries depicting the antlered goddess were made to honorthe Feast of Rozhanitsa in late December. And white, deer-shaped cookies weregiven as lucky gifts.

Soyalangwulis the winter solstice ceremony of the Zuni and the Hopitu Shinumu, "ThePeaceful Ones," also known as the Hopi. It is held on December 21, theshortest day of the year. The main purpose of the ritual is to ceremoniallybring the sun back from its long winter slumber. It also marks the beginning ofanother cycle of the Wheel of the Year, and is a time for purification.
Inancient Latvia, Ziemassvētki, meaning winter festival, was celebrated onDecember 21 as one of the two most important holidays, the other being Jāņi.Ziemassvētki celebrated the birth of Dievs, the highest god of Latvianmythology. The two weeks before Ziemassvetki are called Veļu laiks, the"season of ghosts." During the festival, candles were lit for Dieviņšand a fire kept burning until the end, when its extinguishing signaled an endto the unhappiness of the previous year. During the ensuing feast, a space atthe table was reserved for Ghosts, who was said to arrive on a sleigh. Duringthe feast, carolers (Budeļi) went door to door singing songs and eating from manydifferent houses. The holiday was later adapted by Christians in the middleages.

2011-10-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

I found this short story between some pages of a dream journal that I kept in 1981. I had typed this story. On a typewriter. Talk about time travel!

At the signal of the latch clicking and a breeze mixing the stale office air with a sudden whiff of outside, I gladly lifted my head from the pile of papers to be filed, and glanced at the woman who pushed open the door. She was neat and brown in a vested suit, with the inevitable business case and crisp walk. She looked around for someone in charge, and after giving her a smile and the polite interval of attention, I returned to the alphabet and file drawer, trying not to look responsible. The head secretary stepped forward. It was a typical scene in the office, but not always was the customer a handsome woman who looked so competent. My attention strayed to her as the business transaction began. I had ascertained that her face was unfamiliar to me, but there was something about this woman that made me lose my place in the file. i tried hard to place exactly who she reminded me of, but I knew no one with that golden brown hair color, and the way she carried herself was very unique. She had a familiar air, the way her eyes seemed to catch every detail caused a bell to ring in some dusty corner of my brain. I was growing rather curious. Was this some kind of deja-vu; the more I looked a her, the more certain I became that I knew her, yet for what reasons I couldn't pinpoint. Well, I couldn't stare all day - she was beginning to feel my eyes on her, and glance dartingly in my direction.

There was nothing to do but get back to work, I was behind as it was. and had a pile of things to run on the copy machine, too. She was delegated to a salesperson and left the outer office. A quarter of an hour later found me shuffling my originals and warming up the machine. Hearing a soft tread behind me, I looked around to see her jerking her head down quickly and perusing a company magazine. She had been studying me! Now that she was close, I could feel a field of almost electric energy exuding from her and holding my attention. I couldn't concentrate on my trivial task. It was as thought some inner mechanism tracker her path around the room behind me. her steps circled until they prudently stopped, and she made a little rush over to where I stood. "Who are you?" she huskily breathed. "Have you ever seen me before?" I dumbly shook my head and felt overpowered by her energy at such close range. There was a long silence as we stared unabashedly into one another's eyes. There was something going on in my head that I can barely explain. It was as if all my though processes were abruptly turned off- the memories, the sensations, the calculation of reality - all was silenced. From somewhere else, although I guess it must have been from my brain, a story began to weave itself. not a memory, in the usual sense, though it was names and images and thought, just like a slow recollection. This entity was "informing" me very faintly of things unknown until now. Set off by this woman's presence, a new part of my mind was shifted into gear, and the parts I'd used til then were stunned at the innovation.

There was no way I could assume she was having a similar experience, and no way to describe to this complete stranger my reaction to her. But she spoke first, grasping my arm as she stuttered, "We- we were together once - do you remember it?""I don't know you but something in me is recognizing you - when were we together?""It's the same with me - almost as though we have shared some distant past. I think we could draw it out if we try - just looking at you and talking wih you seems to remind me of a thousand things." She was filled with excitement, and still gripped my forearm.I didn't find it difficult to speak to her, but I felt so confused with the flood of new sensations that I hardly could form an answer. "I..I..guess.. it was long ago.. Could it be another life? I've thought about that but I never know one could be so clearly revealed. Could that be it?""I'm nearly certain - my mind is filled with images of a kind of camp - a primitive existence - women sitting around fires, in front of huts-" Her eyes still riveted to mine, she added, "Don't look so frightened, Lyana."I jumped back at the shock of hearing the name. It wasn't my own, but the sound of it matched the memories coming out of nowhere."That's not my name." I was frightened."It's what I remember," she tried to sooth me, and reached for my arm again."Yes - it is familiar," I admitted. "Look, this is too much for me to take in right now. Can't we talk this over later?""Where can we meet tonight? When do you get off work?" In her competent way, she quickly took my phone number and address, told me she'd stop by tonight or call if she couldn't and turned to leave. It wasn't easy to look away from the face. Our eyes were meant to be staring at each other - or so it felt. The strange memory was being warmed by her presence. "Don't worry, Lyana, I'll see you tonight. Let's try to straighten out these new stories and share them later."

