HUBBLE THURSDAY 3 JUNE 2010

(The Moon passing in front of the Sun from STEREO-B, February 25, 2007)

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.

ENDYMION (extract)

by John Keats

Book I

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases, it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

Read More...

Summary only...

LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 1 JUNE 2010

Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there. And the first two on this page are by little gator.

Read More...

Summary only...

TESTIMONY

In 1980 I entered a period of extreme sexual compulsion that was almost entirely related to beginning work on my childhood sexual abuse but having to invent the healing process every inch of the way -- because it didn't exist yet. Nowhere. A handful of us, working class dykes, put our faith in each other and created theory which, by and large, has stood up to time.


One evening that year I walked with two other dykes in my SF Brosnan Street apartment building, the women/roommates next door, Joan Annsfire and Julie Twitchell, to a potluck on Treat Street near 16th that was being held by a woman we all vaguely knew named Yohimbe. Someone, I bet Joan, gave voice to the largely unspoken truth that most of our gatherings in the wimmin's community those days, political or not, had a real agenda of looking for other women to -- fall in love with, go to bed with, become lifelong devoted companions as Alix Dobkin put it, all or any of the above. The three of us were single, and we laughed about how the only reason we'd drag ourselves to another gathering with semi-strangers to eat badly-made salad and Calistoga was to check out the action. Someone, probably me, suggested we be open about it and make a competition of it: Whoever had the most phone numbers of new women on the walk home would win.

I walked into that party on the prowl, and immediately locked gaze with Michele, who was visitng for the week from Portland. She was fat, pink-skinned, Jewish, with bright yellow hair that had a curl even cropped short. She was wearing purple sweatpants and a faded red Wallflower Order T-shirt. She was making a huge bowl of guacamole, and I immediately went to help her, pressing so much garlic into it that eventually she and I were the only ones who could stand to eat it.

I won the phone number contest, but the only one I remember calling later was Michele. She went back to Portland and we began a torrid correspondence, voluminous handwritten outpourings of confession, treatise, and poetry on the backs of old flyers. We visited each other when we could, which was not often because neither of us had any money. But I began going to Portland every November, a standing date. And it was that first visit, to a bone-cold house she shared with four other lesbians, when I first heard Ferron's album Testimony. Hitting the wimmin's community with the splash of a boulder.

It was sitting in Michele's dank living room, looking at that rose and olive Testimony album cover, when I first listened to

They say slowly
Brings the least shock
But no matter how slow I walk
There are traces
Empty spaces
And doors and doors of locks

I burst into tears and Michele scooted to wrap her generous thighs around me, asking me what was wrong. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know, really. And my despair solidified when I listened to "Ain't Life A Brook." That night in bed, Michele and I kissed but then rolled apart, sleeping back to back for the warmth, staying solo nonetheless. We didn't become lovers, after all. Which for me was an exception during that period, and a good thing.

Michele, like about a third of the dykes I knew, was trying on S/M as a means of dealing with her sexual abuse demons. She had whips on the wall behind her mattress on the floor. In our letters she'd told me what it meant to her, the liberation she felt in assuming roles, and I had said I wanted to try it. I wrote a piece of erotica I sent to her, about overpowering her and making her come against her will, She was a bottom and I imagined myself as a top.

I didn't want to feel bad about the crud that came up inside me when sex entered the picture in any relationship, how out of control I felt. I wanted control. I wanted to have nothing wrong with me.

Instead of pursuing a path that would give me an illusion of control and "safety" with regard to my desire, however, I wound up diving into the abyss and emerging elsewhere. I firmly believe that a lot of us who chose that direction have been labeled as "anti-sex" by our cohort who faced the same demons we did and decided if all they could have was desire with male conditioning defining most of the terms, that was better than no desire at all. I was willing to face a complete loss of sex if that's what it took to undo the imprint I had received as a child. A percentage of us were not willing to take that risk. I know what was right for me, and that's all I can ask for.

But in 1980, we were at the very beginning of that movement divide. We had Fran Winant in 1970 telling us

eat rice have faith in women
what I don’t know now
I can still learn
if I am alone now
I will be with them later
if I am weak now
I can become strong
slowly slowly
if I learn I can teach others
if others learn first
I must believe
they will come back and teach me

By 1975, we had Meg and Holly and Cris and Alix telling us how to cross the desert for each other, how to let ourselves be loved for our crazy eyes and the laughter which loosens our bones. How to stand on the mountain and not let them come here to take it. How to make love with each other, not to or at each other. Judy had assured us we were making love for the best reasons. We had gone forth, and we had even considered how to break up while still allowing only love to come between us.

But in 1980, Ferron reminded us sometimes we break up for good, sell the furniture and put away the photographs. Reagan was embarked on his mission to destroy working-class safety and with it the activist class. What remained of our numbers would be further attenuated by the human immunodeficiency virus entering our brothers' bloodstreams, calling many sisters to become the first AIDS caretakers because (a) gay men didn't know how to do community the way we did and (b) we believed when our turn came, they would come back and teach us. Those of us who had access to trust funds, education money, middle class security were increasingly seduced by a relief from the struggle. If we wanted children of our own, it was time to start having them. Clean and sober arrived as a community need.