Stunned, I watched her leave.Somehow the day stumbled to a close. I was nearly useless to anyone in my stupor of new ideas and the search for some kind of explanation. In the quiet of the car during the drive home, I reviewed my life and tried to arrange my most recent history as I knew it, in order to force my brain to organize itself.I had always felt I had been born somewhere in a realm of reality outside of the world most people see. There was something eerie about the way I managed to deal with the world as if I saw it from other angles. It had been pointed out to me increasingly throughout the years or else I might not have been aware that my consciousness was anything but similar to every one else's. A knowledge of what to expect had toned down my temperament - where there might have been misunderstanding, there was acceptance on my part, when outrages could be counted on, I was placid. It is not the same as being easy-going and having a sympathetic personality. I am blessed, or plagued, as you might judge it, with a personality that can assess a situation with a kind of certainty and play along, assuming the correct behavior that fits in best with the assessment. I had always been vaguely aware that I hadn't learned this ability - that rather, somewhere in the scheme of things, I had a given talent of adaptation. even as a child I felt I was only acting out a role expected by my contemporaries. I felt years older, and never seemed to age within myself. I could count up my various signs of maturation and match them with the expected behavior of my age group, yet there was underneath all of that a timelessness and a distaste for the "immature" behavior that my outer self displayed. This resulted in my blocking most of my childhood from memory - none of it seemed worthwhile at the time, and I merely regarded it as something to pass through and be forgotten. The closer I grew to adulthood, the more I could assess the reasons for my hatred of childhood and my insatiable urge to have it over and done with.

At last reaching an age where I could make decisions and move freely for myself, I felt more than ever in touch with this outer reality, this strange ability to know yet not to know, to have learned without having studied or experienced. And again and again I found myself in situations very familiar: in deja-vus too real to dismiss as mental fabrications or dream memories. I began to read about reincarnation and wondered if I had found a clue at last to the mysterious inner self that was so much wiser than I - or rather than this earthly I.

My mentor at that time had been a wonderful woman, fifty years older than I, who is fascinated with every form of self revelation. She encouraged me to search within myself for answers to the world's mysteries. She isn't in the role of being a teacher, she has the ability to push in the right direction needed at the moment, either intellectually or emotionally. She led me to my study of reincarnation and subsequently to a discovery of a religion meaningful to me. Unfortunately, we no longer lived in the proximity, or I could have seen her for advice on the startling revelatory experience I had just had. On second thought, though, perhaps her reply would be simply a recognition that something had happened, and she would let me take it from there. I was afraid of the unknown ahead of me and behind me.

The sound of gravel crunching under my tires brought me to the realization that I had arrived home: I had driven automatically, barely noting my whereabouts. Still in a trance-like state, I checked the mailbox, took in the paper, and straightened up the mess my cat, Luna, had spent the day arranging. No sooner had I thrown my clothes off and joined Luna, stretching wearily confused, in my sotest and largest easy chair, the knock jarred the purring silence. "Who is it?" I knew. "I could say it's Martha, but you know me as Naomi."Wrapping myself in the afghan, I rushed to the door - her voice made my spine jingle with electricity. Her name fit my new consciousness and released images. They poured out of the secret chamber that held the past - or was it the past? The door flew open and her face and strong body crossed my threshold. She was flowing in a golden shirt and warm brown pants, big and comfortable. I shivered at the sight and from the breeze that accompanied her. "Sorry, I haven't had time to change yet." "that's ok, stay comfy, we have a lot of talking to do."

So I fell back into my chair enclosed in the crocheted blanket, and stared at her for a long time, letting my mind free itself and take me on that journey it was desiring. "What an amazing coincidence that we should meet again like we did. I wonder if this sort of thing happens to lots of people, but they cover it up for fear they are crazy." "Maybe we are crazy.. what exactly is happening? Can we be sure we are experiencing the same thing?"So we decided to take turns, to carefully plot out the stories our minds had released, to fill in the blanks, to discover lost identities, to pick up where we left off, to rekindle (rekindle? what had there been?) our bond.. And we talked all night.

And as the windowsill dust began to glisten and Luna gave up her alternate pacing and purring for a long sleep, and the cars and trucks began to pass on the street, we stood as one and went into the dark curtained empty bedroom, fell onto the bed in a long warm kiss that made me feel I had been interrupted in an embrace years ago, and was finally satisfying what had begun. Our bodies fit like old lovers. The afghan lay on the living room floor, and later in the morning, Luna moved from it to lay upon our entwining legs. Laughter and muffled purrs.

Devastating

2011-03-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

The photos and stories and videos from New Zealand, and now Japan, are heart-stopping. Perhaps we live in a time when the earth has had enough of us. She shudders and knocks some of us off her crust. She sloshes an a few thousand more are cleared away. The radioactive materials that have been painfully extracted from her heart could be swallowed up and buried again.

These troublesome and destructive creatures known as humans will some day be eradicated.

30 images

2011-03-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

Day 1 - A picture of yourself.

Day 2 - A picture of you and a person you used to be close with.

Day 3 - A picture of the cast from your favorite show. Portlandia - a new favorite.

Day 4 - A picture of something you wish you could forget.

Day 5 - A picture of your favorite memory.

Day 6 - A picture of a person you'd love to trade places with for a day.

Day 7 - A picture of your most treasured item.

Day 8 - A picture that makes you laugh.

Day 9 - A picture of the person who has gotten you through the most.

Day 10 - A picture of the person you do the silliest things with.

Day 11 - A picture of something you hate.

Day 12 - A picture of something you love.

Day 13 - A picture of your favorite band or artist.

Day 14 - A picture of someone you could never imagine your life without.

Day 15 - A picture of something you want to do before you die.

Day 16 - A picture of someone who inspires you.

Day 17 - A picture of something that has made a huge impact on your life recently.

Day 18 - A picture of your biggest insecurity.

Day 19 - A picture of you when you were little.

Day 20 - A picture of somewhere you'd love to travel.

Day 21 - A picture of your favorite night.

Day 22 - A picture of something you wish you were better at.

Day 23 - A picture of your favorite book.

Day 24 - A picture of something you wish you could change.

Day 25 - A picture of your favorite day.

Day 26 - A picture of something that means a lot to you.

Day 27 - A picture of yourself and a family member.

Day 28 - A picture of something you're afraid of.

Day 29 - A picture that can always make you smile.

Day 30 - A picture of someone you miss

Anyone Can Sing

2011-03-01T12:55:00.000-08:00

Anyone Can Sing

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot ~

Finding a place

2011-02-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

I'm from a very, very small town in a cold, cloudy part of Western New York State. The only gay person I knew of, growing up in the 60s, was the developmentally disabled gentleman who hung out downtown and carried a purse. And Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly, and maybe Rose Marie on the Dick Van Dyke show.

People didn't leave our town. They grew up and moved down the street from their parent's house. I was different, I spent my whole childhood fantasizing that I would become a world traveler, and live in different places every year. I wanted to be someplace else. When I started dating, one boy after the other turned out to be gay. I went away to college and got involved in feminist activism. I met women in the consciousness raising groups who had short hair and wore plaid shirts. I had never seen anyone like that before. They were not at all like Rose Marie. They were much, much better.

I brought my first serious girlfriend home during a school break. My mother cried and cried, and my father told me that I had to change what he called "my lifestyle", because my mother was having a nervous breakdown. My mother had told me once that gay people are born that way. But she didn't believe that I had been born "that way". They believed I had made a choice, probably because I had become a feminist.

I escaped that place and moved to Japan. I continued my world travelling, for several years, until I came to San Francisco, in 1979. The town was filled with women wearing short hair and plaid shirts, and trim handsome men in moustaches and boots. Every week, there were feminist meetings and marches. The sky was blue and the world was beautiful. There, I met a woman who spoke my language, and we fell in love. This year, she and I will celebrate 28 years together. My place is by her side, and we travel the world together.

Be obstreperous!

2011-02-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

This motto was espoused by our dear friend Charlie Halloran, and I'm not sure where he picked it up. But it is fine advice, and I'm glad I inherited it from him. It means "noisily and stubbornly defiant", and although that definition sounds sort of bad, I feel the rebellion in the word has a playful quality. I think of a canvasser on the corner, bouncing and shouting and calling attention to himself. I think of lustful arguments about politics and religion where the parties switch sides mid-stream, just for the fun of it. I see rambuctious youths carrying signs of protest and chanting slogans all day long.

The point of the playfulness is so you never cross the line from ostreperousness to violence or hate.

A day at the beach last summer

2011-01-28T16:42:00.001-08:00

Mosaics

2011-01-24T17:23:00.000-08:00

My vision is poor. I am severly nearsighted and, without lenses, see the world as a cottony mass of color and smudged patterns. Perhaps this is why mosaics appeal to me. When I see an image that has been broken into pieces, I have a physical, joyful, reaction. These broken images work in reverse - the closer you are, the harder it is to see the whole image. As you back away, the image forms and looks more and more like reality.

Hokitika, New Zealand

2011-01-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

I once spent an afternoon in Hokitika, New Zealand, and I can't seem to get this place out of my head. It's a little community of about 3,000 people, located on the west coast of the south island. The Tasman Sea stretches bluely into the distance from the wide beach. A large meandering river forms its southern boundary, and there is farm land to the north. A tiny airstrip is on the rise just outside of town. The town itself is made up of a grid of 5 blocks by 12 blocks.

To my mind, this little town is the place where I would live in as if in a fairy tale. I would be an artist, making iconic pieces using drift wood and home-spun yarn. I would stop for tea everyday and would collect string and colored ribbon. I'd be the old lady in boots and overalls who'd give the kids penny candy and never miss a political meeting, where I'd rant about ecology and water. I'd have a lot of cats and an old dog.

Dreaming

2011-01-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Martin Luther King's birthday, and I saw many references here and there to the famous "I Have A Dream" speech. It made me think about dreaming, and what how dreams hold such power for inspiration and for motivation.

I wonder if Dr. King ever really had a dream, during his sleep, about a world where former slaves and former slave owners sat down at the same table, where black and white children were holding hands in Alabama? If he had that dream, did he wake up smiling and groggy, and then tell Coretta about it? Did he mention it to others at the breakfast table? Did the images from his dream keep tugging at his conscious mind as he sat down to write the speech?

This eloquent speech is so beautiful to read. Look at this part:

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

And:

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

This advice was directed toward those struggling against racial injustice in the 60s. However, don't you wish someone today was warning people to keep their protest from turning violent? We could use some of that rhetoric as tempers flair on both sides of the political spectrum, after the shootings in Arizona.

I can dream.

Citrus season

2011-01-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

We have a navel orange tree and a lemon tree in our backyard. The lemons are "Portugese Lemons", or so we've been told. They are thick-skinned and quite sweet, as lemons go. They look a bit like Meyer lemons but they taste different. Every year, I pick bags and bags of lemons to give to friends. Many drop off the tree and rot. Some stay there on the branches (just out of reach) for a year or more, getting big as grapefruit. When a recipe calls for lemon, I gleefully pick one or two .. but trying to use them up is a futile exercise. They just grow like crazy.