And to our utter dismay, we discovered daddy was still showing up in bed with us. Some of us found nothing at all sexy about it.

Ferron sang

But life don't clickety-clack
Down a straight-line track
It comes together and it comes apart

In 1985, Michele lost weight, found a Jewish man to marry, went to work as a manager in Nike, and overnight became critical of what she called my downward mobility. I decided the way to address my need for control was to partner with a woman who took all the initiative and space in our intimacy. Unions had been broken, liberal was now an epithet, and the neocons who would arrive 15 years later to staff Dubya's regime were talking up the idea of a winnable nuclear war. It's a good thing I didn't know how far social justice and women's love would continue to unravel, part and parcel of each other.

However, now 30 years on, those doors and doors of locks have been opened enough to allow a breeze, and there are a great many of us still alive who eat rice and have faith in women. The wheel always spins around to new territory, and I can sing with certainty

But by my life be I spirit
And by my heart be I woman
And by my eyes be I open
And by my hands be I whole

Tuesday is Ferron's birthday. You might mosey over and tell her what she means to you.

[Love to Martha for the conversation which helped me formulate this essay. And thanks always to the Pleiades who saved my life.]

Read More...

Summary only...

MEMORIAL DAY LOLCATS ROUND-UP 2010

In honor of the holiday, here's an extra collection this week of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There's a political bent to this assemblage, with only one actual cat in these "LOLCats". And the first one on this page is my own effort.

Read More...

Summary only...

FOR THOSE OF US WITHOUT A GATED HIDEAWAY

Jill Cozzi's post at Brilliant at Breakfast acted as a final spark for me today. In "So Long [Gulf of Mexico], And Thanks For All The Fish", she begins:

I hope you all have had a chance to enjoy a tropical beach at least once in your life, because the days of sitting on pristine sands, looking at turquoise water and enjoying a dinner of fresh-caught fish are over, thanks to the oil-soaked greed of the Bush family and their cronies, the complete selling out of America to corporations, our own sense of petroleum-based entitlement, and Barack Obama's insistence on playing nice with greedy bastards.

Read her post for the details.
So I'll share here some of my not-quite-all-the-way-finished thoughts:

If you ardently believe in imminent Endtimes (count on it, in fact)

AND/OR if you ardently believe wealth is meant for only the elite few and there is not enough to go around, certainly not for the unworthy

AND/OR you are hopeless about human nature being inherently decent

AND/OR you secretly know climate change means hundreds of millions will die before the end of this entury unless a stop is put to the lifestyle which accrues you and your friends wealth and power

If you have this kind of damaged, defeated, christianist, white supremacist, male dominated worldview, you will easily decide to loot what is available for looting as you prepare your compound in Paraguay with its own private and pristine water source that will not be affected by the desertification of much of the globe.

You will easily decide rendering our own ocean unfit for anything BUT drilling is a logical step, a hedge against coming oil wars, because those who depend on fishing and nature are expendable segments of the population.

You will all speak the same language -- which we can interpret, if we are only willing to admit it -- and you will slyly allow things to go past the point of remedy. Beginning with the more unbeloved of our national coastlines.

Katrina and Rita response now appear as dry runs.

This is what I'm thinking. And I can read it also in the post of Jill, whom I trust.

But I am not hopeless, and I will not give up. They are wrong in ALL their beliefs, and I will not let them frame the question or close my mind to possibility. It can just as easily become the event that sweeps our elite from all decision-making over our lives. We can imagine that occurring, and whatever we can honestly imagine is a potential reality. Because, in fact, WE are in charge of our own perspective, and we are not stupid. Deceivable but not stupid, and that is the critical difference their class training has missed.

Not stupid, and we have a means of speaking to each other from the heart.

Rest up, allow yourselves to have a truly joy-filled weekend if you can, but rest up in any event. Talk with you soon.

Read More...

Summary only...

(The Center of Globular Cluster Omega Centauri)

Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.


ODE TO CHOCOLATE

by Barbara Crooker

I hate milk chocolate, don't want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don't want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle. You know the color.

Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave's
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.

Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette. Always bets
on the noir.

Read More...

Summary only...

FORGIVENESS AS A RADICAL WAY OF LIFE

(Ancient blue green algae; photograph courtesy D. J. Patterson, L. Amaral-Zettler and V. Edgcomb)

Today I received an essay written by a man with whom I am in community at Dykes To Watch Out For and Facebook. He wrote his thoughts in reply to something personal I had shared at FB, and he wanted my okay before he proceeded to publish it. I liked what he said very much, and if/when it is avaiable online, I'll link to it. In the meantime, his thinking sparked my own, and I want to share that below.


Years ago in The Sun I read the essay by Patrick Miller, A Primer on Forgiveness, which eventually became his book on forgiveness. To say it changed my life was an understatement.