The orange tree is further back in the yard and I have ignored it for nearly a decade. The oranges are large and juicy but not very sweet. This year, the peach tree that used to hog the sunlight from the orange tree has diminished a bit, and the orange tree is booming. New fruit, hard and green, is ripening fast. The older oranges pull the branches down with their golden weight.

I don't want to pick all the fruit off the trees, because I want to be able to pick a lemon or orange whenever I need one, but I want the fruit to be sweet and I don't want to overburden the tree with excess baggage. We have been picking, and picking, and picking. We pile them into the wheelbarrow and put them in front of the house, with a sign that says, "Free Lemons and Oranges - Help Yourself!". People stop their cars and send their kids out to gather a bunch. Many neighbors have been thanking us, including the postal carrier, who loves the lemons.

A bunch of things

2010-11-11T16:40:00.000-08:00

I can't be bothered with daily postings, or even monthly ones, I guess. NaBloPoMo is nagging me though, so I'll try to answer a few of their prompts.

One: Something You Hate About Yourself
I am really very lazy.

Two: Something you love about yourself.
I love that I am a constant in many people's lives. I don't quit.

Three: Something you have to forgive yourself for.
I guess I had better forgive myself for telling the internet that I am lazy.

Four: Something you have to forgive someone for.
Most of the things that I have to forgive have already been forgotten. I guess I do that because I'm lazy.

Five: Something you hope to do in your life.
I want to be an artist. I hope I'm not too lazy.

Going downtown

2010-05-28T15:43:00.000-07:00

We collected our allowance and walked downtown. Past the stone house that was the oldest house in town - the old land office. Past the house where my old teacher lived. All the way to our church - perhaps we'd make a quick detour and go up the side street where the playground was. That playground had the most unusual merry-go-round... instead of the usual wooden platform that spun a few inches off the ground, this one rested atop a five-foot high metal pole. There were chains attaching the platform to the top of the pole. If you were tall enough, you could spin the platform, then grab ahold and haul yourself up to the spinning ledge. Or more scary yet, you could hang from the chain as the thing spun like crazy. I was never tall enough to reach it, but watched in awe as the older kids dangerously careened around and around, feet kicking and voices hollering.

Then back to Main Street and over the bridge. The bridge had white concrete walls, over which you could peer down at the dam and the waterfall. Along the sidewalk, there were small holes in the wall, for drainage I suppose. I was afraid that I might slip through one of these holes. What would happen if you fell into that green water below? Especially if it was winter, when the bridge was particularly slippery. The dam was encrusted with snow and ice, and the creek was nearly solid. But even in mid-winter, you could hear the sound of water running below the icy surface, especially under the bridge.

The bridge safely crossed, we had arrived downtown. Shelby's jewelry store on the corner, and down from that, the Italian restaurant where you could get fried clams every Friday. The 5 and 10, with its large windows and funky smell of goldfish and hamsters in the back. In there, they sold outfits for Barbie and Tinkertoys and sleds as well as undergarments and tools. There was a counter where the town folks could enjoy coffee and gossip. The front of the store had large glass counters to peer into. I can see the collection of combs and hair decorations, and a rack of hairnets.

Next to the movie theater was the soda fountain place. A glorious place of high red-topped stools along a marble counter, with large phosphate dispensers that had huge handles. Large colorful bottles of syrup lined the back counter below the big mirrors. Once you climbed up onto one of the stools, you could see your face reflected back to you, a bit faded or warped, but looking you directly into your eyes. There were booths in the dim store, with cracked red leather banquettes and crowds of teens giggling and sipping.

On to the main event! the Saturday matinee. Kids ran in and out of the lobby. Here we bought our ticket from the musty man in the threadbare suit. We pushed our way to the candy counter, if we were lucky enough to have an extra dime or two for Snoballs or Malted Milk candy. If not, we rushed into the auditorium and found empty seats, where we flopped down and tore off our coats and hats. The room was never dimmed until the main feature started. Cartoons and newsreels played non-stop. Sometimes a man dressed as a clown would come and make balloon animals, or chase kids around the aisles. If it was a holiday, there would be little presents of candy or penny-whistles or tops.

I remember counting down the days until Mary Poppins came to our town. I had a calendar and, with a red crayon, I made a big X each evening on the date that we had achieved. Several months went by before the big day finally arrived. I can't remember if I knew the story from having read it, or if I was hyped up from the advertising that they no doubt ran every Sunday night on the weekly Wonderful World of Disney tv show. The movie did not disappoint. I will never forget magical moment when Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke jumped into the chalk drawing on the sidewalk. I think it has given me a lifelong appreciation of magical realism and the permeability of seemingly concrete objects.

The seats were rough and cracked and the cushions were long since collapsed. When the seats were up, you could see the thick layer of gum that had been smashed there by generations of children. The gum was grayish pink and had a sickly smell. It was hard as a rock and on some seats, looked like lava, all pitted and encrusted with dirt.

Two Points for writing

2010-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

Shall I continue this experiment, or leave it be with two points for writing just one day in the month of May? Two measly points - it doesn't seem like much... it seems connected with basketball, but actually any contest can be decided not only by a two point margin, but with one teeny tiny point. While in sports, the point difference is made by the effort and result of that effort by the players. In adjudicated contests, the point is given by the judges - that point could indicate the total of all the judges individual scores, or it could (I suppose) be added on as a flourish, to the competitor who truly seems to be the best of the group.

This could have been the case during the winter Olympics ice skating contest. Johnny Weir, the seemingly queer and definitely flamboyant, feather- and fur-wearing black sheep of the skating world, was up against the manly jet-black haired hetero champ, Evan Lysecek. (It's true that after the Games were over, Evan appeared on Dancing with the Stars, which is not exactly gay, but could be construed as such - despite his tough-guy attitude and Brill-Creemed hair.) Johnny was, by my judgment, the best by far - he may not have the exact angle of skate to ice needed by the rule book, but his grace and bravery and artistry, both in his movements and his costume, were off the charts. However, it's the rule book that rules. And Evan's muscular, fortified jumps took home the gold.

I'm sure I've written about this before, but what if singing competition were judged mechanically? What if the digitally recorded sound could be run through mechanical ears and measured for clarity of tone and perfect pitch? Each chord could be seen as it lined up or didn't, and overtone monitors could capture the wave lengths of each note as they passed through the microphones. In a perfect world, that would leave the human judges to act only as humans - to observe their own emotions as they listen to the music, to feel the hairs raise on their arms or wipe the sweat from their brows. The humans provide feedback about the poetry of the song, the beauty of the lyrics, the passion of the singers. When you watch a performance, you know it's good when you become the singer, you empathically become them as they take you up and down on the ride. You remember your own story, but you are prompted by them to do so. You travel along the notes to the deep part of a story that you know but yet do not know. You hear your story amplified and shared with a crowd. You have an emotion or two as a result. No machine can measure this.

If a machine could measure this, what kind of machine would it be? A computer with millions of blog entries and novels and every story of every kind. The words of the lyrics would be compared with those stories. The lyric words would not need to match, but share certain algorithms with the story words: shared meaning, matching emotional tags. Perhaps "moon" in a lyric would match up with "midnight"; "love"; "space"; maybe even "vampire". In this way you could count how many lyrical words or phrases matched the most stories in the database. This takes care of resonance of theme and sharing of the common thread of the song. But to measure the emotional response we might have to have machines attached to human receptors - our judging panel now is wearing heart monitors and skin patches with wires attached. Do the panel members' hearts beat together? Do the heartbeats all speed up at the same time? Do the brainwaves get in synch? In fact, which portion of the brain is most stimulated by this song? Moving further into science fiction and the possible future, could we manufacture a body part in a laboratory that could capture the feel of music? They are just now starting to grow human organs in a lab. Which organ is this one? A heart, a brain, a skin, an eye, a soul, a memory, a face, love?

It looks like I may achieve my two points, after all. The grand total will be four - two points gained per day of writing. This system must have been designed by a competitive type person - and what reward will there be for attaining these points?

There seems to be a problem

2010-05-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a problem. It's a disconnect. Lyrics will not register in my brain. Notes, yes. Melodies, sometimes. Accompaniment, yes. Feelings swirl amid the notes and ricochet off the time signature and bounce against the treble clef sign. The words, however, those language elements, the elements that are so dear to my heart, will not stay stuck. I can look at printed lyrics and think, I have never sung this song... even if I know for a fact that I have once sung it every day for a year or more.

I hear a song on the radio. I enjoy it. I hear it again. I learn the ins and outs. I recognize the singer's voice. I hum along in harmony. I request it on the station. I purchase the cd or download the song to my ipod. The following week, we hear it together. She sings along with the singer, knowing each word. I realize that I have never, ever, thought about the words to the song, despite my obsession with it. I am amazed to hear that the topic is thus-and-so.

The song that sounds like a happy sunlit day turns out to be an ironic tale of love gone wrong. The bouncy melody that brings to mind a trip on a train in a foreign country is instead, in the stark lyrics, a nyah-nyah romp of "I told you so". Why are so many songs about loss? I'm thinking that the pop music formula must be this: make it sound one way and make it read the opposite.

On the flip side of this problem is that lyrics I learned by reading never leave my memory. We used to get the lyrics delivered to us, in a largish font size, on the liners and insides and backs of long-playing album covers. I would sit by the stereo, pouring over each word as the songs played repeatedly. Using that method, the lyrics stuck. In fact, I can picture Joni Mitchell's songs in the exact typeface that was used, and with the poetic line breaks intact. This memory must be at least 40 years old.

But when I need to learn a new song that I want to sing, the fastest way is to listen to a recording over and over. This solidifies the notes. I can listen to a recording a number of times without looking at the sheet music, and the next morning, I will awake with the song running through my head. Then I can open my mouth and sing the notes. The words however, are not necessarily there. They will follow later, delinquent and stubborn, until I read the written text enough times.

What parts of my brain are being accessed here? They say that lyrics learned will not vanish despite damage to the part of the brain that controls language. Does that same part of the brain control note memorization? Seems possible but doesn't feel the same.

In other areas of my comprehension of the world around me, my eyes do not play such a vital part. I am sure that, because I came into the world with my eyesight impaired, I never completely relied upon it to bring me the important news of perception. I rely upon my ears and my ESP, for lack of a better term, to recognize a person. I know their voice, I know their essential quality of BEING. I pick up their vibe. I scent their odor. I have been known to completely reject someone based on the pitch of their voice or the terrified smell of their sweat.