I was raised an odd mix of fundamentalist christian and my mama's eclectic spirituality which blended her Wobbly father's worldview with reincarnation and the works of Edgar Cayce. I rejected g*d at 13 and became a born-again lesbian-feminist by 18. Miller's essay hit me at a time when I was still not the "freelance deist" (to paraphrase Karen Montgomery) that I am today, but uncomfortable crevasses in my prior bedrock were appearing on every mental hike.

I was particularly struck by one line of Miller's which said refusing to forgive was asserting that I knew better than g*d, that I was assuming a power and knowledge demonstrably beyond my actual abilities. This made sense to me even at a time when I did not believe in any form of g*d.


I was at that time working in my counseling sessions on the stage in my life, at age four, when I had had a moment of blinding clarity about my family's dysfunction and had decided that I would be the one to save them, individually and collectively. My insight about the problem was dead on. My assumption of my own power was also correct. What was incorrect was the extent of my abilities and resources, and that mistake came very close to killing me before my mother's death at age 28 finally began releasing me from that vow I'd made.

I began considering the idea that who I really needed to forgive was g*d. Or, since I was an atheist, forgive (a) my prior mistaken concept of g*d, (b) my stand-ins for g*d (the universe, collective unconscious, nature), and/or (c) myself as g*d.

Almost immediately, two events help hack out a path for me. One was that I was persuaded to join an acting class by the woman I was currently pursuing, who said the focus of the class would be more on writing than performing, and we could do it together. She lied about both of these (she was a talented liar), and a couple of weeks later I found myself alone in a class full of alarming extroverts, taught by a performer I adored (C.K. McFarland), and being given an assignment to "write a letter to someone about a significant event in our lives which we would then have to act out as a two-minute bit, solo and without props, showing progression through at least four distinct emotions."

My initial impulse was to simply drop the class. However, I woke up one morning with the idea of g*d writing me a letter explaining why she had abandoned me as a child. It was such a good plot line, I had to follow up. It turned into a stunning page. I didn't have a clue about how to "act it out", but somehow dragged my shy ass to the class and volunteered to go first because I was about to hurl from terror. At that point, I had not yet been mentored by either Sharon Bridgforth or Terry Galloway, had not found my voice or a way to handle my fear of public exposure, and when I stood up in front of that cluster of folks -- who had never even seen me converse with any of them -- I was shaking so hard C.K. actually asked me if I was going to pass out.

The only way I could think of to "act" the letter was to rip off all protection and become utterly vulnerable. I made them laugh, cry, and see g*d, as the saying goes. Two minutes later, I was leaned over the nearest chair, sobbing uncontrollably. C.K. called a break, suggested I go wash my face, and after I did, I left the building, never to return.

The second catharsis came when I listened to a tape sent by a friend of the Traveling Jewish Theater performing the revised version of Genesis as envisioned by tikkun olam. This picture of a g*d who was lonely, fallible, and female was a deity I could allow myself to trust and love. And tikkun olam vastly expanded my four-year-old decision to "save my family" into "repairing the world" but eliminated my isolation around it and stopped any clock-ticking. It morphed from a driving goal into a self-loving way of life.

To repair the world requires loving every spark of Shekinah found in each fragment. It means forgiving g*d for trying to end her aloneness by pouring divine essence into frail vessels, a mistake all novices make. If g*d can blow it like that, even the worst of us are off the hook, as long as we try to clean up our messes and keep loving each other.

So, yes, forgiveness becomes a daily choice where new light creeps toward old fetid corners and damage keeps being exposed. There's temporary pain which can be cleaned up before the next mess is revealed. Goethe said "Never hurry, never rest", and I retranslate that "rest" into "be permanently halted by negative emotion". But the cleaning is for my own sake, for my own connection to something way bigger than me, and as long as I always carry my own towel, I'll be in good company.

A company those who reject forgivness keep dying without experiencing.


Below are Miller's Seven Steps of Forgiving. Note how denial and judgment can play no role in this practice.

1
Select a bitter sorrow, a serious grievance against someone, or a punishing charge against yourself, and review it in complete detail.


2
Hold in your mind the image of whatever is to be forgiven – yourself, another person, a past event – and say, "I release you from the grip of my sadness, disapproval, or condemnation." Concentrate quietly on this intention.


3
Imagine for a while what your life will be like without the sorrow or grievance that has been haunting you.


4
Make amends with someone you’ve hurt or someone who has hurt you; tell a friend about your self-forgiveness; or otherwise link you inner work to your relationships.


5
Ask for God’s help to overcome fear or resistance at any step. If you do not believe in God, ask for help from all nature, humanity, and the mysteries of your own mind. These are the channels through which aid is sent – and aid is always sent.


6
Have patience. Forgiveness induces healing which follows its own order and timing. Whether you think you have accomplished anything thus far is less important than the fact that you have attempted a radical act calling forth change beyond your imagining. Go about your daily business, but stay alert to unexpected shifts in your thinking, feelings, and relationships.


7
Repeat steps 1 – 6 as often as necessary, for life.

Read More...

Summary only...