We visited a bakery every day for a year or so. The regular man behind the counter was jocular and friendly, serving us muffins and coffee. The other worker in the shop was equally young, brown-haired and slouchy, but was not always there. He would come by to clear the tables and had a jangly, plate-crashing attitude. One day, he took over at the counter and for the days that followed, made our visits there just a little less pleasant. I commented to my partner that I wished the other guy would come back. What followed was a complete shock to me - she insisted that there was only one guy that worked in the bakery. The same guy sometimes was pleasant, sometimes wasn't.. but there was only one guy. Her theory was that this one guy's vibe varied so that I distrusted the evidence that his hair and clothes were the same.

We continued to argue this point until I became convinced that my ESP had failed me. One day we came in for our muffins, and behind the counter stood TWO guys. They looked like brothers. She had to admit that I had been right all along - that the personality difference made them, to me, as different as two guys could be.

Aerogramme

2010-05-04T15:14:00.000-07:00

These days, if I am actually mailing a letter through the post, I make an educated guess about the weight of it and stick an extra stamp on or two for good measure. After all, stamps cost less than a dollar each .. I use the kind that never expire, so I'm not even sure how much they cost individually any more. I buy them at the ATM on sheets the size of twenty dollar bills.

But in my youth, which after all was quite a while ago but not so long ago as all that, it was ever so important that one never put on even an extra penny's worth of postage. We had postage scales at home, or always conferred with the grumpy people at the post office. If you accidentally sent a letter that lacked a penny or two in postage, the letter would arrive "C.O.D." and the mailman would ask the recipient to pay up. There was actually a form for this. I remember taping pennies to the form and handing to the carrier.We cared about pennies! Waste not, want not!

Sending a letter overseas could not have been that expensive. But maybe it was? because we always took great care to avoid using heavy paper or regular envelopes when sending a note abroad. Aerogrammes, as thin as toilet paper and nearly transparent, were single sheets that could be folded up carefully and glued around the edges, making an envelope obsolete.If the aerogramme got wet or if you tried to open it with oily fingers, most of the writing could be destroyed. It was also hard to open one without ripping away parts of sentences.

Excepts from a 1977 journal

2010-02-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

1. Memories. That first bright night stepping off the bus, walking excitedly in the tracks, deep snow lightly dusting our noses. Streetlamp beams burning with the whiteness falling falling. The low sky reflected..snow..look up, a heavy blanket. Catching flakes on our tongues - the ritual of first snows. Tossing clumps at passing winter worshipers. On the campus, echoing dully, yells of snow battles and conquering rites. I follow her because I have never been on this street before. We have shared many secrets on the bus, and she invited me to her room , to smoke some dope, she said.The dorm is a maze with wet footmarks. I am lost immediately. Her barren room her black light her little steel pipe. The heat is stuffy. Outside, diamonds sparkle. For hours we listen to Joni Mitchell and gaze at the snow, still falling. It falls all night. She has an amazing capacity for smoking dope. I keep taking the pipe because it seems to be the right thing to do. I'm so concerned with conventions, that night. Later I am so burnt out I give up waiting for her advance and go to lie down on the other bed, disappointed. She comes over to me gently and tells me I can't go to sleep.

2. In a ryokan, Japanese-style hotel. Awoke surprisingly early, I think, for I was up 22 hours. Mr. Satori found me paging him at the info desk. We rushed off to the bus, then the train, two hours to Hamamatsu. he is very pleasant and even while laying on an authority trip, managed to stay likeable. Tokyo was very dull-looking, at night. The buildings were no bigger than Rochester - didn't see any crowds. Hamamatsu looks very Asian - like Hong Kong movies - we drove (on the right!) to this hotel after eating in a typical restaurant. It was just a bar arrangement with a counter and five cooks behind a half wall, silently cooking and rushing around a tiny kitchen. We had tempura, but first there was cold octopus, then raw fish (good), then pickled veggies, then the delicate tempura. There was ebi (shrimp), fish, and veggies in batter. I didn't think I was hungry but it was great. Also there was bean soup, tea and a huge bowl of rice. Anyway, the streets weave all around and there are strange looking shops - open front - among the big department stores and the banks and motorcycle shops. drove past the English Center. Today we're going to look at houses. Tomorrow I'll meet my classes, be introduced, etc. On Wed & Thurs, I'll teach! I don't know if I should wait up here for him or go downstairs. The bed is luscious. Last night, I took a hot bath and then collapsed. I guess I'll wait up here because I'm not lugging all my stuff down three flights alone. Out my window is fascinating. So much to see!

3. The file theory for language and life (conceived of during my senior year of college)
The basic concept of this theory begins with the image of the mind as a complex filing system, with the ability to mark and file bits of information for use. This brain/file is seen in action when we use language. The "marked features" of so many linguistic theories are the best way of imaging our mental file cards:
[Vegetarian]
+human
-meat eater
+weirdo (or a positive reaction)
Each feature has is own file as well. Someone offers me a hot dog. I say, "no thanks, I don't eat meat." There is a pause while the files shuffle.. (meat, meat, don't eat), "oh, you're a vegetarian?" The final feature (weirdo or whatever) determines the tone of voice the question is asked in.
If a concept, word , or memory of an event is not too well known, or rare, there are fewer cross references in the file. Perhaps you once heard of the place "Torremolinos" in a conversation about Spain. It would be only featured in your Spanish file. But if you had read Michener's book "The Drifters", with his detailed descriptions of the town, there would be many references in your file. Each story you tell is afterwards marked as to who you told it to, and when or where. Some of us are more meticulous in our file systems - others have no marker for story telling, and may repeat an event many times in your hearing.
The most personal and intimate part of a person is the way in which she orders her file system. the better you know someone, the more you learn about how the file works. Perhaps you have known someone well enough to feel you know what they were about to say, or how they would respond to anything. This is knowing what concepts and feelings (that are marked) are the most prevalent and what triggers file cards to be drawn. No one can ever know all of your file, and no one can know how it is arranged except you. If you want to learn your own system, you have to start with minute details like slips of the tongue and ways you mispronounce words. Or you might listen to your thoughts as you define each term you hear - and jot down the features that come to mind immediately.The better you know your own filing methods, the easier it is to store ideas and to recall them.
As to memory, the files are divided for convenience sake, into long and short term. When a card has not been used for some time (of course, the time and the choice depends on your own system), it is filed more obscurely. There may be a key word that will call it forward, but sometimes you never dredge it up. Or it may be attainable only through a complex set of cross-references.

Ambrosia

2010-01-27T15:43:00.000-08:00

This morning, the coffee was named "Ambrosia". I had to look up the definition, out of curiosity for such a Greek-sounding word.

Definitions of ambrosial
* extremely pleasing to the taste; sweet and fragrant; "a nectarous drink"; "ambrosial food"
* worthy of the gods

In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia (Greek: ἀμβροσία) is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the Greek gods (or demigods). It was brought to the gods in Olympus by doves, so may have been thought of in the Homeric tradition as a kind of divine exhalation of the Earth.

Additionally, some modern ethnomycologists, such as Danny Staples, identify ambrosia with the untameable hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria: "it was the food of the gods, their ambrosia, and nectar was the pressed sap of its juices", Staples asserts.

The wikipedia entry goes on to talk about how it may have been as lowly of a substance as honey or mead, the drink made from honey. But I like the thought of my morning coffee being laced with some kind of magic mushroom.

We used to eat our mushrooms chopped up very finely and mixed with peanut butter or gagged down with orange juice. They imparted a bitter aftertaste on anything they were mixed with. After taking them, you had just a short while to get where you wanted to be until the buzz started coming on. I remember living in the Haight, eating the stash, and then boarding the bus to get out to Lands End. The group of us transferred from on bus to another and then once again, eager and urgent to get out into the open before the trip would begin. There was always a bit of doubt, a worry that this time, I wouldn't get high, that this time, the mushrooms might not be strong enough. Were they tinged with enough blue? Had they been in the freezer too long? Had the shrinkwrap leaked air in and sucked the potency out of the plant?

As I stepped off the last bus at the end of California street, the pavement waggled below me. The street lights wavered just a little, and the green lawn of the golf course glowed intensely as if the blades were spiked with neon. Perfect timing! we had arrived at the intended destination, and like clockwork, forty-five minutes after consumption, the world was about to become more visible. The thing about enhanced perception - when it's there, it's so obvious! And when the drug wears off and the windows of the mind close, you can't force them back open. Gradually, on mushrooms, the vibrations of the world become something that you can sense and see. The space between atoms, the motion of particles, the open space between the pore of one's skin - all that movement is visible, all the vacuums are filled with light. The walls or ceilings move with an undulating pulse. Body parts breath and sigh in the tempo of the heartbeat. The sky vibrates with wind and heat and moisture.

There is also the mundane to deal with - the slight nausea brought on by eating the fungus, and the thirst, and the dizziness that comes in waves. These are minor compared with the elation and thrill of seeing the world again with eyes that are bigger, as big as teacups, as wide as movie screens, as deep as the moon.

We climb past the golf course and gawk at the white-panted men driving miniature cars across the greens. We laugh and sigh and hoot and holler. We run up to the edge of the cliff and are blown back by the ocean wind and the sight of the enormous Golden Gate Bridge, which must have been strung across the gap by giants with engineering degrees. How could they have begun this project? How could they have set those pillars into the water? Climbed those towers and hung the wires? The bridge floats, suspended from itself, a magical construction. The color, burnt vermillion, against the brilliant azure of the water (tipped with white) and the golden honey brown of the hills on the far side. What world is this? The only green in sight is the chemically treated, falsely trimmed artificiality of the golf course, where clowns drive their clown cars and take aim at tiny balls with their oddly shaped sticks. The rest of the world is toasted wheat. Every blade of grass is crisp and sharp.

We stand wobbly and gleeful at the sight of this wonder-touched world.

Sunday Studio and Art

2010-01-24T15:04:00.000-08:00

Our 2010 resolution is to create more art. Carving out a time for this is the essential thing. It's not that we don't have the time - we just don't have the habit. So if we make a timeslot, then it's possible. Sunday afternoons - no web browsing, no newspaper, no crosswords.. we call it Sunday Studio.

Last week I was on fire, worked on my painting/collage work, wrote up some things. This week, I am in the kitchen (culinary art? does it count?) trying to make a Martha Stewart cookie recipe. Hmm, harder than you can imagine. Also, I'm blogging. Is blogging an art? The eternal question: what is art? As long as the creative juices are flowing, and there is some passion involved in making it: that's my definition.

Virtual travel leads to actual trip

2010-01-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'd like to get this blog going again - this year, Facebook took over my time & attention, and although I do love reading about friends new and old, somehow knowing WHO is reading my updates makes me less free to write what I want to. I think I write better with an anonymous (or in this blog's case, a nearly non-existent) audience. Of course I know this blog is public, too, but there is a disconnectedness to the real world that somehow makes me feel more free.

When I look back at 2009, one experience stands out as something that not only was new to me, but also employs relatively new technology and therefore worth noting as iconic for the times. It has to do with my preparation for the trip to Provence that we took last fall. I used Google Earth extensively for the trip planning. We had bought a guide book or two, and I read online about hotels and restaurants in the area, but Google Earth took the planning to a different level. I felt like a futuristic voyeur as I entered what I came to call "the bubble".

I started out looking at Nice, a city I had never been to before. I needed to choose a hotel, and couldn't really tell from the map which part of town would be attractive to us. Sometimes it's best to be near the train station, but some places, it's not - it can be seedy or inconvenient to the spots you want to see. So I opened Google Earth and took a look. What I discovered is that the street view in GE is quite extensive. As you zoom in close to a street, you start to see bubble-like orbs floating above the streets.

Click on a bubble, and you move in, like Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz, passing through a fuzzy out of focus moment, until you are vitually standing in the center of that very street.

This particular view is of a street where a highly recommended hotel was located. As I rotated my vantage point and looked at the neighboring buildings, the traffic, the people loitering by the entrance, I could tell that this was not the hotel for us. For one thing, there were no nearby cafes. There was a large parking lot next door that was filled with mostly motorcycles - imagine the roar that might awake us in the morning!

I found that many of the hotels in the guide book were all in one neighborhood with little character. As I rode my vitual helicopter above Nice, I noticed an area of buildings which were much more dense, with streets that meandered circuitously, rather than fitting into a grid. Could this be the old city?

I zoomed closer and found that the street view bubbles were not available in this part of town! The street must be too tightly spaced to allow the Google photo vehicle access. However, in certain places, Google Earth has a red dot with 360 on it. These are 360 degree photographs, taken by aficionados and uploaded. Clicking on one of these in the old city sent me over the edge of excitement - I couldn't wait to get to this place and start exploring! I did a search right on this screen to find the hotels closest to this neighborhood. We ended up staying in one just a couple blocks outside Old Nice, which was perfect in every way.

I spent so much time exploring virtual Nice that by the time we arrived, it felt familiar, like somewhere I had visited in my dreams.

Frenchified

2009-10-07T15:25:00.000-07:00

The Palais des Papes, in Avignon

The grand horloge in Antibes

Lola loves to roll in the grass

2009-08-21T15:11:00.001-07:00

Ah, the simple pleasures of a grassy lawn!

The intermingling of ghosts

2009-07-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

Something's been bothering me about Facebook, and I think I've finally put my finger on it. It's the ghosts, and how they are rubbing up against each other.

I think my life history is somewhat typical of an American of my age and class. I grew up in one town, moved to another for high school. I transferred a couple of times in college and I studied abroad. I moved away after college and lived in several places, each time with a different set of roommates. I married and moved again. I had several jobs in a few fields until I settled on a career. The people I have worked with have come and gone.

In each of these places and times, there was a unique cast of characters. As I moved on to the next phase of life, some of these folks stuck with me, but most became gradually fainter in my everyday thoughts. Some names were better etched in my mind - someone who had embarrassed me or loved me or someone who had a particularly odd set of ears or habits.

The kaleidoscope of people through whom I see my past is special to me. No one else has had exactly the same influences or experiences. The names in my past float through my dreams like ghosts, haunting me until I can remember what year that was, and sometimes annoying me by showing up over and over again like poltergeists.

And now those ghosts have materialized as my Facebook friends. The girl I slightly knew in high school who signed my yearbook, but who had only stuck in your mind because of her unusual name, now pops up daily as she updates me on her job and family. My former boss and the first person I went to a dance with in 8th grade turns up, right next to each other, as I read my News Feed. Looking at the Chat list to see who is online is like a "This Is Your Life" script - former lovers, someone I knew in preschool, a couple of people I sang with in chorus, my nephew, and a co-worker.

This line-up is disconcerting. Even worse is when they make comments on my updates, and then end up in a comment-discussion with each other! "Wait!", I think. "These timelines can NOT intersect! The time-space continuum will be corrupted if my next door neighbor from 1963 ever meets and talks to the former receptionist at my last job!"

Facebook has me hooked, but if I ever give it up, it will be because of the ghosts.

A walk by the bay

2009-06-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

Just over the Golden Gate bridge, in Marin, is a lovely setting that we used to call Fort Baker. We took a walk down there last weekend and discovered that about a year ago, the decommissioned fort had been turned into a luxury hotel named Cavallo Point. We used to take the boys down there to the Discovery Museum, which is still vital. Now there is more to see than the hands-on children's museum. The fort's old parade grounds are soft and green with grass, and there is a nice restaurant and bar that we will visit someday soon. There's a spa and a beautiful grove of pines and gum trees. The view of the bridge is quite unusual from this side of things. Most tourists go over to the headlands side of the bridge, or look down at the bridge from the view lot positioned just above this fort. The views of the city can be great from here, depending on the fog, of course. We enjoyed a sunny day with minimal mist across the water.

You can take a hike under the bridge on a bike path and look straight up at the freeway's struts. This funky little building looks like something out of a fairy tale, but in reality held the circuit breakers for the nearby bridge workers' setup.